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Lugiel woke like someone had struck him.

Not physically.

Something deeper—an instinct older than memory, snapping him out of sleep with brutal precision.

His eyes opened to darkness and paper and Lorelei’s warmth against him, and for half a heartbeat he didn’t understand why his body was already tense, why his hand had curled as if reaching for a weapon that wasn’t there.

Then it hit.

Pressure.

Not the political kind. Not the social kind. Not even the oppressive weight of winter pressing into stone.

This was mana.

A presence.

Spiritus—so dense it didn’t feel like energy so much as gravity.

Lugiel sat up fast enough that papers slid off his chest and scattered across the bed like startled birds.

Lorelei woke with him, instantly, her tail snapping tighter around the blankets, eyes wide and bright in the low lamplight.

She didn’t need explanation.

Dragonkin felt shifts in the world like weather changes in bone.

“What is that,” she whispered.

Lugiel didn’t answer immediately.

He listened.

Not with ears.

With the part of him that remembered being something else.

Genesis stirred in him faintly—irritated, like a beast rousing—responding to the intrusion the way a body responds to a foreign blade.

Lugiel swung his legs over the side of the bed, bare feet meeting cold stone. The chill should have grounded him.

It didn’t.

The Spiritus pressure thickened, settling into the palace like a second atmosphere.

Lorelei sat up beside him, brows knit.

“I don’t like this,” she said, voice low, controlled, but her fear was visible in the way her hands had curled into the sheets.

Lugiel’s jaw tightened.

He knew that pressure.

He’d felt it before, in Zawafhir’s arena, when Cygnia’s teal state had filled the world and made mortals remember what it meant to be fragile.

But this—

This was too much.

And it wasn’t coming from within his palace.

It was coming from outside the city, like a sun that had decided to rise at midnight.

Lugiel stood, already reaching for the robe draped over a chair.

Lorelei followed, pulling her own wrap around her shoulders, tail bristling faintly.

They stepped out into the corridor.

The palace was quiet.

Too quiet.

Servants moved with normal pace. A guard at the far end of the hall nodded politely, unalarmed. Lanterns flickered in their brackets, casting warm light over carved wood and crystal inlays.

To most of the palace, nothing had changed.

But Lugiel could see it in the small things.

A guard’s hand hovering closer to his sword than normal.

A servant pausing mid-step, frowning as if trying to remember something they’d forgotten.

A hush in the air that wasn’t about sound.

Lorelei’s eyes tracked the same details. Her nostrils flared once, tasting the air like she could smell magic.

“Some of them feel it,” she murmured.

“Not enough to name it,” Lugiel replied.

They moved faster, boots silent on runner rugs.

At the edge of the central hall, several nobles had gathered, drawn like iron to a lodestone. They weren’t the gilded sort who lived for banquets. These were older bodies, straighter spines—men and women who wore expensive clothing like armour rather than decoration.

Veterans.

The ones who had fought beside Lugiel when the Khanate was not yet a nation, only an idea held together by blood and necessity.

One of them—a broad-shouldered man with frost scars down his hands—turned as Lugiel approached.

His face was pale.

“You feel it too,” the man said, not a question.

Lugiel’s gaze sharpened. “You feel Spiritus.”

The man swallowed. “Aye. Like the sky’s pressing down.”

Another veteran noble, a woman with a limp and eyes that had seen too much, shook her head slowly.

“It’s… wrong,” she said. “Not wrong as in evil. Wrong as in… too much.”

Lorelei stepped closer to Lugiel without touching him, her proximity a silent anchor.

Lugiel looked past them, toward the palace’s great window.

Beyond the glass, the Khanate’s night was unchanged—snow reflecting moonlight, crystal towers humming faintly with stored heat, the breath of the city rising like mist.

And yet the pressure was real.

It wasn’t local.

It was approaching. Or expanding. Or simply arriving.

Lugiel’s hand curled into a fist.

“Cygnia,” the limping woman said carefully. “Could he—”

“No,” Lugiel snapped, too fast, too certain.

The nobles flinched. Not at his volume. At the conviction.

Lugiel steadied his breath.

“It isn’t him,” he said again, slower now. “It can’t be.”

Lorelei frowned. “Why.”

Lugiel’s eyes stayed on the window, on the calm night that had no right to feel like it was being crushed by sunlight.

“Because Cygnia,” Lugiel said, voice low, “doesn’t let his Spiritus spill like this unless he’s fighting a domain.”

He paused, and something in his expression hardened.

“And because even when he does,” Lugiel continued, “it has a shape. It’s alive. It’s warm. It’s… him.”

Lorelei’s lips parted slightly, reading what he wasn’t saying.

“This,” Lugiel finished, “is Spiritus without restraint.”

The veterans exchanged looks. A few of them unconsciously adjusted their stance—feet widening, weight grounding, the reflex of people preparing for an impact they couldn’t dodge.

A younger noble drifted into the hall behind them, blinking in confusion.

“What’s going on,” he asked, smiling faintly like this was an inconvenience. “Is there some—”

He stopped mid-sentence as the pressure surged for half a heartbeat—enough that his smile faltered, enough that he looked suddenly ill.

Then it eased again, not gone, just… settling.

The young noble swallowed hard, finally afraid.

Lugiel looked toward the palace’s inner sanctum, where the Khanate’s heat-crystals were regulated—where his own magic threaded through the city’s infrastructure like a furnace heart.

He could feel his heat system react, not failing, but bracing, like a living thing responding to a predator entering its territory.

Lorelei’s voice was tight. “Is it Lokii.”

Lugiel’s head snapped to her.

“No,” he said instantly.

Lorelei’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know.”

Lugiel didn’t answer for a second. He was listening with the part of him that remembered being older than the world.

Then, quietly, he admitted the truth.

“Because Lokii wouldn’t do this,” he said.

Lorelei stared at him.

“He wouldn’t,” Lugiel repeated, firmer. “Not like this. Not to a city full of mortals.”

His gaze darkened, and for a moment the Khan was not a ruler but a man remembering what gods could be.

“This is someone announcing themselves,” Lugiel said. “Or someone failing to hold themselves together.”

Lorelei’s tail flicked with agitation. “So what do we do.”

Lugiel’s eyes narrowed toward the distant skyline, toward the direction the pressure seemed thickest.

“We find the source,” he said.

One of the veterans hesitated. “Khan—if it’s Spiritus at that magnitude—”

“I know,” Lugiel cut in.

He looked around at the gathered nobles, and his voice lowered into something that sounded like command and confession at once.

“Do not panic the city,” he said. “Do not tell the civilians ‘Spiritus’ unless you want a stampede of pilgrims and zealots.”

A few nodded grimly.

Lugiel turned to Lorelei.

“Stay close,” he said quietly.

Lorelei’s eyes flashed. “I’m not staying behind.”

Lugiel didn’t argue. He knew better.

Instead he nodded once, accepting it, and stepped forward—toward the palace’s outer balcony, toward the cold night, toward the crushing warmth that didn’t belong here.

As he moved, the Spiritus pressure pressed again, heavier now, and for the first time since he had abdicated his Primal seat, Lugiel felt something dangerously familiar stir in his chest.

Not Genesis.

Not power.

A memory of what it meant to be a pillar holding up a world.

And the grim understanding that sometimes, even as a mortal, you didn’t get to refuse the weight when it arrived.

The Khanate didn’t panic the way other nations did.

They didn’t scream first. They didn’t riot first.

They mobilised.

At the first sustained surge of that crushing Spiritus pressure, the city’s rhythm fractured—shop shutters slammed, crystal-lamps brightened as the warding lattice reacted, patrol bells rang in quick coded bursts that meant unknown threat, unknown scale. People poured out of inns and homes in half-dressed confusion, looking up as if the sky had become a thing that could bite.

And then they saw him.

Lugiel Seyan.

The Khan himself, moving.

Not riding. Not escorted at a dignified pace.

Blitzing.

A purple-and-white streak of motion that tore through streets like a blade through cloth, boots barely touching stone, breath turning to mist behind him, Lorelei at his side with her tail streaming like a banner.

Behind them—soldiers and veteran nobles, the kind who didn’t ask questions when the Khan moved like that. They just followed, because whatever had made Lugiel run was either going to kill the city or be killed by him.

Lorelei kept pace, barely.

Not because she was weak—dragonkin weren’t built to be outpaced easily—but because Lugiel was moving like a man running on instinct older than thought.

Genesis wasn’t flaring. Not fully.

This wasn’t a display.

This was a hunt.

They cut through the palace avenues, through narrow stone corridors between crystal towers, through a bridge that spanned a frozen canal, and the pressure thickened with every block—Spiritus turning the air into something dense enough to swallow.

Civilians flattened themselves against walls as the group streaked past. Some bowed out of reflex. Others simply stared, pale-faced, hands over mouths as if the very act of breathing might offend whatever presence was pressing down on them.

Lugiel didn’t slow.

His mind ran in parallel tracks—one tactical, one visceral.

The tactical part mapped the city. Triangulated. Felt the pressure like a slope and followed it upward.

The visceral part—older, stranger—recognised the domain itself and disliked how it felt.

Spiritus should have been warm.

Alive.

It should have tasted like blood and sunlight and stubborn hearts refusing to stop beating.

This tasted like an open wound that refused to close.

They entered a market district.

At night it should have been quiet. Closed stalls. Snow-dusted awnings. Lanterns flickering low.

Instead it was half-lit and half-chaotic—merchants hauling goods inside, guards pushing civilians back, rumours moving faster than feet. A few hardy vendors were still out, too stubborn to stop earning coin just because the air had grown heavy.

Lugiel skidded to a halt so sharply that his trailing escort nearly collided into him.

Lorelei’s claws scraped stone as she stopped beside him, breathing fast, eyes wide, scanning for something that wasn’t there.

The pressure was strongest here.

And yet—

Nothing was wrong.

No crater. No broken ward-stones. No cultists. No flare of hostile magic. No sign of an attack.

Just a market.

Just people.

Just normal life trying to pretend it wasn’t being suffocated by divinity.

One of the veteran nobles staggered slightly, hand to chest.

“Here,” he rasped. “It’s here—”

Lugiel lifted a hand, silencing him, and turned slowly in place.

His eyes swept the district with ruthless focus.

He didn’t look for explosions. He didn’t look for shadows.

He looked for incongruity.

A person who wasn’t reacting like everyone else.

A presence that belonged here so fully it didn’t realise it was crushing the air.

His gaze moved past a furrier, past a stall selling carved crystal charms, past a knot of terrified civilians—

And landed on her.

A Soaranggan woman stood near a coat vendor as if nothing in the world was wrong.

She was tall—taller than most in the market, with the long-limbed sturdiness of a nomad built to endure. Her skin was sun-warmed despite the cold. Massive white horns arced upward from her head like a crown carved from bone—one horn broken near the tip, the fracture pale and old.

Her hair was wild brown, thick and messy like she’d never once cared about what “presentable” meant.

And her eyes—

One red. One blue.

The mismatched gaze of something that had seen too much and still chosen to look.

She was browsing coats.

Coats.

She lifted one from a rack, held it up to the lantern light, and smiled as if she’d discovered treasure.

The attendant beside her was trembling—hands shaking so badly the hangers rattled—because the Khan had just appeared in front of their stall with an escort of armed soldiers and veteran nobles who looked like they’d rather bite than blink.

The attendant’s face went white.

“K-Khan—” he stammered, bowing so hard he nearly toppled.

The woman turned, blinking like she’d been interrupted mid-thought.

Then she smiled wider.

Not politely.

Not deferentially.

Genuinely, brightly—like meeting Lugiel was just another interesting event in a day full of interesting things.

“Oh!” she said, voice chipper, warm. “Hello.”

Lugiel stared at her.

The Spiritus pressure poured from her like sunlight from a cracked window.

It wasn’t aimed. It wasn’t hostile.

It was simply… there.

She didn’t look like she was doing anything.

She looked like she was alive.

And the city was feeling it like a weight.

Lorelei’s tail bristled behind her. Her nostrils flared as if she could smell the Spiritus itself.

One of the soldiers shifted, hand hovering near his weapon.

Lugiel lifted a hand again—sharp, commanding—and the soldier froze.

Lugiel stepped forward slowly.

The woman tilted her head, curious.

“Are you alright?” she asked him, as if he was the one who looked out of place.

Lugiel’s throat tightened unexpectedly.

Something tugged in his chest.

Not Genesis.

Not Primal memory.

Something… mortal.

A warmth that didn’t belong to his current mind, like a memory trying to surface from a life he hadn’t lived in centuries.

Familiarity.

A sense of having seen that smile before—somewhere impossible, somewhere gentle.

His primal side knew Spiritus as a domain.

His mortal side knew… her.

He couldn’t explain it. He couldn’t place it.

But it hit him with enough force that for a heartbeat, he forgot the panic, forgot the escort, forgot the city holding its breath.

He simply looked at her and felt—

Home.

The woman glanced back at the coats, then at Lugiel again, bright-eyed.

“I’m shopping,” she explained, as if that clarified everything. “It’s cold here! Beautiful, but cold.”

The attendant made a strangled noise of terror.

Lorelei’s eyes narrowed, voice tight. “Who are you.”

The woman turned to Lorelei with immediate delight, as if she’d just noticed her properly.

“Oh, you’re gorgeous,” she said, utterly sincere. “Your tail—look at that fur! It’s like a winter festival.”

Lorelei blinked, thrown off so hard her fear stuttered.

Lugiel forced his mind back into shape.

“Your Spiritus,” he said, voice low. Controlled. “You’re flooding the district.”

The woman blinked again.

Then, slowly, her smile softened—not dimming, just shifting into comprehension.

“Oh,” she said gently. “Is that what that feeling is.”

Lugiel’s eyes sharpened. “You didn’t know.”

