Stonepath Sect did not announce its conclusions.
That, Kael had learned, was how institutions protected themselves—from responsibility as much as from error.
The decision revealed itself in smaller ways.
The path Kael usually took to the eastern training grounds was suddenly under repair. The steward who distributed resources began overlooking his name with apologetic confusion. A lecture hall he had been permitted to sit in quietly no longer had space when he arrived.
None of it was hostile.
That was the point.
The sect was reducing his footprint.
Kael accepted it without protest.
He adjusted his routines, cultivated later at night, and spent more time at the boundary between sect and wilderness—where formations thinned and rules grew less confident.
It was there, near a line of half-buried marker stones, that Elder Ruan found him again.
"You're being eased out," the elder said without preamble.
Kael nodded. "I noticed."
"You haven't caused damage," Ruan continued. "Not directly. But the strain is measurable now."
Kael looked toward the distant peaks where Stonepath's inner grounds rose, orderly and silent.
"Strain accumulates," he said.
Ruan studied him carefully. "You know that if we formally expel you, Heaven may notice."
Kael's gaze sharpened slightly. "And if you don't?"
Ruan exhaled. "Then Stonepath absorbs the irregularity quietly. That is… preferable."
For the sect.
Kael understood.
"What do you want me to do?" he asked.
Ruan hesitated.
That hesitation told Kael everything.
"Leave," the elder said finally. "Not as punishment. As… mitigation."
Kael inclined his head.
"I was going to anyway."
The formal notice came at dusk.
No accusations.
No trial.
No explanation.
Just permission revoked.
Outer disciples watched quietly as Kael passed through the gates with the same small pack he had arrived with. Some looked relieved. Others looked unsettled, as if they had just watched something important pass beyond their reach.
Kael felt no anger.
Only confirmation.
He did not leave immediately.
Instead, he walked to the edge of the territory and stopped at the boundary marker—the same kind that had separated Greyfall from the wider world.
He stood there until the sun dipped below the horizon.
The internal stillness inside him shifted.
Not reacting.
Aligning.
The sect's formations hummed behind him. The wilderness breathed ahead of him.
Between them, Kael stood unclaimed.
For the first time since his parents vanished, he felt something close to clarity.
Not purpose.
Direction.
As night fell, Kael stepped beyond the marker.
The moment his foot crossed, the pressure eased.
Not because the world welcomed him.
But because it no longer tried to fit him.
He breathed out slowly, feeling the stillness settle more naturally than it ever had within Stonepath's careful order.
Somewhere far above, a procedure updated its records.
Deviation unresolved.
Subject mobile.
Kael did not sense it directly.
But he felt the implication.
Leaving Stonepath did not remove the world's attention.
It widened it.
He walked until the sect lights disappeared behind the hills.
Ahead lay roads that led to other provinces, other sects, other systems that believed themselves complete.
Kael did not hurry.
The path he walked did not reward speed.
It rewarded inevitability.
And as he disappeared into the darkness, the structures that had tried—politely—to correct him finally accepted one thing:
Whatever Kael Ashborne was becoming…
It would not be solved locally.