In the castle, boring wasn't just the norm.
It was an understatement.
There was only so much repetition a person could take before it turned into madness. Einstein apparently had that line about insanity—doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Cute.
What he didn't say was that doing the same thing over and over with no expectation—because you already know the outcome—is its own special kind of insane.
And that kind of insane didn't just creep up. It stewed. It sat in the lungs and pressed against the ribs until breathing felt like work. It made the world small. It made time thick. It turned white walls into a coffin you had to smile inside.
Ezra was done suffocating.
This was the scenic route—rooftops instead of corridors, wind instead of perfume and stone polish. A better Bren tour than the one he'd gotten in "shackles."
Well. Figurative shackles.
Slate and firebrick slid beneath his feet in quick, silent strides. The city's angles looked different from above—familiar buildings rendered new by perspective, their roofs like overlapping scales. He'd lived here long enough to know Bren in fragments: the view from his window, the walk between nursery and hall, the same three courtyards.
Up here, it was whole.
The last time he'd been in the rooftops had been the day his wet nurse abducted him—back when he didn't get to admire anything except how fast the ground came at his face and how to get out of the predicament.
Now he had time to look.
Bren was a walled city. The Inner District pressed tight against Castle Blackfyre like it had grown there—stone leaning on stone, rooftops nearly touching, alleys like cracks in old teeth. Ezra could almost picture older days, when Blackfyre had still been a fort and the inner ring had been nothing but hovels and mud.
Now it churned.
Smoke from foundries bruised the morning air. Hammer-rings carried in faint metallic pulses. Carts ground over stone. The city worked in its own belly, and from above, it sounded… muffled. Softer. Like you were listening through a door.
He went from rooftop to rooftop, using the uneven heights like stepping stones. Chimneys and slate ridges became handholds. Balcony rails became ladders. His body moved with that reinforced smoothness he'd grown used to—no wasted motion, no toddler stumble. Just controlled force applied at the right angle.
From the streets below, Bren was waking up.
Up here, it felt like he had the whole place to himself.
Over the past year, his magic had finally stabilized.
Not perfectly—nothing about his body ever stayed the same for long—but in a way he could rely on. The erratic flare that had made it hard to estimate what any action would cost in mana was gone, and the strain of suppressing his mana had eased into something he could manage again.
He'd tested it in the only way that mattered.
Passing servants. Passing guards. Brushing close enough that, once, they would've flinched.
They hadn't.
He'd improved at controlling his aura. He'd gotten better at moving like he belonged.
He'd gotten much, much better at hiding it than when he was an infant.
It wasn't just his aura either. Even his body—now juiced up with mana—felt more natural. The precision remained, even improved, but it felt more his rather than something he commanded like a foreign drone.
When he was an infant, he'd used mana to "drive" his body. It hadn't felt like him moving a limb. Yes, there were sensations, but they didn't match the movement. It was like operating a machine you were strapped into.
Now… now it was mostly him. There was still that faint uncanny wrongness, but it was nearly gone.
And with that development came drawbacks.
There were sensations—mostly in his chest—that he couldn't really control. When Aerwyna hugged him. When Reitz ruffled his hair. When Reitz gave him attention and told stories of old campaigns with that big, stupid grin.
The sensations came anyway.
Warmth. A compulsion to laugh. A compulsion to be touched.
He'd identified them as emotions, if he wanted to put it neatly. And they were more vivid now. With vividness came weight. Sometimes he drowned them in mana just to get it out of his system.
On Earth, he'd felt things too—muted, dulled. He hadn't been numb, exactly, but life had been… flatter. The highs weren't as high. The lows weren't as loud.
Here everything was surreal.
And that was the double-edged blade: boredom didn't just bloom. It exploded—a mushroom cloud that blotted out everything else.
Maybe leaving the confines of Castle Blackfyre to hunt for the Demon Hunter wasn't a sane decision. But being barred from the library, unable to experiment, unable to explore, unable to come and go as he pleased—unable to feel wind, see sights, look vividly at the stars, understand how the world worked—unable to see or feel anything meaningful—that was how he would lose his sanity.
And frankly speaking, he'd rather risk his life than lose his mind.
Truthfully, he hadn't planned this escape. It started as a restless impulse—boredom, the need to prove he still had control—and then his mind did what it always did.
It built a reason around it.
Ever since the Demon Hunter had mentioned them, the name had been stuck in Ezra's head like a warning bell.
If that bell had the volume of a jet engine.
It didn't ring so much as drown everything else out—a speaker on repeat, a gong on repeat, the same two words over and over until he could feel them behind his eyes.
Shadow Walkers.
He wanted to see what they really were.
If Evan had been part of the bodyguard rotation that morning, Ezra probably wouldn't have gone.