“No,” she admitted easily. “I just… feel good. The air is nice. The world is nice.”

She said it like it was obvious. Like it was normal. Like loving the world was as natural as breathing.

Lorelei’s gaze flicked to Lugiel.

He looked… wrong.

Not afraid.

Not angry.

Conflicted.

His eyes were fixed on the woman’s face with an intensity Lorelei had only seen when he looked at something that threatened the foundations of his life.

And yet there was something else there too.

A softness he didn’t wear often.

Lugiel swallowed.

“What is your name,” he asked.

The woman’s smile returned in full.

“Patch,” she said, bright and cheerful. “Patch—just Patch.”

The name landed in the air like a dropped stitch.

Lugiel’s mortal side tugged hard.

Warmth surged in his chest, sudden and disorienting, like the memory of sitting by a hearth he’d never seen, listening to laughter he couldn’t place.

His primal side—the part of him that had once been Genesis incarnate—had no file for “Patch.”

No category.

No context.

But his mortal side looked at her broken horn and mismatched eyes and wild hair and felt, inexplicably, that she mattered.

That she had always mattered.

Lugiel held her gaze.

The market held its breath.

And Patch, standing under lantern light with the unbothered joy of someone in love with existence, smiled at the Khan as if he was simply another interesting person to meet on a night full of wonders.

The market stayed frozen around them, as if the whole district had become a held inhale.

Lugiel didn’t speak for a moment.

He was doing the thing he always did when something didn’t fit: he was trying to make it fit anyway, through sheer force of thought.

Patch stood there, coat draped over one forearm, the other hand lightly pinching a sleeve between thumb and finger as she tested the fabric. Her posture was relaxed—open, almost buoyant—like she wasn’t aware a city had just reorganised itself around her existence.

Lorelei, by contrast, looked coiled. Not aggressive—ready. Her eyes kept flicking between Patch’s horns, her mismatched gaze, the way the air shimmered faintly around her like heat over stone.

And Lugiel felt it again—the tug. That ridiculous warmth in his chest. A familiarity that made no sense.

His primal side catalogued the phenomenon clinically.

Soaranggan. Mature. Strong constitution. Unusual horn morphology. Spiritus pressure output: extreme. Uncontrolled leakage. No hostile intent detected.

His mortal side did something far more dangerous.

It wanted to smile back.

Lugiel’s jaw tightened like he was angry at himself for even considering it.

“You’re in the Khanate,” he said, voice calm, measured. “How.”

Patch brightened as if he’d asked about the weather.

“Oh! I walked,” she said happily.

The attendant made a strangled sound. A soldier behind Lugiel muttered, “Walked from where?” under his breath.

Patch shrugged. “From the canyon.”

Lugiel’s eyes narrowed. “What canyon.”

Patch frowned, thinking, then made a vague gesture with the coat sleeve. “The one that’s… hidden. Desert outside. Jungle inside. Very rude to the feet, but pretty.”

The veteran nobles exchanged looks. One of them went pale.

Lorelei’s expression sharpened. “That isn’t near here.”

Patch blinked at her. “Oh. Is it not.”

Lugiel felt the pressure shift again as Patch spoke—Spiritus surging with her emotion like it couldn’t help but accompany her words. It wasn’t a flare, not like combat.

It was like the world inside her was simply too alive to stay contained.

Lugiel took a slow breath and stepped closer.

Patch didn’t retreat. She just watched him with curious, bright attention—red eye and blue eye both focused on him as if he was the most interesting thing in the market.

“Patch,” Lugiel said again, testing the name in his mouth as if it might unlock what his chest insisted on remembering. “Do you know what Spiritus is.”

Patch tilted her head. “Life magic.”

Lugiel’s brow furrowed. “That’s… an oversimplification.”

Patch’s smile turned playful. “Everything can be oversimplified if you’re brave enough.”

One of Lugiel’s nobles choked on a laugh and immediately hid it as if fearing execution.

Lorelei stared at Patch like she couldn’t decide whether to be offended or impressed.

Lugiel didn’t smile. He wanted to.

He fought it.

“Your presence is causing panic,” he said flatly. “The city feels you.”

Patch’s expression softened—genuine concern, immediate and unfeigned.

“Oh,” she said again, quieter this time. “I’m sorry.”

And the Spiritus pressure dipped.

Not because she consciously “suppressed” it.

Because she felt sorry.

The whole market seemed to breathe easier in the same moment, like the air had been given back its right to exist.

Lugiel’s eyes widened slightly.

Lorelei noticed too. Her ears—fins, whatever those subtle dragonkin tells were—shifted.

“You can… modulate it,” Lorelei said, voice tight.

Patch blinked. “Can I.”

Lugiel’s veteran nobles looked between each other, expressions moving from fear toward something like wary hope.

Lugiel took advantage of the opening.

“Come with me,” he said, and made it a command without raising his voice. “We need to speak somewhere controlled.”

Patch’s brows rose. “Is this an arrest.”

“No,” Lugiel replied instantly.

He didn’t know why he replied so quickly. He just did.

Patch’s smile returned, relief bright and uncomplicated. “Good. I don’t like prisons. They smell like giving up.”

Lorelei’s gaze snapped to Lugiel again—sharp, questioning—because Lugiel’s tone had been too quick, too… gentle.

Lugiel ignored it.

He offered his hand.

It wasn’t a gesture he made often. When he did, it was political theatre.

This wasn’t theatre.

Patch looked at his hand like it was a fascinating artefact.

Then she took it.

Her palm was warm. Rough in places, calloused like someone who actually used her body to live. Her grip was firm, confident, and entirely unafraid of the Khan’s power.

The moment their skin met, that tug in Lugiel’s chest tightened into a knot.

Warmth flared.

Not Spiritus. Not Genesis.

Something else.

Something human.

For a heartbeat, he saw a flicker—an impression rather than a memory—of a hearthlight glow, laughter, the smell of soup, and a mother’s hand in his.

It was gone as soon as it came.

Lugiel’s fingers tightened fractionally around Patch’s hand.

Patch didn’t notice anything odd. She simply smiled up at him like this was the beginning of a lovely evening.

Lorelei stepped closer, voice low to Lugiel alone.

“Seyan,” she said, warning threaded through the name. “Be careful.”

Lugiel nodded once, not looking away from Patch.

“I am,” he murmured.

He wasn’t sure he was.

They began walking.

The escort adjusted around them instantly, forming a moving wall through the market. Civilians stepped back, whispering. Merchants bowed. Guards stared in open confusion—because the panic was easing, and the Khan was walking hand-in-hand with the source of it.

Patch waved at the attendant as they passed like nothing had happened.

“Thank you!” she called. “I’ll come back for the grey one!”

The attendant looked like he might faint from relief.

As they moved, the Spiritus pressure pulsed again—smaller this time, contained by Patch’s attention. It ebbed when she focused on Lugiel. It rose when she looked around in awe at the crystal architecture.

Patch’s eyes widened at a cluster of heat-crystals embedded in a wall, glowing softly beneath carved runes.

“Oh,” she breathed. “This is gorgeous.”

Lugiel found himself answering without thinking.

“It keeps the city warm.”

Patch looked at him, delighted. “You’re making heat for everyone.”

Lugiel’s jaw tightened again, but this time it wasn’t to suppress a smile. It was to suppress the strange twist of emotion her words caused.

“It is my duty,” he said.

Patch’s grip on his hand tightened gently.

“No,” she said, as if correcting him kindly. “It’s your love. You can call it duty if it helps you sleep, but it’s love.”

The veteran nobles behind them went very still.

Lorelei’s eyes widened, then softened.

Lugiel’s throat worked.

He didn’t respond. He couldn’t—because if he did, he might confirm something about himself he didn’t want spoken aloud.

Instead he led them onward, faster now, toward the palace.

The city watched them go, the pressure slowly shrinking behind them like a storm being coaxed into a bottle.

And Lugiel—Khan, ex-Primal, man built from control—walked through his own streets with a warm-handed stranger named Patch, feeling his mortal side tug toward a familiarity his Primal memories could not explain.

Which, for Lugiel Seyan, was perhaps the most dangerous thing in the world.

The closer they got to the palace, the more the city’s panic thinned into a wary, fascinated quiet.

The Spiritus pressure was still there, but it wasn’t suffocating anymore. Patch—without being told how—had learned to hold it like a lantern instead of a sun. It rose when she gasped at the architecture. It eased when she focused on Lugiel. It pulsed with her moods in a way that made the domain feel less like a weapon and more like weather.

Lugiel should have been relieved.

He was.

But something else itched at the edge of his perception.

Not Genesis.

Not the city wards.

Not the nervous soldiers, nor Lorelei’s protective focus.

A second presence.

Faint.

So faint that anyone without Lugiel’s history would have missed it entirely.

It wasn’t another person walking beside them.

It didn’t have footsteps.

It didn’t even have weight.

It was more like… a harmonic.

A note behind Patch’s Spiritus that didn’t belong to her.

Lugiel’s pace slowed by a fraction.

Lorelei noticed immediately. Her head turned slightly, watching him from the corner of her eye.

“What is it,” she murmured without moving her lips.

Lugiel didn’t answer. He didn’t trust his voice yet.

He scanned again—not with his eyes, but with that old sense that mapped divinity in the air. The pressure of Spiritus around Patch was bright and warm and uncontrolled in the way of a living thing.

But beneath it, threaded through it, was something… older.

Not heavy like a Primal.

Not sharp like a weapon.

Just… present.

Like a shadow that wasn’t dark.

Like a handprint on the inside of the world.

Lugiel’s fingers tightened around Patch’s hand.

Patch looked up at him instantly, concerned. “Are you alright again?”

Lugiel forced his face to remain neutral.

“I am fine,” he said.

The lie tasted stale.

Patch’s mismatched eyes searched his expression with disarming honesty, as if she truly believed people should just say what they felt and the universe would make room for it.

She didn’t press. She simply kept walking, humming softly to herself—an absent, content sound.

And the second presence hummed with her.

Lugiel felt it more clearly now.

When Patch’s Spiritus ebbed, the faint presence remained.

When Patch’s Spiritus surged, the faint presence flared just slightly, like embers stirred by breath.

His gaze sharpened.

This wasn’t a follower.

Not an escort.

Not a hidden mage.

This was… attached.

Bound.

Lugiel’s stomach tightened.

He’d felt attachments like this before—when he was still Genesis and the world tried to explain itself to him in structures and ties. Souls could bind. Domains could bind. Lives could knot into each other so tightly that separating them became cruelty.

He just hadn’t expected to feel it here, in his streets, wrapped around a stranger who smiled at heat-crystals like they were art.

He tried to listen deeper.

To identify the shape of it.

And for a heartbeat, he caught a flash—so brief it could have been imagination.

A boyish laugh. The sensation of fever. The taste of soup. A hand reaching for sunlight and finding it inside the chest.

Then it vanished again.

Lugiel’s eyes widened a fraction despite himself.

That impression wasn’t his memory.

It wasn’t Genesis either.

It was something… personal.

Someone.

His chest tightened in a way that had nothing to do with panic.

Patch tilted her head at him. “You’re thinking very loud.”

Lugiel blinked. “I am not.”

Patch smiled as if he’d told a joke. “You are. It’s alright.”

Lugiel swallowed. He steadied his breath.

“Patch,” he said carefully, “are you alone.”

Patch’s brows rose. “No.”

Lugiel’s gaze sharpened, sweeping the street.

His escort tensed. A few soldiers shifted, hands moving closer to weapons.

Lorelei’s tail bristled, body angling protectively.

Patch noticed none of it in the way they expected. She simply looked… amused.

“Not like that,” she said quickly, waving her free hand. “No one is following me.”

“Then what do you mean,” Lugiel asked, voice low.

Patch glanced upward—toward the night sky, toward moonlight reflecting on snow, toward something Lugiel couldn’t see.

Her expression softened.

“I mean…” she murmured, and for the first time her cheer dimmed into something gentler, deeper. “I’ve never been alone.”

Lugiel went very still.

Lorelei’s eyes flicked to Patch’s face, picking up the tonal shift immediately.

Patch’s hand tightened around Lugiel’s again, not possessive—comforting. Like she was reassuring him.

“There’s someone with me,” Patch continued quietly. “Always. Even when I can’t hear him. Even when I can’t feel him properly. He’s… there.”

Lugiel’s throat tightened.

He stared at her, trying to keep his face controlled.

“Who,” he asked.

Patch smiled, but this time it wasn’t bright. It was tender in a way that made even the air feel softer.

“My Sol,” she said.

The name hit Lugiel like a physical blow.

Not because he recognised it consciously.

Because something inside him—something that should have belonged to no one but himself—flinched with familiarity and warmth.

The faint presence behind Patch’s Spiritus stirred.

Just slightly.

As if hearing its own name.

Lugiel’s breath caught.

He didn’t know why the name mattered.

He didn’t have the context.

He didn’t have the story.

All he had was the sensation of standing near something ancient and gentle that made his mortal side ache.

Lorelei’s voice was cautious. “Sol… Avaya?”

Patch looked at her, surprised. “You know him?”

Lorelei’s gaze darted to Lugiel—do you know this?—but Lugiel couldn’t answer. He was still staring at Patch, still listening to the faint, tethered presence that now felt clearer.

Not Patch.

Beside Patch.

Threaded into her like a second heartbeat.

Lugiel forced himself to speak.

“I do not,” he said truthfully. “Not personally. But… I feel something.”

Patch nodded, as if that was natural.

“Yes,” she said softly. “He’s very hard to miss if you’re listening.”

Lugiel’s jaw tightened.

He didn’t like not understanding.

He didn’t like mysteries that touched his chest instead of his mind.

But this wasn’t a political puzzle.

This was… intimate.

