The thugs' leader stiffened, the last of his angry bluster collapsing into pale, muttered threats.
"We'll take our leave now," he hissed, but the words had no weight now. The guards' presence was a reminder that there were consequences beyond the alley — and that those consequences would be swift if the Goldheart name required it.
Raiden watched the men being gathered and bound, watched Hilda give the guards short instructions about who would carry whom to the guild, and felt something settle into him that wasn't quite shame and not quite lesson. It was a new measurement of the world's gravity — and of his own smallness in it.
He had wanted freedom; he wanted to test himself. He had won a portion of that test. But in the quiet that followed — in the hollowed-out space left by Hilda's measured violence — he understood how dangerous the world could be when he pushed its edges.
For the first time, the system's rewards and chimes felt less like toys and more like scales.
