Saskia leaned her shoulder into the stone of the Peperbus. The surface scraped her palm when she shifted. Cold, old stone. It held steady.

  Her UI hovered in her vision. Amber figures climbed in clean lines.

  Volume Three: up forty percent since morning.

  Testimonial clusters spreading across three continents.

  Corporate bulk orders confirmed.

  Government procurement flagged as priority.

  She let out a slow breath through her nose.

  Good.

  The heat index on Zelfstryt’s dashboard pulsed red. Not a flicker. Sustained demand. Academies had marked the series required reading. Defense ministries had flagged it for internal circulation. Recruitment drives referenced his methods in plain text now. They weren’t even subtle.

  They were building citizens into weapons. Funding them. Leveling them. Racing metrics they barely understood.

  Her inbox blinked.

  Influencers offering interviews. Reporters offering “discretion bonuses.” Every one of them paying in Credits now. Not Kols. Not Dollars. Credits. The Union currency had swallowed the rest whole for anything that mattered.

  And this mattered.

  Learning who Zelfstryt was had become a prize.

  She flipped to the filtered queue. State proxies. Diplomatic handles masked behind layers she recognized instantly. They weren’t asking for hints. They were offering contracts for introductions. For message relay. For “exploratory dialogue.”

  She was charging them by the message.

  Huge sums.

  Her mouth twitched. Rem would choke when she showed him the ledger.

  Movement at the cathedral doors pulled her gaze up.

  Her mother stepped out into the light. Eyes swollen. Cheeks wet. She wiped them with the back of her hand and drew a breath that shook on the way in.

  Saskia pushed off the stone and moved to her side.

  “It’s only been three days.”

  “I know.” Her mother’s voice came thin, then steadied. She inhaled again, slower. “I haven’t been home much lately. And now he’s gone. This is only the second time he’s been away since the—”

  “He’s amazing,” Saskia cut in, soft but firm. “You’re worrying for nothing. He’s probably eating better than we ever fed him.”

  Her mother stopped walking. Saskia took two more steps before she felt the absence and turned back.

  “I feel like I’m losing him,” her mother said. Her jaw worked once before she swallowed. “I feel like I’m losing all of you. Tomas barely looks up from his work. You’re never home. And now Rem is…” She exhaled hard. “He’s Zelfstryt.”

  “He’s still Rem.” Saskia took her mother’s hands. Warm. Slightly trembling. She squeezed until the tremor eased. “And he still needs you. We’re a team.”

  “Then why didn’t you come in to pray with me?”

  Saskia held her gaze. Didn’t look away.

  “You pray,” she said. “I plan. Teamwork.”

  Her mother’s mouth pressed flat, but she started walking again. Saskia matched her pace.

  They moved down the street. Brick facades. Bicycles chained to iron rails. A couple approached from the opposite direction, heads bent close together. Saskia lowered her voice until they passed.

  “About what we discussed.”

  Her mother gave a small grunt.

  “I confirmed it. The system signatures were real. Someone paid a lot to track Zelfstryt’s data trail. Professional level tracing.” She rubbed her thumb along the side of her finger, feeling the dry edge of her nail. “I don’t know why he chose a regional name.”

  Reporters had already begun circling the country. Vans parked near universities. Drones hovering over neighborhoods with the right demographic clusters.

  Silence stretched between them. Shoes on pavement. Wind moving through bare branches.

  “I’ll add security,” Saskia said. “Money isn’t a problem. We can move if we need to.”

  Her mother’s lips thinned. She nodded once.

  “And I got messages from almost every major geopolitical bloc. I’m guessing recruitment pitches. If he takes one, we might relocate anyway.”

  “Our little Remy,” her mother murmured. Her voice softened on his name.

  “He’s not little.”

  “He’s still lost.” Her mother shook her head, small and tight. “Will you go with him?”

  Saskia felt the question land in her chest. Solid. Heavy.

  “Of course.” A short laugh escaped her before she could stop it. “He’s the head of the company. I’m not letting him out of my sight.”