Not because Evan would have stopped him—Ezra could handle Evan if he really wanted to, yes, though it would take planning—but because Evan would have been punished for it.
Ezra didn't want that.
He was attached to Evan now. Not in the childish, clingy way adults expected from toddlers. Something closer to… trust.
Friendship, if he was being honest.
And Ezra knew exactly what "punishment" looked like in this castle.
Since Evan wasn't with the group, Ezra decided quickly. No Evan meant no risk of Evan being flogged on his behalf.
It also meant Ezra didn't have to watch Evan's face when he did it.
As for Hearth and Caspian…
Ezra didn't exactly feel guilty.
They were young, yes. But he'd watched them long enough to know their personalities. Hearth talked like a noble who'd never been told "no." Caspian hesitated when he needed to commit, and that kind of hesitation got people killed.
Besides, Reitz and Aerwyna had assigned two boys to guard him.
They should have known better.
Curiosity wasn't the only thing pushing him out.
He also wanted to be free.
It was a new feeling, and it annoyed him almost as much as the castle did. Back on Earth, he could stay inside all day and be happy. If you were bored, you had entertainment—games, videos, endless information at your fingertips. A whole planet of distractions.
Here, inside Castle Blackfyre, entertainment meant reading or listening to a bard and a jester.
The bards weren't terrible, but the music always sounded a little off, like the scales didn't match what his ears expected. And the jesters…
Ezra had tried. He really had.
Their jokes weren't funny.
The books were worse. Plenty of history, plenty of heroic speeches, plenty of worship for the Empire's ladder—but most of the writing was dull, the prose stiff, and the explanations vague right where it mattered. There were some interesting bits, however he suspected that there were still plenty of books that were being kept from him.
If Ezra wanted real information, he had to dig for it.
Over his shoulder sat a makeshift backpack he'd crafted months ago, out of boredom mostly. He hadn't built it to run away forever. He'd built it because the idea of being helpless had disgusted him.
And today, that wishful thinking materialized.
In his pack he carried a dagger, a slingshot, fruit, and a few chunks of bread he'd stolen from the kitchens. He'd also torn a map of Fulmen out of a book and folded it until it fit.
Not ideal.
But better than wandering blind.
From Ezra's point of view, he could hold his own in the wilderness. He'd read enough survival guides back on Earth to summon the knowledge when he needed it, and this world had a simpler set of threats if you had magic and the ability to think.
And he wasn't planning to go deep into the wild anyway.
His plan was to stow away.
He'd overheard that the escort the Demon Hunter was supposed to be in would leave around this time.
He just had to wait.
If he missed it? He'd go back immediately.
Simple. Reasonable. Measured.
That was what he told himself, anyway.
He estimated the two boys he'd knocked out would wake up in about an hour. Even then, it would take time for panic to spread. Servants would check rooms, guards would check halls, and only after someone admitted Ezra was truly missing would the castle shift into full search mode.
Six hours, maybe.
That gave him plenty of time.
And the convoy would be easy to spot.
Reitz and Aerwyna wouldn't immediately assume he'd left Bren. They'd probably think he was hiding in some closet in the castle like a naughty toddler. That made him almost leisurely as he moved.
Almost.
He still dashed.
He headed south, keeping to rooftops, until he reached the general area of the south gate. The houses here were tighter together, their roofs lower, the alleys narrower and darker.
Perfect.
He dropped down behind a row of stacked barrels in an alley and settled into the shadows, suppressing his aura until it felt like holding his breath.
He waited.
One hour.
Then the caravan appeared.
At the helm was Deimos.
He still wore that long black coat, the one that made him look less like a Knight and more like a rogue from an old story. Two daggers sat where a noble would have worn decoration. No visor. No plate.
Deimos looked like the kind of man who didn't need a helmet because he'd already accepted the consequences of getting hit.
Behind him, the rest of the Knights were more traditional—plate armor, weapons properly strapped, disciplined spacing. A wagon of supplies rolled behind them, heavy enough that the wheels groaned on the road stones. Around them moved twenty regular soldiers, likely for logistics, scouting, hunting.
Ezra watched the formation for a few breaths, eyes tracking gaps and attention patterns.
There were onlookers near the gate. Merchants and workers paused to stare. Children ran alongside until a guard barked at them.
Ezra couldn't just walk up.
He waited for an opening.
Then he created one.
Months of boredom had turned Ezra into a professional at petty contraptions. He'd built a simple device earlier—nothing fancy. Just a weak point in a stack of wood and rope positioned near two alley cats that were always fighting anyway.
The structure held them apart.
One precise hit, and it would fail.
The cats would tumble.
They would do what cats always did.
Ezra took out his slingshot, loaded a stone, and used AMP—just a thin layer, just enough to calculate force and angle.
He released.
The stone cracked the weak point.
The contraption snapped.
