A pair of eyes watched from the treeline.
Below, in the ragged clearing, a knight in matte-black plate lifted a small child as if he weighed nothing. The knight hoisted the toddler once—too high, too fast—then caught him and pulled him close. The men around them let out hoarse, unbelieving laughs.
"Lord Ezra!"
The chant rolled through the trees, half laughter and half disbelief. Hands slapped armored shoulders. A few of the Knights clapped their gauntlets together like it was a feast day instead of a dangerous road.
On the ground, the Chimeraan lay in pieces—lion head pinned and slack, wings collapsed, segmented tail curled like it hadn't accepted it was dead. Its crystals—blood-red crowns around the horn—were dim now, no longer pulsing.
To the men who'd nearly died, it was finally just a corpse.
To the watcher in the shadows, it was proof.
Barely out of swaddling, he thought. Yet the child moved as if he already knew what would happen.
The thought rose from old stories before he could stop it.
God's Eye.
The old tales named it a sight that pierced the veil—one that saw the next heartbeat before it landed, the stumble before the foot fell, the battle's turning while the first horn was still in the air. The brethren argued over it until their throats went raw: boon of heaven, curse, bloodline, bargain. No one agreed. No one living had ever proved it was real.
We do not know its true working, the watcher admitted. But this reeks of the old fables.
He stayed hidden behind the rough bark, breath shallow, aura tucked tight. He watched the toddler's face—mud on his cheeks, hair damp with sweat and spray—and felt his stomach knot.
I don't know why that child is so sharp. But no normal mind, be it babe or veteran, reads battle like that. The brethren must hear of this.
He eased back, step by careful step. No snapped branches. No disturbed needles. Then he was gone, swallowed by the dark between trees.
The Knights of Bren were still half-drunk on relief and euphoria.
They had killed a Preacantae with their own hands.
A Chimeraan—Precantae hybrid, spell-breathing, calm as still water.
They hadn't expected to win without casualties.
They were trained for men.
Tactics against human mages were doctrine: spacing, lanes, denial, pressure, the constant arithmetic of cast times and angles. But Precantae were different. They didn't posture. They didn't bargain. They didn't tire like men did, and their magic didn't feel like a "spell" so much as a body function—heat, pressure, force—married to a frame built to survive the output.
For a Knight, it was a different kind of fear.
And yet—
They had won.
"Thank you, Lord Ezra," the Knights said together.
They bowed.
Even Phobos, the Order-trained veteran who barely nodded at nobles, gave Ezra a full, deliberate dip of his head.
Ezra, still in the arms of the knight holding him, rubbed his nose with the back of his hand.
He did it shyly—too shyly.
He wasn't used to praise from practical strangers who had no reason to lie.
Evan took him down and set him on the ground, one hand hovering near Ezra's shoulder like a leash that didn't want to admit it was a leash.
Phobos straightened, breathing hard, and nodded at the corpse.
"Enough noise," he said. "We strip what we can and leave. Fast. If there's one Precantae on this path, there can be another."
Deimos nodded once. "Work. Now."
The Knights moved.
They had half an hour. The Precantae's smell that marked the territory would ward off most of the felbeasts, beyond that they couldn't guarantee something else would wander into the territory.
Evered and Oswyn cut at the hide with controlled speed, blades working through tough, strange layers—fur giving way to scaled plates and then back again, as if the Chimeraan couldn't decide what it wanted to be. They spoke little. They worked for clean cuts and no wasted effort.
Galwell watched the treeline while he worked, eyes reinforced with mana, scanning for movement between trunks.
Dynham muttered under his breath as he peeled back a section of scaled hide.
"Aye, that'll fetch coin," he said. "If the buyer don't faint at the smell of it first."
They managed only a third of the hide before Phobos called time.
"Enough. We move."
The real prize was in the head.
Phobos knelt by the Chimeraan's horn and set his knife at the base of one red crystal. He didn't hack. He cut the way a man cut out a lodged arrow—slow, precise, knowing one wrong jerk could shatter the prize.
The crystal came free with a faint wet sound.
Then the second.
Then the third.
Each one was fist-sized, slick with blood, and heavier than it looked.
Phobos stood and walked to Ezra.
"Sire," he said, holding the three crystals out in both hands. "Your keep."
Ezra took them like they were treasure.
His eyes lit.
He wanted to investigate immediately—texture, resonance, how the mana sat inside them, whether they matched mined crystals. AMP hummed at the edge of his perception, ready to map the structure.
He forced it down.
"Thank you," he said, and smiled—soft, bright, angelic. It almost made them forget what Ezra had just made them do.
Phobos's expression twitched.
For a heartbeat, he looked like a man caught between two truths.
The truth of the battlefield: a child issuing commands, reading angles, turning doctrine into a weapon.
And the truth of the face: an innocent toddler who smiled like he'd been given a sweet.
Phobos turned away fast, heading back to the carcass as if cutting meat was easier than thinking about what Ezra meant.
Evan stayed close to Ezra, unwilling to let him out of his sight.
He knew Ezra could probably hold his own, but his pride as a sworn shield wouldn't let him drift.
Rycharde and the others did not let Ezra join the looting, insisting that both Evan and Ezra stay where they were and help Galwell keep watch.
In their eyes, Evan's status as Ezra's retainer put him above any of them, even if he didn't act like it.