And Lugiel—the man who controlled nations through discipline—found himself unsettled by how gently Patch said it, how unashamed she was of carrying someone with her.

“How long,” Lugiel asked.

Patch’s smile returned faintly. “A long time.”

She looked ahead, toward the palace looming in the distance, warm lights glowing through snow.

“I think he likes cities,” she added, almost casually. “He always liked people.”

Lugiel stared at her profile, at the broken horn, at the mismatched eyes, at the way her Spiritus moved like breath.

And he felt that second presence again, faint as a whisper.

A soul beside hers.

Bound.

Patient.

Warm.

Lugiel didn’t know what any of it meant yet.

But he knew, with grim certainty, that whatever had walked into his market district tonight was not merely a wandering Soaranggan woman shopping for coats.

Something old had arrived with her.

Something that brushed against him like a memory he didn’t own.

And for the first time in a long time, Lugiel felt genuinely uncertain—because his Primal side could not name it, and his mortal side, traitor that it was, wanted to keep listening anyway.

They brought her into the palace like she was a storm contained in a bottle.

Not in chains—Lugiel would not have allowed that, and something about Patch’s presence made even veteran nobles hesitate to treat her like a criminal—but with the reflexive caution reserved for unknown powers. Guards flanked at a respectful distance. Courtiers watched from alcoves like curious birds. Servants moved with a forced calm that didn’t quite hide the tension in their shoulders.

Patch walked through it all with the mild, cheerful confusion of someone entering a museum and wondering why everyone was whispering.

She craned her neck at the vaulted ceilings, the crystal inlays that carried heat through the corridors, the carved reliefs of dragons and snowstorms and the Khanate’s founding wars.

“Ooh,” she said at one point, delighted. “This one looks like it’s biting the other one.”

A footman very nearly tripped.

Lorelei kept close—not touching, but present. Close enough to intercede if Patch suddenly decided to do something strange, close enough that Patch’s Spiritus wouldn’t drift and crush servants by accident. Lorelei’s composure held, but her eyes never stopped measuring.

Lugiel led them to one of the smaller receiving halls—still elegant, still filled with expensive wood and crystal lanterns, but less theatrical than the grand court chamber. A long table had been prepared with tea, small pastries, cured meats, and warm bread. The staff had done their best to conjure “hospitality” on command.

Patch stepped into the room, inhaled once, and immediately made a face.

“Oh,” she said.

Half the staff straightened, waiting for praise.

Patch walked closer to the table, peered at it, then looked up at Lugiel with frank disappointment.

“This is very fancy,” she said, like it was a problem.

A few nobles blinked, unsure if they’d misheard.

Lugiel clasped his hands behind his back, posture immaculate, tone even. “It is food.”

Patch frowned. “It’s court food.”

“It is our hospitality.”

Patch’s expression didn’t change.

Then she sighed—loudly, without shame—and rolled her shoulders as if shrugging off a cloak.

“I’m not really in the mood for anything fancy,” she said, conversational. “I wanted noodles. Or that spiced broth from the market stall. The one with the lamb. The man had good hands for seasoning.”

Silence.

A young nobleman—one of the polished ones—looked faintly offended, as if Patch had insulted the Khanate itself.

A senior lady of court stared as though Patch had just walked in barefoot, which, to be fair, she might as well have.

The servants stood frozen, teapots hovering mid-pour.

Lorelei’s lips twitched once, dangerously close to amusement, before she smoothed it away.

Lugiel’s face remained controlled. Only his eyes sharpened.

“You were brought here for discussion,” he said.

Patch looked at him, genuinely puzzled.

“Why,” she asked.

The question landed like a thrown stone.

Lugiel didn’t answer immediately, because the truthful answer—because you’re crushing my city with Spiritus and you’re carrying a second soul like a lantern and I don’t know what you are—was not a sentence he intended to say in front of half his court.

So he chose the safest truth.

“Because your presence alarmed my people,” Lugiel said. “And because you are not… ordinary.”

Patch stared at him for a beat.

Then her face softened in a way that made her look older than she’d seemed a moment ago—not aged, but ancient in kindness.

“Oh,” she said quietly. “I didn’t mean to alarm anyone.”

The Spiritus pressure dipped again, like her empathy physically changed the air.

Then she brightened right back up and clapped her hands once, decisive.

“Okay,” she said. “Then I’ll just go eat in the market like I planned. That’ll fix it. I’ll be happier, you’ll be happier, your people will stop looking like they’re about to faint.”

A steward found his voice at last, scandalised. “M-Madam—”

Patch looked at him. “Yes?”

The steward swallowed hard. “This is the palace.”

Patch blinked. “I know.”

The steward’s mouth opened and closed, unable to find a script that covered a Spiritus-wielding nomad rejecting palace hospitality because she wants lamb noodles.

Patch turned back to Lugiel, smile friendly.

“I’m going,” she announced, as if letting him know she’d be back before curfew.

Then she pivoted toward the doors.

Several guards tensed reflexively.

One stepped forward half a pace.

Lugiel lifted a hand.

The guard stopped instantly.

Patch paused at the threshold and glanced back over her shoulder.

“You’re free to follow me,” she said, tone light. “But I’m warning you—royals aren’t usually cut out for that sort of thing.”

A ripple of shock ran through the room.

One noble actually gasped.

Lorelei’s brows rose sharply—less at the jab, more at the sheer audacity of saying it to Lugiel’s face.

Lugiel, however, felt something different.

Not anger.

Not offence.

A strange, begrudging appreciation—because Patch spoke as if she didn’t recognise hierarchy as a real thing. As if power meant nothing unless it made you kinder. As if a Khan was simply a man with duties and hunger like everyone else.

It was infuriating.

And… grounding.

Patch added, almost as an afterthought, “And you’ll have to walk. I don’t do escorts.”

Then she stepped out, already humming to herself like the palace was just another corridor between her and dinner.

For a moment, nobody moved.

The receiving hall held its collective breath, eyes fixed on Lugiel, waiting for the fury. Waiting for the order to seize her. Waiting for the mask of rulership to tighten into steel.

Lugiel stared at the open doorway.

He felt the Spiritus presence drifting away, pressure easing as Patch left the room, the palace itself seeming to exhale.

He also felt that faint second presence tugging behind her like a trailing thread.

Sol.

Bound to her.

Walking away.

Lugiel’s jaw tightened.

Lorelei stepped closer, voice low enough only he could hear.

“Seyan,” she warned again. “This is… unstable.”

Lugiel didn’t look at her. His eyes stayed on the doorway.

“It is,” he agreed.

Then, to the shock of every noble and servant in the room, he moved.

He reached down, grabbed his cloak from the back of a chair, and swung it over his shoulders in one fluid motion. Papers might have mattered more to him than sleep, but image mattered too, and if he was going to do this, he would do it without looking like a man caught off-guard.

He turned briefly to the stunned court.

“Do not follow,” he ordered.

A noble stammered, “Khan—”

Lugiel’s gaze cut like frost. “Do not.”

Silence snapped into place.

Lorelei’s eyes widened.

“You’re going,” she murmured, half disbelief.

Lugiel’s mouth tightened. “I am.”

Lorelei’s expression shifted—worry, then resignation, then something softer.

“Then I’m coming,” she said.

Lugiel didn’t argue.

He simply strode out after Patch, cloak trailing behind him like a shadow.

Because somewhere between the market stall and the palace table, Lugiel had realised a dangerous truth:

This woman wasn’t impressed by his throne.

Which meant, for once, he might get to meet someone who would speak to him like he was human.

And Lugiel Seyan—who had once been a god and had hated being alone with it—found he could not let that walk away into the snow without at least trying to understand it.

They found her exactly where she’d said she would be.

The market district had settled into a strange in-between state—half-curfew tension, half-stubborn nightlife. Some stalls were shuttered; others remained open for soldiers and late-shift workers, steam rising from pots and braziers into the cold air. Lanterns glowed warm against snow. Heat-crystals embedded in the stone hummed softly beneath footsteps.

Patch stood in front of a stall that looked like it had survived on sheer attitude.

A squat little structure of dark wood, a canvas awning crusted with frost, and a pot so large it could’ve drowned a child. The vendor was an older man with a scar across his lip and forearms like corded rope. He ladled broth with the confidence of someone who’d fed armies.

Patch was smiling at him like he was an artist.

“Told you,” she said to nobody in particular, leaning over the counter. “Good hands.”

The vendor grunted, then paused when he noticed the street had gone unnaturally quiet.

His eyes lifted.

He saw Lugiel.

His ladle froze mid-air.

The vendor’s face went slack, then pale, then pulled tight in the desperate calm of a man who realised he might have just become history.

“Kh—” he began.

Lugiel held up a hand—not a command this time, but a quiet instruction.

“Continue,” he said.

The vendor swallowed hard and continued ladling like his life depended on not spilling broth.

Lorelei arrived half a step behind Lugiel, cloak pulled tight around her shoulders, tail fur shifting with unease. A cluster of soldiers and civilians had stopped at a distance, watching with wide eyes and whispered speculation.

Patch turned at the sound of their approach, bright-eyed, unbothered.

“Oh! You came,” she said cheerfully, as if Lugiel had shown up to a picnic rather than abandoned court decorum in front of offended nobles.

Lugiel stopped a few paces away.

Snow crunched under his boots. The pressure of Spiritus was softer here, but still present—like Patch had lowered her voice in a loud room.

“I said I might,” Lugiel replied.

Patch’s smile turned playful. “Look at you. Outside.”

Lorelei’s eyes narrowed. “We are outside often.”

Patch blinked at Lorelei, then smiled in immediate delight again. “Yes, but not like this.”

Lorelei looked like she didn’t know whether to be insulted or reluctantly agree.

Patch turned back to the vendor. “Two bowls,” she said. “And bread. He looks like he needs bread.”

The vendor’s hands shook slightly. He set two bowls down with exaggerated care, then offered a basket of thick, dark bread slices with trembling reverence.

Patch took one and immediately broke it in half, handing a piece to Lugiel without waiting for permission.

Lugiel stared at it.

The bread was warm. Dense. Smelled like salt and grain and the comforting honesty of people who didn’t have time for garnish.

This was not palace food.

This was real food.

Lugiel took it.

Patch grinned like she’d won something.

“See?” she said. “Royals can do it.”

A few bystanders made strained noises that might have been laughter if fear didn’t live in their throats.

Lugiel sat at the stall’s rough bench because Patch had already done so, patting the space beside her as if seating arrangements were a suggestion and not law. Lorelei sat on Lugiel’s other side, posture straight, eyes scanning the street like a guardian who didn’t trust miracles.

Patch inhaled the broth and visibly relaxed, shoulders dropping.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s the one.”

Lugiel watched her for a moment, then spoke carefully.

“You attempted to leave the palace,” he said, “as if you were not under scrutiny.”

Patch took a sip, then hummed in appreciation before answering.

“I don’t like being stared at when I’m hungry,” she said simply.

Lugiel’s gaze narrowed. “You are being stared at now.”

Patch glanced around, eyes sparkling as she took in the cluster of onlookers.

“Yes,” she agreed. “But this is different. This is normal staring. Palace staring is… sharp.”

Lorelei’s voice was quiet. “You understand social power.”

Patch shrugged. “I understand discomfort. That’s enough.”

She took another sip, then added casually, “Also, your staff looked like they were about to die if I didn’t pretend to like the pastries.”

The vendor choked. Someone nearby audibly stifled a laugh.

Lorelei’s mouth twitched again despite herself.

Lugiel rubbed a thumb slowly along the edge of his bread, grounding himself.

“You’re not afraid of me,” he observed.

Patch looked at him, genuinely puzzled.

“Should I be?”

The question was innocent, but it landed like a knife.

Lorelei’s eyes flicked to Lugiel, watching his reaction.

Lugiel’s voice stayed level. “Most are.”

Patch’s gaze softened, and her Spiritus pressure dipped again as empathy bled into the air.

“That’s sad,” she said, and meant it.

Then she brightened immediately and pointed her bread at him.

“But you’re also very handsome,” she added cheerfully, like she was trying to balance the mood. “So it’s confusing. Fear and handsome don’t belong in the same bowl.”

Lorelei made a sound that was dangerously close to a cough.

Lugiel’s face did something subtle.

Not a smile.

A crack in the ice, quickly smoothed over.

“You speak without restraint,” Lugiel said.

Patch nodded. “Yes.”

Lorelei’s eyes narrowed. “That can be dangerous.”

Patch looked at Lorelei with frank curiosity. “Do you want me to lie.”

Lorelei hesitated.

The honest answer was complicated. So Lorelei didn’t answer at all.

Patch turned back to Lugiel, slurped broth with blatant satisfaction, and then—without warning—her expression shifted.

Not dimming.

Deepening.

A quiet seriousness slipping in like a shadow at the edge of a fire.

“There’s something you felt,” Patch said softly.

Lugiel went still.

Lorelei’s hand drifted subtly toward her hip, where her blade would be if she’d brought it.

Patch didn’t look at the weapon impulse. She looked directly at Lugiel.

“You felt him,” she said.

Lugiel’s voice dropped. “Who.”

Patch’s mismatched eyes warmed.

“My Sol,” she answered.

The faint second presence stirred—so subtle it was like a change in air pressure before snowfall.

Lugiel’s skin prickled.

He hadn’t imagined it.

Lorelei’s gaze sharpened. “Explain.”

Patch took another sip before answering, as if this was something you discussed best with warm broth in your stomach.

“I don’t know how to explain it properly,” she admitted. “I just know… when he died, he didn’t leave.”

Lorelei’s voice was careful. “Sol Avaya.”

Patch blinked. “Yes.”

Lorelei’s eyes widened a fraction. “You know that it's him.”

Patch smiled faintly. “He told me.”

