Aerwyna's gaze lingered on Evan, blank on the surface and stormed beneath.
"Reitz," Aerwyna said, turning sharply.
Reitz Blackfyre stood in the center of the corridor like a drawn blade, barking orders that snapped men into motion. He looked up at her voice; the moment he saw her face, the fire behind his eyes shifted from rage to focus.
"What?"
Evan stepped forward and bowed just enough to be correct.
"Milord," he said. "I believe Lord Ezra stowed away with Deimos and the Demon Hunter escort. They were leaving when the search began."
Reitz's nostrils flared. "Why would he—"
"Shadow Walkers," Evan said simply, and that single phrase did something to the air between them.
Reitz's eyes narrowed. He exhaled through his nose, sharp and controlled.
Aerwyna spoke before the silence could turn into argument.
"Can you catch the convoy?" she asked Evan. Not can you find Ezra. Not will you bring him back. She still had doubts that Ezra would be in the caravan.
Evan nodded once. "Yes, Milady. If I leave now."
"And if you're wrong?" Aerwyna pressed.
Evan didn't flinch. "Then I return to Bren, and I've cost us only time and one rider. If I'm right—" He swallowed. "—then waiting costs us Ezra."
Reitz's gaze stayed on Evan for a long beat, weighing. Not Evan's loyalty—that was a given. He was weighing risk, optics, and the reality that the castle couldn't afford to scream our heir is missing into the ears of everyone in Bren.
Finally, Reitz moved.
He stepped close enough that his voice became a private thing, meant only for the three of them.
"Go," he said.
Evan's shoulders eased a fraction, like a brace inside him had just been released.
Reitz continued, clipped and fast.
"You will not engage anything you do not understand. You will not test anything. You find my son and you bring him back."
"Yes, milord," Evan said immediately.
"And you do it quietly," Reitz added, the word biting. "No banners. No public questions. No dragging half of Fulmen into a frenzy."
Evan bowed again. "Yes, milord."
Aerwyna's hand tightened around her own wrist until the bones ached. She didn't trust herself to speak softly, so she spoke cleanly.
Reitz turned his head slightly.
"Evan," he said. "If you have to choose—"
"No," Aerwyna cut in sharply.
Reitz didn't look at her, but the tension in his jaw spiked.
Evan answered anyway, and his voice was steady.
"I will not choose," he said. "I will bring him back."
There were men in Fulmen who said such things because it sounded honorable.
Evan said it like a statement of method.
Reitz held his gaze another moment, then nodded once. Permission given. Orders set.
"Stables," Reitz said, already moving. "Now."
The stables smelled like sweat, hay, and old leather. A familiar, grounded stink—comforting in a way the castle's polished stone never was.
Reitz didn't waste time on ceremony.
He shoved a folded packet into Evan's hands: thick paper, crisp edges, the weight of authority.
"A pendant," Reitz said, pressing dark metal into Evan's palm—stamped with the House Blackfyre sigil. "Wear it visible. If you're stopped by my men, you show it first."
Evan's fingers closed around it instantly.
Reitz added more—documents sealed and signed, ink still sharp.
"Proof of identity. A written report of your mission, signed by me."
Aerwyna watched as if the paper itself could keep Ezra alive. She hated that the world worked this way—ink and seals mattering more than screaming.
Reitz's voice hardened.
"And this," he said, "is the Augmenti Warrant. Direct from the Rex Imperia's office."
Evan's eyes widened slightly despite himself.
"With this, you can ask aid from lords outside Fulmen," Reitz said. "Use it sparingly. Especially in territories we have discussed before."
He didn't say the rest directly. He didn't need to.
If they know you are from Bren, they will know your connection to me. They will know Ezra is connected to you. And they will cut you open to see what falls out.
Evan nodded. "I understand, your Lordship. I will do as you command."
Reitz handed him a final note—smaller, plain.
"Give this to the stablemaster," he said. "He'll tell you where the Demon Hunter caravan is heading. They might deviate, but their first stop will be Anticourt. Three days from here."
Reitz's mouth tightened. "Send a messenger pigeon from there. If you find Ezra before that, you send one sooner."
"Yes, milord."
Aerwyna stepped closer. Her voice dropped.
"Evan," she said, softer than it had been all day. "He will try to argue with you."
Evan's lips twitched, almost grim. "Yes, Milady."
"He will say he has a plan," Aerwyna continued. "He will say he can handle it. He might even be right."
