The sight was so utterly dissonant, so completely at odds with the nightmare she had been living for days, that Lucia's mind simply short-circuited. The sterile cell, the trail of unconscious bodies, the suffocating dread—all of it collided with the image of her brother sitting comfortably in a well-appointed room, chewing cheese as if he were waiting for a late dinner guest. The cognitive whiplash was absolute.
Before logic could form a single question—*How? Why? Who?*—a more primal instinct took over. The fear, the desperation, the sheer, gut-wrenching terror she had endured, all curdled in an instant into pure, undiluted fury. She crossed the room in two swift strides.
SMACK.
The sound of her open palm connecting with his cheek was sharp and loud in the quiet room. Kaelen's head snapped to the side, the piece of cheese flying from his hand.
"You bastard!" she yelled, her voice cracking with the force of a sob she refused to release. "I thought you were captured! I thought you were in chains! I thought you were dead!"
Kaelen staggered back a step, his hand flying to his reddening cheek. He stared at her, not with anger, but with utter, profound confusion. "Captured? Lucia, what in the world are you talking about? Did you not get my letters?" The question hung in the air, so simple, so reasonable, and so completely devastating. Lucia froze, her hand still stinging, her chest heaving. The letters. The carefully coded messages they exchanged through a dead-drop system, the only thread connecting them across a continent. She had received one, just before she set out. It had contained the usual meeting location and a brief, cheerful postscript asking her to bring extra coin this year, as the ale at the Weary Traveler was particularly fine.
Her mind, honed for danger and deception, had interpreted it through the lens of their entire relationship. Kaelen was always getting into scrapes. He was always charming, always reckless, always a little bit in need of bailing out. The request for extra money had fit the pattern perfectly. She had assumed he'd gambled away his funds again, or gotten into some minor trouble that required a payoff. The idea that he was genuinely, comfortably employed and just wanted to treat his little sister to a nice drink… it had never occurred to her. The thought was so mundane, so… normal, that her paranoid, warrior's brain had filtered it out entirely.
A hot flush of embarrassment crept up her neck, burning away the fury. She had crossed mountains and fought through ambushes, had nearly gotten herself and a stranger killed, all because she hadn't been able to conceive of a reality where her brother wasn't in trouble.
"I… I thought…" she stammered, her voice small, the fearsome warrior replaced by a chastised younger sister. "The money… you always…"
Kaelen's expression softened from confusion to a dawning, sympathetic understanding. He let out a long, weary sigh, rubbing his cheek. "Oh, Lucia. You thought it was another one of my messes." It wasn't an accusation; it was a statement of a sad, familiar truth. "No, little storm. This time, it was just an invitation."
The weight of her mistake settled on her shoulders, heavy and humiliating. Her gaze flickered to Joshey, who was standing silently in the doorway, observing the family drama with a carefully neutral expression. In that moment, the full, terrifying scope of the alternative timeline unfolded in her mind. If she had come alone. If she had stormed this city with only her sword and her rage. She would have torn through the Granary district, leaving a river of blood in her wake, all based on a catastrophic misunderstanding. She would have become the monster the Clan always feared she could be, and at the end of it, she would have found… this. A brother safe and sound, looking at her as if she'd lost her mind. A shudder ran through her. She was suddenly, profoundly glad for the calm, analytical man leaning against the doorframe. "If not for him," she said quietly, nodding towards Joshey, "finding you would have been… different. And much messier."
Kaelen followed her gaze, his eyes—sharper and more calculating than his sister's—taking in Joshey for the first time. He saw a man who looked young, but whose eyes held a depth and stillness that belied his years. He saw the dust of the road, the focused posture, the intelligent gaze that was currently assessing him right back. "And who," Kaelen asked, his tone shifting to one of polite, guarded curiosity, "might you be?"
Joshey pushed himself off the doorframe and offered a slight, formal bow, the one Elias's memories supplied for such situations. "I am Elias Vulcrest," he said, the fabricated name rolling off his tongue with practiced ease. "A… business associate. And a recent traveling companion to your sister."
Kaelen stepped forward, extending his hand. "Kaelen. It seems I owe you a considerable debt. Thank you for looking after her." His grip was firm, his skin calloused in a way that spoke of recent, hard work, but not the softness of a perpetual debtor or the raggedness of a slave.
As their hands clasped, Joshey's mind, ever the analyst, was working furiously. The handshake was more than a greeting; it was a data stream. The calluses weren't from a plow or a trowel. They were strategic. On the palms, yes, but also pronounced on the trigger finger and the base of the thumb. The grip was solid, the alignment of the wrist perfect, suggesting a foundation of formal training. This was not the hand of a wastrel or a victim.
