The cold hit him almost at once.
"Ugh…"
Soren tugged his jacket closer as he made his way down the path, shoulders hunching on instinct.
Summer at Stellaris was annoying like that.
During the day the heat lingered over the grounds and stone walkways until everything felt bright and heavy with it, but once the sun disappeared and the air settled, the temperature dropped hard enough to bite through the gaps in his clothes.
His breath misted faintly in front of him.
"「Ignition」."
A small flame bloomed above his palm, modest and controlled, too slight to do more than warm his fingers and cast a shifting amber light across his sleeve, but that alone was enough to make the walk more bearable.
He still found himself impressed by little things like this.
Not power, but control.
For the longest time, his approach to magic had basically been to force as much mana into a spell as possible and hope that the result counted as success.
Now he actually understood that there was more to it than output.
Shape, precision, restraint, efficiency.
He could make a flame no larger than a candle and keep it there, steady even with the wind worrying at it.
That would have felt impossible not so long ago.
As he walked through the restaurant district near the academy, evening life moved around him in a low, comfortable murmur.
Light spilt from open doorways.
Cutlery clinked against plates.
Conversations drifted in scraps through the night air, laughter here, a complaint there, the familiar rhythm of people eating, drinking, returning late, pretending the world was calmer than it really was.
Then he saw movement near the corner of a building.
A girl with brown hair was half-hidden in the gap between two walls, only her face and shoulder visible at first, as if she had been trying to make herself smaller and had failed.
Soren slowed.
He knew that face.
'Olivia?'
He changed direction almost automatically, intending to check if she was alright before carrying on, but he had not taken more than a few steps when her voice reached him.
"Please… just leave me alone."
Quiet, shaky, polite enough that it made something in him sink.
Soren's expression flattened.
As he came closer, the full scene resolved itself properly.
Olivia was pinned near the wall by three older students in wrinkled second-year uniforms, their jackets hanging open, ties loose, posture sloppy in a way that suggested too much drink and too much confidence in what that drink allowed them to get away with.
One stood a little too close to her left, another had positioned himself in front of the only easy path out, and the third leaned against the wall by her right shoulder with the lazy air of someone pretending this was a harmless conversation rather than what it obviously was.
The smell of alcohol reached Soren before he was even fully there.
Olivia was holding herself stiffly, hands close to her chest, trying to look smaller without looking weak.
Her smile, the one she used when she was uncomfortable and trying not to make things worse, looked brittle enough to snap.
"Come on," one of the seniors was saying, voice soft in a way that made Soren dislike him instantly. "You're taking this too seriously. We just asked you to join us."
"I already said no. I need to go back," Olivia replied, and even now she sounded apologetic about it.
"So go back later."
"It would only be one drink."
"You've been saying no for ten minutes," another added, smiling as though that made this funny rather than deeply unpleasant. "At some point that stops sounding shy and starts sounding rude."
Olivia's shoulders drew in a little more.
Soren let out a quiet breath through his nose and walked the rest of the way over.
"Hey, Olivia," he called, casual enough that it might almost have passed for normal. "Everything alright?"
Her head snapped toward him.
"Soren."
Relief hit her face so suddenly and so openly that it was almost painful to look at.
"Thank goodness. I was just about to leave, so if you could…"
She tried to move.
The student blocking the path shifted half a step, easy as breathing, and cut her off again without even pretending it was accidental.
"Your friend?" the tallest one asked, turning toward Soren at last.
His eyes moved over him slowly, taking in the slight build, the face, the hair, lingering long enough that it stopped feeling like a glance and became an inspection.
Soren already wanted to hit him.
"Cute," the senior said.
The word sat wrong in the air.
Another one laughed under his breath. "
Yeah. Both of them, actually."
Olivia froze.
Soren smiled pleasantly, which was the closest he could get to baring his teeth without starting the fight a second too early.
"Good to know your standards are broad. Now, are you moving, or do I need to start charging by the minute?"
That earned him a few surprised blinks.
The tallest senior recovered first.
"You're funny."
"I've been told."
"I don't think you get the situation."
Soren slipped his hands into his pockets.
"Really? Looks pretty straightforward from here. Three drunk idiots cornering a junior who keeps saying no. Not very subtle."
One of them clicked his tongue.
"Don't make it sound ugly."
"It sounds ugly because it is."
The man by the wall straightened a little.
"Watch your mouth."
Olivia reached very carefully for Soren's sleeve.
Her fingers barely touched the fabric before drawing back again, like even that small motion felt dangerous.
"Soren, it's alright, I just need to…" she said under her breath.
"No, you need to leave," Soren said, still looking at the seniors.
The tall one laughed again, though there was less amusement in it now.
"You're not exactly in a position to tell us what anyone needs."
His gaze dipped once more, crawling down Soren's frame and back up.
"Though maybe you could come instead. Save her the trouble."
The others snorted.
One leaned forward with an expression too familiar for someone who had no right to it.
"Might be more fun, honestly."
"You can join us," another added. "We don't mind sharing."
Olivia went red with a mixture of fear and embarrassment.
Soren, on the other hand, just looked tired.
"Sorry," he said, dry enough to scrape. "I like women."
There was a beat of silence.
Olivia stared at him.
"…What?"
Soren did not look away from the three men.
"Did I stutter?"
"That can be fixed," one of them said at once, grinning as if he had said something clever.
"Can it?" Soren tilted his head. "You must save a lot on career planning when you're already that stupid."
