The biting Orario wind, sharp with the promise of a long winter, did little to cool the simmering frustration within Draco.
His footsteps, heavy and deliberate, crunched a rhythm of discontent into the fresh snow blanketing the city.
The meeting with Shakti in the Ganesha familia home was over, the proposal delivered, but the weight of its necessity clung to him like a shroud.
It was a simple, almost embarrassingly obvious idea: mandatory education for new adventurers before they were ever permitted to set foot in the dungeon.
It was not a cause he had ever envisioned championing.
Yet, the past two months had painted a gruesome mural of folly and waste across the dungeon's upper floors, a tragedy written in the blood of the inexperienced.
His tail, a heavy, scaled thing, lashed once, sending a plume of powder into the frozen air.
The motion was pure agitation, a physical manifestation of the silent rage coiling in his gut.
The catalyst, the true heart of this grim compulsion, was the children.
The war against the evilus three months prior had been a pyrrhic victory, leaving a city not just scarred but hollowed out.
The price of triumph was measured in a generation of orphans.
Orphanages, strained and underfunded even before the conflict, were now catastrophically overwhelmed.
The Guild provided some aid, of course, but it was a thimble of water on a forest fire.
Their strictures and protocols, their very bureaucracy, hampered decisive action.
In this vacuum of despair, various familia's saw opportunity.
Those who had suffered heavy losses looked to the streets to fill their ranks, offering a roof, a meal, and a familia crest to desperate, parentless children.
It was a solution both pragmatic and monstrous.
It alleviated the immediate crisis of shelter while sowing the seeds for a slower, more intimate carnage.
The result was a predictable slaughter.
A horrifying spike in the deaths of new adventurers.
They were sent into the dungeon ill-prepared, with cheap gear and cheaper advice, their only training a rushed lecture from guild advisors stretched so thin they were rendered practically useless.
Small and mid-sized exploration familias, hemorrhaging money from lost assets and properties in the war, needed quick capital.
They viewed these green recruits not as investments to be nurtured, but as disposable tools to be used until they broke.
Some of the more shadowy groups offered no training at all, a policy of unsupervised "live experience" that was little more than a death sentence.
It was as if the sacrifices of the war, the lessons bought with so much blood, had been entirely forgotten.
The worst of it was the quiet exploitation, the systemic bullying that turned these children into pack mules and bait.
It reminded him of the plight of Lili, the Pallum girl he thought be had saved.
The memory was a fresh cut.
He could not, of course, dictate the internal policies of other familias.
His influence had limits.
But he could slightly pressure the Guild, a monolithic institution that could enforce change.
He could give these children, these orphans he had failed to save from destitution, a fighting chance to survive their new profession.
Orario needed to be stronger, harder, more resilient than it had been in the tale he remembered. The need was not just altruistic; it was a grim necessity for survival.
Aasterinian's warning echoed in his mind, a chilling counterpoint to the city's troubles.
When his treatment was complete, when he finally transitioned from a juvenile dragon-kin to an adult, the divine hunt would begin.
The goddess Tiamat would come for him.
And her arrival would not be a quiet affair; it would drag all of Orario into a chaos that would make the evilus war look like a street brawl.
These children, these poorly trained adventurers, would be the first to be swept away in the storm.
'If only I had more time' he mused, his reptilian eyes narrowing as he scanned the snow-shrouded rooftops.
'I could purge some of the rot at its source. I could wipe out the Ishtar Familia at the very least'
The thought was born of a recent, chilling discovery.
Days earlier, he had walked the mind boggling maze of Daedalus Street, his purpose to seek out strays….orphans who had fallen through the already gaping cracks of the system, to offer what little warmth and shelter he could before winter's full fury arrived.
But he had noticed something peculiar, a statistical anomaly that prickled the back of his mind: a distinct lack of female children.
It could have been coincidence.
It was not.
A brief, discreet investigation confirmed his darkest hunch.
Many of the missing girls, those with even passably pleasant features, could be traced to the garish, perfumed confines of the Entertainment District, the sovereign territory of the Ishtar Familia.
Their fate required no imagination.
It was a old, vile story.
And without overwhelming power and the political capital to wield it, direct action was impossible.
He was not a one-man revolution yet.
Power alone was not enough, a lesson taught in blood by the story of Zald, Alfia, and Mors.
One needed a system, a cause, a legitimacy he did not yet possess.
Shaking the depressive inertia from his mind, he focused on two specific souls caught in this vast, grim machine: Lili and Haruhime.
Lili's decision still baffled him.
Two and a half months ago, he had intervened when members of her own Soma Familia were assaulting her.
He had offered her sanctuary within the Bahamut home, protection against the familia that treated her as a slave.
Yet, after a few days of safety, she had chosen to return.
He could not stop her; to do so would make him her jailer, different in method but similar in spirit to her captors.
He had assumed the backing of a major familia would give her the courage to break her chains. He had been wrong.
'I guess I don't give off the same vibes as Bell Cranel' he concluded with a silent, grimace. 'Perhaps only he can be her savior. Some paths are not mine to walk'
The other, Haruhime, was a ghost of a future tragedy.
A fox-kin from the Far East, destined to be banished from her clan, captured by slavers, and purchased by Ishtar.
An event scheduled for two years hence.
An event he wished to intercept but was utterly powerless to prevent.
His path was set; tomorrow he would depart for the Valley of the Dragon for his treatment, with no clear date of return.
He could not put off his growth, and stay by the city gates for a two-year vigil on the off chance of spotting one specific, unfortunate soul.
He had considered tasking his siblings or familia members with the watch, but the thought died as quickly as it was born.
How would he explain it?
How could he articulate the source of his knowledge without sounding like a obsessed deviant, especially to the keen-eyed and sharp-tongued women who already populated his life?
The explanation was impossible.
No.
It was a bitter pill to swallow, but it had to be done.
Haruhime's fate, however dark, would have to play out.
According to the narrative he knew, she would be protected by Aisha Belka within Ishtar's palace, shielded from the worst of its horrors.
She would survive, until her own hero arrived.
This rationalization was his only comfort, but it was a frail one, threatened by a terrifying variable: the law of causality.
His very existence was a stone thrown into the pond of fate.
Ripples spread.
Timelines shifted.
Alliances changed.
What if his actions had already altered the chain of events?
What if Aisha was transferred, or killed on a expedition?
What if Haruhime was sold to a far crueler master before her designated protector could find her?
The what-ifs were a torturous chorus in his mind, a relentless plague of doubt that followed him all the way to the wrought-iron gates of the Hephaestus familia compound.
He paused, taking a final moment to let the cold air sear his lungs, trying to bury the oppressive thoughts under a mantle of frost.
The problems of the city were a hydra; for every head he lopped off with a proposal or a charity, two more grew in the shadows.
He was trying to build a levee against a coming flood, all while knowing a hurricane was on the horizon.
With a final, steadying breath that misted in the air, he pushed the heavy gate open.
For now, there was other business to attend to.
A/N: Just a few more chapters left before I do the time skip, if there is anything you readers feel should be addressed before then, please let me know 😁.