Ricky found him on Thursday.
Haruki had been expecting it, honestly. The suspension had ended nearly a week ago, and while Ricky had maintained his presence-at-the-periphery routine with admirable consistency, patience wasn't among his virtues. Sooner or later, the boy was going to make his move.
Haruki just hadn't expected it to happen in the middle of the afternoon. In the corridor outside the alchemy supply closet. While he was carrying three vials of reagent solution that would cause significant problems if shattered.
"Hey." Ricky's voice came from behind. Close enough that Haruki could smell whatever cologne the boy had doused himself in—something expensive and aggressive that probably cost more than Haruki's first month of meals combined. "Dead boy. We need to talk."
"I'm carrying fragile materials."
"I don't care."
"Figured."
He turned carefully. Slowly. Keeping the vials balanced against his chest while presenting as neutral a target as possible.
Ricky stood in the middle of the corridor. Not alone this time—two flanked him, positioned slightly behind like they were trying to look casual about the obvious formation. The same two from before. Tobias (the one who'd tripped during the inauguration incident) and someone new, broader, with the kind of neck that suggested regular strength training.
Three on one, Rax observed. Original.
He's making up for last time. Embarrassment requires compensation.
"You got me suspended," Ricky said. His voice carried the particular tension of someone who'd been rehearsing this conversation for days. "First day of the term. In front of everyone. Made me look weak."
"You made yourself look weak. I just existed nearby."
"Don't—" Ricky's jaw tightened. "Don't do that thing where you act like you don't care. I know you care. Everyone cares about something."
Haruki considered this.
Considered the vials in his arms.
Considered the three boys blocking the only exit from this section of corridor.
Considered how easy it would be to simply... let go. To stop holding back the part of himself that wanted to respond to threats with overwhelming force. To show Ricky exactly what "dead boy" actually meant when the dead boy in question had killed things that made Saints tremble.
You're thinking about it, Sol noted quietly.
I'm aware.
Is that wise?
Probably not. But neither is letting them corner me repeatedly until they work up courage to do actual damage.
Ricky stepped closer. His posse shifted accordingly—Tobias angling left, Broad-Shoulders angling right, creating a triangle that limited escape options to approximately zero.
"I've been watching you," Ricky continued. "Since I got back. You're not normal. The way you move—the way you notice things before they happen. That thing you did to Tobias during inauguration, where you somehow knew exactly where to step to make him fall. That's not luck. That's training."
"Observation skills."
"Combat training." Ricky's eyes narrowed. "You've fought before. Really fought. Not sparring—not Academy dueling crap. Actual combat where losing means something worse than bruises."
"Maybe I have."
"So prove it."
The challenge hung in the air.
Not verbalized explicitly—but present in the way Ricky's shoulders squared, in the way his hands uncurled at his sides, in the way his companions straightened into positions that suggested they expected things to escalate.
He wants to fight you, Rax said. Properly. Not ambush-this-time, but face-to-face, skill-for-skill.
I noticed.
What are you going to do about it?
Haruki thought about Dorothy. About her confession yesterday. About the deal they'd made to face what was coming together instead of alone.
He thought about Elara. About their rooftop conversation. About choosing connection over isolation even when connection meant vulnerability.
He thought about Maren. About her missing hand. About the letter he'd been waiting for that still hadn't arrived.
And he thought about Cas.
About Fen, Sable, Wick.
About all the people he'd failed to protect because he hadn't been strong enough, or fast enough, or simply because the universe didn't care about fairness or justice or the people who deserved to survive.
Ricky wanted a fight.
Ricky had no idea what fighting actually meant.
"Put down the vials," Ricky said. "Unless you're scared you'll break them when I hit you."
"I'm not going to fight you."
The statement landed wrong. Ricky blinked—clearly not the response he'd anticipated.
"What?"
"Fighting you proves nothing. You lose, you come back with more friends next time. I lose, you feel validated and keep pushing until eventually someone gets hurt badly enough that it can't be taken back." Haruki adjusted his grip on the vials. Stepped sideways along the wall—not retreating exactly, but repositioning. "I'm not interested in proving anything to you, Ricky. I'm interested in getting to my destination without breaking these containers and causing an alchemical incident that'll get us all detention for a month."
"That's not—you can't just DECLINE."
"I just did."
"You're calling me weak?"
"I'm saying this confrontation isn't worth either of our time. If you want to actually talk about whatever's bothering you, I'll listen when I'm not carrying hazardous materials. If you just want to throw punches to feel better about your ego..." Haruki shrugged. "Find someone else. I'm not available."
