Chapter 115: Watchfire Whispers

  The fire burned down to a bed of glowing coals, their light painting the camp in shades of deep orange and shadow. The heavy aroma of Grok’s stew had faded, repced by the clean, cold scent of the pins at night. Grok himself was a motionless mound of bnkets near the carriage wheels, his breathing a slow, steady rhythm. From the small tent they’d pitched, the faint, uneven sounds of Neralia’s sleep drifted out, a restless sigh, the rustle of fine fabric against a bedroll she clearly found offensive even in unconsciousness.

  I sat cross-legged on a ft rock just outside the ring of firelight, my back to the warmth, facing the vast, star-dusted darkness. The countdown was a constant presence.

  287:14:33... 32... 31...

  First watch. It was less a duty and more a necessity. My mind was a coiled spring, buzzing with the revetions about Erik and the looming, silent threat of the forest we’d reach tomorrow. Sleep was a distant country.

  Instead, I focused inward. I closed my eyes, letting the night sounds wash over me—the sigh of the wind, the distant cry of a night bird, the pop of a coal. I reached for that sense I’d first brushed against after the Aberration, the ability to feel the pulse of life around me. The Ki sense.

  It was like trying to hear a whisper in a storm. At first, there was nothing but the static of my own racing thoughts. I breathed slowly, in through the nose, out through the mouth, forcing my mind to settle. I visualized the principle Corvus had beaten into me. Be the rock. Listen to the stream.

  I wasn’t trying to push my awareness out. I was trying to let it receive.

  Slowly, impressions began to filter through.

  The strongest was a dense, slow, earthy pulse from the direction of Grok. Not Ki, not exactly, but a robust, stubborn vitality, like an old tree. Beside it, from the tent, two more distinct signatures. Lashley’s was a flickering, agitated energy, like a guttering candle fme, all nervous pride and simmering tension. Neralia’s was cooler, sharper, a brittle crystal of focused discontent, even in sleep.

  Further out, the pins came alive in a different way. Faint, skittering sparks of life—small burrowing creatures, insects, the roots of sleeping grasses. It was a tapestry of low-grade energy, a hum of existence that had been invisible to me before.

  I opened my eyes, the world feeling suddenly more… yered. It wasn’t true sight. It was a pressure against my spirit, a map of living presence painted in feelings rather than images. Useful. Maybe even vital in the dark of the Edelmere.

  Restless, I stood. The firelight stretched my shadow into a giant against the rocks. I moved into the open space between the carriage and the fire, the packed earth firm under my boots.

  Yield. Redirect.

  I began the simple, frustrating exercises Corvus had shown me. Not strikes. Not attacks. Just movement. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, not stepping, but letting my center flow across the space between my legs. I practiced the subtle hip turn that turned a push into a guided stumble, the roll of the shoulder that could turn a bde’s edge. My hands moved in slow, flowing arcs, not blocking imaginary blows, but meeting them, joining them, spiraling their energy away.

  It felt stupid. In the silent vastness, under the cold stars, I must have looked like a man doing a slow, bizarre dance. But in my mind’s eye, I saw Jax’s charge. I felt the direction of his force, and my body rehearsed the futile, crucial act of not meeting it head-on. I practiced being water.

  I lost track of time, the countdown a silent metronome to my movements. The coals faded further.

  “You never stop, do you?”

  The voice, tight and quiet, came from behind me. I didn’t startle. I’d felt his agitated energy approaching from the tent. I completed the motion, letting my hands fall to my sides, and turned.

  Lashley stood at the edge of the firelight, arms crossed over his chest. He hadn’t bothered with his fancy jacket. He looked younger, somehow, in just his shirt, the shadows hollowing his cheeks.

  “Can’t afford to,” I said, my voice low. “The things out here don’t stop.”

  He didn’t reply for a moment, his eyes on the dying fire. “I couldn’t sleep,” he admitted, the words sounding pulled from him against his will. He walked over and sat on a log near the fire, not looking at me. “Neralia snores. Delicately, of course. But she snores.”

  A flicker of unexpected humor touched me. “Of course.”

  The silence stretched, but it was different from the hostile quiet of the journey. It was the silence of a long night and shared, unwelcome proximity.

  “You and Freya,” he said suddenly, the words sharp in the dark. He stared into the coals, his jaw tight. “What is… that?”

  There it was. The question that had been burning behind his eyes since the guild hall. The naked, jealous curiosity.

  I sighed, walking over to sit on the rock opposite him. “There is no ‘me and Freya.’” I kept my tone factual, disarming. “I like Gwen. The receptionist. That’s… a thing. With Freya…” I shrugged. “It was one night. After the first beast wave. Adrenaline. Fear. Nothing more. It didn’t mean anything.”

  He looked up, his eyes searching my face for lies. He must have seen only weary honesty, because some of the tension bled from his shoulders, repced by a different, more complicated frustration. “She never… she never speaks of such things.”