But it was more than that. As their skin made contact, Joshey felt it. A thrum. A low, steady, potent hum of power contained within Kaelen's frame. It wasn't the volatile, explosive potential of a mage like Sylvaine, nor the silent, lethal sharpness of Lucia. This was something denser. More grounded. It felt like bedrock. It was the feeling of immense physical strength, so integrated and controlled that it had become a fundamental part of his being, like the mass of a mountain. This man wasn't just "not weak." He was, by any earthly standard, monstrously strong.
The pieces of the puzzle began to shift and realign. The comfortable room. The lack of guards. The fact that he was here, in the heart of Viggo's operation, seemingly as a guest. This wasn't a prisoner who had been rescued. This was… something else entirely.
Joshey released the handshake, his expression neutral, but his mind was racing. "The debt is mine," he replied smoothly. "Your sister's skills have saved my life more than once on this journey." It was the truth, and it bought him goodwill.
He let the silence hang for a beat, his eyes openly appraising Kaelen now, from his sturdy boots to the confident set of his shoulders. The question that had been burning in him since he first felt that resilient signature in the cellar could no longer be contained. It was too important. It spoke to a path to power he desperately needed to understand.
He gestured vaguely at Kaelen's form, a casual, almost off-hand gesture that belied the intensity of his interest. "If you don't mind my asking," Joshey began, his tone light, conversational, "how did you… get to be like that?" He let the question hang, incomplete. "You know. Your body."
It was a deeply personal, almost rude question, but Joshey asked it with the pure, unvarnished curiosity of a scientist examining a fascinating specimen. He wasn't asking about fitness. He was asking about the source of that bedrock power. He was asking how a man could become a fortress. Kaelen's response was a casual, almost dismissive wave of his hand, a low chuckle rumbling in his chest. "Awww, jeez," he said, a playful grin softening his sharp features. "I was just the one who survived the harsh conditions of the clan."
The answer was a deflection, a polished stone skipping over the deep, dark waters of his past. But to Joshey, it was a floodlight.
He survived the harsh conditions. The words echoed in Joshey's mind, instantly cross-referenced with everything he knew of Lucia. Her lethal precision, her emotional armor, her deep-seated paranoia. If this was the result of the clan's training for men, then the standards were not just high; they were Darwinian. It implied a regime of such brutal selection that only the absolute pinnacle of physical and mental fortitude could emerge. Lucia was a master sword; Kaelen was the anvil upon which she was forged. He had adapted, not just by learning to strike, but by becoming unbreakable. The thought was staggering. No wonder Lucia's furious, bone-jarring slap had seemed to barely register. It hadn't been a blow to him; it had been a love tap. A pillow fight. His body was a fortress, and she had been rattling the outer gate.
A chilling, strategic thought followed. It would be a significant problem if he could use mana and was fluent with it. A man with this level of inherent physical power, augmented by the precise, reality-warping force of mana engineering? He would be a one-man army. A true force of nature. Joshey filed that terrifying possibility away for later examination.
He opened his mouth to probe further, to ask about the specifics of this "harsh conditioning," to understand the path that led to such density of being. But Lucia, her brief flash of embarrassment burned away by a resurgence of practical fury, cut him off.
"Why," she demanded, her voice like shattering ice, "are we even here, Kaelen? In this… this den. You're not a prisoner. You're sitting here eating cheese. Explain. Now."
"Oh! Right, right," Kaelen said, his playful demeanor evaporating as he was yanked back to the present crisis. He ran a hand through his dark hair, the gesture suddenly weary. "It's… a friend of mine. He's been enslaved by Viggo. Stupid bastard got caught skimming from a spice shipment. I need help getting him back."
Lucia's eyes narrowed. "So, go get him. Or just kill Viggo. Problem solved." It was the same brutal, binary logic she had displayed in the corridor. See a problem, remove the problem. Permanently.
Kaelen sighed, a sound of long-suffering familiarity. He reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder, not to comfort her, but to physically impress upon her the complexity of the situation. "If only it was that easy, little storm. But killing him would only put me in deeper shit." He glanced at Joshey, a flicker of wry understanding passing between them. "Unless, of course, I was going to just kill everyone. Which would rather definitively brand me as a criminal and make it somewhat difficult to continue my… work… here."
Joshey couldn't help but interject, a dry, commiserating tone in his voice. "She's always like that." It was a simple statement, but it carried the weight of their shared, harrowing journey—the forest ambush, the confrontation on the stairs, the seven unconscious men. It was the weary acknowledgment of someone who had learned, through direct experience, the relentless, straightforward, and often terrifying simplicity of Lucia's problem-solving methodology.
Kaelen's eyes lit up with a spark of genuine camaraderie. He looked from Joshey back to his sister, a real smile touching his lips for the first time. "Right, right," he said, the words laden with a lifetime of similar frustrations. "You get it."