The silence that followed was magnificent.
Tobias exchanged glances with Broad-Shoulders. Broad-Shoulders' expression cycled through confusion, anger, uncertainty, and something that might have been reluctant respect. Ricky's face simply shut down—the particular blankness of someone whose script had been discarded mid-performance and who didn't know the improvisation lines.
"You're pathetic," Ricky said finally. But the word lacked conviction. Sounded more like reflex than genuine insult.
"Probably. Pathetic people survive too."
Haruki walked forward.
Expected resistance.
Received none—Ricky stepped aside at the last moment, almost involuntarily, like his body had moved before his brain could authorize the action. The same happened with Tobias. With Broad-Shoulders. A path opened where moments before there had been none.
He walked through it.
Didn't look back.
Didn't need to.
That, Rax said after he'd turned the corner, was possibly the most disappointing fight I've never witnessed.
It wasn't supposed to be a fight.
It was supposed to be SATISFYING. Some consequences. Some catharsis. Maybe a broken nose or two.
Violence isn't catharsis. Violence is just violence dressed up in prettier language.
Since when are YOU the pacifist?
Since I realized that every time I let the Chaos out—even a little—it wants more. And 'more' isn't something I'm ready to give it yet. He adjusted the vials again. Ricky isn't worth feeding it.
...Huh.
What?
Nothing. You're just... different than I expected. When we first merged, I figured you'd be another host who tried to use me as a weapon. Control me. Shape me into something useful.
I DID try to control you.
You tried. You failed. And instead of doubling down, you changed tactics. Found a different approach. A pause.
Your grandmother would be proud.
Haruki didn't respond to that.
Couldn't, quite.
Something in his chest had tightened at the mention of grandmother—a combination of grief and gratitude and longing for a woman who'd taught him everything important about surviving the world's indifference.
He kept walking.
Delivered the vials to the alchemy laboratory without incident.
Made note of Ricky's location (avoiding the main courtyard for the rest of the afternoon) and continued about his business.
And when evening came, he returned to Wing C to find something waiting at the reception desk that made everything else fade to background noise.
The envelope was cream-colored.
Official Academy stationery—the kind used for formal correspondence, bearing the Soldemn seal in blue wax that had been broken and resealed with a secondary mark indicating "personal delivery, confidential contents."
His name was written on the front in handwriting he recognized immediately.
Not because he'd seen it often—he hadn't. Maren's handwriting was unfamiliar in its specifics, carrying a personality he'd never had chance to study properly. But there was something about the way the letters formed themselves. The slight pressure variations. The particular angle of the slant.
It looked like the handwriting of someone who'd recently learned to write with their non-dominant hand.
Someone adapting to loss by finding new ways to accomplish old tasks.
He took the envelope.
Signed for it with fingers that trembled slightly.
Carried it upstairs to Room 107—past the common areas, past the other students who were doing whatever students did in the hours between dinner and curfew, past everything that mattered less than the weight of paper he held against his chest.
Elara was already inside when he entered.
She looked up from the book she'd been reading—something dense and academic, the kind of text that suggested either genuine intellectual curiosity or deliberate projection of scholarly disinterest.
"You received mail," she observed.
"Apparently."
"From the seal, it's external. Official courier service." Her amber eyes tracked the envelope. "Someone went through proper channels to get that to you. Must be important."
"It is."
He sat on his bed.
Stared at the envelope.
Didn't open it immediately—couldn't quite make his hands cooperate with the instruction. There was something surreal about holding physical proof that Maren existed, was alive, was thinking about him enough to write. After weeks of nothing but internal memory and the occasional report from Boros Aldane via unofficial channels, this tangible evidence of her continuity felt almost too significant to breach.
"She's someone important?" Elara's voice came careful now. Reading his hesitation. Adjusting her approach accordingly.
"A friend. Someone I—" He stopped. Started again. "Someone I was with. Before the Academy. Before any of this. We survived something together. She didn't come out of it whole."
"The missing hand."
"Yeah."
Silence settled between them.
Comfortable, this time. The kind of silence that came from two people who understood that some subjects required space rather than interrogation.
Eventually, Haruki's fingers cooperated.
The envelope opened.
Inside: folded paper. Multiple pages, from the thickness of it. He drew them out carefully—handling Maren's words with the same delicacy he'd handled the alchemical vials, though for entirely different reasons.