The smile dropped a fraction.
Another of them laughed harshly.
"You've got a mouth on you."
"Yes, and unlike yours, mine mostly says useful things."
Olivia made a faint sound that might have been horror.
The tall senior's expression changed in that unpleasant, incremental way that tended to happen when men like him realised a conversation was no longer going the way they wanted.
The genial sloppiness did not vanish, exactly, but something harder slid into place underneath it.
"Listen," he said, voice flatter now, "we were being nice."
"That was nice?" Soren asked. "Right. Then you should probably never try threatening someone, you'd be awful at it."
The man in front of Olivia stepped closer, not to Soren, not yet, but close enough that the message was obvious.
"No one's threatening anyone. We asked her to come with us. She can stop playing hard to get whenever she likes."
Olivia flinched at the phrase.
Soren felt something in him go cold.
There it was.
Not theatrical villainy, not some dramatic declaration, just the same ugly, ordinary entitlement men like this always seemed to wear, the assumption that a girl's discomfort was flirtation, that refusal was delay, that persistence could turn someone's fear into consent if they leaned on it long enough.
It was uncomfortable.
Common, even.
He hated it more for that.
"Olivia, come here," he said, not taking his eyes off them.
She moved at once.
The senior blocking her path caught her wrist.
Not hard enough to bruise, perhaps, but hard enough that she stopped, hard enough that all the blood seemed to drain from her face.
Soren saw it.
That was enough.
Mana surged into his hand before he had even consciously decided.
A brown magic circle flashed to life against his palm.
"「Gaia」."
The cobblestones beneath the three seniors gave way at once, stone losing form and collapsing into dense, sucking mud around their shoes and ankles.
One of them swore, another lurched sideways trying to wrench his foot free, and the one holding Olivia let go on reflex the moment the ground shifted beneath him.
Soren crossed the distance in two steps, caught Olivia by the wrist, and pulled.
"Run."
She did not hesitate.
They bolted.
Olivia stumbled on the first step, then found herself and ran beside him, breathing hard, fear making her movements sharp and uneven.
Behind them came a chorus of furious shouts, the wet drag of boots tearing out of mud, and then, almost immediately, the slap of pursuit on stone.
"Thank you, Soren, I thought I…" Olivia's words broke apart on her breath. "I thought they were going to…"
"Talk later. We need to keep moving."
His grip on her wrist tightened, not enough to hurt, just enough to stop her from losing pace.
He scanned the street ahead even as they ran, looking for professors, peacemakers, anyone useful, but the section they had hit was annoyingly empty, the late crowd concentrated further toward the brighter restaurants and away from the side roads.
Fear was there, of course.
It would have been strange if it were not.
But irritation burned underneath it, sharp and ugly.
'Alex,' he thought grimly. 'That's another one.'
He could almost overlook Amelia.
Not because that situation had been fine, but because at the time, she and Alex had barely reached the point of being anything at all.
It was easy enough to tell himself that the original route had already diverged there.
Olivia was harder.
She was supposed to matter.
She was supposed to be one of his people, one of the connections that should have existed before Soren ever got near this world's main story.
A childhood friend.
Someone who should have been harder to miss.
And yet here she was, running frightened through the dark with Soren instead.
The thought left something sour in his mouth.
Then the air behind them changed.
A sharp crackle cut through the night.
His skin prickled.
Instinct moved faster than thought.
"Olivia, down!"
She dropped immediately, more from panic than obedience, and Soren hauled her with him as a bolt of lightning tore through the space above where their heads had been a split second earlier.
The flash lit the alley mouth white-blue, heat snapping across his shoulder as he hit the ground hard enough to jar his teeth.
Stone burst somewhere behind them.
Shards skittered across the street.
Olivia let out a small cry.
Soren twisted, already pushing himself back up, and saw one of the seniors tearing free of the last of the mud with electricity still crawling across his fingers.
"Persistent little bitch," the man snarled.
Another looked down at his trousers and swore.
"Ahhh, fuck! These were new."
The third rolled his shoulder with a grimace.
"I told you not to let her get too close."
Soren's stomach sank.
They were already out.
Of course they were.
It would have been too convenient if [Gaia] had bought real time instead of a few seconds.
He turned to Olivia, lowering his voice at once.
"Listen to me."
She looked at him with wide, frightened eyes.
"I'm going to slow them down," he said. "You run and get help. A professor, a peacemaker, literally anyone with authority and a functioning brain will do."
Her face tightened.
"What about you?"
"I'll manage."
It was not exactly confidence, but more like necessity wearing confidence's coat.
Olivia looked at the three men behind them, then back at him.
"Soren…"
He forced steadiness into his voice.
"They're after you more than me. That makes you the priority. So run."
That was the logic he gave her.
He didn't mention that he wasn't actually sure what these men would do once they realised he was male.
Lose interest, maybe.
Get more violent out of humiliation, maybe.
Either possibility seemed uncomfortably plausible.
But there was no point saying that aloud.
Olivia's hands clenched at her chest.
She looked miserable, frightened, and guilty, but after a beat she gave a tiny nod.
Soren was already gathering mana.
"On three," he said. "One. Two. Three. 「Ignition」."
Fire surged up between them and the advancing seniors in a sudden wall of orange and white, hot enough to force all three of them back with curses.
Soren shoved Olivia away from him rather than risk her hesitating.
"Go!"
————「❤︎」————