---
Six years passed.
The Outer Lands did not grow quieter.
The city did not grow safer.
Time moved anyway.
It moved through stone and scar alike, through patched walls and rebuilt doors that pretended they had always been there. Repairs layered over damage without erasing it. Streets learned new routes around collapsed corners. Children learned which alleys were no longer shortcuts.
Names vanished from doorframes.
New ones replaced them.
Life adapted the way it always did—by narrowing.
Inside one particular house, time did not heal.
It sharpened.
Maxmilian woke earlier now, though he slept less. His rest came in fragments, shallow and precise, as if his body no longer trusted stillness. Gray threaded through his hair unevenly, not with age but with accumulation—stress that refused to leave once it arrived.
He no longer tested his body.
He tested information.
Maps were adjusted weekly. Guard shifts memorized, then re-memorized when they changed without explanation. Supply routes were tracked until patterns emerged—and then questioned again when those patterns became too neat.
He trained minds more than muscles.
Because muscles failed.
Minds survived.
Rexor understood this.
He just hated it.
At fifteen, Rexor had grown into a weapon that hadn't yet learned when not to cut. His frame had hardened, shoulders broad and arms corded with disciplined force. His movements were faster than Maxmilian's had ever been at that age. His strikes carried weight, intention, confidence.
And he knew it.
That knowledge sat inside him like heat trapped beneath stone—contained, pressurized, dangerous.
Training no longer began with instruction.
Maxmilian watched now.
Corrected only when absolutely necessary.
Rexor was strong enough to hurt himself without help.
"Again," Maxmilian said, not raising his voice.
Rexor struck.
Too fast. Too committed. The blow carried certainty—but certainty made it predictable.
Maxmilian stepped aside with minimal movement, letting the strike pass as if it had never mattered. His remaining hand pressed briefly against Rexor's chest—just enough to disrupt balance, not enough to bruise.
Rexor staggered half a step.
"You're dead," Maxmilian said calmly.
Rexor steadied himself, breath sharp. "I would've broken through."
"You would've been bait," Maxmilian replied. "Power announces itself."
Rexor's jaw tightened.
That phrase again.
Visibility.
He hated it.
Because he could feel it.
People looked at him differently now. Guards held eye contact longer. Merchants paused before greeting him. Children stared—not just with admiration, but calculation, as if trying to understand what kind of thing he was becoming.
He was being noticed.
And some part of him liked it.
That part frightened him more than the rest.
"Strength without restraint isn't courage," Maxmilian continued. "It's permission—for the wrong things to find you."
Rexor said nothing.
He bowed his head slightly—not submission, but containment.
They ended training without ceremony.
That, too, was new.
---
Aurélia measured time differently.
She noticed it in inventories. In the way food spoiled faster despite careful storage. In how coin felt lighter even when counted correctly. Markets changed hands quietly, stalls disappearing between visits without explanation or announcement.
She had learned the exact weight of silence.
At the market, people still greeted her politely—but not warmly. Their eyes followed her movements, tracking her path through the stalls. Conversations bent inward when she approached, voices lowering instinctively.
Awareness again.
It pressed in from all sides.
On her way home, she passed a boarded doorway. A symbol scratched faintly into the wood caught her eye—not fresh, not bold. Old. Almost erased.
A warning.
She slowed for half a breath.
Then kept walking.
She did not need to see it clearly to understand.
---
Voryn returned at dusk.
He always did.
At fifteen, he moved like something that had chosen stillness rather than been forced into it. His strength was quieter than Rexor's, but denser—contained, layered, intentional. His eyes missed nothing, not because they searched, but because they expected to find something wrong.
He carried fruit.
Always fruit.
Never trophies.
"Scouting was clean," he reported.
Maxmilian nodded once. "Patterns?"
"Wider spacing," Voryn replied. "They're keeping distance. Watching responses."
Maxmilian's expression did not change.
"They're still learning," Voryn added. "But not slowly."
That was worse.
Rexor listened from the edge of the room, arms crossed, jaw tight. He felt excluded—not by secrecy, but by caution.
"How long?" he asked.
Maxmilian turned to him. Not surprised. Not angry.
"That's the wrong question," he said.
Rexor's eyes flared. "Then what's the right one?"
Maxmilian answered without hesitation.
"How much time do they need to decide we matter?"
Silence followed.
Not empty.
Loaded.
Voryn lowered the basket to the table.
"They already have," he said.
The words settled like ash.
Rexor felt it then—not fear, not excitement—but certainty.
They were no longer invisible.
And something about that felt inevitable.
---
Night pulled the city inward.
Walls swallowed sound. Streets dimmed. Patrols doubled without announcement. Lamps flickered behind shuttered windows like nervous eyes.
Rexor stood watching from home, leaning against cold stone.
The Outer Lands were nothing but darkness from here. No lights. No movement.
But he could feel it.
Not watching.
Waiting.
Voryn joined him without a word.
They stood shoulder to shoulder, as they had since childhood. But the space between them felt different now—not distance, but weight.
"If I wanted to see the Outer Lands," Rexor said quietly, "would you stand with me?"
The question was too calm to be harmless.
Voryn did not answer immediately.
"You know what that means," he said at last.
"Yes," Rexor replied.
"And you know what it costs."
Rexor nodded once. "That's why I'm asking you."
Voryn studied him—not his posture, not his strength, but the stillness beneath it. The kind that formed only after a decision had already been made.
"I'll tell my father tomorrow," Rexor continued.
Voryn's eyes narrowed slightly.
"Not that I want to go," Rexor said. "That I intend to explore."
Silence stretched.
"Not alone," Rexor added. "As a party."
The words settled between them, heavy and final.
Voryn looked back toward the darkness beyond the wall.
"I'll be there," he said.
He did not say yes.
That was worse.
Voryn turned and walked away.
Rexor remained where he was, eyes fixed eastward.
For the first time since childhood, the Outer Lands did not feel distant.
They felt invited.
And somewhere beyond the walls, something patient adjusted its attention—
Not to the city.
But to the boy who had finally learned how to ask the wrong question with confidence.
---