The path narrowed beneath a solemn canopy of ancient trees, their branches arching together overhead like intertwined hands in quiet prayer. Shafts of pale morning sunlight broke through the leaves in delicate strands, dappling the trail ahead with shadows and gold. Ahead of them, the group walked in a subdued line Valen and Luken at the front, their earlier banter now replaced with careful silence. Nyra followed close behind, head slightly bowed, eyes fixed ahead but clearly lost within her own thoughts. Just behind her, Neo moved quietly, tension visible in every subtle shift of his stance, the weight of their earlier conversation still settling heavily upon his shoulders. Tar, solid and unyielding, followed after, his large frame a comforting, silent guardian.
At the very rear, Thal walked steadily, his massive form casting a shadow that stretched behind him. Beside him, Alinda matched his pace effortlessly, her boots moving soundlessly over the earth.
For a time, neither spoke. The silence between them was comfortable yet edged with a quiet tension that had settled since Thal's harsh words earlier. Finally, Alinda broke it, her voice soft, carefully neutral.
"You shouldn't have said it like that," she said quietly, eyes fixed on the path ahead rather than him.
Thal did not immediately reply. His gaze remained distant, unreadable. When he finally spoke, his voice was low, weighed down by an undertow of weariness. "I know."
Alinda gave a slight nod, accepting his admission without satisfaction. Her crimson eyes glanced sideways, studying his face from the corner of her vision. "You treat him like a child, still."
Thal's jaw tightened subtly, a brief shadow crossing his eyes. "Maybe I do."
"Maybe?" she echoed gently, raising an eyebrow. "You've raised him, guided him, protected him everything you've ever done has been to keep him from harm but Neo isn't a boy anymore, Thal. He's grown up in the shadow of all your grief, and he needs to step out from it."
Thal's golden eyes remained focused ahead, though his voice softened slightly, barely audible above their footsteps. "And if he steps into fire instead?"
Alinda looked forward as well, matching his thoughtful, distant gaze. "Then he'll burn, like we all did but he'll come out stronger. He'll find his own way. You can't choose for him."
Thal exhaled slowly, quietly, as though releasing something he'd carried for far too long. "I've seen enough broken dreams, Alinda."
Alinda hesitated, careful to choose her next words but spoke anyway. "Is that why you're holding him back? Because you couldn't protect her?"
Thal slowed slightly, his footsteps hesitating just enough to betray the jolt of pain her words brought. For an instant, he glanced at Alinda, his expression hardening. "Don't."
"I'm not trying to hurt you," she replied softly, keeping her voice steady. "But he remembers her. He carries her every day even now. He sees in himself what she might have been."
Thal's voice dropped dangerously quiet, heavy as stone. "He has no idea what it means to carry that burden."
Alinda's gaze sharpened slightly, though her tone remained gentle. "Maybe not but he watched you carry it. He learned it from you, Thal."
Another silence fell between them, heavier this time, filled only by the faint sounds of footsteps and distant birdcalls. Thal kept walking, each step a quiet refusal to break first.
Alinda let the silence linger, respecting the weight of his thoughts but eventually, gently, she continued, almost in a whisper. "Quincy believed people could change. She fought and died for that belief. If she were here, do you really think she would approve of how you spoke to Neo?"
The name landed between them like a fragile thing, cracking open memories that both had guarded fiercely.
Thal stopped walking abruptly, the subtle shifting of leather and fabric of his kilt the only indication of his internal struggle. Alinda paused too, turning slightly to face him. He looked down, his fists clenched loosely at his sides, tension rippling subtly through his shoulders.
"Quincy," he finally murmured, voice heavy with something deeply buried. "She trusted too easily. She thought too much of people."
"Is that what you tell yourself now?" Alinda asked quietly, meeting his troubled gaze directly. "Or is it because believing in others cost her everything?"
Thal's jaw tensed again but this time, he did not pull away. His eyes were haunted, burdened by old pain. "Belief can break as much as it builds. You saw it too. You watched her fall."
Alinda's gaze softened. "And I watched her stand again, every single time. She didn't lose because she believed she won because she never stopped. She gave Neo something worth fighting for. Something to aspire to."