Lugiel stared at her.

“You hear him.”

“Not always,” Patch said. “Not like a voice. More like… a feeling. A tug. Sometimes I dream, and he’s there, laughing at me like I’m silly.”

The faint presence behind her Spiritus warmed, like a hearth ember flaring at the mention of laughter.

Lugiel’s breath caught.

He didn’t know why it affected him so much.

But it did.

Lorelei leaned slightly closer to Lugiel, voice low.

“Seyan,” she murmured. “This is not normal.”

Patch looked between them, then sighed lightly, not offended, just resigned.

“It’s not normal,” she agreed. “But it’s true.”

She set her bowl down and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand like she was about to deliver news at a campfire, not to a Khan and his wife.

“Do you know what he was,” Patch asked.

Lugiel’s eyes narrowed. “A Tenthaian. The first.”

Patch’s expression softened so much it almost hurt to see.

“Yes,” she whispered. “My Tenthaian. Long before that was what he was called.”

Lorelei’s breath hitched.

Lugiel’s chest tightened again, that damned mortal warmth tugging at him like a memory he didn’t own.

Patch looked at Lugiel, eyes bright and steady.

“He loved people,” she repeated quietly. “He loved the world. He didn’t want to leave it.”

Lugiel’s voice was rougher than he intended. “And so he stayed with you.”

Patch shrugged, small and helpless. “Maybe he couldn’t go. Maybe he chose not to. Maybe he’s waiting. I don’t know.”

She smiled again, softer, almost shy.

“I just know I’m not alone,” she said. “And I don’t think you are either.”

Lugiel froze.

Lorelei’s gaze snapped to Patch. “What do you mean.”

Patch’s mismatched eyes lingered on Lugiel’s face.

“It’s not the same,” she said carefully. “But you feel… like someone who’s carried too much for too long.”

She tapped her own chest lightly.

“People leave marks,” she continued. “Not always visible. But they stay. In you.”

Lugiel stared at her, unable to decide whether to be angry at the audacity or shaken by the precision.

The stall’s pot bubbled softly. Steam rose between them like a veil.

Around them, the market district held its breath.

And Lugiel—Khan, ex-Primal, man of control—sat on a rough wooden bench eating broth from a street stall, listening to a woman named Patch speak about the first Tenthaian as if he were still close enough to touch.

Somewhere deep inside him, the part that had never quite learned how to be mortal without resenting it whispered something dangerous:

This matters.

And Lugiel, for once, didn’t immediately know how to turn that into a plan.

The moment Lugiel took the bowl, the market changed.

It wasn’t dramatic—no roar, no sudden applause—but the air shifted. The hush that had been fear became a different kind of silence, tight with disbelief. People leaned out of doorways. A pair of soldiers on patrol stopped mid-step. Even the vendor’s hands steadied, as if the simple act of the Khan eating street broth had rewritten the rules of the night.

Lorelei noticed it first.

Not because she cared about optics—she didn’t, not in the way courtiers did—but because she understood crowd behaviour. She’d watched morale rise and fall like tidewater in war camps. She knew what a city looked like when it tried to decide whether its ruler was still a person or something else.

Tonight, they were watching him become a person.

Lorelei sat down too.

Not gracefully, not with court poise—just a controlled lowering of her body onto the bench at Lugiel’s side, cloak gathered, tail fur tucked in so it didn’t brush strangers. She took the second bowl with a calm that dared anyone to comment.

Patch looked delighted, like she’d successfully lured two rare animals into the same clearing.

“Yes,” she said, pleased. “Good. Eat. Warm food makes everyone less stupid.”

Lorelei’s brows rose. “Less stupid.”

Patch nodded earnestly. “Cold makes people panicky. Hunger makes people mean. Warm broth solves both.”

Lugiel didn’t react outwardly, but Lorelei felt his shoulder shift faintly—an almost imperceptible surrender to the absurdity.

He broke the bread again, pushed a piece toward Lorelei without looking at her, the gesture so familiar it felt like a confession. Lorelei took it and didn’t speak. She simply ate, because the truth was: the broth was good.

Rich. Peppery. Dense enough to fortify a winter soldier.

Patch took a long sip and sighed with satisfaction so genuine it made nearby onlookers look briefly confused, as if they’d forgotten people were allowed to enjoy things without strategy.

Around them, the Khanate watched with bated breath.

Not just civilians—nobles too, hanging back in the shadows, faces half-hidden by hoods and fur collars. Veterans who had followed Lugiel through civil war stared like they were seeing the man they’d bled beside, not the symbol he’d become.

A child peeked out from behind a stall post, eyes huge.

His mother yanked him back, whispering harshly.

Patch noticed anyway. She lifted her free hand and wiggled her fingers in a friendly little wave.

The child froze.

Then, very slowly, he waved back.

The mother looked like she might faint.

Lorelei tracked the exchange, then flicked her gaze to Patch’s face.

Patch wasn’t performing.

There was no calculation.

She just… loved the fact that a child existed and could wave.

Lugiel’s eyes moved across the street as he ate, scanning automatically, cataloguing threats out of habit. His mind was still working—always working—but the tightness in his shoulders had eased by a fraction now that the pressure was controlled and localised.

Still, he could feel it.

Spiritus from Patch, held like a heartbeat.

And beneath it, that faint second presence, like an echo that didn’t fade.

Sol.

Patch spoke again between sips, casual.

“I like your city,” she said. “It’s stubborn.”

Lorelei’s gaze stayed sharp. “We survive winter. We don’t have a choice.”

Patch nodded solemnly, as if that was a sacred truth. “Yes. Survival is a kind of love too.”

Lugiel’s eyes flicked to her. “Explain.”

Patch shrugged. “You keep everyone warm,” she said, gesturing with her spoon vaguely toward the heat-crystals and the steamy breath of passers-by. “You choose it every day. That’s love.”

Lugiel’s jaw tightened. “It is provision.”

“It’s love,” Patch insisted, unbothered by his resistance. “You can call it provision if it makes you feel more in control.”

Lorelei almost choked on her broth.

She covered it with a cough, shoulders shaking once with suppressed laughter. When she looked at Lugiel, her eyes were bright with something rare: amusement that wasn’t cruel.

Lugiel shot her a look—sharp, warning—then returned his gaze to Patch.

“You speak boldly,” he said.

Patch grinned. “Someone has to. Otherwise you’ll die of duty.”

That landed differently.

Even the vendor paused, ladle hovering, as if the sentence had weight.

Lugiel’s eyes narrowed, not angry—thoughtful. “That is not a risk.”

Patch’s smile softened. “Seyan,” she said, using the name like it belonged in her mouth.

Lorelei went very still.

So did Lugiel.

Patch continued, tone gentle but firm. “It’s always a risk.”

The faint presence behind Patch’s Spiritus warmed again, a subtle flare of agreement—like someone invisible nodding.

Lugiel felt it. His throat tightened.

Lorelei noticed him feeling it. Her hand slid under the table, not grabbing him, just touching his knee lightly—an anchor he hadn’t asked for but didn’t resist.

The market held its breath.

Lugiel swallowed, then spoke with deliberate control.

“You said Sol is with you,” he said. “Bound.”

Patch nodded, eyes calm. “Yes.”

“And you walked from a hidden canyon temple in the desert,” Lugiel added.

Patch nodded again. “Yes.”

Lorelei leaned forward slightly. “That canyon is not easily found. Not unless you are allowed.”

Patch’s expression brightened, almost mischievous. “Oh, I know.”

Lugiel’s eyes sharpened. “So you were allowed.”

Patch sipped her broth like the answer was obvious.

“Of course,” she said.

“By who,” Lorelei demanded.

Patch blinked, then looked up at the night sky as if consulting something only she could see.

“By him,” she said softly.

Lugiel’s breath caught. “Sol.”

Patch smiled. “Sol.”

The faint presence behind her Spiritus pulsed—subtle, warm, familiar.

Lugiel stared at Patch’s face, trying to fit the pieces.

A Soaranggan woman with horns and mismatched eyes.

A soul bound to her.

The first Tenthaian.

Spiritus output that crushed districts.

A hidden temple in a desert canyon.

And then the detail that made his skin prickle:

Patch didn’t act like a pilgrim.

She didn’t act like a spy.

She acted like someone who had nothing to hide because she genuinely didn’t understand why anyone would.

The crowd watched. Whispering spread in soft waves. Not panic now.

Wonder.

Confusion.

A city’s collective mind trying to decide if this was danger or myth stepping into flesh.

A veteran noble stepped forward from the shadows, hesitant.

“Khan,” he called softly. “Do we… stand down?”

Lugiel didn’t look away from Patch as he answered.

“Yes,” he said.

The noble froze. “Khan—”

“Yes,” Lugiel repeated, harder. “Stand down. No blades. No arrests. No theatre.”

The veteran swallowed, bowed once, and retreated.

The onlookers didn’t disperse. They stayed, because they couldn’t help it.

They were watching their ruler eat broth in the street beside a laughing horned woman who radiated Life like the sun.

Patch finished her bowl and sighed, content.

Then she looked at the watching crowd and smiled as if she couldn’t resist.

“You can all breathe,” she announced, cheerful and loud enough to carry. “I’m not here to kill anyone. I’m here to eat.”

A few people actually laughed, the sound startled out of them like they’d forgotten they could.

Lorelei’s lips curved despite herself.

Lugiel stared at Patch, then down at his own bowl, then back at her.

Against every instinct of control, he asked the question that had been grinding in him since the market:

“Why are you here,” he said, voice low.

Patch’s smile softened.

“I don’t know,” she admitted honestly. “I was walking. I saw your city. It was beautiful. Sol… felt happy near it.”

She tapped her chest lightly, then looked at Lugiel with a directness that had no diplomacy.

“And then I saw you,” she added. “And you felt… familiar.”

Lugiel went utterly still.

Lorelei’s hand tightened on his knee under the table, grounding him.

The Khanate watched.

And Lugiel—who had once been above such things—felt his mortal side tug hard again, like a memory knocking from inside his ribs, asking to be let in.

Patch’s gaze drifted past Lugiel, past Lorelei, out into the watching crowd.

Not at the fearful faces.

At the ones half-hidden behind adults—children peeking from cloaks, soldiers’ sons and daughters perched on shoulders, a few teenagers pretending they weren’t interested while clearly hanging on every word.

Her expression softened in a way that didn’t dim her brightness, only deepened it.

“Do you have children,” she asked suddenly.

Lugiel blinked. “No.”

Lorelei’s posture shifted, subtle. Not hurt—she and Lugiel had lived long enough for the subject to become complicated rather than painful—but there was still a quiet gravity in her silence.

Patch nodded, accepting it without judgement, then looked back at the street again as if seeing a different world layered over this one.

“I did,” she said.

Her voice was still light. Still warm.

But the words carried weight.

The market quieted further, as if the crowd sensed this wasn’t performance. This was something real.

Lorelei’s eyes softened, guarded sympathy breaking through her vigilance.

Lugiel held Patch’s gaze, still trying to understand the shape of her.

“You said Sol died,” Lugiel said carefully. “And he remains bound to you.”

Patch nodded. “Yes.”

“And your children,” Lorelei added quietly, “are gone.”

Patch’s smile didn’t disappear. It changed—gentler, sadder around the edges, but still present, like the sun behind thin cloud.

“Yes,” she said. “They lived. They loved. They died.”

She said it plainly, without drama, which somehow made it hit harder than grief ever did when shouted.

Patch took a breath and looked down at her hands—strong hands, scarred in places, hands that had held babies and weapons and bowls of broth.

“I miss them,” she admitted.

The Spiritus pressure flickered—briefly heavier—then settled again, controlled by her intent.

“I miss them all the time,” Patch continued, voice quiet but steady. “But I learned something. If I cling to that grief like it’s the only proof they mattered, it… changes me.”

Lorelei’s brows knit. “Into what.”

Patch’s eyes lifted, red and blue catching lantern light.

“Cruel,” she said simply.

The word landed like iron.

Not cruel in the dramatic sense. Not cruel in the villain sense.

Cruel in the small, daily way grief can rot a person’s generosity into bitterness.

Patch continued, almost conversational, as if she were explaining weather patterns.

“Grief is important,” she said. “It means you loved. It means the world had teeth and still you walked into it anyway.”

She tapped her chest lightly.

“But if I hold it too tight,” she went on, “I start resenting everything that keeps living. I start thinking people shouldn’t laugh because my children can’t. I start thinking the world owes me stillness.”

Her smile sharpened a fraction, wry.

“And the world doesn’t owe anyone stillness,” Patch said. “It just keeps moving. If you fight it, you don’t win. You just become mean.”

Lorelei exhaled slowly, some tension easing from her shoulders without her noticing.

Lugiel said nothing. He was listening in a way he rarely allowed himself to—without immediately turning it into strategy.

Patch leaned back on the bench and glanced at the heat-crystals glowing in the wall across the street.

She looked genuinely delighted again, like the heaviness had been acknowledged and set down, not denied.

“The best part,” she said, voice brightening, “is that my children did what children are supposed to do.”

Lugiel’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Which is.”

“They went on,” Patch said simply.

Then she smiled at the watching crowd, at the scattered soldiers, at the city itself.

“And the children of their children went on,” she added.

Her gaze returned to Lugiel, intent now—quietly fierce in its kindness.

“So even if they don’t,” Patch said, “their line does. Their choices do. Their love does.”

A faint pulse stirred beneath her Spiritus—the second presence, Sol, warming like an ember being breathed on.

Patch’s expression softened again at the sensation, and she spoke as if responding not just to Lugiel and Lorelei, but to the invisible tether beside her.

“I see pieces of them,” she said, almost tenderly, “in every Tenthaian I meet.”

Lugiel’s breath caught at the word.

Patch continued, smiling faintly.

