The first thing to arrive was silence.
The second was House Mourncrest.
They descended on Lord Baenri's estate before the smoke had cleared. Healers entered first, dressed in gray robes without crests. Masons followed with carts of enchanted stone. Then came servants carrying buckets, brushes, fresh tapestries, and enough hush-money to purchase the loyalty of every frightened witness in the manor.
By sunrise, the underground chamber had ceased to exist.
The Rune Howler's corpse vanished beneath a black canvas. Blood was scrubbed from the floors. Broken pillars rose again under the manipulation of Earth Verdance. Illusionists stretched flawless images across the places that could not be repaired quickly enough.
The hole Tamura had punched through the wall became smooth stone once again.
The screams became a rumor.
The rumor soon became nothing.
That was how noble houses survived their mistakes. They did not simply undo them.
They buried them beneath a more convenient truth.
Tamura awoke in a recovery room three days later.
Pain found him before his memory did.
His ribs ached each time he breathed. The skin along his back pulled tight beneath layers of salve. His throat felt as if he had swallowed smoke, and something inside his skull throbbed behind his right eye.
He stared at the pale ceiling.
Blurry red vision.
Teeth.
Mugen's cries of pain.
Fire crawling through darkness.
Then nothing. Just... Blank.
Tamura tried to sit up. His body answered with a sharp warning that folded him halfway back onto the mattress.
"...Mugen?"
"Still alive. Against my better judgment."
Tamura turned.
Mugen sat beside the window with one leg resting across the other. Bandages swallowed his left shoulder and crossed his ribs beneath a loose black shirt. Blisters climbed both forearms where Tamura's flames had traveled through his shadows. A bruise darkened one side of his face.
He looked terrible.
He also looked annoyed, which meant he was probably fine.
"Good," Tamura said.
Mugen stared at him. "That's it?"
Tamura considered the question. "Are you okay?"
"Better. Barely."
"Good."
"You are awful at this."
Tamura frowned. "At what?"
"Being concerned."
"I asked if you were okay."
"After I complained."
"But I asked."
Mugen opened his mouth, thought better of it, and leaned back in the chair.
For a few quiet seconds, the room almost felt normal.
Then Tamura reached for his chest.
His fingers found skin.
No chain.
No silver setting.
No crimson sunstone.
He searched the blanket, then the floor. His movements grew faster. Pain flashed through his ribs, but he ignored it.
"Where is it?"
Mugen stopped pretending not to understand.
"Tamura-"
"My necklace."
The room became warmer.
Mugen sat forward. "The Howler swallowed it. You remember that much?"
Tamura did now.
The chain snapping.
The stone ringing across the floor.
The creature reaching it first.
Crimson light burning beneath blackened fur.
Tamura looked down at his empty hands.
The pendant had been more than a possession. It was proof. Proof that Levi had existed. Proof that someone had carried him through the cold and left him with something other than scars. His memories of that night were already fading around the edges. Without the stone, he feared they would disappear entirely.
Maybe they had never been real.
Maybe he had invented the warmth because he needed to believe somebody had loved him once.
"I'm sorry," Tamura whispered.
Mugen's expression tightened. "For what?"
"It was my fault. You were hurt because it wanted the pendant."
Mugen stared at him for several breaths.
Then he laughed.
Not a polite laugh. A loud, painful one that made him clutch his bandaged side.
Tamura's eyes narrowed. "Why are you laughing?"
"Because you're an idiot."
"I am not."
"Did you tell the monster to eat your necklace?"
"No."
"Did you hide an illegal apex predator beneath a nobleman's floor?"
"No."
"Did you send two children into the room with it?"
Tamura went quiet.
Mugen's laughter faded. What remained in his eyes was colder.
"Then stop carrying blame that belongs to adults," he said. "They already make us carry everything else."
Tamura looked toward the window. The answer felt right.
That only made the heat under his skin grow.
Across the capital, House Mourncrest was deciding which truth the city would be allowed to remember.
The meeting took place in a windowless chamber beneath the manor. Eight officials sat around a circular table while clerks moved reports between them.
"The witnesses?" asked a narrow-faced noble.
"Paid where possible," an attendant answered. "Threatened where necessary."
"The merchant?"
"He signed a revised statement. The children never entered the estate."
"TirMyre's guards?"
"Three accepted contracts elsewhere. Two resigned. One remains difficult."
Nobody asked what difficult meant.
At the head of the table, Vayra turned a page.
The dead beast did not interest her. Neither did the repair costs, the bribes, or Lord TirMyre's furious demand for compensation.
"He was harboring an unregistered Rune Howler," one official said. "Remind him that the crown punishes illegal beast ownership with forfeiture of land."
"And if he speaks?"
"Then he admits the crime himself."
Soft laughter traveled around the table.
The matter was finished.
The appearance of control was often more valuable than control itself.
Vayra moved to the next report.
Tamura.
Thirty-seven major wounds. Multiple fractures. Severe blood loss. Burns, punctures, and damage to several organs. Any five of the injuries should have killed him. Most had begun repairing themselves before a healer touched him.
"How quickly?" Vayra asked.
The physician standing beside the table swallowed. "My lady, we could not establish a reliable rate. His recovery accelerated whenever his internal temperature increased."
"Fire Verdance stimulating regeneration?"
"Not ordinary Fire Verdance. His blood burned the instruments."
The room quieted.
Greed appeared first in the officials' faces.
Then curiosity.
Then fear.
Vayra noted all three.
"Can the ability be reproduced?" someone asked.
"We would need controlled tests."
"You will have them," Vayra said.
She placed Tamura's report aside and opened the thinner file beneath it.
Mugen Kurokishi.
Type One Darkness Verdance. Exceptional physical strength. High tactical awareness. Continued spell use after catastrophic injury.
The final line had been underlined.
Successfully restrained Tamura during an uncontrolled Infernal event.
Vayra read it again.
Most guards could not approach Tamura when his temper broke. Teachers failed to command him. Pain only made his power worse.
Mugen insulted him, challenged him, trained beside him-and somehow reached him when everything else disappeared.
"You seem pleased," one official said.
"I am."
"Because of the regenerating boy?"
Vayra lifted her wine-colored eyes. "There were two children in that chamber."
That evening, she stopped outside the recovery room.
Tamura sat against the headboard, glaring at a bowl of broth as if it had offended his family. Mugen occupied the chair beside him, eating bread he had almost certainly stolen from the healers.
"You stayed?" Tamura asked.
Mugen shrugged. "Unfortunately."
"You could have left."
"And let you wake up alone? You would have set something on fire."
"I would not."
"The blanket is smoking."
Tamura looked down. A thin thread of gray rose beside his hand. He quickly moved it.
Mugen smirked.
Tamura smiled.
Only slightly.
But Vayra saw it.
Trust. Dependence. Influence.
Things children called friendship.
Things intelligent adults called leverage.
Perhaps Tamura did not need another guard or teacher. Perhaps the perfect restraint could not be fastened around his throat or burned into his skin.
Perhaps it could walk beside him.
Argue with him.
Care whether he survived.
Vayra closed the door without entering.
Behind it, the boys continued their quiet argument.
Ahead of her, a plan began taking shape.
The Rune Howler had revealed Tamura's power.
Mugen had revealed how to control it.
House Mourncrest would make use of both.