The camp had finally learned how to sleep.
Wards hummed around the perimeter like low, protective bees. Tents made of canvas and scavenged drake-leather lifted and settled with each breath of the night wind. Somewhere beyond the ring of dim lanterns, the corrupted forest clicked and sighed—restrained for now by sigils Nia had woven into every stake and rope. A sky thick with stars watched over them all, patient and bright, as if the constellations had leaned closer to hear the whisper of three hearts.
Inside the small shelter of stitched hide where they had laid their bedrolls, Nia slept on her side facing him, one hand tucked beneath her cheek, the other splayed over where his chest had been moments ago. The moon penciled silver across her hair; peace, at last, softened her features into the quiet beauty he always felt rather than saw. She had given him everything tonight—again, fully, without reservation—and then, with the softest smile, had slipped past the edge of waking into the gentle dark.
He watched her breathe for a time, the way a man might keep watch over a holy fire.
Thank you, he thought, brushing his lips to her temple. For light. For shelter. For choosing me, again and again.
A chime glided through him, soundless and sure, like a heartbeat tapped on crystal.
> [Bond Constellation — Orion]
Nia → ⭐ 40% (Stable)
He exhaled, amused that the system had its own way of saying yes, I saw that. He eased her hand back onto the blanket and tucked the furs higher up her shoulder. "Sleep," he whispered. "I'll be close."
Draconic Oathblade was nowhere to be seen—because it didn't need to be. The Shared Inventory hung on his will like a puncture in the air, weightless as thought. He stepped outside unarmed and didn't feel the lack of it. Since the Constellation opened its eye to him, power had soaked deeper than the shape of his forms; it had stained his bones. The cold on his skin tasted clean. The night smelled of pine pitch and damp earth, with a thread of ash beneath it—the world's reminder that corruption still waited beyond their circles of light.
He didn't have to look for Aurelia. The way laughter knows the shortest path to a sore place, she found him instead.
She sat on the fender of a cookfire that had dwindled to coals, elbows on her knees, chin lifted to watch the stars as if daring them to wink. A thin, travel-soft tunic fell off one shoulder; she'd thrown a cloak over it without fastening the throat, and the clasp—a phoenix brooch—caught the fire intermittently, a wink, a dare. Her hair was unbound, pouring down her back like a banner cut from the moon.
"Couldn't sleep?" she asked without turning, as if she'd heard his footsteps from three tents away and recognized the gait.
"Didn't try," he said.
Aurelia slid him a sideways smile. "Ah. The fearsome fiancé slips out after midnight. To do what, I wonder?"
"To breathe," he said. Then, because the truth was a better blade than any he could call, "And to find you."
Aurelia's brows lifted. The teasing line of her mouth wavered—just for a heartbeat—into something startled and terribly soft. "Dangerous answer, Dragon."
"True answers usually are."
She patted the space beside her, and he took it. For a while they sat without speaking. The camp sighed and turned, the woods ticked, a nightbird threaded a silver call through the branches. Aurelia warmed her hands over the coals and watched the backs of her fingers as if reading a fortune written in heat.
"I heard her," she said finally, still studying her hands. "Before the wards dimmed. I tried to be asleep because it felt…polite." A breathy laugh. "It turns out I'm very bad at polite."
He didn't pretend not to know what she meant. "You weren't cruel to yourself about it, were you?"
"I was…honest." She turned, and whatever mischief usually wicked her eyes aside, it made room for something brave. "I wanted it to be me, too. Not in place of her. Not to take anything away. Just…to stand beside what you two already are." She swallowed. Teasing returned, but it was gentler now, scaffolding for the truth rather than a mask. "Greedy of me. I like greedy better than jealous. Greedy gets things done."
"You don't have to be good at polite," he said. "Just be true."
"That, I can do." Aurelia shifted, angling her knees toward him, cloak parting just enough to send a thread of her warmth across the small space between them. "What about you? Are you going to keep being good? Or are you going to be true?"
He didn't answer with words.
His hand rose to her jaw, thumb brushing the corner of her mouth. The laugh that always lived there trembled and fell silent. For once, she let him set the distance. Their foreheads touched; her breath met his, cool and quick, then slower. He tasted citrus on her lips, the memory of some fruit she must have bartered from the quartermaster, and the smoke from the fire, and something like cinnamon that might have been the way her skin held warmth.
When he kissed her, Aurelia made a helpless noise and immediately found her footing again, fingers catching in his hair as if unsure whether to pull him closer or push him away playfully and absolutely unwilling to do either halfway. She kissed like a dare, like a dance on the edge of a cliff with wind in her hair, like a woman who had taught herself to want out loud because the world had always wanted to hush her.
"Andy," she said into his mouth, fierce and breathless, "look at me."
He did. She let herself be seen—no angles, no armor, no wisecracks—just a girl who had crossed a sea and a line inside herself and had decided to keep walking.