The first page began:
Dear Haruki,
I'm writing this with my left hand, which looks terrible and feels worse, so please forgive the mess. They say I should practice with it anyway—that using it regularly will help rebuild the neural pathways or whatever the healers keep going on about. I think they just want me to stop glaring at them whenever they suggest exercises.
I'm healing. Slowly. The wound itself closed weeks ago, but apparently when you lose a hand to a blade tainted with demonic residue, "closed" doesn't mean "fixed." I still get phantom sensations. Still wake up reaching for things that aren't there anymore. Still forget, sometimes, that I'm different now—that the girl who entered that dungeon isn't the same girl who crawled out of it.
But I'm alive. That's what matters. That's what you kept telling me, right? That being alive means having chances to become something new. I'm trying to believe that. Some days it's easier than others
Boros says you've enrolled at Soldemn. The Academy. The most prestigious institution in the Kingdom. Part of me is proud—genuinely proud, Haruki. You deserve recognition for what you did. What we both did. Even if nobody else will ever know the truth of it.
Part of me is terrified.
Because I know you, sort of. Not as well as I want to—as well as I might have, if things had gone differently. But well enough to know that you don't seek out places like that Academy because you WANT prestige. You seek them because you're looking for answers. Because something inside you won't rest until you understand why things happened the way they did.
Be careful. Please. I know you can handle yourself—I've SEEN you handle yourself, watched you do impossible things when impossible things were the only option. But the Academy is different from a dungeon. The enemies wear uniforms and smile while they plot. The traps aren't mechanical—they're social, political, institutional. You can't punch your way out of those kinds of situations.
(Well. YOU might be able to. Try not to?)
There's something else. Something I've been meaning to tell you but couldn't figure out how to put into words. Something I saw, the night before I left Ashfen to come here for treatment
The healers don't believe me. Say I was hallucinating from blood loss and trauma. But I know what I saw, Haruki. I know it was real.
After you descended into the dungeon—after the floor collapsed and you fell through and we lost sight of you—I was running. Trying to reach the surface. Trying to find help. And I passed through a section of the Rift I didn't recognize. Somewhere deeper than we'd mapped. Somewhere that shouldn't have existed according to any of our information.
There was a door there.
A massive door. Stone. Ancient. Covered in symbols I couldn't read—couldn't even properly see, because looking at them directly made my eyes hurt. Like they existed in dimensions that human vision wasn't designed to process.
And standing in front of the door
—three figures.
I only caught a glimpse. Seconds, maybe, before I forced myself to keep moving. But I remember what I saw.
They were tall. Taller than any person has a right to be. Wearing robes that seemed to absorb light instead of reflecting it. And their faces—
Their faces were wrong, Haruki. Not monstrous. Not inhuman. Just WRONG. Like someone had tried to draw a human face from memory and gotten close but missed something essential. The proportions were off. The angles were wrong. And their eyes—
Their eyes were empty.
Completely empty.
Like there was nothing behind them looking back at me.
I don't know what they were. I don't know what they were doing there. I don't know if they saw me or if I was beneath their notice. But I've been thinking about it constantly since then, and I needed to tell someone who might actually believe me.
Someone who's seen things that shouldn't exist too.
Someone like you.
Please be careful at that Academy. Whatever you're looking for—whatever answers you're hunting—I have a terrible feeling that they're connected to what I saw. That the dungeon, the door, those figures, the Academy... it's all part of something bigger. Something that's been growing while nobody was paying attention.
I don't want to lose you to it.
I've already lost enough.
— Maren
P.S. — Tell whoever's reading this over your shoulder (I know someone is, you never do anything alone anymore, it's weird) that I said hello. And that if they hurt you, I will find a way to make them regret it despite only having one hand. I'm very motivated.
Haruki read the letter twice.
Then a third time.
Each pass revealing new details—the slight smudge where Maren's hand had slipped, the darker pressure marks where she'd paused to gather thoughts, the way her handwriting grew steadier as she progressed (adapting to the left-handed writing, muscle memory kicking in).
By the third reading, his vision had blurred slightly.
He blinked. Didn't help.
You're crying Rax observed.
I'm aware.
Want to talk about it?
No.
Okay.
Elara had set her book aside at some point during his reading. She sat cross-legged on her own bed now, watching him with an expression that managed to convey concern without demanding response. Giving him space while remaining present.
The letter trembled slightly in his grip.
"Maren," he said finally. "Her name is Maren. She was—we were part of the same party. Same dungeon run. When things went wrong."
"The one who lost her hand."
