At noon the river threw back the sun like a sheet of glass. The koi hovered one body‑length below the surface, aligning his heartbeat to the glitter. He felt Brandon before he saw him—the steady, unflickering will he had touched through mist. No doubt. No tremor. Footsteps on gravel. A shadow leaning in.
Now.
He fired upward.
Air slapped his gills; heat flashed his scales; the world arced white—then arms were there exactly where the dream had promised. Strong. Certain. Brandon caught him without flinch or fumble, as if he had done it a thousand times in waking life, not once in a prophecy.
[Bond Protocol: Initiating]
[Candidate: Brandon — Human Tamer]
[Consent required: Host/Brandon]
[Proceed?]
Yes.
Sense braided tight, two rhythms finding one cadence. Brandon's breath hitched, then steadied.
"So it's you," he said, a quiet that sounded like a conclusion. "The mystical koi."
The koi pressed his spine to the warm crook of Brandon's elbow in answer. He was not mystical; he was hungry and terrified and made of sharp new vows. But if belief was a tool, he would wield it. If lore was a bridge, he would run across without looking down.
[Bond established]
[Shared growth: open]
[Legendary Task — Objective One complete（Form a bond with a Human Tamer）]
"Welcome to the team," Brandon said. He lifted his left arm and whistled.
It brought winter.
A shadow crossed the sun and became a bird of ice and storm—a phoenix not of flame but of hoarfrost and pale blue fire. Its wings sounded like silk tearing in cold. When it exhaled, the air frosted in a lace of needles; when it beat its wings once, a spray of glittering shards hung for a heartbeat and fell as arrows.
"This is Frostwing," Brandon said. "Breathe easy. She won't bite."
Frostwing folded down, head cocked, eyes like frozen sapphires. The koi felt the cold on his scales, and something else beneath it: discipline, old battles, a bond tempered like hammered steel.
[Scan: Companion detected — Frostwing (Icy Phoenix)]
[Classification: Tier 2]
[Combat notes: Cryo breath, shard‑flurry, aerial lift, glacial field control]
Tier 2. The koi's mind snagged on the label. He forced the question he'd avoided in the dark. System, he thought, careful, thin, what tier am I?
[As stated: Host remains Level -100.]
[Tier system does not recognize negative levels.]
[Therefore: Host is not in the tier system.]
He nearly choked on river water he wasn't breathing. Not in the system. Not on the ladder. Outside the map everyone else used to understand the world.
wtf, he thought, flat and hollow. Soul and scales both aliens no matter which side of the surface they lived on. He let the emptiness burn and then set it down. Labels didn't cut dragons. Work did.
Brandon's thumb brushed the bowl's rim as if feeling the dip in his will. "You came like the dream said," he murmured. "Then the rest will follow. We go to Emerald Peak. You jump; I catch; we climb."
There was no sermon in him, no speech—just a conviction too simple to wobble.
Right, the koi sent back through the bond, a small crackle of thought in Brandon's mind. We start now. And I won't be a burden.
A grin touched Brandon's mouth. "You won't be."
—
They built a way to move together. Brandon lashed a wide‑mouthed travel bowl to a padded sling across his chest—leather lined with felt, sloshing with river water freshened every mile. The koi curled inside, Blood Scales humming under the sun like buried embers. When terrain turned cruel, Frostwing knelt to take Brandon in her talons, bowl and man both, and the team became a geometry of trust: bird, man, fish, held in the same line.
Training started on the first hour of the first day, because that's when you break habits—before they grow teeth. Brandon ran drills on reflex: count your breaths; feel where your partner wants to move; don't reach—invite. Frostwing strafed a gravel bar with shard‑flurry; Brandon set the bowl down steady under winter hail; the koi practiced Bounce through a crosswind, skipping from ripple to ripple as if the air wore invisible stones only he could see. When Brandon flicked two fingers—left—the koi cut a tight arc; when Brandon closed his hand—hold—the koi let a wave lift him without fight. Bite learned to find leather straps and knotted cords and improve them, not destroy them; he mended more than he tore.
They moved.
