Davin was less than two kilometers from Mehian.
He had run for most of the journey, stopping only in short intervals to catch his breath and calm the burning in his lungs. A prolonged escape, nearly twenty kilometers at a fast pace, through a forest whose paths and terrain he knew only through the cold assistance of the AI.
Fortunately, during the journey with the group, he had taken care to record Sylvia's map into his interface. Without that, after the ambush and the forced detour, he would probably still be wandering between the black trees and violet grass of that foreign forest.
For an ordinary human, such an effort would have been suicidal.
For him, it was simply exhausting.
Agility, without a doubt. And the rest follows. My muscles can endure an effort my old body never would have survived.
He felt fatigue, of course. Real fatigue. Heavy, irritating. But it did not crush him completely. His body kept responding. Mana had restructured him more deeply than he had first understood.
When he finally reached the main road, wider and more worn, he slowed down on his own.
Merchants, travelers, and several carts moved in both directions. No one paid him any attention. Davin resumed a measured pace, straightened his shoulders, and merged into the flow.
Then he stepped out from the last curtain of trees.
And saw it.
Mehian.
It was not a simple city.
It was an immense body of stone, iron, and authority, set upon the world like a certainty.
Colossal walls encircled the entire city. Several stories high, thick enough to make the palisades and modest defenses of the village he had left behind seem absurd, they were built from pale stone, almost white, catching the light of the two suns and throwing it back with an almost blinding hardness.
But what struck Davin most was not the wall.
It was what towered above it.
Far above the city, perched on a steep rocky summit, a colossal castle overlooked the entire valley. The slope beneath it was covered in dark lavender grass, almost violet, rippling under the wind like a silent sea. From a distance, that color gave the hill an unreal quality, as if the earth itself had been painted by a hand alien to the landscapes of Earth.
Four great slender towers rose from the fortress corners. Their gray-white stone spires climbed so high they seemed to pierce the clouds. Enormous banners snapped in the wind from the ramparts, too distant for him to distinguish the crest, but large enough to proclaim, even from here, undisputed power.
The whole structure gave the impression that the castle had not been built on the mountain.
It had emerged from it.
As if the rock, while growing toward the sky, had decided to take the shape of a fortress.
Under Kassis and Mira, the vision felt almost unreal.
Davin stood still for a few seconds, his breath still short.
Nothing like the muddy rat hole where this body landed.
The village he had left was nothing more than a forgettable margin. A dirty periphery, useful at most for producing resources and corpses.
Mehian, however, gave him his first real sense of this world's scale.
And that castle… only a taste of what truly dominated the board.
He resumed walking.
As he approached, the city gates revealed their true scale.
Two black wooden doors, banded with iron, tall enough to swallow an entire house, stood open under the watch of a dozen guards in polished plate armor. Lines of travelers stretched before them. Merchants waited as their carts were inspected. Ledgers were checked. Bags opened. Identities verified.
Davin stepped toward one of the guards.
The man looked up at him.
His gaze changed by a fraction.
His posture straightened almost imperceptibly. His grip on the shaft of his spear loosened.
He had sensed the Adept.
Let's take advantage of that.
The guard gave him a brief nod and allowed him forward without demanding any document.
Before passing through the gates, Davin nodded toward the castle.
"One question. Up there… is that the Academy?"
The guard shook his head.
"No, sir. That is the Countess's castle. Aethelgard Academy is south of the city. You'll find it easily."
"Thank you."
Davin nodded slightly and passed through the gate.
The contrast struck him with the brutality of a well-placed blow.
The streets, first.
Wide. Paved. Clean.
They stretched in long, regular lines between tall half-timbered houses crowned with bright red tiles. The façades had nothing of the village's functional poverty. Here, even the modest homes seemed designed to be seen. The wood was carved. The beams carefully painted. In places, fine patterns of silver or copper were inlaid into the frames.
The village had been nothing but a mass of raw need.
Mehian allowed itself elegance.
Stalls overflowed beneath colorful awnings. Strange fruits were stacked in perfect pyramids. Bright spices rested in wide wooden trays. Translucent crystals, placed on black velvet, caught the light and threw back almost liquid reflections. Gleaming weapons hung from braided leather supports.