"Say it," she whispered.
He understood. "I want you."
The system woke, the way thunder sometimes travels far on a clear night.
> [Bond Constellation — Orion]
Aurelia → ⭐ 28% (+4)
Aurelia inhaled sharply, eyes widening. "There it is," she said, wonder burned into a grin. "I can't hear it, but I felt the air change."
"Trust me," he murmured. "It changed."
"Then change me more."
The cloak fell from her shoulders like a dark wave. She rose, tugging him to his feet, then back, then closer again, a constant recalibration that resolved into hands setting path and mouth drawing map. She was playful, yes—always—but the play was not frivolous; it was a claiming done with laughter so the claiming didn't frighten them. She pushed him back against a tent pole, then relented and let him draw her in; she cupped his jaw with both palms to study his face, then pressed their chests together as if to prove that study had results.
"Tell me when I pull too hard," she murmured, fingers on the edge of his tunic. "I know you're strong, but I am too, and I forget."
"You won't hurt me."
"That's not what I mean."
It turned out he knew exactly what she meant, and the steadiness of his answer—"You won't"—put a fresh tremor through her. The Shared Inventory took anything that would have been cumbersome and folded it elsewhere. What remained between them was warmth and breath and the quiet kinds of sounds people make when they've decided to stop pretending they can live on restraint.
He gathered her into his arms and they sank to the furs she dragged from a storage roll without looking. Aurelia, who liked to steer, did—but with a delicacy that surprised them both. She guided and yielded in the same movement, coaxed and answered, insisted and listened. The night gave them privacy; the wards kept the world back. He was careful, infinitely careful; she was brave, excessively brave; and between care and bravery there was a narrow bridge which, once crossed, did not vanish underfoot but sang.
No details walked past the door of decency, but everything essential entered: the slow, breathless aligning; the break of a held breath into a small cry she tried and failed to swallow; the way her fingers bit into his shoulders and then widened to hold rather than clutch; the fact that he stilled when she needed him to, and moved when she tugged at his hair, and learned her the way one learns a prayer at last by wanting to mean it.
"Again," she said later, laughter cutting through a tear she hadn't expected. "Greedy, remember?"
He was tired. He had thought himself emptied, joyfully, by the woman sleeping behind a canvas wall. But he found another light, the way men always do when the road is dark and someone insists on seeing them, and gave it. The world tightened around the small circle of their bodies and expanded inward to make room for more sweetness. She was softer after, and sharper, as if the night had filed her into the exact shape she had always intended to be.
The Constellation turned a notch.
> [Bond Update]
Aurelia → ⭐ 32% (+4)
Orion Tier I Combined → 60%
She didn't hear the chime, but she saw it in his face and smiled like someone who had thrown a stone into a lake and finally heard the splash.
"Is this wrong?" she asked him at some point when breath was a luxury and teasing was the only way to keep from falling through the floor of the tent into the stars. "Is this stealing from her? From you?"
He kissed the center of her palm. "No. This is making the circle bigger."
Aurelia pressed her forehead to his, eyes bright and damp. "Good. Because I don't think I know how to give you back."
"Don't," he said, and that was the end of that question.
The night went on. It changed shape around them a few different times, as nights do when certainty is new and people are learning what tenderness looks like when it wears their faces. Somewhere in the middle of that long patience, a small, involuntary sound broke out of her—half sob, half laugh, all astonishment—and she rolled onto her side to breathe, one hand braced at his chest, the other clutching his wrist like an anchor. He kissed her hair and let his heartbeat do the rest of the talking.
When she could speak again, she said into his shoulder, "I thought I'd be…less. After. Like the stories say. But I feel—" She searched for the word. "More. As if some lock I didn't even know I carried has turned."
"You did that," he said. "Not me."
"It was both." A wicked grin returned, tamer now but still itself. "Greedy and grateful are sisters, you know."
"Then invite them both to stay."
"Already did." She lifted her head, studied him, and laughed softly. "You look ruined."
"Do I?"
"In the best way." She pinched his cheek. "I'll let you rest. In five minutes. Maybe."
The Constellation approved, patient and amused.
> [Bond Update]
Aurelia → ⭐ 36% (+4)
Status: First Union Acknowledged (Aurelia)
Note: Emotional Dominance Synced — Playful Vector
Andy shut his eyes a moment, dizzy with the tenderness of a system that insisted on turning love into numbers and somehow didn't ruin it. He tucked Aurelia closer beneath the cloak. She was warm, and that warmth was slightly sore, and she didn't hide that from him. He kissed the frown line between her brows until it smoothed.
"You're hurt," he said softly.
"I'm…new," she corrected, and then, because being brave had become a habit, "I'd do it again. And again. And—don't worry—again, later. Maybe not tonight. Probably not." A small, theatrical wince. "Definitely not. But soon."
