I floated somewhere between sleep and waking, not quite anchored to either shore, drifting in the lazy, directionless current of a half-conscious state.
The world around me was less a place and more a suggestion of one—patches of color that shimmered like heat over stone, sounds that barely remembered what they were supposed to be, fragments of thought that never finished their sentences before dissolving into static.
Somewhere in the middle of it all, like a lighthouse glimpsed through fog, she appeared again. The woman from the cube. The one whose face I'd seen more often in dreams than I'd seen my own in mirrors lately.
I wasn't even startled anymore.
No jolt of suspicion, no paranoid scanning of the horizon for tricks. She'd become… familiar. Not in the way you grow used to a neighbor's voice through the wall, but in the way you grow used to your own shadow—always there, even when you forget to look for it.
Her presence didn't slam into me; it slipped in, like warm water curling around my ankles. The light around her pulsed faintly, never steady, always flickering as if someone had put the sun on a dimmer switch and was indecisively fiddling with it.
I couldn't make out her expression—never could—but there was a weight to the way she watched me, the same way you might watch a candle burn lower than it should, knowing you can't snuff it out but wishing you could shield it from the wind. I wondered, not for the first time, if she actually knew me, or if this was some elaborate cosmic prank. But the strange thing was, I didn't care. If she wanted to haunt my dreams, she was welcome. It was almost… nice.
Then came the whispers.
They began far off, little ripples against the surface of the dream, so faint I couldn't tell if they were words or just the memory of them. They drew closer with every second, curling around me, thin and insistent, like ivy wrapping a column. I strained to make them out, and they sharpened—not much, but enough. Two words, breathed with the kind of softness that still cuts straight through you:
"Wake up."
And so I did.
The jolt was instant, like being dropped into my own body from a great height. My eyes snapped open to the dim canvas ceiling of our wagon, the fabric shifting slightly in the breeze, sunlight already filtering in at the edges. It was early morning—too early for anything to feel right—and yet my bones knew something was off before my head caught up.
Salem was sitting across from me, legs stretched out, arms folded in that deliberate way that makes you wonder whether he's comfortable or just posing as comfortable to annoy you. His expression was the perfect blend of boredom and faint contempt, the kind of look you'd wear if you were forced to watch paint dry but the paint insisted on doing it badly.
I blinked at him, voice rough. "What's with the funeral face?"
"Bandits," he said flatly. No flourish, no dramatic pause, just that one word tossed out like it was the day's weather report.
It took all of three seconds for the meaning to settle, and when it did, I felt the corners of my mouth curl into a grin that was probably… well, alarming, if we're being honest. "And you're telling me this now because…?"
He didn't answer right away, which meant he was giving me the pleasure of figuring it out myself. I did. My grin sharpened. "You saved them for me."
One of his eyebrows twitched. "You're welcome."
Gods, what a gentleman.
I sat up, stretching lazily, as if we were discussing what to have for breakfast rather than imminent violence. Rodrick was still beside me, dead asleep, his breathing steady and unbothered. Either he hadn't heard, or he simply didn't consider "bandits" worth waking up for. Admirable.
The back of the wagon's tented flap burst inward so suddenly I half expected it to be a gust of wind with strong opinions. Instead, it was a man in a mask. The mask was rough leather, crudely stitched, with two narrow eye slits and the kind of carelessly smeared black paint that screamed "we tried to look terrifying, but the paint budget ran out."
He took a step in, clearly expecting… something other than me lounging like a cat on a windowsill. I smiled at him, slow and pleasant, as though we were neighbors meeting in the street and I wasn't still half-wrapped in my blanket.
"Morning," I said, rolling my shoulders until they popped. "You're early. We don't usually start getting robbed until after breakfast."
There was a hesitation behind the mask—confusion, maybe even the faint realization that he had somehow walked into the wrong play. "Uh… you—" he began, but I was already standing, drawing myself up in one long, lazy stretch that made my joints crack audibly.
"Sorry, what was that?" I asked, pretending to cup a hand to my ear. "You'll have to speak up."
He didn't. Which was fine, because my foot was already moving. The kick connected squarely with the middle of his masked face, and the sound it made was deeply satisfying—a sharp, meaty thud followed by a muffled yelp as he stumbled back. Blood was already blooming under the mask.