The smell of warm bread, rich spices, smoked meat, and dry wood lingered everywhere, almost covering the more human odor of sweat and crowds.
He had never seen so many people gathered in one place.
Merchants shouted their prices at the top of their lungs. Commoners in fitted tunics and clean trousers hurried from one street to another. Their clothes remained simple, but well cut, well maintained, far from the rough cloth and rags of the village. Children ran laughing between adults' legs. Warriors in polished armor walked with their chests out, short cloaks floating behind them. Others, without plates, wore heavy leather tunics and carried themselves like fighters who did not need shining steel to command respect.
Then there were the robes.
Men and women draped in long fabrics of deep colors — ink blue, dark green, shadowed red, ashen violet. Some robes were embroidered with golden runes that shimmered subtly with every movement. Others appeared plain at first glance, but their flawless cut and the living sheen of the fabric were enough to betray their price.
Nobles.
Mages.
Or sometimes both.
But what truly shocked Davin were the details.
Magic was not hidden here.
It lived in broad daylight.
At the top of a lamppost, there was no flame, but a diamond-shaped stone that emitted a steady white light without flickering. Farther away, a merchant's cart moved several dozen centimeters above the ground. The man guiding it seemed to exert no effort; a crystal fixed to the front gave off a pale halo that supported the structure.
Davin followed it with his eyes, slightly stunned.
At an intersection, a fountain made its water climb upward along a sculpted column before letting it fall back down in a cascade into the basin, without a wheel, without any visible mechanism. A little farther on, a bakery sign projected into the air the luminous illusion of a golden loaf slowly rotating above the street.
Magic is not just a weapon here. It is infrastructure. The very foundation of society.
He instinctively placed a hand on the white-and-gold pommel of his saber.
Then he looked at the weapons around him.
Some blades vibrated with a faint glow. Others were engraved with complex runes. Even without knowing how to read them, he could feel the difference. His saber, bought in haste from a village shop, looked almost rustic by comparison.
He kept walking.
Then the crowd began to shift aside.
Not in panic.
In discipline.
Like a wave opening on its own.
A carriage approached along the main avenue.
Calling it a carriage almost felt insulting to the vehicle.
It was a rolling piece of ceremony.
The dark, perfectly varnished wood reflected the light in places like a surface polished by hand for hours. The edges of the cabin were reinforced with finely worked silver ornaments. The wheels, taller and sturdier than those of their old cart, were banded with gleaming metal. The curtains inside looked to be made of thick fabric, understated but obviously rich.
Compared to it, the cart destroyed on the hill had been nothing more than a pile of repaired planks.
Six guards escorted it, wearing heavy armor and white cloaks embroidered with gold. Their steps were measured. Their faces closed. Their hands rested near the pommels of their swords without ever seeming tense.
This was not ordinary protection.
It was a demonstration.
Around Davin, murmurs immediately rose.
"The Countess's children!"
"Glory to the lord's family!"
Residents waved. Others raised their hands with genuine enthusiasm. A few even dropped to one knee as the procession passed before them.
A window of the carriage opened.
A young woman appeared.
She could not have been more than eighteen. Her blond hair, soft and wavy, fell over her shoulders like a curtain of light. Under Kassis and Mira, her fair skin took on an almost golden hue. Her blue eyes swept across the crowd with a surprisingly natural warmth. Her smile, wide and luminous, drew the eye with an almost unsettling ease.
She wore a pale green silk dress embroidered with silver thread in delicate floral patterns. Nothing about her attire was loud. Everything breathed a wealth old enough to no longer need vulgar display.
She greeted the crowd with a graceful wave.
Davin watched her for one second.
And immediately felt the pressure.
His expression did not change.
But his mind adjusted the variables.
She far surpasses Sylvia's grandfather. Eighteen years old… and already at the Adept Summit, or close enough that the difference is laughable. Either she benefits from resources most people will never see in their lives, or she truly is an anomaly. Maybe both.
Sylvia's grandfather had spent decades climbing to a level she seemed to have reached before even becoming an adult.
But she was not the one who weighed heaviest inside that carriage.
Beside her stood a man draped in a long robe of deep azure blue. A hood concealed most of his face. He did not wave. Did not look at the crowd. Barely moved.