Ezra stood with the crystals in his hands, staring down at them.
Then he looked up at Evan.
"I thought magic crystals and cores were mined," Ezra said. "How come that thing had them on its head?"
Evan's gaze flicked to the corpse, then back.
"I'm not certain either, Milord," he admitted. "It's my first time seeing a Precantae. During my days with Riverrun, I was only assigned to bandit clearing and escort routes. The four knightly Orders handle most wilderness operations. They see more of… this."
"I see," Ezra said.
But inside his head, the questions multiplied.
Are these crystals equivalent to mined ones? Do beasts condense them internally like a core and then push them out as external channels? If so… why can humans mine them at all? Are mines just fossilized Precantae sites? Mana-storm deposits —if those even exist?
His fingers tightened around the slick red surfaces.
He asked the next question anyway.
"If you can gather crystals like this and sell them, why doesn't everyone just go into a forest and hunt Precantae? Seems… lucrative."
Evan's mouth tightened.
"Sire," he said carefully, "you are the only one who thinks this way."
"You must understand," Evan continued, "killing beasts like the one we encountered is not easy. Most parties lose lives before they can bring one down. It's far safer to mine crystals than to hunt Precantae. Mines yield more, too."
Ezra shrugged.
"Oh. Yeah. People can die. Mining is safer." He paused, then added, because the thought wouldn't leave him alone, "But powerful nobles could hunt them, right? For profit?"
Evan exhaled.
"Unless it's for sport, Lord Ezra, I doubt a noble would do such a menial task," he said. "Most would rather squeeze coin from taxes and contracts than bleed for it."
That answer landed in Ezra's head like a piece fitting.
Just… consistent.
Ezra looked down at the crystals again.
Then he remembered something else.
"That reminds me," he said. "Evan—before we were cut off by the Chimeraan… how did you find me?"
Evan's expression softened a fraction.
"Oh," he said, like he'd forgotten Ezra didn't already know. "I rode straight from Bren for six hours to the Fulmen fork."
Ezra winced.
"I didn't see you," he said quickly. "I stowed away. In the supplies."
He tried to make it sound light.
"Sire," Evan said, "I saw how bored you were in the castle. I understand it felt unbearable. But you must consider the feelings of Lord Blackfyre and Lady Aerwyna before you do such a thing."
Ezra stared at the ground.
For once, he didn't have a clever argument ready.
"Anyway," Ezra said, voice smaller, "continue."
Evan let him have the escape.
"Yes," Evan said. "When I reached the Fulmen fork, I didn't know which path you took toward Anticourt, so I had to guess. The left route was the shortest—five days with stops—so I gambled and followed it. I didn't know Deimos would split the caravan."
Ezra listened, quiet.
"Later," Evan continued, "I found soldiers headed to Anticourt. I searched their wagons for you—found nothing. I asked where Deimos and the Knights were. They said Irriton. So I rode hard for the Grove, even though I thought it unlikely you'd be there."
Ezra's throat tightened.
"When I arrived," Evan said, "I found traces of a fight with a bear. From that, I deduced your direction. I don't know these woods well—only the stories."
Ezra's eyes dropped again.
"Wow," he said. "You did a lot to find me. I'm sorry for the trouble I caused."
Evan's voice stayed steady.
"Sire," he said, "if not for you, those men might be dead. It was… providential that you came and rescued them. Aside from the ruckus, you did not do real damage."
Ezra blinked up at him.
"Really?"
"Yes," Evan said. "But you should understand Lord Blackfyre and Lady Aerwyna. They want you to grow up safely. To enjoy life."
His gaze flicked toward the others—Knights sweating over salvage, Demon Hunters moving like men who expected the forest to bite.
"Your parents are caring people," Evan added, and there was something firm in his tone that wasn't just loyalty. "More than any nobles I personally know. They want the people of Fulmen to live happy, free from worry. That's one reason Lord Blackfyre was adamant about exercising his authority over the mines."
Ezra's fingers curled around the crystals.
Evan continued, voice low.
"And you know Lord Blackfyre's principles," Evan said. "House Blackfyre believes nobles carry a duty to their people. Those without power should not be left to fend for themselves. Everyone has their role. Nobles may be stronger, and better protected by birth, but it is the people who feed the household and keep the land alive."
He looked Ezra in the eyes.
"So grow strong, Lord Ezra. Protect the weak. Guide them."
He looked directly at Ezra.
"This is a noble aim, Lord Ezra. Strive for it. Grow strong. Protect the weak. Guide them."
His eyes flicked toward the corpse again.
"Just like you did today—when the plan was breaking and the night was trying to eat us."
Ezra said nothing for a moment.
Praise from strangers made him awkward.
Praise from Evan made his chest tighten.
He finally managed a quiet, practical response.
"I'll… try," Ezra said.
Above them, the Grove creaked.
Somewhere deeper in Irriton, something answered with a distant, low sound—too far to name, too heavy to ignore.
Phobos's head snapped up.
"We're done," he said. Clipped. Procedural. "Mount. Now."
The Knights moved without complaint.
Ezra tucked the crystals into his pack, took one last look at the Chimeraan's slack eye, and let Evan lift him back onto the Quintil.
They left the corpse behind.
And the forest swallowed the evidence as if it had never happened.