Ezra watched.
For now, there wasn't much else he could do.
Cool air brushed his cheeks. His eyes were free. The world still bounced around as he brushed past chimneys.
They kept moving.
He tracked the guard patrols below—armor flashing as they turned corners—and counted the timing of their rotations.
People moved between buildings. Smoke rose from kitchen chimneys.
Bren was under lockdown.
He watched Catalyna.
Staying alert felt like someone had hung weights from his eyelids. His body was strong—for a baby, hell even for an adult on Earth. If he used mana, his skin would be closer to steel. He could take hits no infant should survive—but growth still demanded its price. Bones knit. Channels thickened. Reserves swelled.
It was exhausting, taxing in a way that he had never felt before on Earth. His body demanded sleep. He propped up his thoughts by sheer will and mana, his eyes wanting to cave in.
This is a drag, he thought. I need to get back.
He listened as bells rang far off. It started slow, but now it had a predictable cadence, and he could tell it was catching—tower to tower, street to street.
It was jarring.
At least Catalyna doesn't seem actively homicidal, he admitted. Otherwise I'd be dead. So why take a lordling at all?
They stayed behind a chimney on a flat roof, far from the edge. From the street below, no one would notice them.
"Ezra," Catalyna whispered. She adjusted the strap across his chest again. "We stay on the roofs until nightfall. Then we leave."
Her voice stayed sweet, still having that melodic rhythm.
Ezra stared back, keeping his face blank and baby-like, but his mind wasn't blank.
He'd spent the run from the castle testing options. Every time Catalyna's stride smoothed out, he tried to condense mana.
If he could gather enough into a fingertip, a wrist, a knee—anything—maybe he could rupture the cloth. Void-silk might block shaping, but cloth was still cloth. Enough force should tear it; after all, his body was nigh indestructible when using mana. It was like he was piloting a first-person drone.
In theory, he could tear the cloth easily if he used mana.
In practice, nothing obeyed.
The first attempt, he aimed everything at his right hand.
The warmth slid wrong and pooled in his left shoulder blade.
He swallowed a curse and tried again, shifting his "target" like he was tuning a dial.
By the fifth try, it felt like his nerves had been rewired at random.
So he started logging it internally.
Trial 3, he noted as Catalyna crouched to peer over the parapet. Gather toward left arm, right leg, and navel. Result: magic concentrates bottom-left of left ankle.
It was almost funny. He didn't laugh.
Trial 4: right arm, right leg, and navel. Result: magic collects bottom-left of left shin, then fizzles.
If there was a pattern, it was buried under noise. Directing aura inside the void-silk was like telling his fingers to curl and getting a twitch in his neck instead.
By Trial 26: left pinky, left leg, and navel, he'd managed a hot pulse in the crook of his right elbow and a wash of pins.
This isn't random, he thought, jaw tight. It's static. The cloth isn't just blocking. It's scrambling.
He glanced at the sun's angle. Only a few hours had passed.
He shut his eyes and forced the frustration down. Think sideways. He tried to flex his toes. Nothing. The wrap held everything—except when he wrinkled his nose.
His face was free. The void-silk sat under his jaw and over his shoulders, but it didn't seal his mouth and nose; he needed to breathe, of course. Catalyna made sure of that. It couldn't seal his face without suffocating him.
His eyes were his.
AMP.
He'd avoided it so far. When it first manifested, using it had felt like overclocking a dying machine: it worked, but it came with blackouts, skull-splitting headaches, and the sense his mind was outrunning his nerves.
That had been before days of practice.
AMP still ate at his reserves. He couldn't predict how much mana it used. It was like it depended on the time of day or the state of his body. It wasn't second nature presently; it was a curiosity, yes, but not a dependable ability. His instinct was always to use muscle reinforcement.
And so far, the cloth only mangled mana when he tried to send it into muscles, but AMP wasn't second nature.
He activated AMP, routing it to his vision.
He picked a fixed point—the edge of the chimney—and nudged.