"She cut it off herself. To escape something that was tracking her. To survive." He folded the letter carefully. Precisely. Treating it with the reverence it deserved. "I couldn't save her from that. Couldn't save any of them, really. Cas died. Fen, Sable, Wick—all dead. And Maren survived, but changed. Permanently. Because I wasn't fast enough, strong enough, good enough to protect the people who trusted me."
"That's a lot of guilt to carry."
"It's accurate guilt."
"Accurate doesn't mean deserved." Elara shifted. Drew one knee up toward her chest. "You can't save everyone, Haruki. Nobody can. The fact that some people didn't make it doesn't mean you failed them. It means the situation was impossible and you did what you could with what you had."
"What I had wasn't enough."
"What you had kept YOU alive. Kept you functioning long enough to get help. To—to do whatever you did that ended the threat." She hesitated. "Bor mentioned something in his reports. About the aftermath. About how you emerged from that dungeon carrying something that shouldn't exist, having done things that shouldn't be possible. You saved yourself, Haruki. And in saving yourself, you created the possibility of saving others later."
"Maren doesn't see it that way."
"Maren is grieving. Grief makes people look for blame because blame is easier to process than randomness. She's not blaming you because you actually failed—she's blaming you because blaming you hurts less than accepting that sometimes terrible things happen for no reason at all."
He considered this.
Found merit in it, logically.
Emotionally, the guilt remained—a living thing coiled in his chest, fed by memories of Cas's face in the moment before death, of Maren's scream as blade met flesh, of the silence that followed losses he couldn't prevent.
"But there's something else," he said. "In the letter. Something she saw."
He handed it across.
Took strange comfort in watching Elara read through Maren's words—watching someone else process the information, share the weight of it, transform his solitary burden into something distributed.
Her expression shifted as she read.
When she reached the description of the door, the figures, the empty-eyed faces, she went very still.
"These descriptions," she said slowly. "The symbols that hurt to look at. The light-absorbing robes. The wrongness of their proportions."
"You recognize it?"
"Not exactly. But I've seen similar references before." She lowered the letter. Met his eyes. "In files my mother keeps. Documents related to Academy history that aren't part of the standard curriculum. She studies things that happened before the current administrative structure. Things that predate the Kingdom itself."
"Dorothy—Mira—mentioned something similar. About entities older than civilization."
"They might be connected." Elara's brow furrowed. "If Maren saw what she thinks she saw, and if those things are connected to Academy history, and if the Academy is somehow involved with forces that date back to before recorded time..."
"Then everything's bigger than I thought."
"Everything's always bigger than we think." She handed the letter back. "But that doesn't mean we stop trying to understand it. It just means we stay humble about how much we don't know."
She's good at this, Rax murmured. The emotional support thing. You should keep her around.
I plan to.
*Oh? Plans now?*
Shut up.
Haruki refolded the letter. Placed it in the small box he'd started keeping beside his bed—items too precious to risk losing, too meaningful to leave scattered. Maren's words joined the few other treasures he possessed: a smooth stone from the Grey, a scrap of fabric from his grandmother's favorite shawl, the crumpled O³S brochure that still smelled faintly of whatever Dorothy cooked near it.
"I should write back," he said. "Tell her I'm okay. That I received her warning. That I'm being careful."
"That sounds like a good idea."
"And maybe... tell her about Dorothy. About what I've learned. She deserves to know she's not alone in seeing things that don't make sense."
Elara smiled. Small but genuine.
"That sounds like an even better idea. Connection matters, Haruki. Especially when you're carrying things too heavy for one person."
He thought about that.
Thought about Maren, alone in Ashfen with her phantom hand and her empty-eyed figures haunting her sleep.
Thought about Dorothy, hiding for six years under a false name, carrying secrets heavy enough to crush.
Thought about Elara herself, sitting across from him with her own burdens she hadn't fully shared yet, choosing presence over distance.
Thought about himself, and the weight he carried, and how much lighter it felt when he allowed others to help hold it.
"You're right," he said. "Connection does matter."
"I'm always right." The teasing tone was new—or maybe not new, just newly permitted. "Get used to it."
"I'll try."
Outside, night had fallen completely. The Academy slept around them, unaware of the letters being written and read, the secrets being shared, the connections being forged in darkness that would hopefully prove strong enough to withstand whatever light eventually exposed them.
Somewhere beneath the foundations, the basement door waited.
And beyond it, something ancient stirred with renewed interest in the anomalies walking its halls above.
To Be Continued...