  “Good.” Her mother slowed for half a step, then kept moving. “I’ll stay here if he takes one of those offers. If he comes back…”

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Saskia’s stride faltered.

  “If he comes back,” her mother finished, her voice barely above the wind.

  Saskia looked ahead. The street stretched homeward. Familiar doors. Familiar windows. Every brick placed years before any of this started.

  “He’ll come back,” she said.

  Her hands had curled into fists. She forced them open.

  Her mother didn’t answer.

  They walked on.

  The arch spat them out in a rush of cold air and wet stone.

  Finn caught himself on his knees. Snow slid from his shoulders and hit the pavement in heavy clumps. His fingers shook when he pushed upright. The air in Zwolle felt soft against his face. Cool autumn. Bare trees. Damp brick. After three months of hard winter nights, it felt almost warm.

  Eva stood bent over, hands braced on her thighs, breath tearing in and out of her chest. Frost clung to her lashes. Mara ripped off her gloves with her teeth and swore under her breath when her stiff fingers refused to bend.

  They’d cleared it again.

  Longer this time. Cleaner.

  The essence potions had changed everything. The first week inside had nearly broken them. After the potions, the puzzle made sense. Patterns held. Controls responded. Three minds working in tight rhythm instead of panic.

  Mara marched to the lockers, boots scraping concrete. She pressed her thumb to the reader. The lock clicked open. She dug through the metal compartment and shoved devices into their hands without looking.

  Finn’s tablet felt thin and fragile after months of leather, iron, and rope. He powered it on. The screen lit his face blue.

  One hour outside. Nearly three months inside.

  He still didn’t understand how that was possible. He didn’t care. It worked.

  Finn opened his messages.

  Nothing new.

  “He still hasn’t checked mine,” he said.

  Mara shrugged out of her fur-lined coat. Melted snow darkened the fabric. She stuffed it into her backpack and rolled her shoulders until something cracked. “Maybe he finally went deep. Twenty-four hours in there is what? Seven years?”

  “Seven point two,” Finn said automatically. His throat felt tight. “And he hasn’t checked anything for over three days.”

  Eva straightened slowly. “You don’t think he died in there.”

  Finn looked up at her. Her face had gone pale under the wind burn.

  “Died from what?” Mara said. She forced a short breath through her nose. “There’s nothing that can kill you quickly. Not unless you do something really dumb like fall off a cliff.”

  Eva’s jaw clenched. “You think he climbed the mountain?”

  “We don’t know.”

  Mara slammed her locker shut. The bang echoed across the empty entry hall. “Stop. We don’t even know he’s in Challenge Four. We’re guessing. That’s all.”

  Finn folded his jacket carefully, hands moving on habit. Store. Zip. Seal.

  “Besides,” he said, not looking at them, “even if he is, we can’t do anything about it.”

  Silence settled between them. Somewhere down the street, someone laughed.

  Finn thumbed his tablet till he pulled up his progress tracker.

  Weapon proficiency climbing steady. Staff for him and Eva. Mara’s bow related skills, all soared this run. And their primary class abilities were still growing. Survival skill nearly halfway complete. Farming was finally high enough to sustain their long runs without running low on food.

  They were advancing fast. Faster than anyone else they knew.

  It still felt slow.

  His stomach cramped hard enough to make him bend slightly. Three months of ration bars supplemented by produce. Three months of lake water.

  “What we can do,” he said, straightening and stretching until his back popped, “is keep this pace. We’re doing great.”

  Mara slung her bag over one shoulder. “I need actual food. Hot. Greasy. Don’t talk to me about anything else until I’ve eaten.”

  Eva managed a thin smile. “Fries.”

  “Fries,” Mara confirmed.

  They headed toward the street, boots heavy but steady now.

  Finn lingered a second longer. He refreshed his messages.

  Still nothing.

  The screen reflected his own face back at him.

  He typed, paused, erased it.

