The sun was setting when Aery reached the temple.

  The gates were still open. She stepped through into the courtyard and stopped.

  Lars was in the ring sparring with someone she hadn’t seen before. Young. Built solidly. Moving with quiet confidence. But it was Lars she kept watching.

  He was different from what she remembered. Elbows. Kicks. Combinations that hadn’t been there during the sand wyrm quest. More structured. More deliberate.

  She hadn’t expected that.

  For a moment she forgot entirely why she had come.

  Then Lars glanced toward the gate.

  He saw her.

  His footing shifted just slightly and Soren’s kick caught him clean in the abdomen. Lars left the ground and landed in the sand.

  Aery’s hand went to her mouth.

  He pushed himself upright and looked across at Soren.

  “That’s my fault,” he said. “I lost focus.”

  Soren grinned. “Glad you know it.”

  Raizen spoke from the edge of the ring without moving.

  “That will conclude today’s training. Rest for a few days then return.”

  Lars looked at him.

  “I want to see if you improve without someone standing over you,” Raizen said. “If you are serious about this path then prove it in the time between.”

  Lars bowed to Raizen then to Soren.

  Soren waved it off and looked at him.

  “Don’t get yourself killed before you come back.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  He walked over to Aery.

  “I thought you’d left Zahara,” he said. “I figured you’d decided to continue on your own.”

  Something in that landed harder than he probably meant it to. Aery glanced briefly around the courtyard then back to him.

  “Can we talk?” she said quietly. “Back at the inn.”

  Lars looked at her properly then. The marks along her forearm. The dust in her sleeve. The kind of tired that had nothing to do with sleep.

  He didn’t ask.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  The city was quieter in the evening. Lanterns lit along the main lanes, the market thinned out, the streets settling into a slower pace.

  Lars walked beside her and said nothing.

  But he noticed her eyes moving every few steps. Not casually. She was checking the rooflines. The gaps between buildings. The dark corners the lanterns didn’t reach.

  He filed it away and kept walking.

  They reached the inn, climbed the stairs and stepped inside. Lars closed the door behind them.

  Quiet. Private.

  He turned to face her.

  Lars watched her for a moment after the door closed.

  She was standing near the center of the room not quite looking at him. Her hands were at her sides but not relaxed. Her jaw was set like someone holding something in place through effort alone.

  “Aery.”

  She looked at him.

  “Are you okay?” he said. “What happened?”

  She opened her mouth. Closed it. Then sat down on the edge of her bed and put her hands in her lap.

  “I was hiding,” she said.

  Lars said nothing. He waited.

  “I felt something watching me. I couldn’t see it or point to it exactly but I felt it. So I hid and waited hoping it would go away.”

  Lars pulled his chair out from the small desk and sat down facing her.

  “Who were you hiding from?”

  Aery exhaled slowly.

  She told him about the presence. About the hours in the alley. About finally pinpointing where it was coming from. She described drawing her wand and sending the burst of wind mana straight up into the space above her. The sound it made. The way the concealment broke and the thing dropped to the ground in front of her.

  “It was an eye,” she said. “Just a single eye. The size of my fist. Silver iris. It was watching me from above the whole time.”

  Lars leaned forward.

  “Someone sent it,” Aery continued. “I know the craft behind it. I grew up around that kind of magic.”

  She paused.

  “It’s from Celestia.”

  “How long do you think it had been there?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “That’s what scares me.”

  She was quiet for a moment. He could see her working up to something.

  Then she looked at him directly.

  “My name isn’t Aery Valenwood.”

  “My name is Aery Thalvaris.”

  Lars held still.

  “Daughter of King Vander Thalvaris.”

  His mind started putting it together before she said it herself.

  “Princess Aery Thalvaris,” she said quietly.

  He sat back slowly.

  Aery kept going.

  “I wanted to leave the Dominion. I went to the Head Master of our adventurers association and told her I wanted to explore Sesilia. She asked what my father would say. I told her — give me a way out or I’ll find one myself.”

  She looked at her hands.

  “The Head Master was worried so she arranged a badge for me. My father was against it completely. But my mother stepped in.”

  She smiled faintly at that. Something private and fond.

  “My mother gave me the chance to go. But under one condition — if I couldn’t find someone to travel with then I had to come back. My father wanted people from Celestia to accompany me. I refused. I didn’t want anyone from home following me out there.”

  She shook her head slightly.

  “My mother told the Head Master to register me under a false name. For my safety.”

  “And the B Rank?” Lars said.

  “My output is high. It’s always been high. That was the biggest problem everyone had with me leaving. Not just my father. Everyone. My control has never matched what I can produce.”

  Lars sat with all of it.

  He was looking at a princess. A princess of Celestia who had been traveling with him through the desert, splitting quest rewards, sharing a room at a cheap inn in Zahara.

  He genuinely did not know what to say.

  Aery watched his face.

  “Do you hate me?” she asked. “For lying to you.”

  The question hit him somewhere he didn’t expect.

  He thought about it honestly. Not the polite version of the answer. The real one.