Mana rose behind his eyes, familiar.
He braced for the wrap to scramble it like everything else, but that uncanny scrambling didn't happen.
Faint gold lines traced the chimney's edge. Tiny angle marks hovered over chipped brick. When he looked at the roof tiles, arrows whispered their slope and where rain would run.
It worked.
Okay. I can see the vectors again. How do I use that?
He watched the street below through the gap by the chimney. A patrol turned the corner—gray cloaks, dull steel. The overlays caught their speed, their steps, the sway of their weight.
He pictured the angles where a shove or shift could turn a clean landing into a stumble—or a stumble into a fall loud enough to draw attention.
He didn't know how long it would last. He only knew he had a small window.
At least he had an ace in the hole.
So he went back to waiting, listening, and pretending to comply.
If I time it when she pushes off…
A plan slowly formed in his mind. He just hoped it could be executed before his drowsiness stole him away.
Catalyna noticed Ezra's occasional tensing, the way his eyes sometimes sharpened, sometimes went flat.
She didn't care.
He was doing what she needed: not screaming, not thrashing, not making her life harder than it already was.
She sat with her back to the chimney, one knee up, watching the streets through a gap.
Her senses stretched outward—counting guards, listening to the bells, catching shouted orders on the wind.
She still couldn't get over him.
Even after seeing it, part of her brain insisted it was impossible.
Infants didn't manipulate mana like that.
Infants drooled and screamed. They didn't shape aura with the precision of a trained Baron.
Yet Ezra had.
She'd seen Barons with worse control than this child. Noble heirs bled power all over basic exercises. Ezra's aura had been clean and focused.
His purity was on par with some Fire Viscounts she'd known—hot, bright, edged.
But purity wasn't what made her skin crawl.
Capacity was.
When his magic had flared during the core incident, it had felt like standing in front of an Ashbringer for an instant—raw, deep potential pressing against her skin.
Unlike the Ashbringer, it hadn't been heavy. The Ashbringer's aura carried years of war and the weight of men who followed him.
Ezra's had been gentle.
Gentle, and too clean.
She couldn't stand the thought of that maturing under careful guidance.
He would be a Primarch someday.
If no one stopped him, he might become the next Rex Imperia.
He had enough potential to snap the six-hundred-year reign of House Regaledeus.
She flexed her fingers against the void-silk under her gloves.
Good thing this kid can't do actual incantations yet, she thought, shuddering once. If he could throw a proper spell while awake, I'd keep him unconscious the whole trip.
The tavern door slammed open hard enough to make the nearest patrons jump.
Conversation broke.
Four guards swept in first, shields half-raised, scanning corners and windows. Sweat and stale ale mixed with cold metal.
Behind them strode Evan, cloak pinned neat, hand lifted.
The room's temperature dropped suddenly.
Aerwyna had entered.
She wore armor: a fitted breastplate with faint frost etching and pauldrons made to move. Her braid was tight, and she wore an expression that was hard to read.
"Listen, citizens of Bren," Evan boomed.
Mugs stopped halfway to mouths.
"Pardon this disruption. This concerns the abduction of our Lord Ezra Blackfyre. The Little Lord was taken just before sunrise. If anyone has information on his whereabouts, he will be rewarded with his weight in gold. Normal activities will resume upon his recovery."
The word abduction lingered, and men exchanged looks.
A cup slipped from someone's hand and clattered on the floor.
"His weight in gold?" someone muttered.
"Someone kidnapped the lordling?" a crooked-nosed man blurted, half-rising. "Are they sick in the head? I pity the knave who lays hands on the Ashbringer's son."
"Well, Ashbringer ain't here," his companion grumbled, slumping lower. His shirt was stained, while his breath reeked of cheap liquor. "It's just Lady Aerwyna overseeing us for now, Wayne."
Wayne jabbed him with an elbow. "Reckon the bastard planned this," he muttered, then lowered his voice as Aerwyna's gaze swept past. "Damn him. I wanted to drink 'til I forgot my own name today."