  Where are you Rem?

  He didn’t send it.

  He stepped out into the cool Zwolle air and followed his friends toward the lights along the canal.

  Rem floated a thousand feet above the lake, his white core pristine in the sun, his band of armor tight around his form.

  The sky around him shimmered faintly.

  They circled.

  At first glance they looked like ravens, but they had not been ravens for years.

  One was vast, its wingspan eclipsing the others as it crossed the sun. Each downstroke boomed. Metallic feathers flashed gunmetal. When it banked, silvery scars caught the light. The air bent around its mass.

  Near it flew another nearly as large but leaner, long wings tapering to sharp points. It carved the sky. When it held still, the downdraft rippled the clouds beneath it, precise and controlled. Its yellow eyes never stopped measuring.

  “iT iS TimE,” the air around Rem trembled as he forced it into motion. His speech warbled. It was loud. The nearest birds cawed.

  Closer to him flew something less bird than absence. Its edges tore and reformed without sound. Parts of its body dissolved and returned. It cast no shadow on the lake below. Light failed where it passed.

  A smaller raven split into three mid-flight.

  Then six.

  Then one again.

  The duplicates were flawless, wingbeats synchronized, silver-blue eyes identical. They moved in layered spirals that refused geometry. For a heartbeat there were twenty. Then only one remained.

  Another form flickered beside it, frozen mid-beat. A glasslike shape hung in the air, wings half-spread, beak open. It did not move. The original continued its arc, eyes pale white. Seconds later the frozen echo dissolved, leaving a faint afterimage.

  One bird burned without flame.

  Its feathers were dark at the root and ember-red at the tips. Gold motes drifted from it as it shed and renewed in flight. Light pulsed beneath its wings. Where a scar marked its flank, brightness seeped through before smoothing over.

  Farther out, something immense drifted in a wider orbit.

  Its body was thick and heavy. Shadows clung to it in writhing tendrils. Smaller shapes peeled from its surface, formed brief silhouettes, then dissolved back into it. The light around it dimmed.

  Another perched in the air on nothing. Midnight feathers etched with faint blue sigils pulsed slowly. When it turned its head, the runes shimmered. It did not flap often.

  Below them, vegetation on the distant cliffs browned where a sleek, oily raven passed. Sickly veins pulsed faint green through its feathers. Its shadow stretched too far, thin and crawling over stone.

  And then there was the one that was not.

  A perfect raven-shaped silhouette. A cut in existence. The sky showed through everywhere except where it moved. No feather texture. No eye. When it crossed the floating sphere, the surface warped inward toward it.

  They did not collide.

  They did not attack.

  They orbited.

  Mass and light and time and corruption and renewal circled Rem in widening spirals. The vast armored one beat its wings with siege force. The shadow-form thinned and reformed. The mirage multiplied and collapsed. The rune-marked one held position.

  Rem remained unmoving.

  “Ready,” Rook cawed, wings laced with thin silver light.

  Every raven adjusted at once. Wings shifted. Shadows tightened. Echoes froze. Embers flared.

  They did not scatter.

  They drew closer.

  Rem dropped. The water erupted as he drove toward the bottom of the lake. With a flex of will, his merge domain pushed the control sphere forward, time accelerating within it. When it reached the point he wanted, he locked it in place with stone.

  He waited in the lake.

  He did not know what he was waiting for.

  Then he felt it.

  Cold.

  He had almost forgotten.

  Then it all came back at once. He was cold. He was–

  His body gathered itself from a clump of cells into something resembling human. Bone hardened. Skin closed over it. He opened his eyes to the lake.

  He flexed his budding fingers.

  They were small. Soft at the knuckles.

  They trembled.

  His pulse began to climb. Too fast. Each beat struck hard against his ribs.

  His throat tightened. His stomach drew in.

  Thoughts slipped their place. They came back carrying weight.

  Something inside him ached, and he didn’t know where to put it.

  Rem opened his status. His eyes fixed just below his name.