**Around Ninth Bell Duskside, A.Z.**
A couple of hours had passed since the celebration began to wind down, though The Talking Boar had not grown quiet. The first rush of guests had thinned, the nobles and guildmasters had taken their leave, and the long tables were no longer buried beneath untouched food, but the bar still breathed with the laughter of regulars. Mugs struck wood. Someone near the hearth had started a song three people actually knew and everyone else pretended to. Hanami moved between the tables with an apron tied at her waist, refusing to let a single cup sit empty, while William sat at the bar with the peaceful look of a man who had finally accepted that his home would never be quiet again.
Kai slipped out through the back door without anyone noticing.
The night air met him cool and clean after the warmth of the tavern. Magnara stretched beyond the guild walls in layers of firelight, its chimneys breathing thin trails of smoke beneath a dark blue sky. The city had not gone to sleep. Hammerfall still rang faintly in the distance, carts rattled over the late roads, and the Iron Cothon's furnace glow painted the low clouds a dull red. Behind The Talking Boar, though, the training yard sat empty beneath the moon.
The stone was still scarred from the lesson William had given them on the Triad of Will. Splintered practice posts leaned at uneven angles, loose gravel had gathered in the cracks, and one long groove remained where Kai had been driven backward a days ago. He stepped into the center of it all and stared down at the mark for a moment before lifting his eyes toward the lights beyond the wall.
The excitement swelled in him so fast he couldn't hold it.
"Wooo!" He jumped with both fists raised, his voice carrying across the courtyard. "I made it, Bodhira!"
High above him, a pair of boots stopped swinging over the edge of the roof.
Aria had climbed up there before Kai ever left the tavern. She'd wanted a little quiet after the party — somewhere she could see Magnara without captains asking her about Artemis Flamehart or strangers reaching to shake her hand. From the roof of The Talking Boar the city opened beneath her in rivers of lantern light and furnace glow, and she had been enjoying it right up until Kai's shout pulled her attention down into the yard.
She leaned forward, resting an arm across her knee, a smile tugging at her mouth. He stood alone in the middle of the broken stone, grinning toward a homeland far too distant to answer him.
For the first time in a long time, he was being recognized. He was no longer only the monk boy from Bodhira, the strange orphan who trained until his fingers split and carried a staff too large for him down the temple roads. Captains knew his name now. Guildmasters talked about his movement. Somewhere past Magnara, people who had never seen his mountain were beginning to look for him.
The thought widened his smile.
Kai slid one foot back and raised his hands into the opening posture of Bodhira's discipline. His shoulders loosened. His breathing dropped. Heel, toe, spine, breath. The happiness in his chest didn't fade when he settled into the stance — it traveled downward, grounding itself through his legs, then rose again through his whole body.
Raw aura began to coil around him.
It came first as thin gray strands slipping off his shoulders and wrists. Then the courtyard wind turned. Dust scraped across the stone. Broken chips from the practice posts lifted and skipped over the yard as the aura thickened, wrapping his arms, circling his waist, climbing until it shrouded him completely. The pressure pushed hard against the surrounding walls, rattling loose shutters and bowing the branches beyond the fence away from him.
Aria's brows lifted. She had watched Kai train before, but this was different. He wasn't forcing anything outward to impress a crowd, and he wasn't preparing for a fight. His aura was moving because something inside him was too full to sit still.
"This is new," she whispered, curiosity sharpening into something closer to excitement. "What are you doing, monk?"
Kai tightened his stance. The gray aura raged once more, rising in a column around him as his feet shifted across the floor. Then he spoke, so softly the words barely survived the wind.
"I'm so appreciative for these moments."
The courtyard changed.
The violent edges of his aura folded inward. The wind settled — not all at once, but in slow breaths, until the debris that had lifted around him dropped back to the stone. Gray light warmed along his skin, turning pale, then gold, a quiet hue spreading through the aura as though dawn had found him hours before morning.
Aria's smile faded into stunned attention as she finally understood what she was looking at.
"I didn't know you'd gotten this far, Kai."
He didn't hear her.
He kept his body in motion, flowing from one stance into the next without breaking the rhythm of his breath. His heel touched stone, his hip turned, and his fist passed through the space in front of him — and by the time the air cracked, he was already somewhere else. Each transition came smoother and faster than the last, until he seemed to flick in and out of the courtyard, his body arriving at the end of a strike while the shadow of the previous movement still hung behind him.