Thal's gaze turned distant, looking past her, through the trees to some faraway memory. "And what did that belief earn her in the end?"
Alinda sighed softly. "It earned her Neo. It earned her Lucian and it earned her you. No matter how it ended, she gave you all a chance to be something greater. Isn't that worth something?"
Thal drew a slow breath, the quiet sorrow in his eyes deepening. "I don't think Neo realizes what he's walking toward. It will change him, Alinda. If he sees the true cruelty of those walls, what they hide beneath their city…"
"He may," Alinda conceded gently. "But he also might change the cruelty he finds. Quincy believed in the possibility of people, even when you stopped believing. Maybe Neo carries her hope now."
For a long, tense moment, Thal remained silent, wrestling with the heaviness of her words. Finally, he nodded, a subtle gesture heavy with quiet resignation.
"I won't watch another one die because of what they believe," he murmured, voice tight with suppressed pain.
The weight of those words silenced Alinda briefly, their echoes hanging painfully in the air between them. Finally, she reached out just for a moment her hand brushing gently against his arm, a rare gesture of comfort she seldom offered.
"You can't protect him from everything," Alinda said quietly, her voice gentle but firm. "And I don't think he'd let you, even if you tried."
Thal didn't respond right away. His golden eyes remained fixed ahead, unmoving, cold. When he did speak, his voice was low and quiet but there was no warmth in it. Only steel.
"He couldn't stop me if he tried."
The words settled like frost between them, and Alinda felt the sudden shift in the air but Thal wasn't finished. His pace didn't change but his next words came with a weight that made the forest itself feel more distant.
"I'll make sure he lives," he said. "Even if I have to drag him back with broken legs. Even if I have to kill every damn soul in that city. I won't lose another child."
Alinda's breath caught faintly, and though she didn't stop walking, her body stiffened. She knew darkness. She'd lived beside it, fought through it, bled with it but still, those words made something old and instinctive flicker at the base of her spine. "You'd become a monster just to protect him?" she asked, voice quieter now, edged with disbelief.
Thal's lips curled, not into a smile but into something like resignation. "I already am."
The words hung heavy, and for the first time, Alinda didn't know what to say. She looked at him, not as the old friend she'd known, or the scarred father of broken children but as something terrible and beautiful like a storm on a leash, only barely kept from destroying everything in its path.
Thal's expression remained unreadable but there was no mistaking the truth in what he said. It wasn't bravado. It wasn't rage. It was certainty. If Lions Gate itself stood between Neo and survival, Thal would tear the stone from the foundations with his bare hands. He would burn the world if it tried to take another child from him.
"That's not what she would've wanted," Alinda said, quieter now. Not angry just disturbed. "She wouldn't want you becoming that."
Thal's reply came fast and flat.
"She's dead."
He didn't look at Alinda as he said it. He didn't have to. The words hit like a hammer, not because of volume or force but because of the brutal simplicity behind them. Alinda stared at him for a moment longer, her jaw tightening, eyes searching his face for some sign any sign that part of him didn't believe it.
But she found none.
They walked on in silence after that. Alinda didn't speak again, not for a while. Some lines, once crossed, didn't let you come back easily.
Alinda moved like a shadow peeled from the forest, weaving between the group with unsettling silence. She didn't glance at Nyra, Neo, or Tar as she passed, only the faint whisper of her boots brushing earth marked her presence. Whatever thoughts stirred behind those crimson eyes, they were unreadable cold as the steel etched into her armor. When she reached the front, where Valen and Luken walked side by side.
Valen and Luken walked at a relaxed pace, the early light catching on the edge of Luken's hood where it draped over his illusion-wrapped horn. Valen said something half-smirking, half-serious probably a comment about someone's boots or the way the moss stuck to Nyra's armor but Alinda didn't hear it. Her focus was on Luken. Just him.
As she reached them, her shadow falling briefly across the pair, she didn't speak at first. Her crimson eyes flicked to Valen, then to Luken, then back to Valen again.
"Luken," she said flatly. "Walk with me."
Valen blinked, raising an eyebrow but before he could say something inappropriate, she added, "Alone."