Two cats collided and erupted into screaming, clawing chaos.
Everyone nearby turned their heads.
Ezra moved.
With his small body reinforced and his speed sharpened, he dashed through the crowd, slipping between legs and skirts, staying low. He reached the supply cart and climbed into the shadowed gap beneath a canvas flap, pressing himself against sacks that smelled like grain and dust.
The wagon jostled.
The caravan kept moving.
Ezra held his breath.
Deimos didn't look toward the cats.
He looked back toward the supplies cart.
For a sharp second, Ezra's stomach tightened.
Found.
Then Deimos looked forward again, expression unchanged.
Ezra let out the smallest possible breath.
Relief.
Back in Ezra's room, Hearth was the first to wake.
His head throbbed. His tongue tasted like dust. For a moment he didn't even know where he was.
Then memory slammed into place.
The toddler.
The strike to his neck.
The floor.
Hearth shot upright so fast the room spun.
He scrambled across the floor and grabbed Caspian's shoulder, shaking hard.
"Hey," Hearth hissed. "Wake up. Wake up—Lord Ezra is missing. He knocked us out!"
The words came out half-disbelieving.
He couldn't get past that part.
A toddler.
He'd been beaten—again—by a toddler.
Caspian groaned and blinked at the ceiling like it had personally offended him.
"Wha… huh?" he mumbled, rubbing his eyes. "What happened?"
Hearth's hands clenched into fists.
"Lord Ezra went outside," he said, voice rising despite his attempt to keep it steady. "I don't know where he's going. What do we do?"
Panic wanted to spill out of him.
Hearth tried to swallow it.
All his life he'd been trained to hide mistakes. To smooth them over. To make sure the important people never saw the cracks. If something went wrong, you didn't announce it—you fixed it before anyone higher noticed.
But this wasn't a broken plate.
This was Ezra.
Caspian forced himself upright, groggy but functional.
He listened.
Then he answered.
"The only thing we can do is tell the Lord and Lady Blackfyre," he said.
Hearth's stomach turned.
"But we might be punished for letting Ezra out," he said, the fear finally slipping into his voice.
Caspian didn't even flinch.
"It was our responsibility," he said plainly. "If we get punished, it means we deserve it."
Hearth stared at him.
That kind of thinking was insane.
"Bu-but—" Hearth started.
"Come," Caspian cut him off, already moving. "The longer we wait, the less time we have to find Lord Ezra."
Hearth swallowed.
"Can't we try to find him ourselves?" he asked, clinging to the last chance to keep this hidden.
"Yes," Caspian said. "But we must tell the Lord first."
Hearth had no good answer.
He followed.
They rushed out, down corridors that suddenly felt too bright, too long. Guards snapped to attention as they passed, confused by the urgency.
When they reached the study, Hearth didn't even try to be polite. They told the guard to send the message inside.
A moment later, the door flew open.
"WHAT!" Reitz roared.
The sound shook Hearth's bones.
"He knocked you both out?" Reitz continued, fury blazing. "Dammit. I should have sent another knight instead."
Hearth's face went cold.
He braced.
Then Reitz's expression shifted—not softer, but focused.
"Don't worry," Reitz said, voice tightening into command. "It isn't your fault."
Hearth almost collapsed from relief.
Caspian's shoulders loosened too.
Reitz didn't waste another breath.
He ended whatever council was happening and stormed into the halls, barking orders. Servants were organized into groups. Guards were sent to sweep every corridor, every courtyard, every rooftop.
"Search everything," Reitz commanded. "Every nook and cranny. East, west, north, south. No one leaves the inner ring. Move!"
Hearth and Caspian were thrown into one of the search groups.
Guilt stuck to them like sweat.
In the same chaos, Evan stood off to the side.
He watched the servants scatter.
He watched the guards shout.
He watched Aerwyna's eyes harden into that cold, dangerous calm she wore right before she made someone regret being born.
And Evan thought.
Aerwyna noticed him lingering.
"Evan," she snapped, irritated. "What are you doing? Help try to find Ezra."
Evan didn't flinch.
"Lady Blackfyre," he said, "I think I know where Lord Ezra went."
Aerwyna's expression tightened.
He was one of the people Ezra spent the most time with. He'd seen Ezra's fascination with magic, the way it wasn't just childish curiosity but something sharper. He'd also been there when Deimos had been summoned.
He'd seen the look on Ezra's face when Shadow Walkers were mentioned.
"He wants to see the Shadow Walkers," Evan said.
Aerwyna went still.
"What?"
"I'm sure," Evan said.
Her jaw tightened.
"What if he is not?" Aerwyna demanded. "We don't have enough manpower to search for him in Bren and chase down a caravan. We can't split the Guard on a guess."
Evan didn't hesitate.
"No need to send a lot of knights," he said. "Just send me."