“Some have the way my daughter used to wrinkle her nose when she lied,” Patch said. “Some have my son’s laugh. Some have that stubborn look Sol got when he decided to be kind even when it hurt.”

She chuckled softly, a sound full of warmth rather than sorrow.

“They don’t know it,” Patch added. “And I don’t tell them. It’s not mine to burden them with. But I see it.”

Lorelei’s voice was quiet. “You’ve met other Tenthaians.”

Patch nodded, chewing on a piece of bread. “A few. They’re rare. They feel like sunlight trying to pretend it isn’t.”

Lugiel’s eyes sharpened, instincts snapping back in.

“And what do you do when you meet them,” he asked.

Patch looked at him like the answer was obvious.

“I’m happy,” she said.

Then, with a frankness that was almost disarming:

“I’m grateful,” she added. “Because it means my babies mattered. It means Sol mattered. It means the world didn’t swallow them completely.”

Her smile softened again, and her voice dipped.

“Sometimes I cry,” she admitted. “Quietly. In a river. Or behind a rock. Where no one has to see.”

She shrugged as if crying was just another bodily function.

“But I don’t hold on to it until it makes me sharp,” Patch said. “Because grief that’s hoarded turns into a blade, and I don’t want to cut people who had nothing to do with losing them.”

The market stayed silent, not from fear now, but from something like reverence.

A few civilians had stopped whispering. A soldier’s jaw worked as if he was swallowing something thick.

Even the vendor, hardened man that he was, stared down at his pot for a moment like he suddenly needed it to boil to hide the fact he was listening too closely.

Lugiel sat very still.

Something in him—mortal, not Primal—tightened painfully.

He thought of Lorelei in bed, alone, wishing he would come.

He thought of the way duty could choke out tenderness until tenderness felt like indulgence.

Patch had just described the exact opposite of his instinct: letting love remain soft even after loss.

Lugiel’s voice came out quieter than he intended.

“And Sol,” he said. “Does he share that acceptance.”

Patch smiled, small and private.

“I think he tries,” she said. “But he was always… big-hearted. He loved too hard.”

Her eyes went distant for a second.

“He didn’t get long,” Patch murmured, almost to herself. “Not in his mortal body.”

Lorelei’s breath hitched softly, recognising something she’d heard—something Gaia had once spoken of, the first Tenthaian’s frailty beneath his power.

Patch blinked the distance away and looked back at Lugiel, suddenly bright again, as if refusing to let sadness linger too long in her mouth.

“But look,” she said, gesturing at the city, at the people, at the very air. “He’s still here. In me, yes. But also… in the world.”

Then she smiled at Lugiel with a gentle, maddening certainty.

“And you,” Patch added. “You have a city worth loving.”

Lugiel’s throat tightened.

Lorelei’s hand, still under the table, found his fingers and squeezed once—quiet support.

The Khanate watched their ruler sit on a rough bench, eating street broth beside a woman who spoke about grief like it was a lesson in not becoming cruel.

And Lugiel—who had once been a god—felt something uncomfortably human bloom in his chest:

The urge to believe her.

Lugiel should have stood up first.

That was the rule. The habit. The shape of power.

But he didn’t.

He stayed seated on the rough bench with a half-finished bowl of broth in front of him, cloak pulled close, the cold biting at his knuckles. He could feel the stares—thousands of them, it felt like—pressing into the stall like snow piling on a roof.

Patch, meanwhile, looked entirely satisfied.

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand again, then leaned back and sighed like a traveller who’d finally found a warm fire.

“Better,” she announced.

Lorelei’s eyes stayed sharp. “Better for you.”

Patch blinked at her, then smiled. “Better for everyone.”

Lugiel’s gaze tracked Patch carefully. “You’re still leaking,” he said.

Patch glanced around as if noticing the air for the first time. “A little.”

Then she looked at him—direct, kind.

“You look tired,” she said.

Lugiel’s jaw tightened. “I am not.”

Patch’s smile turned knowing. “You are.”

Lorelei’s hand under the table tightened around his fingers once, half warning, half agreement.

Patch tilted her head, studying Lugiel the way a healer might study a patient who insists he’s fine.

“That heat in your city,” she said softly. “You make it, don’t you.”

Lugiel’s eyes narrowed. “It is regulated. It is infrastructure.”

“It’s you,” Patch corrected gently. “It’s your body, your pathways, your will. Even if you’ve made it ‘systematic’, it’s still you.”

Lugiel didn’t answer, because it was true, and he hated how plainly she said it.

Patch nodded as if his silence was confirmation.

“Then you’re carrying a constant strain,” she said. “Like holding a pot over a fire all day and pretending your arms don’t shake.”

Lorelei’s expression softened into something dangerously affectionate and annoyed all at once, because she’d told him the same thing in different words a hundred times.

Patch looked pleased, like she’d solved a small puzzle.

“As thanks,” she said brightly, “I can fix that.”

Lugiel went still.

Lorelei’s posture snapped taut. “Patch—”

Patch lifted a hand in a small, calming gesture. “No tricks. No binding. No stealing.”

Her mismatched eyes returned to Lugiel. “Just… help.”

Lugiel’s voice was careful, controlled. “You cannot simply—”

“I can,” Patch said, and she sounded mildly offended that he’d implied otherwise. “It’s Spiritus.”

Lorelei’s eyes narrowed. “Spiritus is not a toy.”

Patch looked at Lorelei, then smiled, not mocking—warm.

“No,” Patch agreed. “It’s a kindness.”

Then she turned back to Lugiel and reached out.

Not dramatically.

Not with glowing theatrics.

She simply placed two fingers against the centre of his chest, just above where a Tenthaian’s crystal would sit—right where Lugiel’s heartbeat lived beneath bone and cloth.

The contact was light.

Lugiel’s entire body locked anyway, instinct screaming control, control, control.

Then the warmth arrived.

It didn’t hit like a spell.

It spread.

A slow, sun-deep heat that moved through him with a gentleness that was almost humiliating.

Lugiel’s breath caught.

He felt it travel—down his sternum, into the lattice of mana pathways he’d forged through years of Genesis use, into joints that always ached faintly from cold and strain, into the subtle fraying in his nerves from constantly sustaining the Khanate’s heat systems.

Spiritus didn’t shove.

It listened.

It found the places in him that were overworked and simply… eased them.

Lugiel’s shoulders dropped by a fraction before he could stop them.

Lorelei watched, eyes wide and wary, sensing the shift in his aura. Soldiers in the distance stiffened, some half-reaching for weapons out of sheer reflex at seeing their Khan touched.

A murmur ran through the onlookers like wind through trees.

Patch kept her fingers there, eyes half-lidded as if she were concentrating on something delicate.

The Spiritus pressure around them changed—tightening, condensing, focusing into Lugiel rather than spilling across the district. For a few seconds, it felt like the market itself had been wrapped in warm cloth.

Lugiel felt the fatigue peel away in layers.

Not all of it—Patch didn’t erase the cost of responsibility entirely. But she did something profound:

She removed the accumulated strain. The hidden debt he’d been paying silently, day after day, because he refused to be seen as tired.

His lungs expanded more easily.

His fingertips stopped tingling from cold.

The faint tremor he’d never admitted to—deep in his forearms after heavy Genesis use—simply vanished.

Lugiel’s eyes widened a fraction.

And something in him, raw and involuntary, threatened to show on his face.

So he did what he always did.

He tried to harden.

Patch felt it anyway.

She opened her eyes and smiled up at him, almost teasing.

“You fight healing,” she whispered, like it was the funniest flaw in the world.

Lugiel’s voice came out lower than intended. “I do not.”

Patch’s smile widened. “You do.”

Lorelei exhaled slowly, a sound that carried relief she hadn’t allowed herself to show in weeks.

Patch lifted her hand away.

The warmth remained.

Lugiel sat very still, as if moving too quickly might break whatever had just been repaired.

Around them, the market’s silence had changed again.

Fear had drained out.

What remained was awe—uneasy, hungry awe.

Because the Khan had just been touched in public by a stranger, and instead of punishing her, he’d… softened.

A veteran noble in the distance stared like he’d just witnessed a myth.

A soldier murmured, barely audible, “That’s… what Spiritus is meant to be.”

Patch looked around at the staring faces and waved again, cheerful.

“Hello,” she called lightly, as if she hadn’t just rewritten the emotional climate of an entire city block. “Please don’t make it weird.”

No one laughed this time, but several people blinked like they’d been given permission to breathe again.

Lugiel’s voice finally came, quiet, controlled, honest despite himself.

“Why,” he asked.

Patch tilted her head. “Why what?”

“Why heal me,” Lugiel said. “In front of them.”

Patch’s expression softened, and her Spiritus pressure hummed warmer for a heartbeat.

“Because you ate with me,” she said simply. “Even with all these eyes on you.”

She leaned closer, just slightly, as if sharing a secret.

“And because,” she added, almost fond, “you look like you forget you’re allowed to be a person.”

Lugiel’s throat tightened.

Lorelei’s hand under the table found his again and squeezed—this time not warning, just gratitude.

Patch sat back, satisfied, and reached for the last piece of bread like the conversation was complete.

Lugiel stared down at his bowl, then at the crowd, then back at Patch.

For the first time that night, he didn’t feel the cold in his bones.

He felt warmth.

Not just Spiritus.

Something else.

Something that made the weight of the Khanate feel—briefly—shareable.

The palace didn’t talk about Patch the next morning.

Not openly.

Not in the way rumours usually ran through court like wildfire.

Because nobody knew what to call what they’d seen.

A horned Soaranggan woman strolling out of the market, tugging the Khan behind her by sheer irreverence. The Khan eating broth on a street bench while half the city watched. And then—quietly, unmistakably—Patch touching his chest and leaving him looking… lighter.

So the palace did what it always did when confronted with something it couldn’t categorise.

It pretended it hadn’t happened.

And yet.

Lorelei noticed the shift before anyone else could even find the courage to name it.

It wasn’t the obvious things—though those existed too. Lugiel’s complexion looked healthier, his eyes less shadowed. His posture, usually carved from discipline and frost, had softened at the edges. He moved through corridors without that constant microscopic tension in his shoulders, like a man perpetually bracing for impact.

No, the real difference was quieter.

He stopped biting people with silence.

When a steward approached with a stack of reports that would normally earn a clipped, impatient nod, Lugiel actually spoke.

“Put them there,” he said, and even added, “Thank you.”

The steward stared as if he’d been handed a rare jewel.

Lorelei watched from the doorway, expression unreadable, and felt a strange, unfamiliar relief bloom in her chest—because she hadn’t realised how much she’d been carrying his fatigue too.

Later, in the council chamber, a noble stumbled over his words during a briefing. In the past Lugiel would have corrected him with a look sharp enough to draw blood.

Today, Lugiel simply waited.

The noble recovered. The briefing continued.

The entire table seemed to loosen by a fraction, as if they’d been granted permission to be human around him again.

Lorelei didn’t comment. Not in public.

In private, though—when the day’s formalities had finally thinned and the palace quieted—she caught him doing something she hadn’t seen in a long time.

He came to find her.

Not summoned her. Not sent a servant. Not appeared in the doorway as if checking whether she was still there.

He came, boots soft on the carpet, cloak slung casually over one shoulder instead of arranged with careful authority.

Lorelei was in one of the side rooms that belonged more to her than to court: a small library space with a low fire basin and a window that looked out over the palace’s inner courtyard. She’d been reading a report—something about border patrol rotations—because even when she rested her mind liked to stay half-armed.

Lugiel stepped inside, closed the door, and leaned against it with a quiet exhale.

Lorelei looked up slowly.

He looked… tired.

But not the deadened, overdrawn exhaustion of strain.

This was the clean tiredness of someone who’d worked hard and still had something left at the end.

“You’re not in your study,” Lorelei said.

Lugiel’s mouth twitched. The closest thing he allowed himself to a smile in most rooms.

“I left it,” he replied.

Lorelei’s brows rose. “Voluntarily.”

“Yes.”

She watched him for a beat longer, eyes scanning for signs of pain, strain, or some hidden crisis.

There wasn’t one.

Instead she saw something she didn’t know what to do with:

Space.

Like some internal knot had finally been loosened.

Lugiel pushed off the door and crossed the room. He didn’t go to the desk. He didn’t reach for a report. He didn’t ask about schedules.

He stopped behind her chair.

Lorelei stiffened instinctively, expecting him to speak of duty.

Instead, he placed his hands on her shoulders.

The touch wasn’t possessive. It wasn’t demanding.

It was… careful.

As if he were re-learning that he was allowed to touch her without the world ending.

Lorelei’s breath caught, just slightly.

Lugiel’s thumbs moved once, a slow press, easing tension she’d never noticed building in her.

“You’re sore,” he observed.

Lorelei’s eyes narrowed. “I’m fine.”

Lugiel hummed, the quiet sound of a man who now had the energy to be mildly amused.

“You are lying,” he said.

Lorelei huffed softly, irritated by how easily he’d said it and how true it was.

“Don’t start copying her,” Lorelei muttered.

Lugiel’s hands paused.

Then resumed, gentler.

“I am not copying,” he said.

Lorelei leaned back a fraction into his touch before she could stop herself.

“That woman,” Lorelei said quietly, “did something to you.”

Lugiel didn’t answer immediately.

Lorelei waited, patient in the way only someone who had loved Lugiel long enough could be. She didn’t demand vulnerability. She invited it and held the space in silence until he chose to step into it.

Lugiel spoke at last, voice low.

“She healed me.”

Lorelei’s jaw tightened. “Completely.”

“Yes.”

Lorelei turned her head slightly, looking up at him.

“And you let her.”

Lugiel’s pause was so small most people wouldn’t have noticed it.

Lorelei did.

“Yes,” he admitted again.