Evan didn't answer, because there was no correct thing to say.
Aerwyna's eyes went hard again.
"Bring him back," she repeated.
Evan bowed once more. "I will."
Reitz slapped Evan's shoulder—hard enough to be felt through armor.
"Go," he said. "Now."
By the time Evan rode out, four hours had passed since Ezra had been reported missing.
It felt longer.
The stables were chaos wrapped in discipline: grooms moving fast, hands sure, mouths shut. A few looked up as Evan entered and saw the pendant. The sigil did what it was meant to do.
No questions.
A groom thrust a folded map into his hands, ink lines marking roads and rivers.
"Anticourt," the man said, pointing. "This is the general direction. They headed southeast first, then cut toward the managed woods. They'll reach Irriton Grove tomorrow if they keep pace."
Evan's eyes narrowed. "That's off the cleanest path."
The groom shrugged, careful not to offend. "Demon Hunters don't like clean paths, sir."
Evan didn't waste breath on it.
He packed provisions the way he'd been trained to: dried meat, waterskin, spare cord, whetstone, basic field kit. Weapons checked, straps tightened, saddle adjusted until it fit like part of the horse.
Then he rode.
Bren fell behind him in a blur of stone and smoke.
The road opened into countryside, and with it came the ugly quiet of distance—no walls, no patrol density, no familiar rotations. Just sky and wind and the long stretch of land between him and the caravan.
He kept his horse at a hard pace.
He did not let himself think too much about what Ezra might do if he met Shadow Walkers before Evan did.
Ezra had not enjoyed the first few minutes in the supply cart.
He'd almost thrown up.
On Earth he hadn't been prone to motion sickness. He'd never even thought about it. But he'd forgotten the simplest variable:
New body.New inner ear.New problem.
He lay wedged between sacks, face pressed into rough canvas, and focused on not making noise. Every jolt turned his stomach. Every rut in the road punched nausea up his throat like a fist.
Stupid, he thought, furious at himself. You planned the stowaway, you planned the timing, you planned the distraction—didn't plan your own digestive tract.
So he used mana.
Not for speed or strength. Not for AMP.
For his stomach.
Over the past year, Ezra had discovered he could reach into parts of his autonomic nervous system—subtle levers that shouldn't have been accessible at all. He could slow his heart. Steady his breathing. Reduce the tremor in his hands.
And, apparently, suppress the reflex that wanted to empty his stomach into the Demon Hunters' supplies.
He didn't know exactly how he did it. He just… did. It was as much a part of his body as breathing. Mana flowed, nerves calmed, the nausea dulled into nothingness.
The cost was real. The suppression leeched his mana in small, steady sips. Over hours it added up—but compared to everything else, it was negligible.
In the cramped dark, Ezra found himself thinking anyway, because thinking was what he did.
He'd noticed something else lately: he could feel magical depletion as a distinct, measurable thing. It wasn't just tiredness. It was a specific hollowness—channels that wouldn't answer cleanly, limbs that felt heavy even when his muscles still worked.
When he was an infant, it had all felt intertwined. Now that he was older, he'd realized depletion didn't always mean collapse.
Often, when he burned through his mana, he could still walk—just awkwardly, like a toddler learning balance for the first time. It made him suspect that the way many fighters in this world behaved—dueling until their magic ran out and then collapsing dramatically—was partly technique.
A reliance.
They weren't only using magic as fuel. They were using it as a stimulant, threading it through every motion. When it ran dry, their bodies paid for the strain all at once.
Ezra's mouth tightened in the dark.
If I build dependence like that, I'll die the first time my core is empty at the wrong moment.
The cart finally slowed. Voices rose outside. The wheels stopped grinding long enough that Ezra could hear the crackle of a fire being built.
Camp.
Relief hit him so hard it was almost dizzying. No more endless jostling. No more constant suppression.
He let the mana thread relax a fraction and inhaled slowly through his nose until the nausea settled into something tolerable.
He waited.
Then, careful as a thief, he used magic to amplify his hearing.
The world sharpened: boot steps, clinking armor, low voices, the scrape of a knife on wood. No alarm bells. No shouted orders.
He was still unseen.
Ezra eased out of the cart like a shadow slipping from a seam.
The wilderness looked larger than it had from castle windows. Trees, dark and dense, framed a clearing lit by fire. The air smelled of grass and smoke and distant water.
Men gathered around a bonfire, hunched over the warmth. Summer was ending; the night had bite.