  And somewhere underneath the question he felt the quiet weight of his own secret. His own name. Lars Silverwing — exiled from Solaris for the death of a man he had trained under. Carrying a power that an evaluation orb couldn’t rank. Marked as dangerous by a kingdom that had taken everything from him.

  She had told him the truth.

  Every part of it.

  He thought about whether he should do the same.

  The exile. The night Osbin died. The things Osbin had said about what Lars might become. The power sitting inside him that an evaluation orb couldn’t rank.

  He thought about what knowing all of that would do to her.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t hate you.”

  Aery nodded slowly. She wiped the corner of her eye quickly like she was trying to get ahead of it.

  “My father is the one sending people to find me,” she said. “He’s been trying to bring me back since I left. That eye was his. Or someone working for him.”

  Her voice stayed steady but her hands weren’t.

  “I thought about going back more than once. I almost convinced myself it was easier.”

  She laughed quietly.

  “But then—”

  She stopped. Looking for the words.

  “You gave me hope,” she said.

  Lars stared at her.

  “You included me without knowing anything about me. You didn’t treat my lack of control like a problem I needed to apologize for. You didn’t make me feel like a burden.”

  She was crying now. Not heavily. Just quietly, the way people cried when they were relieved rather than broken.

  She smiled through it.

  “When you make your guild,” she said. “I’ll join you.”

  It landed with a weight he hadn’t prepared for. His face felt warm. He didn’t have a single word ready.

  Aery wiped her eyes and let out a slow breath, composing herself piece by piece.

  “I feel like with you I can actually become a real adventurer,” she said.

  And she smiled. Honestly. For the first time all day.

  Lars looked at her for a moment after the smile settled.

  “Why are you afraid to go back?”

  Aery’s smile faded slightly.

  “If I go back I’ll never see any of it,” she said. “Sesilia. The kingdoms. The people. All of it.” She paused. “I’ve read about this continent my entire life. Every kingdom. Every landscape. And I never got further than the borders of the Dominion.”

  Lars understood that without needing her to explain it further.

  He thought about his previous life. The estate. The same halls. The same faces. The same conversations about politics and succession and etiquette repeated until they lost meaning. He had been born into a world that had everything except room to move. The world outside those walls had existed but only as something other people moved through. Status didn’t open that door. If anything it made the walls taller.

  He had died inside those walls without ever seeing beyond them.

  He knew exactly what she meant.

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  “If I go back,” Aery continued, “my father will make sure I don’t get another chance. He’ll see to it personally.”

  Lars nodded slowly.

  Then something else surfaced.

  “Are you not scared people will find out who you are?” he said. “Out here. While you’re traveling.”

  Aery looked at him.

  “I think about it,” she said honestly.

  Lars turned that over quietly. He thought about the underworld. He had only ever read about it in the association archives back in Solaris. Brief entries. Vague references to networks and organizations operating beneath the surface of every kingdom. He hadn’t understood the full weight of it then.

  He was starting to now.

  A princess traveling under a false name. A surveillance eye sent from Celestia. A father with the resources of an entire kingdom behind him.

  And Lars with no guild. No title. No backing.

  He wasn’t sure he could keep her safe. He didn’t even fully understand what he was capable of yet. Osbin’s words had stayed with him — the way the man had looked at him after their first real spar with something between concern and disbelief. Whatever Lars was carrying inside him was not something he could predict or fully control.

  He wasn’t sure if that made him an asset or a liability.

  Aery was still watching him.

  Waiting.

  He realized he had gone quiet and she was sitting across from him holding everything she had just said out in the open, waiting to see what he would do with it.

  He looked at her.

  Lars exhaled slowly.

  “I should tell you something too,” he said.

  Aery looked at him.

  He didn’t dress it up. He just said it.

  “My name is Lars Silverwing. I was exiled from Solaris.”

  Aery’s expression shifted but she didn’t interrupt.

  “I was training under a man named Osbin. An S Rank. He was the one who found me when I first arrived in Solaris and took me in.” Lars paused. “He died. And I was the last one with him.”

  He looked at his hands.

  “I don’t know what happened. I lost consciousness during our training session and when I came around he was gone. They found me at the scene and that was enough for Solaris.”

  He was quiet for a moment.

  “I don’t know what I’m capable of when I lose control. That’s why when you talked about being afraid of your own power — afraid of hurting people around you — I understood that more than I probably showed.”

  Aery hadn’t moved.

  “So that’s who you’re traveling with,” Lars said. “Someone exiled for the death of his own mentor. I don’t blame you if you don’t want to continue on with me. I wouldn’t hold it against you.”

  Aery looked at him for a long moment.

  Then she shook her head.

  “No,” she said simply.

  Lars blinked.

  “There’s no proof you did it,” she said. “You don’t even know yourself. I’m not going to treat you like you’re guilty of something nobody can confirm.”

  Lars stared at her.

  He had carried that weight since the morning they put him out of Solaris. Every step across the plains. Every night he lay awake turning the gaps in his memory over and finding nothing on the other side. He had told himself it didn’t matter what people thought. That he didn’t need anyone to believe him.

  But sitting here now he realized that wasn’t true.