Lorelei studied him, trying to determine whether this was a temporary shift—an afterglow—or something that had actually changed shape inside him.

Lugiel’s eyes were steady.

Not softer, exactly.

But less… haunted by the constant pressure of being the only pillar holding up an entire nation.

Lorelei’s voice lowered.

“And now you’re being… amicable.”

Lugiel’s hands stilled on her shoulders.

Lorelei continued, blunt because she could afford to be.

“You’ve been less sharp. Less controlling. You didn’t flay that noble alive today. You thanked the steward. You came to find me. You haven’t done that in—”

“I know,” Lugiel cut in quietly.

Lorelei blinked, surprised by the interruption.

Lugiel exhaled.

Then, with a candour that felt almost unfamiliar coming from him:

“It feels,” he said slowly, choosing each word like it mattered, “as though a weight has been taken off my shoulders that I did not realise was there.”

Lorelei’s throat tightened.

She hated that he’d carried that weight alone.

She hated that she hadn’t been able to pull it off him herself.

But more than that—

She was grateful.

Because she could feel it too, in the way his hands on her shoulders were warm and present rather than distracted. In the way he hadn’t checked the door once since entering, as if he trusted that the world would keep spinning without him staring it into place.

Lorelei reached up, covered one of his hands with hers.

“You’re staying,” she said.

It wasn’t a question.

Lugiel’s answer was immediate, almost stubborn.

“Yes.”

Lorelei swallowed, then spoke softly, the vulnerability slipped in between her usual confidence.

“Good.”

Lugiel’s thumbs pressed once more, slow, grounding.

Then he leaned down—not to whisper strategy, not to share intelligence, not to speak of threats—

But to rest his forehead briefly against the top of her head.

Lorelei’s eyes closed without permission.

In that small contact she felt it: the difference between a man holding everything alone and a man who had finally remembered he was allowed to be held too.

When he straightened, Lorelei turned in the chair to face him properly.

“What did she take from you,” Lorelei asked quietly, “that made you come back to me like this.”

Lugiel’s gaze held hers.

“I don’t think she took anything,” he said.

Lorelei waited.

Lugiel’s voice dropped.

“I think,” he admitted, “she reminded me that I can accept help without becoming weak.”

Lorelei’s chest tightened, sharp with affection.

“About time,” she murmured.

Lugiel’s mouth twitched again.

Then, without asking, he pulled her up from the chair and into him—arms wrapping around her with a firmness that was both protective and hungry for closeness, like he’d been starved of it without realising.

Lorelei froze for half a heartbeat, surprised by his decisiveness.

Then she relaxed into it fully.

His warmth seeped into her bones.

His breath hit her hair.

And Lorelei, who had spent so long watching Lugiel choose duty over softness, realised something with a quiet, almost painful joy:

He wasn’t just more amicable.

He was making time for her on purpose.

As if that “massive weight” being lifted had revealed a truth underneath it that had been there all along—

That even a ruler needed someone to come home to.

Patch left the palace the way she entered it: as if it belonged to the world and the world belonged to her right back.

No guards flanked her this time—at least, none in formation.

Lugiel had ordered “no theatre”, and the Khanate obeyed him the way it always did: literally, and with creative loopholes. There were no obvious escorts, no ceremonial entourage.

But Patch wasn’t stupid.

She felt them.

Not as threats.

As eyes.

As footsteps that slowed when hers slowed. As pauses that lined up a little too neatly with hers. As people who pretended to browse stalls they’d never normally approach.

She wandered through the city anyway, hands tucked into her sleeves against the cold, looking up at the crystal spires catching morning light and the carved runes that hummed with warmth. Her Spiritus stayed low today, a soft radiance rather than a crushing tide—she was learning the Khanate’s boundaries quickly, whether out of respect or instinct.

Still, she could feel her watchers.

So she did the most Patch thing possible.

She treated it like an invitation.

At the edge of a square, a pair of soldiers “rested” beside a fountain—too still, too alert. Patch walked straight to the fountain, leaned over, and watched the steam curl off the heated water.

Then she turned her head and smiled at them like she’d always known they were there.

“Hello,” she said.

Both soldiers straightened as if the word hello was a command.

Patch waved.

One of them hesitantly waved back.

The other stared like she’d just spoken to his soul.

Patch patted the stone beside the fountain.

“You can sit closer,” she offered. “You’ll warm up faster.”

The first soldier blinked. “Madam—”

Patch tilted her head. “Yes?”

“We’re… on duty.”

Patch nodded solemnly, as if she fully respected duty.

“Then do it over here,” she said. “This spot is warmer.”

The first soldier’s mouth opened. Closed. He looked helplessly at his partner.

Patch watched their struggle with bright, patient amusement.

“Oh,” she added helpfully, “if you’re worried I’ll stab you, I don’t have a knife.”

She lifted her sleeves and wiggled her fingers to prove it.

“I do bite sometimes,” she said, thoughtful. “But only if someone asks nicely.”

The second soldier made a strangled noise that might have been a laugh. He coughed to hide it.

Patch grinned, triumphant, and sat on the fountain edge like she’d claimed a throne made of warm stone.

The first soldier exchanged a look with the second—an entire conversation of do we? can we? will the Khan murder us?—then, very carefully, sat a little closer.

Patch beamed.

“Good,” she said, approving. “Now you look less like frightened statues.”

The soldier’s cheeks flushed. “We are not frightened.”

Patch nodded with exaggerated seriousness. “Of course not.”

Then she stared at the first soldier’s hands.

He instinctively pulled them in, as if hiding something.

Patch pointed. “Your knuckles are split.”

The soldier froze.

Patch leaned closer, not touching, just seeing.

“Cold does that,” she said. “And work. And hitting things.”

The soldier stared at her, wary.

Patch smiled. “I can fix it if you want.”

The soldier recoiled slightly. “No— I mean—”

Patch held up both hands immediately, palms out.

“Only if you ask,” she said quickly. “I don’t do it without asking. People deserve choices.”

The soldier’s expression flickered—confusion, then something softer, like the idea of being offered a choice had knocked loose a door in his chest.

Patch tilted her head. “Do you want it fixed.”

He hesitated.

Then, voice barely above a whisper: “Yes.”

Patch’s smile gentled. “Okay.”

She reached out, not dramatic, just fingertips brushing his battered knuckles.

A faint warmth flowed. The splits sealed like the body remembered it didn’t need to be broken.

The soldier stared down at his hand as if it no longer belonged to him.

Patch leaned back, pleased, and took a deep breath of the cold air like it was delicious.

“Thank you,” the soldier said, stunned.

Patch blinked. “For what.”

“For…” He looked at his hand again. “For that.”

Patch shrugged. “You asked.”

The second soldier cleared his throat, trying to recover his composure.

“Why are you walking alone,” he asked, cautious, as if the question itself might offend.

Patch smiled.

“I’m not,” she said lightly.

Both soldiers stiffened.

Patch pointed vaguely at her own chest.

“He’s with me.”

They didn’t ask who. Not this time.

They’d heard enough.

Patch hopped down from the fountain and started walking again, boots crunching in snow.

She didn’t tell the soldiers to follow.

She didn’t need to.

She could hear their footsteps fall in behind her anyway, careful and uncertain, like men trying to guard something they didn’t understand.

Patch led them through narrow streets and warm alleys where heat-crystals made the snow melt in slow rivulets. She paused at stalls, sniffing spices. She stared at a craftsman carving fur-lined gloves and loudly praised his stitching until the man turned red and tried to give her a discount.

Patch refused it on principle, then paid extra anyway when he looked too proud to insist.

All the while, she felt the watchers multiply.

Not just soldiers now.

Civilians. Curious elders. A few youths trying to be subtle and failing.

And every time she sensed someone hovering at the edge of her orbit, Patch did the same thing.

She turned.

She smiled.

She made room.

At a stall selling hot berry pastries, she noticed a young woman pretending to look at a display while clearly staring at Patch’s horns.

Patch leaned closer, conspiratorial.

“Do you want to touch them,” Patch asked.

The young woman’s face went white. “N-no!”

Patch nodded, solemn. “Okay.”

Then, as if remembering something:

“But you can,” Patch added warmly. “If you ask.”

The young woman’s eyes widened.

Patch waited with patient silence.

After a long, trembling breath: “May I?”

Patch grinned. “Yes.”

The young woman reached out like she was approaching a wild animal. Her fingers brushed the smooth white horn, then the broken tip. Her expression crumpled into something awed and tender, as if she’d expected a monster and found… a person.

“They’re warm,” she whispered.

Patch hummed. “Yes. Life tends to be.”

A few onlookers laughed softly, the sound tentative but real.

Patch turned to the group—soldiers and civilians alike—and lifted the bag of pastries.

“I’m going to the river,” she announced. “Anyone who wants to come can come.”

The crowd hesitated.

Patch shrugged, unbothered. “Or don’t. I’ll still go. But it’s nicer when you’re not alone.”

Then she started walking.

And, slowly—like the Khanate was testing the idea of following warmth instead of authority—people began to fall in step behind her.

Not like an escort.

Like a procession of ordinary lives choosing, for one morning, to move together.

Patch didn’t look back to count them.

She simply kept walking, humming softly, Spiritus held low and gentle, inviting the whole city to stop watching from a distance and, for once, just join her.

They reached the river district just as the morning light sharpened.

The Khanate’s river wasn’t wide—more a thick, stubborn vein of meltwater guided through stone channels and warmed by embedded crystals so it didn’t freeze solid. Steam rose in lazy ribbons. The air smelled clean, like snow and mineral.

Patch stepped to the edge, crouched, and dipped her fingers into the water like she was greeting an old friend.

Behind her, the loose knot of followers—soldiers, bakers, curious youths, a few elders who had decided they were too old to be afraid of anything new—hovered in a half-circle. Nobody spoke loudly. Nobody wanted to be the first to ruin whatever this was.

Patch looked over her shoulder and smiled.

“You can sit,” she said, as if she’d invited them to a picnic. “Rocks are free.”

A few people actually obeyed, awkwardly lowering themselves to the stone embankment. The two soldiers who’d started it all stayed standing out of habit, though one shifted as if tempted.

Patch opened the pastry bag and offered it outward, arm extended.

“Eat,” she insisted. “It’s rude to watch someone eat alone.”

There was a soft ripple of nervous laughter. A young man—late teens, maybe—took one with trembling hands like it might explode.

Patch beamed at him as if he’d done something heroic.

Then the air changed.

Not with magic.

With intent.

A thread of hostility cut through the warmth like a knife through cloth.

Patch’s Spiritus didn’t flare. She didn’t whirl around. She just… paused, fingers still in the water, head tilting slightly as if she’d heard a sour note in music.

The crowd felt it too. Bodies tensed. Conversations died.

Footsteps approached fast from behind the small group—hard, angry steps, not the careful curiosity of the rest.

A man shoved through the onlookers.

He wasn’t a soldier. Not wearing the Khanate’s clean lines or insignia. His clothes were rough, layered too thick as if he’d been sleeping outside. His eyes were bloodshot with sleepless certainty. And in his hands was a short blade—wide, utilitarian, meant for gutting animals or men.

He pointed it at Patch like he was pointing at a witch.

“You!” he snarled.

Several soldiers moved at once, hands dropping to weapons.

Patch lifted one hand, palm out, without turning around.

It wasn’t a command in the way Lugiel’s was.

It was an invitation to pause.

And somehow, the soldiers obeyed anyway.

The man’s voice rose, shaking with anger that had nowhere safe to go.

“You’ve got them all following you like dogs,” he spat. “You’ve got the Khan eating out of your hands. This—this is brainwashing!”

Murmurs rippled. Someone gasped.

A few civilians backed away, fear resurfacing in their faces like a remembered nightmare.

Patch finally stood and turned.

She didn’t look offended.

She looked… sad.

Not at being accused.

At the fact someone felt they had to accuse.

“Hello,” Patch said gently, as if meeting him for the first time was a normal thing. “You’re scared.”

The man’s grip tightened. “Don’t talk to me like you know me.”

Patch nodded. “Okay.”

He took that as weakness.

He lunged.

It happened fast enough that half the crowd didn’t even process it properly—just a blur of arm and steel aimed for her throat.

Patch moved.

Not with flash.

Not with Spiritus light.

With frightening, simple competence.

She stepped inside the strike and caught the blade with her bare hand.

Not the edge pressed into her palm—she caught it at the flat, fingers closing with absolute certainty at the point of leverage near the guard.

Steel stopped dead.

The sound it made—metal arrested by flesh—was wrong in a way that made the crowd collectively flinch.

The attacker froze, eyes wide in shock.

Patch’s fingers tightened.

Then she twisted, gently but impossibly strong.

The blade rotated out of alignment. The man’s wrist bent with it, forced into a position where he couldn’t follow through without breaking himself.

Patch didn’t break him.

She didn’t even make him cry out.

She just… redirected.

The knife slid out of his grasp like it had decided it didn’t want to be held by him anymore.

It clattered onto the stone near the river.

Silence hit like a wall.

A soldier took one step forward, ready to pounce.

Patch lifted her hand again—same palm-out motion.

“Please don’t,” she said softly.

The soldier halted, jaw clenched, confused at himself for listening.

The attacker staggered back, clutching his wrist, staring at Patch like she’d revealed her true nature.

His voice cracked. “Monster.”

Patch’s expression didn’t harden.

It softened further.

“I can be scary,” she admitted, almost apologetic. “But I’m not here to hurt you.”

The man spat on the stone. “You’re hurting all of us! You walk in and suddenly everyone’s… smiling. Following. Like they’ve forgotten what the world is!”

Patch blinked slowly.

Then she nodded, as if he’d finally said something true.

“The world is sharp,” she agreed. “And cold. And it takes people.”