That shut him up, though not without a muttered, "Sure. I'll just flirt with the silence then."
He exchanged a glance with Valen, who blinked and stepped aside. Luken gave a slow nod, warily falling into step beside her as they veered off the trail.
They didn't speak at first. The forest around them was quiet, save for the occasional rustle of wind brushing through the high boughs. Only when the others were well out of earshot did Alinda stop.
"I need your help," she said at last. Her voice was softer now but it didn't lose its edge.
Luken, who had spent most of his life hiding behind jokes, sarcasm, and well-placed illusions, suddenly felt exposed. He gripped his staff a little tighter, not as a weapon but as an anchor. "That so?"
She hesitated not out of uncertainty but out of reluctance to admit something she didn't like acknowledging. "Neo," she said, eyes ahead. "His... heritage." She turned slightly toward him, one hand disappearing into the pouch at her side. "Neo can't enter Lions Gate as he is."
The pause between them thickened.
Luken blinked. "You're worried someone in Lions Gate will see it."
"They will," she replied. "Eventually. Someone always does. I've seen it happen before. One wrong glance. One moment of dropped focus and they'll see him not as a person but as a problem."
He hesitated, then sighed. "I can mask a person, sure but it's not simple. Masking myself is second nature by now but putting a veil on someone else... that takes focus and I'll be stretched thin already just keeping my own illusion stable in a place like Lions Gate. Their mages test for these things."
"I'm not asking for a traditional veil," she said, withdrawing a small, darkwood box from her pouch. "This should carry the strain for you."
She opened the box. Inside was a red gem, pulsing faintly, like it was alive. Luken's eyes narrowed the moment he saw it.
"A Beastkin soul gem," he murmured, his voice low with both awe and suspicion.
Alinda didn't answer right away. She simply let the implication hang in the air like mist.
"You know how dangerous these can be," he said, stepping back slightly. "If the soul in there is still tied to it, if it has will, it could reject my magic. Could even hijack the veil."
"She won't," Alinda replied, too quickly.
He tilted his head. "You sound sure."
"I am."
He studied her, then the gem again. "Did you know her?"
There was a long pause before she answered too long to be casual. "Yes. An old friend."
Her voice was softer than before, barely audible. There was a pain buried in it that Luken didn't understand but recognized all the same. A buried name. A memory too raw to resurface.
He frowned. "You mean it don't you? You're not just using the gem. You think she'd want to help."
Alinda shut the box slowly. "I know she would."
That chilled him more than anything. Not because he feared the gem but because it meant Alinda, this cryptic, terrifying woman no one in their group truly understood, was mourning someone.
"You really think Neo will be safe with this?"
"He'll be hidden. That's all that matters."
Luken tapped the staff against his shoulder, thinking. "You're asking me to tie my magic to a dead soul. If it backfires, it could drag both of us under."
Alinda didn't flinch. "Then don't let it backfire."
He looked at her with dry sarcasm. "You're a warm negotiator."
She handed him the box. As he took it, he felt the faint heat from the gem like a heartbeat pulsing against his palm.
"If you link the veil to the gem," she said, "you won't have to hold the spell consciously. She'll hold it for you."
"And if she doesn't?"
Alinda met his gaze directly. "Then I'll fix it."
He was silent for a long moment, watching her, watching the way her face didn't change. "You really did know her, didn't you?"
"I told you, "She said softly, almost absently. "An old friend."
He turned the box over once more, cautious but no longer resisting. "What was her name?"
Alinda didn't answer.
And Luken didn't push it.
He nodded, slipping the box into the fold of his cloak. "I'll try but I'll need Neo's focus. We'll have to sync our energy just long enough to embed the illusion into the gem. He'll feel it."
"Then I'll tell him." Alinda said.
Luken stepped back toward the trail. "You know," he said, almost to himself, "you scare the shit out of most of me."
Alinda glanced sideways. "Good." With a small smirk
Luken gave a breathless chuckle, more nervous than amused. "You and Thal make a lovely pair."
That quicky turned to a frown "Don't push your luck." With that, she turned away, leaving him to rejoin the group on his own soul gem warm in his hand, and more questions in his chest than he dared ask aloud.