I stepped lightly down from the wagon, boots hitting the forest floor with a crunch of leaves. The morning air was crisp, scented faintly with pine and something warmer—smoke, maybe, or the remnants of a campfire I hadn't seen yet. Somewhere behind me, the bandit was still staggering, trying to decide whether to be angry or simply unconscious. I helped him make that decision with a quick follow-up strike, this one silent.
Whistling—an obnoxiously cheerful little tune I'd learned from some drunken sailor years ago—I strolled around the wagon to find three more of them.
One had Dunny by the collar, the boy's lanky frame held still but his eyes were sharp and calculating in a way I hadn't seen before. The other two flanked him, both brandishing short swords that looked as if they'd been forged from equal parts steel and bad intentions.
I didn't even break stride. "Good morning, gentlemen. And… gentleman-adjacent," I said, nodding toward the one holding Dunny. "Hope you don't mind, but I'm going to make my tea now. You're welcome to stay, of course, though it might be awkward if this ends in your deaths."
They blinked at me as I crouched, setting my small kettle over the portable flame I carried for exactly this purpose. Water poured in, leaves added, the scent of brewing tea unfurling into the cool air.
"Oi!" one of them barked, voice high and irritated. "What the hell do you think you're—"
"You're being loud," I interrupted, not looking up. "It's morning. Let's keep it civil."
The tallest of the three stalked forward, the set of his shoulders saying "I am the reasonable one here" while the glint in his eyes said "I am about to do something very unreasonable." Without a word, he smacked the kettle from my hands, sending the tea scattering into the dirt.
I stared at the fallen kettle for a long, slow moment. "Oh," I said at last, "that was rude."
The fight began without ceremony. Two of them rushed me at once, blades flashing, movements clumsy enough that I almost felt bad for them. Almost. I slipped aside from the first swing, then the second, my boots barely whispering against the dirt. They were sloppy, predictable—the kind of fighters who thought speed meant moving their arms faster rather than their minds.
One lunged straight for my chest. I caught his blade mid-swing, my hand snapping closed around the steel. The enhancement flared instantly—muscles, tendons, skin hardening just enough to turn a fatal mistake into a show of control. It was the same trick Salem had pulled in the mirror chamber, and it felt good.
The man's eyes widened in disbelief. I smiled, then poured the same enhancement into my forearm and twisted. The blade shattered with a ringing crack, shards scattering into the leaves. He screamed—briefly—before my fist drove into his gut, silencing him as neatly as a snuffed candle.
The other took a step back, sword still raised but his confidence crumbling like stale bread.
I bent down, picked up my poor fallen teacup from the dirt, and stared mournfully into its half-filled depths. The liquid had gone a little grainy from its impromptu meeting with the forest floor, but I wasn't about to waste good tea over a little grit.
I took a sip—slow, deliberate—letting my free hand flick out lazily to swat away the other bandit's sword as it came for me again. It was like brushing an insistent fly away from your ear—annoying, repetitive, utterly harmless.
He grunted in frustration, probably wondering why the hell I wasn't playing by the unspoken rules of banditry, which, as far as I could tell, involved looking scared, pleading for mercy, and bleeding generously on demand.
The third man, the one still holding Dunny, hadn't moved. He looked like someone had just replaced all his thoughts with the loud static of panic. When his brain finally caught up to the scene in front of him—his two men bested, one groaning on the ground, the other being idly toyed with—his grip on Dunny tightened.
"Stay right where you are," he snarled, the mask warping with the movement of his jaw. "Or I'll kill him."
Now, that was interesting. Not because of the threat—threats were as common as leaves in a forest—but because of the sheer, pitiful conviction in his voice. He really thought he had leverage.
I sighed, drained the last sip of tea, and let the cup dangle from my fingers. "You know," I said, my voice calm as a church bell, "it's awfully rude to interrupt breakfast."
And then I moved.
One step forward to draw the swordsman's attention, then a fluid pivot around him—close enough that I could smell the sweat and fear under the leather of his armor. My hand slipped down, fingers curling around the hilt of a dagger strapped to his side. I pulled it free in the same motion, the weight familiar and perfect in my palm.
Before the swordsman had even processed what I'd taken, my arm snapped up. The dagger left my hand in a perfect, spinning arc.