Her gaze dropped briefly to the river, to the steam rising like breath.

“I don’t want you to forget that,” Patch said. “I just don’t want it to make you cruel.”

The man’s eyes flashed, anger trying to survive her gentleness.

“You don’t get to decide what makes me cruel.”

Patch nodded again. “You’re right.”

She took a small step closer—careful, slow, giving him space to retreat if he wanted.

“You get to decide,” she said. “That’s why you’re still holding your wrist instead of bleeding.”

The man’s breathing was ragged.

He looked around, seeing the crowd—seeing that people weren’t staring at him like a villain, but like a neighbour having a breakdown.

That didn’t fit his narrative either.

Patch crouched and picked up the fallen blade by the handle with two fingers, like it was just a tool.

She held it out to him—handle first.

A few people gasped, thinking she was giving it back so he could try again.

Patch didn’t seem to notice the fear.

“If you want this,” she said calmly, “I’ll give it back.”

The man stared at the knife, then at her face, searching for the trap.

“There isn’t one,” Patch said gently, reading him too easily. “I’m not stealing your choices.”

She held it there, steady.

The man’s hands shook. He didn’t take it.

Patch nodded, accepting.

“Okay,” she said. “Then I’ll put it down.”

She walked to the riverbank and set the knife on a flat stone well away from everyone, the way someone might set down a hot pan so nobody got burned.

Then she turned back to him.

“You think I’m brainwashing them,” Patch said softly. “But look.”

She gestured toward the crowd.

“Ask them why they followed,” she said. “Ask them if they feel less themselves. Ask them if they’re trapped.”

No one spoke at first.

Then the teen who’d taken a pastry earlier swallowed and lifted his hand awkwardly.

“I followed because… she looked happy,” he admitted, voice cracking with embarrassment. “And I wanted to see if it was real.”

An older woman—lined face, wool scarf—snorted. “I followed because my joints hurt and the fountain was warm.”

A soldier cleared his throat, mortified to speak in front of civilians. “I followed because she told us to sit somewhere warmer and… that sounded sensible.”

Soft laughter moved through the group, thin at first, then steadier.

Patch turned back to the attacker, eyebrows raised gently.

“See?” she said. “No spells.”

The man’s expression wavered—anger struggling against shame, shame struggling against fear.

“You touched the Khan,” he said, grasping for something solid. “You healed him. In public.”

Patch nodded. “Yes.”

“That’s influence.”

“Yes,” Patch agreed easily. “Kindness is influence. So is fear. So is hunger. Everything influences people.”

She took another step closer, close enough now that he could see the warmth in her mismatched eyes.

“I’m not taking their minds,” Patch said quietly. “I’m trying to give them something back.”

The man swallowed hard.

“What,” he rasped.

Patch’s smile was small and fierce in its gentleness.

“A day,” she said. “A morning. A breath. A reminder that you can survive without turning into something you hate.”

The man’s eyes glistened unexpectedly.

He blinked hard, furious at himself for it.

Patch didn’t react like she’d won.

She reacted like she’d noticed someone was hurting.

“You can go,” she told him softly. “No one here will chase you. Not if I can help it.”

The soldiers shifted, uncomfortable, but didn’t move.

Patch tilted her head. “Or you can sit.”

The man stared at her, breathing uneven.

“You’d let me sit,” he whispered, disbelieving.

Patch nodded as if it was the simplest thing in the world.

“Yes,” she said. “You’re not the first scared person to pick up a blade.”

She pointed at the warm stones by the river.

“Sit,” she invited again. “Eat. If you still hate me after, you can leave with a full stomach. It’s harder to be cruel when you’re not starving.”

The attacker stood frozen for a long moment.

Then, slowly—like a man stepping out onto ice unsure if it would hold—he lowered himself onto the stone embankment.

Not close to Patch.

But not running away either.

Patch smiled, bright and unbroken.

“Good,” she said, and tore a pastry in half, offering him a piece without flinching.

Even after a blade had been aimed at her throat, her kindness didn’t drop.

It simply… stayed.

The tension didn’t vanish all at once.

It bled out gradually, like heat seeping back into fingers after you’ve nearly lost feeling.

People sat.

More than sat—stayed.

The river steamed. The pastries warmed hands. The man who’d attacked Patch chewed slowly, eyes down, like he didn’t trust himself to look up and be seen as someone who had done that and still been offered food.

Patch, meanwhile, acted as if the entire incident had simply been weather. Unpleasant, but survivable.

A child—maybe seven, freckles, bundled in too many layers—sidled closer with the fearless curiosity only children could afford. He stared at Patch’s horns, then at her clothes, then at the pastry bag, then at the small pouch of coins Patch had used earlier at a stall.

His eyes narrowed in suspicion that was almost comical.

“Excuse me,” he said, very politely, like he’d been raised correctly and was about to weaponise it.

Patch turned to him instantly, delighted. “Hello.”

The child pointed an accusing finger at her coin pouch.

“How do you have so much money?” he demanded, like this was the real scandal of the morning.

A few adults froze, half-embarrassed on Patch’s behalf.

Patch just blinked.

Then she grinned, as if she’d been waiting for someone to finally ask the important questions.

“I’ve been saving,” she said proudly.

The child squinted. “Saving how.”

Patch held up one finger, solemn. “For a very long time.”

“How long?”

Patch’s grin widened. She leaned in like she was about to tell a secret.

“Thousands of years,” she said cheerfully.

The child’s face went blank. “That’s not real.”

“It is,” Patch insisted.

One of the soldiers snorted, then coughed to hide it.

Patch continued, entirely sincere.

“I don’t buy many fancy things,” she explained. “I mostly buy food. And coats. And sometimes I tip stall owners too much because their hands look tired.”

The child stared at her like she was a strange kind of animal. “But still. That’s… a lot.”

Patch nodded. “Yes.”

The child’s gaze sharpened again, logic returning. “Where did you get it.”

Patch tilted her head as if considering how to explain her life in a way a child wouldn’t find boring.

“Doctors make a lot of money,” she said simply.

There was a beat of silence.

A few people blinked.

Lorelei’s voice wasn’t here—this wasn’t the palace—but the crowd’s collective disbelief filled the space anyway.

The child’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.

“You’re a doctor?”

Patch nodded with grave seriousness. “Yes.”

The child looked her up and down, taking in the horns, the wild hair, the cheerful expression, and the way she’d caught a blade barehanded.

“You don’t look like a doctor,” he said bluntly.

Patch didn’t take offence. She looked genuinely thoughtful.

“I think doctors are supposed to look like people who don’t want you to die,” she said. “So… maybe I do.”

A few adults laughed, softer now, less frightened, more human.

The child persisted, clearly unsatisfied. “But doctors work in hospitals.”

Patch shrugged. “Sometimes.”

Then she smiled, bright again. “I work wherever I find someone hurt.”

The child paused, then pointed at the man who’d attacked her.

“Did you fix him?”

Patch looked at the man, who had gone very still, jaw clenched around pastry.

Patch’s expression softened. “Not yet,” she said.

The child frowned. “Why not?”

Patch’s voice stayed gentle. “Because he didn’t ask.”

The child blinked, processing that like it was a new rule of the universe.

After a second he nodded slowly, as if deciding he liked that rule.

Then he looked back at Patch, brow furrowed again.

“So you just… saved money for thousands of years,” he repeated, sceptical.

Patch nodded. “Yes.”

The child crossed his arms, mirroring the posture of an adult interrogator. “Why.”

Patch’s eyes brightened even more, like she’d been offered another chance to talk about something she loved.

“Because I wanted to keep being free,” she said. “Freedom costs money sometimes. Not always. But sometimes.”

The child stared at her, then at the steaming river, then at the crowd of adults who’d actually sat down instead of panicking.

“Okay,” he said finally, as if he’d reached a verdict. “That makes sense.”

Patch beamed like she’d passed an exam.

The child then immediately asked the question he’d clearly been holding back, voice dropping into a conspiratorial whisper:

“Are you older than the Khan?”

Patch paused.

Then she tilted her head, considering.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “He’s got that ancient sadness look. That adds years.”

A soldier choked. Someone laughed too loudly. A woman covered her mouth, scandalised but smiling.

The child looked triumphant, as if he’d just humiliated royalty on principle.

Patch leaned closer to him, stage-whispering back.

“But I’ve probably eaten more candy than him,” she added. “So I’m winning.”

The child burst into giggles, the sound clear and sharp in the cold air.

And with that—just like that—the riverbank felt less like a tense political incident and more like what Patch had always meant it to be:

A morning where people remembered they could laugh without permission.

By midday the river district had loosened fully.

People drifted off in twos and threes, returning to errands, patrol routes, stalls. The soldiers resumed their posture, though it looked a little less rigid now, like they’d been reminded their spines weren’t made of iron. The man who’d attacked Patch left too—quietly, shoulders hunched, not forgiven by everyone, but not hunted either. He didn’t thank her. He didn’t apologise.

He just… went.

Patch didn’t look disappointed.

She looked relieved.

As if the best outcome wasn’t repentance or punishment, but simply a person stepping away from the edge.

The watchers thinned, the murmurs dissolved, and the Khanate did what it always did: it recalibrated back into routine.

Normal resumed in the small ways first—vendors shouting prices again, kids chasing each other through steam, someone complaining loudly about the cold like it was a moral failure of the universe.

Patch stood at the edge of a bridge where the river narrowed, staring down into the moving water with her hands tucked into her sleeves. She had a small pack slung over one shoulder now—nothing fancy, just a bundle of cloth tied well, the kind you’d carry if you planned to walk until the world changed around you.

A few people lingered at a distance, unsure whether it was rude to keep watching or rude to stop.

The same freckled kid from earlier had already been dragged away by a parent, still craning his neck to see Patch’s horns.

But another child—older, maybe thirteen or fourteen—hung back with the kind of anxious bravery that came from being old enough to understand danger but young enough to still ask questions anyway.

They approached slowly, hands shoved deep into their pockets.

Patch turned before they spoke, as if she’d already heard them thinking.

“Hello,” she said warmly.

The older kid hesitated. “You’re leaving.”

Patch nodded. “Yes.”

The kid glanced at the city behind them, then at Patch’s pack.

“You’re just going to… walk out,” they said, voice edged with disbelief. “After everything?”

Patch smiled, small and steady. “Everything is always ‘after everything.’ That’s how days work.”

The kid huffed, not quite laughing, not quite upset.

Then their face tightened with something more earnest.

“Aren’t you worried,” they asked quietly. “On your own?”

A few nearby adults stilled, pretending not to listen. One of the soldiers who’d followed Patch earlier paused at the corner of his patrol route, eyes flicking over like he was ready to offer escort if asked.

Patch watched the kid’s expression—genuine concern, no ulterior motive—and her smile softened.

She stepped closer to the bridge railing and leaned against it, looking up at the pale winter sun.

“I’ll be okay,” she said.

The kid’s brow furrowed. “How do you know.”

Patch’s eyes warmed. She tapped her chest lightly, not theatrical, just matter-of-fact.

“Because I’m never alone.”

The kid blinked. “You mean...”

Patch nodded.

For a moment the faint presence behind her felt more noticeable—like a warm hand resting at her back. Not a full person in the world, not a voice, but a companionship that made the air gentler around her.

The kid swallowed. “Does it ever… scare you.”

Patch considered that honestly.

“No,” she said. “It makes me sad sometimes. But it doesn’t scare me.”

She looked down at the kid, expression open, unguarded.

“Being alone scares me,” Patch admitted. “And I don’t have to be.”

The kid stared at her like they were trying to memorise her face.

“What if someone tries to hurt you again,” they asked, voice lowering.

Patch smiled.

Not sharp.

Not arrogant.

Just… certain.

“Then I’ll handle it,” she said. “And I’ll still try not to become cruel.”

The kid’s throat bobbed. “Will you come back.”

Patch glanced at the Khanate’s skyline—snow, trees, massive crystals glinting, warmth humming beneath stone.

“Maybe,” she said. “If I’m needed. Or if I’m hungry. Or if I somehow stumble through the gates again.”

The kid snorted despite themselves.

Patch’s grin widened.

She reached into her sleeve and produced something small—a coin, old and smooth from time, worn in a way that suggested it had been carried through centuries. She pressed it into the kid’s hand.

The kid recoiled instinctively. “I can’t take that.”

Patch closed their fingers around it anyway, firm but gentle.

“It’s not a bribe,” Patch said. “It’s a reminder.”

“A reminder of what.”

Patch’s eyes brightened.

“That you got through today,” she said. “That you asked a kind question when everyone else was busy being scared.”

The kid stared down at the coin as if it might burn.

Then they looked up again, voice suddenly smaller.

“Thank you,” they said.

Patch nodded like it was normal to thank someone for existing.

“You’re welcome.”

She adjusted her pack, then stepped away from the railing and onto the road that led out of the district, and eventually out of the city.

A few people straightened as if to follow her again.

Patch lifted a hand and waved them off before they could start.

“Go live,” she called lightly. “I’m not a parade.”

Some laughed. Some just stared, emotional and quiet.

The soldier at the corner gave a stiff nod, as if acknowledging an equal in a way he didn’t fully understand.

Patch waved back.

Then she walked.

Past the last warm stones.

Past the market stalls.

Past the crystal-lit streets.

Out toward the open snowfield beyond the Khanate’s walls, where the wind was sharper and the world was wider.

The city watched her go until she was a small figure against white and sky, horns like a strange crown, footsteps steady.

And then—slowly, inevitably—life went back to normal.

Not because Patch was forgotten.

But because, for a brief morning, she’d reminded them that normal life was the whole point.

And somewhere, beneath the routines and patrols and quiet winter burdens, something subtle lingered in the Khanate like an ember in ash:

A warmer way to breathe.