For several heartbeats, the world around him looked slow.
Aria rose from where she sat. The words escaped before she could stop them.
"Pre-True Flow..."
She knew it wasn't complete. Kai hadn't consciously crossed that threshold, and the state didn't carry the still, absolute harmony William moved with. This was something just before it — a glimpse born out of joy and gratitude instead of battle. He was standing in the doorway without knowing there was a door, reaching toward enlightenment for no reason other than that, for once, he loved being alive.
Below her, Kai went on with what he believed was an ordinary routine.
"One thousand punches," he said, every word timed to the rhythm of his hands, "then one prayer for the beauty of life."
His fists struck forward in a stream, each punch beginning where the last one ended, the air rippling in rows before him.
"One thousand kicks, then a prayer for the foundation where men and women may rest their feet after a hard day of honest work."
He pivoted, kicked low, then high, then turned through a spinning heel without wasting a single motion. The gold aura followed each limb in smooth ribbons, never tearing loose from him.
"One thousand finger push-ups, then a prayer for the love the world, the universe, and the gods give to lesser men like me — allowing us to wield great power while chasing our hopes and dreams."
He dropped. His fingertips caught his full weight before his chest could touch the ground. One became ten, ten became a hundred, his body rising and falling fast enough that the gold around him looked like a second figure moving through him.
"One thousand finger strikes, then I pray for all my enemies. I wish them good health, and that their demise doesn't befall every one of them."
Aria blinked.
"That's almost kind," she muttered. "Almost."
His fingers snapped forward in precise bursts, stabbing at points only he could see — narrow enough to kill, controlled enough to stop a breath from the wall.
"And lastly, one thousand sit-ups. Then I pray that all the new people I've met keep living well and find success in everything they chase."
His movements never stopped as the names began to come.
"Captain Darius. Captain William. Alice and Alex Wonder. Elder Li. Aria. Rin. Lila..."
His expression tightened with sudden concern, as if forgetting one person might undo the entire prayer.
"And I almost forgot the old man who sold me my staff, Sun."
Aria clapped a hand over her mouth to keep the laugh in. Even from the roof she could see how serious his face was.
"May all of them live well," Kai finished. "And may I become strong enough to protect the moments they give me."
The last words drew the final restlessness out of him. His movements turned fluid as river water, faster than the eye could comfortably follow, and for one suspended instant everything beyond him seemed to stop — the lantern flames, the drifting smoke, even the distant noise of the city — while he moved through the center of the yard in perfect, unconscious harmony.
Then he settled.
His heel touched the stone. His palms lowered. The pressure eased, and Magnara rushed back around him all at once.
Aria stayed on the roof, shocked and more than a little amazed by what she'd just watched. Kai only stood there breathing in the middle of the courtyard as though none of it had been unusual. After a moment he rolled one shoulder and dropped into a lower posture — back rounded slightly, knees bent, one palm extended in front of him while the other curled near his ribs, fingers loose and ready, weight balanced on the balls of his feet.
"Martial Muti: Monkey Wu Ape Stance."
The posture carried a strange playfulness that did nothing to lessen how dangerous it looked. He tilted his head, shifted left, then bounced back to the right with the restless balance of an ape studying an opponent from the branches.
He opened both palms.
"Spirit Muti: Soul Flames."
Yellow-gold fire bloomed out of his hands.
It didn't explode outward or roar across the yard. The flames curled around his fingers, climbed his forearms, and flowed through his shoulders before spreading across his whole body. His aura shifted from gray to gold as the Spirit Muti woke through him, leaving Kai wrapped in a warm glow that felt less like fire and more like standing beside a hearth after a long winter road.
Aria's eyes widened again.
"Wow."
Kai moved.
The first leap was a Maka Leap — an old technique credited to Gu Quan of Chun, whose strange aerial footwork had once carried him across the spears of an entire formation without touching the ground. Kai planted one hand, vaulted sideways, and twisted through the air before landing in a crouch, Soul Flames trailing off his limbs in golden arcs.
From there he shifted into the monkey grips made famous by Rajia Singh, the Rajistani monk-bender who, five centuries earlier, had spent years watching wild monkeys because he believed their movements held a martial truth people had forgotten. Kai's fingers hooked around invisible wrists. His shoulders rolled. He dipped beneath an imagined strike, seized an unseen arm, and answered with a palm thrust that sent a warm shockwave rolling through the yard.