And yet, his mere presence made the air heavier.
Davin felt his mana like one feels the nearness of a storm.
Dense.
Crushing.
Far heavier than Kys's.
Far heavier than the young noblewoman's.
A true Mage.
Perhaps even more than that, but Davin lacked the references needed to estimate it.
His body reacted before his thoughts did.
He looked away.
By instinct.
Like one averts their eyes from a predator too high on the food chain to risk being noticed by.
Two other figures were visible inside, behind the young woman.
First, a young man. Blond as well. The same fine features, the same fair skin, the resemblance too sharp to be accidental. But his face held cold boredom. He barely looked at the crowd. He already seemed tired of existing among it.
Beside him sat a younger girl, perhaps sixteen. The same golden hair, the same blue eyes, but with a more reserved posture. She greeted the crowd timidly, with a small hesitant smile, as if she were not yet entirely used to the weight of all those eyes.
The murmurs around Davin became more precise.
"Lady Mehiana Mia…"
"And her brother, Mehiana Sia."
"Their younger sister, Mehiana Isabelle."
Mehiana.
The name of the city.
The name of the lineage.
Davin gave an almost imperceptible smile.
The arrogance of magical nobility. When you rule a city, you wear its name as if it were a natural extension of yourself.
The young man and the younger girl were Adepts as well. Their pressure was clear, perceptible, but far below that of their elder sister.
Intermediate Adept, perhaps. For both of them. Or close.
The younger girl continued to smile with reserve.
The brother, however, did not even bother to play the game. No greeting. No smile. Nothing but a distant gaze and almost deliberate indifference.
The carriage continued down the road and eventually turned at an intersection, disappearing behind a street corner with its escort.
Davin remained still for a few seconds.
A comital family.
A young noble barely of age already surpassing entire veterans.
A high-level Mage as a silent shadow.
A city where magic flowed through the streets like water through fertile soil.
Sylvia's grandfather suddenly seemed far less impressive.
He resumed his path south.
Crossing Mehian took a long time.
A very long time.
Almost two hours on foot.
The city stretched over several kilometers, and each district seemed to possess its own breathing rhythm. Here, the merchant quarter, dense, loud, alive. Farther on, a quieter residential sector, with enclosed gardens and more restrained façades. Farther still, an artisan district where blacksmiths worked strange metals that hissed under their hammers as if protesting each strike.
In a half-open courtyard, two warriors trained with sabers. Their blades left brief luminous trails behind them, so thin he might have mistaken them for illusions if his senses had not been awakened.
In a shop open to the street, dozens of colored vials rested on dark wooden shelves. Some bubbled on their own. Others pulsed faintly, as if a miniature heart beat inside them. A sign displayed the prices.
Davin could not read it.
I'll need to fix that problem. Quickly.
As he moved farther south, the atmosphere changed.
Not only because of the architecture.
Because of the density.
The air itself seemed more charged. Not with heat. Not with cold. A dull, diffuse pressure, as if mana had seeped into the stones, the walls, the streets, until it had become part of the city's very matter. Certain stretches of road almost seemed to take on a lavender hue under the light, as if the ground remembered an ancient saturation.
At last, the south of the city opened before him.
A broad road paved with pale stones stretched straight ahead, almost solemn.
Then came the rift.
The ground was split by an immense crevasse, deep, sharp, as if a colossal blade had once cleaved the earth in two. A massive bridge, built from the same pale stone as Mehian's noble districts, crossed the void.
And on the other side…
The Academy.
Several colossal buildings rose on the opposite plateau. As imposing as the Countess's castle, but with an entirely different architecture. Where the castle asserted domination, the Academy evoked something else: age, knowledge, a power less frontal but far broader.
The lines were rounder.
The towers, crowned with spiral roofs, seemed to coil toward the sky. Great domes of colored glass caught the light of the two suns and scattered it in shifting fragments. Aerial walkways connected certain buildings to one another, suspended over the void several dozen meters above the ground.
Davin stopped dead.
For the second time that day, the world reminded him that he had only seen the smallest fraction of its surface.
And this time, it was not nobility that drew him.
It was the Academy.