Someone laughed, and the sound felt wrong in the open dark.
They were roasting meat—rabbit, by the look and smell of it. Ezra's mouth watered instantly, stomach forgetting its earlier mutiny. He had to look away to keep from drifting forward like an idiot.
Instead, he opened his pack and pulled out his own provisions—dried meat, tough and salty. He chewed quietly in the shadows, eyes tracking the men.
Observe first. Eat later, he told himself, even as his body did the opposite.
He slipped farther from the firelight and relieved himself behind the cover of brush, then returned carefully, keeping to darkness and angle.
The caravan was larger than he'd first estimated. Regular soldiers, yes—but also knights in House Blackfyre colors. Five of them, grouped together near the edge of the fire.
They looked… specialized.
Ezra's curiosity twitched.
One knight carried a war hammer that looked absurd, like something out of a myth meant to impress children. Ezra quietly ran AMP—not the full overlay, just enough to estimate density and mass.
The hammerhead was enormous.
Too enormous.
He activated AMP just to check, and he almost stopped breathing.
One hundred and fifty kilograms.
Ezra stared at it, then at the knight holding it like it was a normal weapon.
Magic, he deduced instantly. Reinforcement. Probably constant. No human arm swung that without turning itself into pulp.
Next to the hammer knight sat another with a mace of comparable weight. A third had a spear. A fourth carried a halberd. The last wore a typical cross-guard sword, plain compared to the others.
Deimos's voice cut through the crackle of fire.
"The first stop is Anticourt," he said. "We stock supplies, then push toward the border city of Aprax. From there, we go to Valorfall Hold—the Fulmen border near the Arcane Lands. That's where my party was ambushed. The caravan we were escorting was meant to reach Valorfall."
"But why aren't we going directly to Anticourt?" the hammer knight asked, tone edged.
Deimos didn't react like a man challenged. He reacted like a man who expected suspicion.
"We are going to Irriton Grove," he said.
The hammer knight frowned. "We weren't told of a southern target."
"It isn't a target," Deimos agreed. He tapped a mark near the trees. "It's a rendezvous point. We're meeting another Demon Hunter. He's been tracking a separate cell of the Walkers. The Order uses the Grove for training exercises."
"Alive?" the hammer knight asked.
Deimos looked up, eyes catching the firelight.
"He's a Hellspawn Slayer," he said. "If he's dead, you'll know by the heap of corpses he's under."
He didn't smile. He didn't have to.
The hammer knight's gaze flicked toward the wagons and the line of regular soldiers.
"We arrive there tomorrow," Deimos continued. "Tonight we rest. The Grove is not easy to traverse."
Ezra's eyes narrowed in the dark.
Irriton Grove.
He'd heard the name before—Reitz had told him stories about hunts there.
Deimos went on.
"After we meet, we push through Irriton to save time. We don't need to circle back after the rendezvous. I have a path in the Grove that cuts east."
"Isn't Irriton dangerous?" the hammer knight asked. "We may be knights, but we have regular soldiers in this caravan."
"Yes," Deimos said, and his voice had a hard, flat certainty. "I've accounted for them. They'll take the safer route toward Anticourt."
Ezra felt his pulse pick up.
Split forces.
Knights take the dangerous route.
Regular soldiers take the safe one.
The hammer knight stared at Deimos for a long moment, then nodded once.
"I see," he said. "Then it's settled."
"We leave at daybreak," Deimos said.
"Understood."
The conversation broke. Men returned to their routines. Someone laughed at something crude. The fire crackled and spat.
Ezra stayed in the dark, grinning like a man who had just been offered a locked door and discovered it was already open.
He would actually see the wilderness.
Not from a castle window.
Not as a story.
He would see it under his own feet. He had decided.
He wasn't just riding to Anticourt.
He was riding toward Irriton Grove—toward a dangerous traverse, toward Demon Hunters, and whatever waited there.
Local flora and fauna, yes—but more than that:
New data.New phenomena.The thing he'd been suffocating in the castle without.
He forced himself to stay still until the conversation dissolved and men began settling into bedrolls.
Then Ezra slipped back into the supply cart, curling into the cramped space as if it were a nest. He pulled canvas close and shut his eyes.
Mana management, he reminded himself as sleep edged in. Don't burn everything on excitement.
His last coherent thought before drifting off was simple and sharp:
Tomorrow, he would tail the knights.
The only question wasn't whether he could keep up.
It was whether his magic could.