Neither Gu Quan nor Rajia Singh had built Monkey Wu Ape Stance alone. Their teachings crossed borders, survived wars, and were reshaped by generations of Chun martial scholars and Rajistani monks until, over hundreds of years, the techniques were cultivated and blended into a single discipline — named for the legendary summon said to have inspired them both. The Monkey King, Wu whose descent at the Battle of Ganjoes River had ended one of the bloodiest clashes between Rajistan and Chun.
Kai carried every piece of that history without speaking a word of it.
He sprang from stance to stance, using the Maka Leaps to change height and angle while Rajia Singh's grips redirected the force of an enemy who wasn't there. Soul Flames wrapped every strike, never burning the stone, only leaving warmth in the air behind each palm and elbow and knuckle. The playful sway of the style turned deceptive — a loose shoulder became a brutal backfist, a stumble became a low sweep, a retreating hop ended with Kai launching forward hard enough to crack the floor under his foot.
His final punch stopped inches from the practice post.
The golden flame passed through it anyway.
The post trembled. A clean fracture opened down its center, glowing faintly before the two halves slid apart and hit the ground.
Kai held the finishing posture for a breath. Gold faded to gray. Gray thinned into drifting strands. Then even those were gone.
His knees buckled.
After two hours of training and prayer, he collapsed onto his back and stared up at the stars, too tired to lift his head. His chest rose and fell hard, but the smile stayed.
A shadow crossed the moon.
Aria dropped off the roof, aura gathering in her legs just before impact. She hit the yard in a low crouch, stone popping under her boots without the fall costing her anything, and when she straightened, the same competitive smirk she'd worn through half the Trial by Mercy was already waiting on her face.
"Not bad, monk. Need a hand?"
Kai turned his head toward her and smiled.
"Were you watching me the whole time?"
Aria crossed the yard, pretending to think about it.
"Not the whole time." She stopped beside him. "But, yeah. The whole time."
They both laughed.
She put out her hand. Kai looked at it, then up into her eyes, the gold warmth of the Soul Flames still lingering somewhere in his expression.
"Thanks," he said. "I really appreciate you."
For the first time that night, Aria's smirk faltered. Only for a second.
"I know."
She caught his wrist and hauled him up, and his legs immediately threatened to fold again. Aria rolled her eyes, ducked under his arm, and slung most of his weight across her shoulder.
"You do know training's supposed to make you stronger, right?"
"It did."
"You can't walk."
"That part comes back."
She laughed as they made their way toward the back door, Kai stumbling along beside her while the noise of The Talking Boar welcomed them home.
Upstairs, Rin's room stayed dark.
Steel whispered through the silence as he sheathed Tetsuba. The phantom sword settled onto the weapons rack beside Yoru Oni, moonlight from the open window tracing a narrow line along both blades.
Rin reached beneath his travel bag and pulled out a small notebook bound in black leather.
"Where's the target's name."
He opened it and turned through the pages. Names filled them in tight handwriting, some paired with locations, military ranks, dates, or symbols only he understood. Several had been crossed out. Others carried notes about Germania, the Avoiders, or sightings of surviving Black Clan members.
His finger stopped.
*Benjamin Johannes.*
Beside the name, a note written years earlier:
*Former High Germanian commander. Hunted surviving Black Clan members. Currently hiding in Janoah under the protection of the Seeker Association after surrendering intelligence on Germanian experiments, weapons, and the elusive Avoiders — Seeker killers who work only for the highest bidder.*
Rin read it once. Then again.
The leather creaked as his fist tightened, his knuckles going white.
Protected by the Seeker Association. Allowed to sleep safe beneath the same laws that had failed every Black Clan family he had helped hunt.
Rin closed the notebook and stood.
He walked to the window as laughter rose faintly from the bar below. Somewhere outside, Kai and Aria were coming back through the yard. He didn't look down.
His eyes stayed on the rooftops of Magnara.
"I hope you slept well all these years, Benjamin Johannes."
He stepped onto the sill, the night wind lifting the edge of his clothing.
"Because tonight, I'm hunting you."
Rin jumped.
His feet touched the next roof without a sound. Then the next. Within moments he was moving above Magnara's lantern streets, passing from chimney shadow to chimney shadow while nobody below thought to look up.
The celebration went on inside The Talking Boar, warm and loud and unaware.
Outside, the Dark Dragon was already on the prowl.