It struck the bandit holding Dunny dead in the forehead.
No scream, no stagger—just a sharp, wet thunk and the sudden collapse of a body whose strings had been cut. Dunny stumbled free, wide-eyed, as the man hit the ground with a graceless finality.
The swordsman froze. His gaze flicked from me, to the corpse of his comrade, and back again. His sword lowered, his knuckles loosening, the fight bleeding out of him in a rush. When his weapon slipped from his fingers, the sound it made hitting the dirt was almost polite.
That's when I smiled.
I reached into my coat, fingers curling around the cool, feathered length of my pen. The way the sunlight caught its trim sent a little ripple of delight down my spine. When I drew it out, I made sure the motion was slow—measured—so he could see exactly what I was holding. The wicked smirk I wore was entirely intentional.
His lips moved, forming words almost involuntarily. "You… you're the incarnation of the devil."
"Flattery will get you everywhere," I murmured.
Three quick marks—sharp, deliberate strokes against his skin The ink shimmered and then sank into him. The transformation hit like a silent storm. His frame shuddered, muscles trembling, voice catching in a strangled gasp that was equal parts fear and something softer. His height shifted; his face softened; the harsh lines of his jaw gave way to delicate curves; his armor seemed suddenly ill-fitting against the new, slighter frame.
When the magic faded, he stood there—no longer the gruff, desperate swordsman from moments before, but something… gentler. Beautiful in a way that made even the sunlight seem a little shy about touching him.
I stepped closer, tucking the pen away, my grin easy now. "Much better."
That was when Salem and Rodrick emerged from the wagon. Salem's eyes swept the scene with the same detached precision he might use to assess the weather, while Rodrick just… stopped.
His gaze moved from Dunny, still frozen in shock, to the bodies on the ground, to me, and then back again, like he was assembling a puzzle he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to finish.
Dunny looked like he'd just witnessed a god pluck the moon out of the sky and toss it into a stewpot. His hands twitched at his sides, as if they couldn't decide whether to reach for a weapon or cross themselves.
"Cheer up," I told him, giving his shoulder a light pat. "You're still alive. Which, given the morning we're having, is quite an achievement."
But the moment of levity didn't last.
The knot in my gut tightened, that faint itch at the back of my mind flaring. This hadn't felt like a random attack. Bandits didn't usually pick well-guarded wagons unless they were either desperate or stupid, and these men hadn't carried the kind of hunger in their eyes that spoke of desperation. No… this smelled like planning. Like placement. Like someone had arranged for them to be here.
I turned to my newly transformed companion, tilting my head. "Alright, lovely," I said, the edge in my voice sharpened just enough to cut through his silence. "Who sent you?"
He pressed his lips together, chin lifting in that stubborn, futile way people do when they're still clinging to the idea that they have a choice.
Fine. We'd do this the easy way.
"Velvet Command," I whispered.
The magic settled over him like silk soaked in honey—sweet, irresistible, utterly binding. I could feel him fighting it, the tension in his frame betraying the battle in his head. But resistance was just a pause, not a victory. Eventually, the words tore free.
"The… Southern Sun Cult."
I blinked. Then, for a moment, I almost laughed. "Really?" I said, unable to stop the incredulous curl of my mouth. "The Southern Sun Cult? Working with the Northern Cathedral?"
Rodrick's brow furrowed, but Salem's expression didn't shift—though I swore I saw the faintest flicker of interest there.
The Cult and the four cathedrals were supposed to hate each other. They had for years. The kind of bone-deep loathing that survived generations and feasts on old grudges like they're fresh bread. But apparently, their hatred for me was enough to outweigh their hatred for each other. How charming.
Still… this added another layer to the board. Another faction to account for when we walked into the tournament. Another piece I might just be able to move into place to take down two enemies at once.
I turned to Dunny, whose shock was starting to give way to something more like wary focus. "Start heading out," I told him. "Now. We don't have a moment to spare."
He nodded, climbing up to the driver's seat. Salem and Rodrick followed, their gazes still occasionally flicking back to me as if waiting for me to explain how I'd turned a bandit raid into a morning stroll.
I just smiled to myself, stepping up into the wagon as the wheels began to roll forward, the forest swallowing the last traces of the fight behind us.