Across a salt flat where heat braided with mirage and distance lied, Frostwing shaded them in a cold wing‑shadow that made the world bearable. Across thorn deserts that snagged and tore, Brandon wrapped cloth around the sling and carried the bowl like a shrine. Up canyons where the wind had opinions and tried to knock them over, they braced and laughed into it and kept walking. Over snowfields, Frostwing lifted them above the knife‑bright crust and arrowed past white silence like a thought refusing to freeze.
Nothing went wrong.
Once, a dune collapse missed them by a heartbeat. Once, a band of hunters fell silent when Frostwing cut the sky, arrows idle as awe. Once, a wind‑devil tore a tent‑village to threads before them; when Brandon landed to help, the devil veered and died on a rock spire without touching a soul. The world opened in front of them as if it had been rehearsed.
The koi felt a feeling he did not trust. It wore hope's clothes but didn't tremble.
[Bond Synergy rising]
[Hidden Trait revealed: LUCK（Dormant → Active）]
[Source: Brandon's unwavering belief amplifies Host fortune within bond radius]
He stared at the text until it blurred. Luck? The word looked like a toy in a war ledger.
"Kinda cringe," he muttered along the bond before he could stop himself.
Brandon snorted, amused. "Cringe works if it works."
Frostwing dipped one wing in what felt suspiciously like a laugh.
Luck or not, the miles obeyed. The koi had never felt the world step aside for him. Each day that it did, something eased inside him and something sharpened. He wasn't getting away with things—he was getting through. And not by miracle. By link.
"Rule," Brandon said one night under a sky full of winter stars. "You don't die. Not until we face what we came for."
The koi flicked his tail. "Obvious."
The System did not care for obvious.
[Legendary Task — Clause Update]
[If Host dies before first attempt on Bonus Objective（Tier One Emerald Dragon）, task is considered failed.]
[Penalty will be carried out immediately upon revival. Severity: extreme.]
The koi felt his scales prickle. So if I die on the road—
[Fail state: true.]
"Copy," he said grimly. "Alive, then."
"Alive," Brandon echoed, as if it were a plan, not a wish.
—
Days stacked into a road. The koi mapped Brandon's quiets and quicks; Brandon learned how the bowl sloshed when the koi meant left versus go now; Frostwing learned how low she could skim rivers before the koi's Sense drowned in noise. They became a three‑body problem that solved itself by practice.
And the bond grew teeth.
Sense extended without tearing. The koi could brush Brandon's edge and know whether to hold or cut; Brandon could glance and know when the koi's Blood Scales wanted to show their uglier gift—pain that numbed on contact, a poison born from suffering. Frostwing learned to lay a skin of cold over the bowl when the sun tried to reach inside, learned to lift at angles that made the koi's Bounce turn air into water for a heartbeat at a time.
Everything aligned.
"Not normal," the koi said on the sixth sunset when the horizon bled without omen. "I've never had six days without catastrophe."
"That's because you were alone," Brandon replied, simple and unarguable.
The river in the bowl lapped the rim. The koi shut his eyes. He would not be a burden. Not this time. He reheated that sentence each night and ate it like winter soup.
They crested a ridge at last and saw the world he had been avoiding in memory and seeking in fact: a saw‑tooth line of mountains. The second‑highest lifted its green‑black shoulder above the rest, a humid shadow wearing a crown of cloud: Emerald Peak. At its foot, a scatter of roofs like teeth in a cracked jaw. A village.
The air changed. Not colder—tighter. As if the world held its breath for news it didn't want.
Brandon shaded his eyes with one hand. Frostwing glided lower. The koi tasted the wind through the splash of his bowl and felt iron he couldn't name.
"Tomorrow," Brandon said.
"Tomorrow," the koi echoed, and for once the word did not feel like a threat.
They made camp within sight of the Peak's shadow, with luck purring like a tame storm under their ribs. The koi drifted in his bowl, watching stars cut the dark. Somewhere ahead was the second objective, the mountain, the lake, and a dragon with a body harder than sense. Somewhere ahead the world would stop stepping aside and start shoving back.
For tonight, the river belonged to quiet, and the road had not yet asked for blood.
He slept like a blade in its sheath.