  This was the first time anyone who knew had still chosen to stay.

  He didn’t know what to do with that.

  “You’re the first person I’ve told,” he said quietly.

  Aery met his eyes.

  “Then I’m glad you told me,” she said.

  “If you can accept me for who I am,” Lars said, “then I’ll do the same.”

  Aery’s face changed immediately.

  The tension that had been sitting in her since she walked through the door broke all at once. She crossed the space between them and hugged him before either of them had time to think about it.

  Lars went completely still his face going red.

  When she pulled back she was smiling. Not the careful restrained smile he had seen from her before. Something bigger. More open. Like a door that had finally been allowed to swing all the way.

  This was different from the Aery he had been traveling with.

  “If you show me the world of Sesilia,” she said, “I’ll support your dream. Every part of it. The guild included.”

  Lars smiled.

  “Deal.”

  “Do you have a name for it yet?”

  He thought about it honestly for a moment.

  “Not yet,” he said. “But it’ll come when the time is right.”

  Aery nodded accepting that. Then she tilted her head slightly.

  “So what now?”

  “I want to keep getting stronger,” Lars said. “I have a few days away from Raizen. I think we should head to the association tomorrow and take some quests.”

  “I want to find a mentor too,” Aery said. “You’re improving with your training and I want to do the same. Find some real control.”

  “Nothing like real combat for that,” Lars said.

  Aery nodded.

  “The association tomorrow then.”

  Lars leaned back slightly.

  “I have a long way to go before I can even think about the guild. The registration alone costs a hundred gold.”

  Aery stared at him.

  “A hundred gold?”

  “A hundred gold,” Lars confirmed.

  She sat with that for a second then straightened herself.

  “Then we’d better get started.”

  Lars looked at her and felt something settle in his chest. For the first time since leaving Solaris the path forward felt less like something he was stumbling through and more like something he was actually walking. He had his first future guild member sitting right across from him.

  And she was a princess.

  He almost laughed thinking about it. Everything that had happened since the day they exiled him. The plains. Zahara. The sand wyrms. Raizen. Soren. Draven. Aery.

  It was all coming together in ways he hadn’t planned for.

  He had a purpose now. A real one.

  “There’s something else,” he said. “I want to go to Dorgrum.”

  Aery’s eyes widened slightly.

  “Dorgrum? That’s dangerous to get to. Merchants usually hire entire parties just to make the journey.”

  “I know,” Lars said. “But I met someone today while I was out. His name is Draven Voss. S Rank from the White Sun Guild.”

  He told her about the katana. The purple blade infused with beast materials and mana cores. The name pressed into the steel near the guard. Draven’s recommendation of a master blacksmith in Dorgrum named Thorin Naut.

  “I want gauntlets,” Lars said. “Something built for the way I fight. Draven said if anyone could make them it would be Thorin.” He paused. “Once I’ve finished my training here in Zahara I want to head north.”

  Aery was quiet for a moment.

  Then she nodded.

  “Okay.”

  Lars raised an eyebrow.

  “Just like that?”

  She shrugged lightly, the smile still sitting on her face.

  “I don’t care where we go,” she said simply. “As long as it’s with you.”

  Lars looked at her for a moment then let out a quiet breath.

  “Get some rest,” he said. “We have a long day tomorrow.”

  Aery nodded and pulled her grimoire onto her lap, already looking more like herself than she had in days.

  Lars turned toward his bed and lay down, staring at the ceiling.

  A guild. A hundred gold. Dorgrum. Thorin Naut.

  A princess sitting three feet away who had just agreed to follow him across a continent.

  He closed his eyes.

  One step at a time.

  ______

  The underworld didn’t have a sky.

  Just layers. Structures built on top of structures, platforms and walkways cutting across the space above like a ceiling that never fully closed. Lanterns hung at irregular intervals throwing uneven light across the lanes below. The air was stale and carried the smell of old smoke and damp stone.

  Rin moved through it carefully.

  She had two scouts with her. Both A Rank. Both experienced enough to move without sound and follow signals without hesitation.

  They split across three vantage points and communicated without words. Hand signals only. The underworld had eyes everywhere and she wasn’t willing to find out whose they were.

  They had been down here for a while now, working through the district where Gallant had last been spotted. Every lane looked the same. Every face they passed carried the particular blankness of people who had learned not to notice things.

  Nothing so far.

  Rin signaled them to regroup and reassess.

  Then one of the scouts raised a fist.

  Stop.

  She held position and watched him. He moved toward her slowly, his eyes low, one hand coming up to shield his face as she arrived at his location. The other scout arrived a step behind her.

  She followed the scout’s eyeline down toward the lane below.

  Her stomach dropped.

  Near the entrance of a narrow alley, planted upright in the ground, was a sword.

  She recognized it immediately.

  Gallant’s blade. Standing straight up from the ground, driven deep enough to hold its own weight. The steel was dark with dried blood from the guard down.

  Her eyes moved upward slowly.

  At the top of the blade, pierced through and held in place, was Gallant’s head.

  Rin’s jaw locked. Her eyes burned but she didn’t look away. She respected him that much.

  This was a message.