In that moment, a silent bond was forged between the two men—not of deep friendship, but of mutual, bemused respect for the formidable, complicated, and dangerously direct woman they both, in their own ways, were now tethered to. They were fellow operators trying to manage a natural disaster.
Lucia, for her part, seemed entirely oblivious to this silent male pact being formed in her honor. Her focus was on the mission. She crossed her arms, her posture all business. "Fine. So what is the job?"
Kaelen's expression grew serious again. "To be perfectly honest," he admitted, "if you had shown up alone, I would have aborted the whole thing. Saved Finn later. I don't… I don't really trust you with this kind of task, Lucia." The words were blunt, but not cruel. They were the assessment of a strategist, a brother who knew her strengths and her profound, potentially mission-ending weaknesses. "It requires a… lighter touch. But with the additional presence of Elias here…" He gestured to Joshey. "This could actually work. It provides a better way of dealing with it."
Lucia was taken aback, not by the insult to her capabilities, but by the underlying motivation. Her head tilted, a rare flicker of genuine, soft curiosity breaking through her stern facade. "Who… who is this friend, Kaelen? To make you care this much? To make you risk this?" It was a deeply personal question. In their world, attachment was a vulnerability. Risking one's life for anyone other than blood was a foreign, almost foolish concept. "Normally, you wouldn't try something like this unless it was for me."
Kaelen met her gaze, his own grey eyes softening. The playful rogue was gone, replaced by a man of surprising depth and loyalty. "Well," he said, his voice dropping to a more intimate tone. "He is my brother."
The effect was instantaneous. Lucia's eyes flew wide open. "*What?*" she exploded, a look of pure, unadulterated shock on her face. "When did Father adopt another person into the family?! How could you not tell me?! Who is he?!"
The room fell silent for a beat. Then, a snort escaped Joshey. He tried to stifle it, but it was too late. Kaelen followed, a low chuckle building in his chest until it erupted into a full-bellied, genuine laugh. It was the sound of tension shattering, of a shared, ridiculous understanding.
Joshey, wiping a mirthful tear from his eye, decided to put the poor girl out of her misery. "Lucia," he said, his voice warm with amusement. "He doesn't mean it literally. He means they're as close as brothers. They're really, really good friends."
Lucia stared at them, first at Joshey, then at her brother, who was now leaning against the desk, laughing so hard he was clutching his stomach. The realization dawned on her, slow and mortifying. The cultural nuance, the figure of speech, had flown completely over her head, intercepted by her literal, clan-forged mindset where family was a matter of bloodline and oath, not sentiment.
A deep, crimson blush spread from her neck all the way to the tips of her ears. She looked down at her boots, the fearsome warrior once again reduced to a flustered little sister who had just committed a monumental social faux pas. "Oh," was all she could manage, her voice small.
Kaelen finally caught his breath, his laughter subsiding into warm, affectionate shakes of his head. "Oh, Lucia. Never change." He pushed himself off the desk, his expression settling back into a focused, determined calm. The moment of levity was over. The plan was back on. "Alright. Now that we've all been properly introduced… let me tell you about Michael. And why we need to get him out of here without starting a war."
The silence in the room was a taut wire, vibrating with everything left unsaid between brother and sister. Kaelen's playful deflection about the clan had been a carefully constructed wall, and Lucia's slap had left a crack in it. Now, he looked at Joshey, a man he'd just met, and decided how much of the truth to reveal.
"The clan didn't just make me strong," Kaelen began, his voice losing its casual edge, becoming something lower, more deliberate. He held Joshey's gaze, the explanation meant for him, the outsider. "It made me a specific kind of tool. And when a tool starts thinking for itself, questioning its purpose…" He paused, the memory a shadow in his grey eyes. "I was exiled."
The two words landed in the room, simple, final, and heavy with unspoken history. He offered no details, no reasons, no drama. It was a statement of fact, a closed book.
Lucia, who had been standing rigid, her arms crossed, let out a soft, almost imperceptible sigh. Her eyes, which had been blazing with a mix of fury and relief, softened with a pain so old it had become part of her bones. She knew. She knew the real story, the shame and the principle tangled together that had led to his casting out. She knew he was simplifying a wound that had never fully healed, packaging it into a neat, palatable explanation for their new companion. He was saying it for Joshey's sake, to provide context without exposing the raw nerve of their shared past. She didn't challenge him. She didn't elaborate. She simply gave a single, slow nod, her gaze dropping to the floor in a rare moment of shared, silent understanding. The past was a locked room between them; for now, the door would remain shut.