The wind outside the Khanate was honest.

No warmed stones. No humming crystals embedded in walls. No polite architecture insisting winter could be civilised.

Just snowfield, distant pines, and the sky stretched thin and pale like old parchment.

Patch walked with her hands tucked into her sleeves, boots crunching softly, breath puffing out in small clouds. The road out here wasn’t a road so much as a suggestion—packed snow where caravans had passed, a faint line of dark earth peeking through in stubborn places.

She didn’t hurry.

She never did, unless someone was bleeding.

For a while it was only her and the cold.

Then she felt it—warmth at her back, familiar in the way your own heartbeat is familiar.

A presence that wasn’t quite pressure, not like Spiritus flooding a district, but a quiet accompaniment woven into her steps.

Patch’s shoulders loosened.

She smiled to herself, small and private.

“You’re closer,” she said aloud, as if speaking to a companion walking just behind her.

The warmth tightened, then—like a deep breath—expanded.

Patch stopped walking.

Snow settled around her boots.

The air in front of her shivered, not with heat but with life—a soft distortion like sunlight caught in water.

And then he was there.

Sol Avaya stood a few paces away as if he’d always been, his form made of quiet Spiritus—solid enough to cast a faint shadow on snow, bright enough that the world around him seemed a shade more awake.

He looked… young and old at once. Not in the way gods looked timeless, but in the way a mortal could be carved by short years lived intensely. His eyes were kind. His smile was gentle, tired at the edges.

He didn’t have Lokii’s deadpan detachment. If anything, Sol looked like the sort of man who apologised when he bumped into furniture.

Patch’s face lit up like a lantern.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, turning fully toward him, voice instantly bright and chirpy. “Look at you! You’re actually here.”

Sol’s mouth curved, fond and restrained. “For a while,” he said softly.

Patch crossed the distance and put both hands on his cheeks like she was checking he was real. Her fingers passed warmth into him, and he leaned into it instinctively, like he’d missed being touched.

“You’re so handsome,” Patch declared with absolute sincerity. “Still. Somehow. Ridiculous.”

Sol gave a small laugh that sounded like someone trying not to cry. “Patch…”

Patch waved him off. “No, no. Don’t ‘Patch’ me. You know you like it when I fuss.”

Sol’s smile deepened. “I do.”

Patch pulled her hands back only to clap them together once, delighted.

“I met one,” she announced.

Sol blinked. “One of—”

“One of ours,” Patch said, nodding fiercely. “A descendant.”

Sol’s expression shifted—surprise first, then something quiet and aching, like joy finding a place it hadn’t been able to sit for a long time.

“In the Khanate,” Patch continued, as if she was reporting gossip over tea. “Not many, but there’s one. A girl. Hiding. Sweet eyes. Terrified, but trying very hard. You would’ve liked her.”

Sol’s throat bobbed. “You spoke to her.”

“I didn’t,” Patch said, then huffed. “Not properly. Too many people. And I’m not here to drag her story out in front of strangers. But I felt her. Like… like a little candle trying to pretend it isn’t a fire.”

Sol’s gaze lowered, and for a moment his whole manifestation seemed to soften, almost thinning, like emotion cost him.

Patch noticed instantly and scolded him on reflex.

“Oh, don’t you start fading already,” she snapped, but the softness in her eyes betrayed her. “You just got here.”

Sol’s smile returned, gentle. “I’m not leaving yet.”

“Good,” Patch said, satisfied. Then her expression brightened again, because Patch never stayed sad for longer than necessary.

“And I met Lugiel,” she added brightly.

Sol’s eyebrows lifted. “Lugiel.”

“Yes!” Patch said, as if announcing she’d met a celebrity chef. “The ruler. The ex-Primal. The one who looks like he’s swallowed an entire mountain and is trying to digest it with his spine.”

Sol let out a surprised laugh. “That’s… vivid.”

“It’s accurate,” Patch insisted. “He’s so tight, Sol. Like if you poked him he’d ring like a bell.”

Sol’s amusement lingered, but something more complicated flickered behind it at the name.

“You were near him,” Sol said carefully.

Patch nodded, then leaned in conspiratorially like a grandmother about to spill scandalous family news.

“He’s not as awful as he pretends,” she whispered.

Sol’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Pretends.”

“Oh yes,” Patch said, wagging a finger. “He pretends he’s made of duty and cold and control. But I saw it—right under the armour. He’s tired.”

Sol’s expression softened. “You healed him.”

Patch beamed. “Of course I did.”

Sol looked at her with something like awe, like he still couldn’t quite believe Patch existed even after all these years.

“You did it in front of the city,” he murmured.

Patch shrugged as if it were nothing. “The city needed to see it. He needed to feel it. And his wife—oh!”

Sol blinked. “He has a wife.”

“Yes,” Patch said, delighted again. “Lorelei. Dragonkin. Tall. Gorgeous. Tail like a winter blanket. And she looks at him like she’s half in love and half ready to bite him.”

Sol’s laugh slipped out before he could stop it. “That sounds… right.”

“Oh it’s perfect,” Patch declared. “She’s worried about him. Properly worried. The kind that makes you angry because you can’t fix it.”

Sol’s smile turned tender. “Like you.”

Patch gasped, offended. “Excuse you, I’m never angry.”

Sol’s eyes warmed. “You were furious at him.”

Patch waved a hand dismissively. “Well. He was being ridiculous. He tried to pretend he wasn’t tired. I hate when people do that.”

Sol’s gaze lingered on her face. “Because you’ve watched people work themselves into the ground.”

Patch’s cheer dimmed for half a heartbeat.

Then she nodded.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “And because I’ve watched you do it too.”

Sol’s breath caught, the comment landing with gentle force.

Patch immediately brightened again, unwilling to let the heaviness sit too long between them.

“But,” she continued, chirpy again, “Lorelei likes me.”

Sol’s brows lifted. “She does.”

“She does!” Patch said triumphantly. “She tried to look suspicious, like a very polite wolf, but she likes me. She ate with me. In public. She’s not just a pretty tail, Sol. She’s steel.”

Sol nodded slowly. “Good.”

Patch smiled warmly, satisfied with her assessment.

Sol’s laughter came easier now, and Patch looked pleased—like she’d done her job simply by making him laugh.

Then Patch’s eyes softened again, gaze drifting up to his face.

“I missed you,” she said, simple and honest.

Sol’s smile faltered into something aching.

“I’m with you,” he replied quietly.

“You’re with me,” Patch echoed, nodding, then immediately scowled as if realising something. “But it’s not the same as being able to smack you on the shoulder when you say something stupid.”

Sol’s eyes crinkled. “I do miss that.”

Patch reached up again, cupping his face like she couldn’t help herself.

“You should’ve had more time,” she muttered, voice suddenly fierce with love. “It wasn’t fair.”

Sol didn’t argue. He never had.

Instead he leaned forward until his forehead touched hers, Spiritus warmth mingling in the cold air.

“For what it’s worth,” Sol murmured, “I’m glad you kept living.”

Patch’s grin returned, watery at the edges.

“Of course I did,” she said, like it was obvious. “Someone has to keep an eye on the world for you.”

Sol’s voice was soft. “And you still love it.”

Patch looked out at the snowfield, at the wide sky, at the distant line where the Khanate ended and everything else began.

“Yes,” she said, bright and absolute. “I still love it.”

Then she glanced back at Sol, eyes gleaming.

“And I love that our descendants are still here,” she added, voice taking on that chirpy-grandmother warmth again. “Even if they’re hiding. Even if they’re scared. They’re here.”

Sol’s smile grew, steadying his form.

“For a while,” he repeated.

Patch squeezed his cheeks lightly, playful.

“For as long as you can,” she corrected.

Sol laughed softly.

And for a little while longer, in the open cold beyond the Khanate, Patch wasn’t just “never alone” in the abstract.

She had him beside her—solid, warm, real—two souls bound together, walking forward as the world kept moving.

The further they walked from the Khanate’s warmth, the more the world stopped pretending to be hospitable.

Snow deepened. Wind sharpened. Trees thinned into stubborn lines of black pine. The light grew flatter, the kind that made everything feel old.

And yet—down in a shallow cut between two banks of stone—there was running water.

A narrow river, stubbornly unfrozen, dark as ink against the white. Steam rose from it in a thin veil. Whatever heat bled through the ground here wasn’t crystal or craft—it was something older, natural, patient.

Patch stopped at the bank and smiled like she’d found treasure.

“Oh, perfect,” she said brightly. “Look at you, still moving.”

Sol stood beside her, his Spiritus form faintly brighter against the cold. He watched the water with a kind of quiet reverence, like movement itself was a miracle worth respecting.

Patch dropped her pack and started working immediately, all brisk competence.

“Camp,” she announced. “Before the sky decides it hates us.”

Sol’s mouth curved. “Agreed.”

Patch dug into her bundle and pulled out a small roll of canvas, a coil of cord, and a pouch of dried food.

Sol—still half unreal, still something made of Spiritus rather than flesh—stepped forward anyway and began helping as if he were as solid as any man.

He gathered fallen branches from the sparse treeline with careful hands. He set stones in a ring with a precision that looked almost ceremonial. When Patch went to tug cord tight around a tent stake embedded in frozen ground, Sol simply placed his hand over hers and pushed.

The stake sank cleanly, as if the earth briefly remembered kindness.

Patch stared at the result, then at Sol.

“Well,” she said, impressed. “That’s cheating.”

Sol’s smile deepened. “It’s teamwork.”

Patch huffed, amused, and kept working.

Within minutes, the small campsite took shape: a low tent angled away from the wind, a fire ring protected by rocks, a neat pile of kindling and thicker wood, a flat stone pulled close to the river’s edge to serve as a seat.

Patch crouched and struck flint. The sparks caught, hesitant at first, then confident.

Warmth bloomed in the fire ring—small, mortal heat, not magic.

Patch leaned back on her heels with a satisfied sigh.

Then she frowned, glancing at Sol.

He was still there.

Not thinning. Not flickering.

Usually—usually when he pressed close to the surface of the world, it was brief. A moment. A touch. A whisper.

But this… this was time.

Patch narrowed her eyes suspiciously, the way she did when she sensed someone had gotten clever without telling her.

“Alright,” she said. “What did you do.”

Sol blinked, innocent. “What do you mean.”

“You’re still here,” Patch said, pointing at him like the evidence was undeniable. “You’re not supposed to be able to do this for this long.”

Sol’s gaze drifted toward the distant horizon—the direction of the Khanate, now hidden behind ridges and trees but still felt in the bones of the world.

Patch followed his glance, then looked back at him.

“You stole something,” she accused.

Sol’s mouth twitched. “Borrowed.”

Patch’s eyes narrowed further. “From where.”

Sol hesitated—one tiny beat of guilt, like a child deciding whether to lie to their mother.

Then he sighed quietly, surrendering.

“Genesis,” he admitted.

Patch stared.

Sol rushed on before she could explode.

“Not much,” he said quickly. “Just… a thread. A taste. When we were close enough to Lugiel—when his power was saturating the city—your Spiritus and his Genesis were… adjacent. Resonant.”

Patch’s expression grew more incredulous by the second.

Sol continued, voice careful.

“I used that proximity. I anchored myself a little more firmly. Like… tying an extra knot.”

Patch straightened slowly, hands on her hips.

“That,” she said with terrifying calm, “is theft.”

Sol flinched slightly, though she wasn’t threatening him physically—just morally, which somehow was worse.

“It’s not like I drained him,” Sol protested gently. “He wouldn’t even feel it.”

Patch’s glare sharpened. “That’s not the point.”

Sol’s eyes softened. “I wanted to be with you longer.”

Patch’s mouth opened.

Then closed.

She exhaled hard through her nose, trying very stubbornly not to melt.

“Oh, don’t,” she muttered, looking away as if the river had suddenly become fascinating. “Don’t say it like that. It makes it difficult to be angry.”

Sol stepped closer, warm and steady.

Patch pointed a finger at him without looking. “You’re going to apologise to Lugiel.”

Sol blinked. “Patch—”

“You are,” she insisted, now looking at him again, expression firm. “He’s… he’s trying. He’s carrying a nation on his back and learning how to breathe while doing it. Don’t take from him without permission.”

Sol’s gaze lowered. “You’re right.”

Patch watched him for a beat, then sighed and rubbed her forehead with the heel of her palm.

“I swear,” she grumbled. “You always were too kind and too clever in the worst combination.”

Sol smiled faintly. “You loved it.”

Patch shot him a look. “Don’t get smug.”

Sol’s smile widened slightly anyway.

Patch turned back to the camp, fussing with the fire like she could burn off irritation through organisation.

She poked the flames. Adjusted a log. Checked the tent cord twice.

Then, very quietly—almost begrudgingly—she added, “I’m glad you did it.”

Sol’s expression softened. “Patch…”

Patch waved him off again, cheeks faintly pink despite the cold.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she said, clearer this time, but still gruff in a way that was pure her. “Even if you’re a thief.”

Sol’s laugh was soft, relieved.

“I’ll apologise,” he promised. “Properly.”

“You’d better,” Patch muttered, then dropped onto the flat stone by the river, pulling her cloak tighter.

Sol sat beside her—not on the stone, not in the way a mortal would, but close enough that his warmth bled into the space between them.

Patch stared at the river’s black ribbon, steam curling upward.

After a moment, she nudged him gently with her shoulder.

“Next time,” she said, voice sly, “steal from something that deserves it.”

Sol blinked. “Patch—”

“I’m joking,” she said quickly, then paused, then added with a wicked little grin, “Mostly.”

Sol sighed like a man who knew he’d never win.

But he stayed.

And Patch—miffed, grateful, softened in spite of herself—let herself lean just a fraction closer to him as the fire crackled and the unfrozen river kept stubbornly moving through the cold.