The first prep day had a rhythm to it.
Zoe had set up in the common room with her medical kit and a list, calling the Syndicate group in one at a time. She was thorough and unhurried about it — baseline temperature tolerance, arcana flux stability, cardiovascular output under strain. The kind of assessment that took twenty minutes per person and left no room for cutting corners.
"You're in good shape," she told Levi when his turn came, marking her sheet. "Better than I'd expect from someone who was in a coma five days ago. Your body recovers fast."
"Is that a medical observation or a compliment?" asked Levi.
"Both. Don't let it go to your head." She capped her pen. "Your cold tolerance is the thing I'd watch. You've never lived in sub-zero conditions so your body has no frame of reference. Layer up and keep your arcana flux active — your lightning runs warm. Use that."
"Noted," said Levi.
He found Winters in the corridor after, leaning against the wall reading through a two-page list with the focused patience of someone checking a blueprint for errors.
"Clean bill of health," said Levi.
"Good." Winters folded the list. "Walk with me."
They went out to the rear yard where the twins were mid-drill — combinations at a pace that blurred at the edges, each of them anticipating the other by fractions of a second. Winters watched them for a moment, then glanced sideways.
"When we're out there and something goes wrong — and something always goes wrong — what's your instinct? Assess first or act first?"
Levi thought about it honestly. "Depends on what's going wrong. Immediate danger, act. Unclear situation, assess. Charging blind into something you don't understand gets people killed."
Winters was quiet for a moment. "Most people your age say act. They think hesitation is weakness."
"Hesitation and assessment aren't the same thing," said Levi.
"No," said Winters. "They're not." He looked back at the twins. "Good."
It wasn't effusive. From Winters, Levi was beginning to understand, it didn't need to be.
—
The morning moved along. Priscilla had catalogued her gear with characteristic precision and was cross-referencing it against Winters' list, adding margin annotations in handwriting so small that Levi had to lean in to read it. The twins had finished their drills and moved on to equipment checks, laying everything out in rows with the methodical ease of people who had done this many times before.
Sylvia was on the front step.
Levi sat beside her without asking.
"I'm fine," she said, before he could say anything.
"I know," said Levi.
"I'm not sulking."
"I know that too."
Her jaw shifted slightly. "I tested my blue flames in the yard this morning. They didn't flicker. The cold doesn't affect them the way Curwyn said it would."
"I believe you," said Levi.
"Then —"
"Sylvie." He looked at her. "The decision's made. What I need from you is to be sharp while we're gone, not distracted by something that can't be changed. The rogues are moving toward the settlements. That's real work and it needs you."
Sylvia looked at him for a long moment. Then she let out a slow breath and unfolded her arms. "Fine," she said. "But if anything happens to you out there—"
"You'll drag me back from whatever afterlife I end up in," said Levi. "I remember."
Sylvia almost smiled. Almost.
He was heading back inside when Curwyn appeared in the doorway, moving with a purpose that was different from his usual unhurried captain's pace. He had his comms piece in his hand.
"Suit up," said Curwyn. "All of you."
✦ ✦ ✦
The settlement was called Veldmoor — a small residential cluster on Frostilia's eastern outskirts, maybe four hundred civilians. The alert had come through the military channel at just past midday. Rogue unit sighted at the perimeter. Moving fast.
By the time R.K Squad arrived via the teleport relay, fast wasn't adequate anymore.
The rogues were already inside.
Levi took it in quickly — three buildings with smoke rising from the ground floors, civilians streaming out of side streets, and amid the chaos a coordinated unit of maybe eight figures moving through the settlement with the practised efficiency of people who had done this before and knew exactly how long they had.
They weren't destroying indiscriminately. That was the first thing that stood out. They were moving toward something specific — carving a path through Veldmoor's centre with surgical intent, leaving only what they needed burning to slow down whoever came after them.
And alongside them, keeping pace, were myths. Not the feral swarming kind Levi had fought in Olympia. These moved with directed focus — deployed assets rather than a force of nature, responding to the unit's movement rather than acting on their own instinct.
"Spread out," said Curwyn. "Don't let them reach the central relay tower. Twins, left flank. Ross, Zoe — civilian evacuation, keep them clear. Everyone else, push the centre."
The squad moved.
Levi went with Winters and Priscilla toward the central route where the rogue unit's path was most concentrated. The first myth came fast — a hulking creature moving low to the ground with too many joints in the wrong places. Priscilla hit it mid-stride with a Repulse that flipped it sideways into a wall. Levi took the second one, telestriding inside its reach and driving a lightning-charged palm strike into its centre mass.
It dropped clean.
"There," said Winters.
Levi followed his sight line to the far end of the central street.
A man was standing completely still.
Tall, dark-coated, completely unhurried. He wasn't fighting. He was watching — hands loose at his sides, head slightly tilted, with the calm attention of someone observing an outcome they'd already calculated. Everything moved around him and he simply stood in it, the way a rock stood in a current.
Two rogues ahead broke from the unit and came at the trio from sharp, low angles — clearly designed to separate rather than defeat, forcing Priscilla wide left and driving Winters to cover ground to the right, leaving Levi exposed in the centre.
*Coordinated,* he thought, already adjusting, already moving.
He was faster than either of them expected. The first rogue went down to a Godspeed burst. He turned for the second.
The second rogue stopped. Held up one hand. Disengaged — falling back smoothly, rejoining the unit without urgency.
Levi looked for the signal's source.
The man in the dark coat was walking toward him.
✦ ✦ ✦
Each step placed with the same measured calm he'd had when standing still. Around him the battle continued — the twins' chi clashing with myths on the left flank, Ross's sonic bursts cracking the air to the right — but he walked through all of it as if it were weather rather than war. As if the outcome of everything happening around him was a detail he'd already accounted for.
He stopped ten metres away.
He looked at Levi directly for the first time. His eyes were the flat, assessing kind — not cold exactly, not cruel. The eyes of someone who didn't need to feel anything about what they were looking at because the calculation was already complete.
He looked at Levi the way someone looked at a conclusion they'd arrived at before the argument was finished.
"Levi Baron," he said.
Not a question. Not a greeting.
Just a name delivered with the specific weight of someone who had known it for some time and had been waiting for the occasion to use it.
Levi went very still. Not from fear — from the specific alertness of someone who has just understood that this encounter was not a coincidence. This man had not stumbled into Veldmoor on the same day R.K Squad was doing its prep run. He had come here knowing R.K Squad would come. He had come here knowing Levi specifically would come.
Someone had told him. Or he had found out. Either way, the Forsaken Rogues knew who Levi Baron was, which meant the Forsaken Rogues knew about Olympia, about the trial, about everything that had led here.
"I was starting to wonder when I'd get to see you for myself," said the man. He said it with the ease of someone resuming a conversation that had been paused rather than starting one.
"You have me at a disadvantage," said Levi. His voice came out level, which was accurate to how he felt — not shaken, calculating. "You know my name."
"Drayke Voss," the man said. A courtesy, offered the same way a professional offered a card — not warmth, just information. His hand moved to his side in a small, deliberate gesture.
From the air beside him something began to form.
Not summoned with effort or theatrics. Called, the way you called something that had always been there. The shape solidified slowly — enormous, dense with a presence that registered in the chest before the eyes could process its outline.
Levi didn't look away from Drayke's face.
"What do you want?" he asked.
Drayke looked at him with something that was almost, in a very contained way, like approval.
"To see," he said, "what you can do."