He laughed into her hair, exhaustion finally finding him. "Rest. Please."
"Bossy," she murmured, but didn't argue. She pulled the cloak up to her chin and tucked herself into him with the entitlement of someone who had decided she belonged. The coals near them collapsed into red, the ward-lines around the camp glowed and quieted, and the stars did the slow work of morning.
Sometime just before dawn, someone's shadow passed the tent flap and paused. A familiar aura breathed along the pegs and canvas: calm, blue-white, resolute. Nia did not lift the curtain. She did not intrude. The shadow lingered, filed something under noted, and moved on.
Aurelia woke at that, or at the rustle Andy made because he always felt Nia even when she was three tents away. She kissed his collarbone and smiled at nothing.
"You two will be the end of me," she said, affectionate as a prayer.
"No," he said, kissing her brow. "We'll be the making of you."
She fell back asleep with a tiny smile that made him want to win every battle for the rest of his life.
When he finally dozed, the dream he came to was a good one: a road through black pines that were not corrupt but simply tall, a sky that hadn't learned how to sulk yet, and two voices arguing about whether his hair should be left alone or mussed more. He woke to the sound of water being heated somewhere and the smell of tea, and for a disoriented, perfect instant, the world had no enemies.
Then the forest remembered itself.
A breath of stale heat drifted in from beyond the wards, carrying a taste like iron and old smoke. The sigils Nia had inscribed on the stakes sharpened in answer. In the east, a wedge of gray bled into violet; day was prying up the edge of night with tired fingers.
A chime threaded his ribs.
> [System Alert]
Corruption Pressure Rising (Northern Quadrant)
Estimated Manifestations: 3
Classification: Dragon Corrupter — Scattered Cores
Recommendation: Consolidate Bond, Maintain Wards, Scout at First Light.
He breathed once, steady, and the buzz of panic that used to attend such messages didn't arrive. He felt only the weight of two sleeping heads on his chest—one literal, one sensed through a bond that had never once asked him to be anything except exactly himself—and wondered how anyone had ever fought alone and survived it.
"Wake me in ten," Aurelia murmured without opening her eyes.
"We don't have to move yet."
"Mm. I promised to help Nia with the east-line sigils." A sly not-smile. "Also promised to try not to look too smug at breakfast. I might fail at both."
"Try your best."
"You try yours," she shot back, eyes half-open now, amused. "The villagers practically worship when you walk through camp. Might be nice if their new saint didn't show up with hair that says I lost a fight to two women and liked it."
He let his hand find her hair anyway and combed through it with slow fingers. "I won."
"You did," she said, satisfied. "Which is why you're allowed to lose a little."
They rose when morning finally got its way. He fastened her phoenix brooch for her—two tries, then a third because his hands suddenly weren't steady, which made her smile like a sunrise trying to get it right—and she smoothed his collar in return, exactly as if that were a sacrament. Outside, the camp was already shaking itself awake; kettles hissed, a child cried and was comforted, the first scout called a greeting that drifted over canvas and rope.
They stepped into the day together.
Nia waited by the central pole, hair braided, staff bright as a piece of morning. She did not look surprised to see where he had come from. She did not look unhappy, either. She looked like herself—possessive and generous, steel wrapped in velvet—both hands steady on the life they were making.
"Good morning," she said.
Aurelia's grin flashed, quick and incorrigible. "Very."
Nia's eyes flicked once to the way Aurelia's cloak sat on her shoulders and back to Andy's face. "We have work," she said, tone clipped and warm at once. "Breakfast first. Then wards. Then we decide where to draw the map of the day."
Andy nodded, and the Constellation hummed its quiet approval of leadership taken and shared.
> [Orion Tier I — Combined Progress: 60%]
Members: Andy (Anchor), Nia (Lumina Vector), Aurelia (Playful Vector)
Shared Inventory: Active
Team State: Synchronized (Morning Pulse)
He didn't tell them what it said. He didn't have to. It lived on their faces already.
"Eat," Nia ordered gently. "Then we find the first shadow and pull it inside out."
Aurelia bumped his shoulder and whispered, low enough that only a man who knew the shape of her voice could catch it, "And tonight I'm going to steal you for fifteen minutes. Twenty, if I bribe her."
"I heard that," Nia said without looking, and handed Aurelia a steaming cup. "You can have him for twelve. I'm not unreasonable."
"Fifteen," Aurelia negotiated instantly, bold and bright again. "You can watch."
Nia's ears went pink. "Eat your breakfast," she said, fierce only on the surface.
They did. The day climbed. The wards brightened. Somewhere beyond the lattice of light, three slow bruises moved under the skin of the world, and none of them were allowed to mistake what that meant.
But for the length of tea and bread and the warmth of three shoulders touching in a busy camp, the future was a patient thing that could wait its turn.