"I wish I knew something," someone whispered earnestly. "Could use the coin. They say she nearly took his head off in a fight before they married—"
"Has anyone heard anything suspicious," Evan cut in, "or seen a woman carrying a baby? On streets, on carts, near gates, drains, or alleys?"
Aerwyna scanned faces.
Her eyes were faintly red, but the tears were gone. What remained was rage—cold, controlled, aimed outward.
She had wept until her throat hurt, kneeling beside an empty crib and a mangled blanket.
Then she had stood.
In the breaths after, she stopped being a mother and became the Lady of Fulmen again.
Guilt didn't care about titles.
You left him, it hissed. You went to council. You weren't there. You didn't sleep beside Ezra.
She strangled the thought and shoved it down with the rest.
A voice cracked near the back.
"M–milord?"
A young man stood up, shaking, twisting his cap in his hands. Ink stained his fingers.
"Yes," Evan said. "Speak."
The boy swallowed. "I… I don't know if it's important. But walking here, I heard footsteps."
A scoff from the bar. "We've all heard footsteps today, lad—"
"From the roof," the boy blurted. "That's why it was odd. I pass old Ablahega's shop every day—the one with the ugly orange awning, Milady. There's no way up to the roof. No inside loft, no outside ladder. But as I passed, I heard running overhead. Not a stray cat. Boots."
Aerwyna's spine straightened.
"What time?" Evan asked.
"Just after first bell," the boy said. "The bells were already ringing funny, so I noticed. It might've been nothing, but I couldn't stop thinking about it."
"It is not nothing," Aerwyna said.
She stepped closer, gaze pinning him. The boy's breath hitched.
"Where?" she asked.
He pointed with a trembling hand. "Thirty paces northeast of here, Milady. The textile shop—Ablahega's. Faded green sign, two blue shutters. You can't miss it."
"Reward him," Aerwyna said. "His weight in silver now. Gold if this lead takes us directly to my son."
The boy's knees nearly buckled.
"Yes, Milady," one guard said, moving to take his details.
"Boy! What's your name?" the guard immediately asked.
"P—Perrin, Milord," the boy answered.
"Milady," Evan murmured as she turned for the door. "Are you certain? The lead is thin."
"It isn't thin," Aerwyna snapped, already moving. Patrons flattened out of her path. "It tells us what we've been too stupid to see."
They stepped into the street. Afternoon light had gone hard; shadows stretched between buildings.
"We locked the gates, doubled wall guard, swept the drains," she said, each word edged. "Patrols in markets and along the roads."
"Yes," Evan said.
"We thought like people who live on the ground," she said. "Catalyna doesn't have to."
Evan's jaw tightened.
"The roofs," he said.
"The roofs," Aerwyna said. "She's fast. Quiet. If she knows our rotations, she can run right over us while we check papers in the streets."
She looked up, tracking lines between chimneys.
"Riverrunners!"
"Rooftop sweep starting at Ablahega's," Aerwyna ordered. "Eyes on every tile within three streets. Archers on the highest ridges. Trackers watching for disturbed mortar, broken tiles, loose bricks."
"Yes, Milady," their sergeant said.
"Send runners to the other patrols," she added. "Tell them the city has three planes, not two. If any captain keeps his men on street level only after that, I'll have him whipped until he can count to three."
"Do you still think she's aiming for the gates?" he asked, falling into step.
"Yes," Aerwyna said. "Because she's good enough to take the obvious route and make it work."
"She's trained," Aerwyna growled. "Baron—no viscount rank, around third circle, maybe fourth, or she'd scale walls like air. But she doesn't need to. Not if she can move above us."
She kept scanning rooftop lines.
"She'll move when it's dark enough to hide her jumps," she said. "She'll drop near the outer wall where patrols thin, slip down when backs are turned. That's what I'd do."
Evan glanced at her.
"And we'll be there first."
Aerwyna's maliciously grinned.
"We'll see how fast she really is,"