Kaelen, seeing her acceptance, gave a slight, grateful nod of his own before turning his attention fully to the map on the desk, his voice shifting back to the practical, focused tone of a man with a mission. "The first person I met after was Michael," he said, unfolding the sketch. The story could now move forward, the foundation laid. The "why" of his exile was less important than the "what" he had built after. He began to outline the plan, the complex, bloodless extraction that would require all their unique skills, a silent agreement passing between the siblings to leave the ghosts of the clan where they belonged—in the past. Kaelen let out a long, slow breath, the kind that carries the weight of a long story. He ran a hand through his hair, the casual act looking strangely tired on him.
"Look," he started, his voice lower now, losing its earlier performance. "After... everything with the clan... I washed up here. Had nothing. The first person who didn't look at me like I was stray dog or a piece of meat was Michael."
He unfolded the sketch, his thumb brushing over the paper. "He found me trying to steal a loaf of bread. I was all muscle and no plan. He was all plan and no muscle. We made it work." A real, fond smile touched his lips this time. "We had a good thing for a while. We were like... righteous con artists. We'd find some greedy guildsman skimming off the top, cook up some fake documents, and 'confiscate' his ill-gotten gains to give back to the people he'd cheated. Felt good. Felt like we were actually doing something."
He sighed, the memory souring. "Got cocky, I guess. Used the money to start a real business. Thought we were so smart, playing with the big boys." His jaw tightened. "But in a place like this, there's always a bigger boy. Viggo. He 'invited' us to join his operation. It wasn't a request."
"I said yes," Kaelen said, the words simple and heavy. "Seemed like the only way to keep a roof over our heads and Michael out of the line of fire. I did jobs for him. The kind that required... persuasion. But Michael... he couldn't stomach it. The things we were moving. The people. He started talking about leaving. Got careless about who he talked to."
Kaelen's gaze dropped to the map, but he wasn't really seeing it. "Viggo took him three months ago. It's a message. 'Do your job, or your friend suffers.' They've got him in the main pen, breaking rocks. They keep him alive because he's still useful with numbers, and because every day he's in there is a day I remember who's in charge."
He finally looked up, meeting Joshey's eyes, then Lucia's. "I could kill Viggo. Honestly, it'd be the easiest thing I've done all week." The casualness of the statement was chilling. "But it's like kicking a hornet's nest. The second he's dead, every smuggler, guard captain, and merchant in his pocket turns into a loose cannon. The first thing they'd do is clean house. Michael would be at the top of the list. So, we don't need a massacre. We need a magic trick."
He spread the map out fully, his finger tracing lines. "Here's how we pull it off. It's gonna take a few days. We need to be smart about it."
First: You Two Get Lost "Elias," Kaelen said, tapping the western docks. "You need to disappear into the crowd. I can get you a job as a dockhand on the night shift. Just keep your head down, do the work. But while you're at it, I need you to be my eyes. Watch the guards. Learn their routines. When do they get lazy? When do they change shifts? And find Michael. Confirm he's still in one piece. He'll be the one who looks half-dead but still has that clever look in his eyes, like he's figuring the angles."
He turned to Lucia. "You, little storm, are gonna be our ghost. I need you to find a way in that isn't the front door. There's an old drainage tunnel that runs from the marshes right up to the foundation. I need to know if it's collapsed, if it's guarded, if we can even use it. Also, walk the perimeter. Find the spots where the walls are crumbling or the patrols never bother to look."
Second: The Misdirection "Alright, this is the tricky part," Kaelen leaned in. "Lucia, I need you to cause a little chaos, but the quiet kind. There's a rival of Viggo's, a man named Vorlag. I need you to get into his office and take one specific thing: a shipping manifest for a big incoming spice shipment. Don't get seen. Just make it disappear. When that manifest goes missing right before the shipment arrives, Vorlag is going to think Viggo is screwing him over. It'll cause a lot of yelling, a lot of meetings, and a lot of distracted guards right when we need them to be looking the other way."
"Elias," he continued, "while that's happening, you'll be in position near the holding pen. When the distraction is at its peak, your job is to get through the final lock on Michael's chains. No smashing. Something precise. Can you do that?"
Third: The Getaway "When all hell is breaking loose between Viggo and Vorlag, that's our window. Lucia, you go in. You grab Michael. You get him out through that drainage tunnel or over the wall, whichever works. I'll have a small boat waiting in the reeds. Elias, the second it's done, you just... melt away. Go back to the inn. Be seen having a drink. You were never there."
He looked at both of them, his expression dead serious. "This isn't about being brave. It's about being smart and patient. We only get one shot at this. If we mess up, Michael is dead. Are you in?"
Joshey felt a slow grin spread across his face. It was a dangerous, complicated plan. It was perfect. Lucia gave a single, sharp nod, her eyes already calculating the angles of the walls and the shadows. They were in.