  “I wouldn’t either,” I said. “It was a moment. A messy one. Then I spent the next ninety hours making sure she didn’t die. It sort of… overshadows the context.”

  He absorbed this, his fingers drumming on his knee. “You know she was engaged. To Rordan.”

  “I heard,” I said. “He died.”

  “Right.” Lashley’s voice was ft. “In some goblin cave with you, the reports said. A tragic incident.”

  I looked at him, the firelight reflected in his eyes. “He saved me,” I said quietly. “In that cave. Threw a fireball at the Chief when I was already broken on the floor. Gave me the opening I needed. He died for that.”

  Lashley stared at me, a new understanding dawning. The story I’d told earlier took on a darker, more personal shade. He’d thought it a tale of brutal survival. Now he saw it as the pce where Freya’s fiancé had fallen. The weight of it seemed to settle on him.

  “He was a good man,” Lashley murmured, almost to himself. “Arrogant. But good. His family… they’re important.”

  The memory, sharp and cold, resurfaced. The blood, the smell, the dying man’s whisper. The loose thread I’d shrugged off as not my business suddenly pulled taut.

  “Lashley,” I said, my voice dropping even further. “When I was in that cave… just before Rordan died, he said something to me. His st words. He said, ‘Tell my niece… it was Okutake.’”

  Lashley’s head snapped up. All the lingering jealousy, the posturing, it vanished. His face was pure, unguarded shock. “Okutake? He said that name?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t know what it meant. I thought it was a person, a pce. I forgot about it until…” I trailed off, not wanting to reveal I’d eavesdropped on their family meeting.

  “You’re really foreign,” Lashley breathed, awe and disbelief in his tone. “The Okutake Cn is the most powerful noble house in all of Rostalio. They’re… they’re practically royalty. Older than the crown. More secretive. They pull strings from the shadows. Everyone knows the name, but no one knows them.”

  The pieces cnged together in my head, loud and dissonant. A dying noble’s st breath. The most powerful hidden cn in the kingdom.

  “He said ‘niece,’” I pressed. “Who is Rordan’s niece?”

  Lashley frowned, thinking. “Technically? That would be… the Princess. The king’s sister.”

  The world seemed to tilt. The beautiful, calcuting Duchess with the summer-sky eyes. Helena. The Princess in disguise, sent here on the king’s secret business.

  “So the Duchess,” I said, the words feeling heavy on my tongue. “Helena. She’s Rordan’s niece.”

  Lashley’s eyes went wide. “How did you…?”

  “I overheard. Weeks ago. Before I left for Silveridge. The City Lord was briefing you all. He said she was coming as the Duchess, but she was the Princess.”

  He slumped back, running a hand through his hair. “Gods. Yes. It’s not widely known. Rordan was her uncle on her mother’s side. A distant branch, but blood. His death… it hit the court hard. Especially with the… circumstances.”

  It was Okutake.

  The implication hung in the cold air between us, vast and terrifying. Rordan hadn’t been killed by a goblin chief’s axe in a random cave. He’d been delivering a message with his dying breath. An accusation. A warning.

  His death was political. Assassination. And he’d named his killers. The shadowy, all-powerful Okutake Cn.

  And Freya’s fiancé had been connected to the Princess. And the System had made me protect Freya. And now the Princess was sending me on a quest for a legendary artifact, while the most dangerous cn in the kingdom might have reason to want her, or her agents, dead.

  The cozy mystery of the Mikaelson Inn evaporated. I wasn’t just drinking with a retired hero. I was sleeping under the roof of a man whose daughter was entangled in a silent war between the crown and a shadow dynasty. A war that had already left one man dead in a cave with my name on his lips.

  I looked at Lashley, who was staring into the fire, his face pale. He’d just connected the same dots. His childish crush on Freya was now backlit by the gre of high treason and regicide.

  “You can’t speak of this,” he whispered, his voice urgent. “To anyone. Not even Neralia. If the Okutake were involved… mentioning that name, connecting it to Rordan’s death… it’s a death sentence.”

  I nodded slowly. The countdown in my vision glowed.

  286:58:47... 46... 45...

  Nine days left to find a stone in a cursed fort. And now I knew the real monsters might not be made of residual magic or mutated flesh. They might be wearing silk and pulling the strings of the kingdom itself from the shadows.

  “Get some sleep, Lashley,” I said, my voice gravel. “Tomorrow we walk into the forest. We’ll need our wits about us. For more reasons than you knew.”

  He stood, giving me one st, long look that held no trace of his former disdain. There was only fear, and a dawning, grim respect. He turned and walked silently back to the tent.

  I remained on the rock, staring into the dark beyond the fire’s reach. The tapestry of life I’d sensed earlier now felt like a map of hidden threats. Every rustle in the grass, every distant sound, was a potential knife in the dark, sent by a name spoken in a blood-filled cave.

  Okutake.

  The mission had just gotten infinitely more complicated.

  Toshiro98