Mael chugged the last of the wine and set the bottle down with a dull clink.
She stared out the window. Dark circles sat heavily beneath her eyes, her face drained of anything resembling expression. She turned, stumbled over the mat, took two quick steps, then caught herself.
A soft, humorless chuckle escaped her as she drifted into the kitchen.
She opened a drawer and pulled out another bottle of wine.
"Now where did I put that opener…"
She rummaged through drawers, then crouched low, pressing a hand to the floor as she leaned forward.
"There."
She stretched as far as she could beneath the sofa until her fingers closed around it. When she sat back down, bottle in one hand, opener in the other, the light in her eyes faded again.
She sighed, set the bottle aside, and reached for a pack of cigarettes. The wrapper fought her for a moment before giving way.
She slid a cigarette between her lips and flicked the lighter.
For a long while, she didn't move. Just sat there, staring out at Velthoria, smoke curling uselessly into the room.
Eventually, she tossed the cigarette aside and buried her face in her hands.
"Arghh."
The sound was low and frayed.
"Fuck politics. Fuck Valthorne. Fuck Eireindaile."
Her jaw tightened.
"Fuck everyone."
She stubbed the cigarette out by dropping it into the empty wine bottle.
After Darian left the western continent, Mael became the only heir still present. The Claymores had banks spread across the entire continent, but the founders, her parents, had always remained here, personally overseeing the region where it all began. Now they were growing old. Fragile. And the weight of the company had fallen onto her and Darian long before either of them were ready.
She took the responsibility seriously.
Which was exactly why Darian's departure couldn't have come at a worse time.
Tension between Eireindaile and Valthorne had always been there, a constant undercurrent. Now, with the two on the brink of war, it was something else entirely.
Suffocating.
Even though Claymore remained neutral, the pressure never stopped. A war was rarely decided by armies alone.
Resources chose sides long before soldiers did.
Mael picked up the wine bottle and slid it back into the drawer, then let her gaze wander around the apartment.
That was why she came here so often. There was something grounding about watching someone else work relentlessly on themselves, grappling with systems too large to fully grasp. And beyond that, Kael was simply… easy on the eyes.
Lately, though, he was rarely around.
He spent less time in the apartment, leaving Mael alone with her thoughts. Exactly the thing she was trying to escape.
She tidied a few loose items, washed the dishes, then finally sank back down onto the sofa.
"What should I do."
The words came out uncertain, small. Like a child admitting she was lost.
"Please… Darian, come back soon."
—
As Kael opened his eyes, he was met by a cloud formed from his own breath.
He pushed himself upright and took in his surroundings.
He was back in the cabin, though it no longer looked the same. Snow had piled up in one corner, blown in through the hole he had torn through the wall, and frost crept along the inside of the window.
Kael lifted a hand and rubbed his jaw carefully.
'It's in place.'
He lowered his hand, fingers brushing over the bandages wrapped tightly around his abdomen. The soreness lingered, but the ribs had been set properly and were already healing.
Torin stood in the doorway.
"You're awake."
Kael reached for the nightstand and picked up his blindfold.
"Yes." He tied it in place. "Thanks for the help."
Torin studied him in silence.
"You do know who you killed, right?"
Kael exhaled.
"I do."
That was why he had been spending so much time at the cabin. Ever since tensions between the two nobles had erupted, Kael had withdrawn further and further from the city. Here, Torin could appear without Valthorne noticing. Kael had known he would. Torin valued Syleena too much not to intervene when Kael's life was truly at risk.
"Then I hope you also understand," Torin continued, "that in the coming war, Lauren was meant to lead one of Valthorne's main armies."
He paused.
"Her death will not go unnoticed."
Kael rose from the bed and began to dress. He never let Torin leave his awareness.
'I never thought he'd reach rank four this early… Didn't expect him to advance so young.'
When they had first met, Kael had been certain Torin was rank three. Anyone who reached rank four before thirty was considered a prodigy among Luminaires.
Their shoulders brushed lightly as Kael passed him on the way into the kitchen.
"Don't you need to leave?" Kael asked. "I killed three Valthorne not far from the cabin recently."
Torin didn't argue. He leaned against the doorframe instead.
"What happened to your eye, Kael?"
Kael's movements slowed.
'Do I really need to attack him?'
He closed the door, even though the gaping hole in the wall still stared back at him.
'There's no way I'd win.'
"Lost it in a fight with another Luminaire," Kael said, lying without hesitation.
"Hm…"
Torin walked over to the hole in the wall and stopped there.
"I hope you understand what I'm expecting of you, Kael."
Then he stepped outside and disappeared into the snow-covered forest.
Kael exhaled slowly.
'I was lucky this time.'
His thoughts drifted back to the battle. He had expected retaliation. An ambush, perhaps. But the Hidden Guardian had never crossed his mind.
Elara's face surfaced unbidden.
'I should've killed her back then.'
During the fight with Adam, Kael had been forced to leave Elara alive. He couldn't afford the distraction while controlling the King Wolf Tiger. And once the battle ended, he had abandoned the search altogether.
The risk had been too high.
Elara had been their information Luminaire. Sensory-based. At the time, Kael had possessed none of those motes himself. She could have followed him with ease, watched from the shadows without ever being noticed. And if he had tried to hunt her down instead, she would have evaded him just as easily, slipping away long before he ever knew she was there.
That knowledge had stayed his hand.
And now, it had come back to find him.
"Ultimately, every action has an opposing reaction."
Kael picked up a fragment of the shattered table, set it aside, and lowered himself into the rocking chair. He closed his eyes.
The room dissolved. Space folded inward, replaced by his inner realm.
He stood before his river of Will.
"Why did she react so strongly to my Will being red?"
He stepped closer, watching the flow. Now that he thought about it, Elara had reacted in much the same way when he refined the Lure mote. The connection hovered at the edge of his thoughts, elusive. The harder he pursued it, the more his mind clouded, until the idea slipped away entirely.
"Right. The mote."
Kael raised his hand.
A spherical mote formed in his palm. Refined by his Will, it felt different now. His understanding of it came not from study, but from instinct, as if the knowledge had always been there. A faint smile tugged at his lips.
It was exactly as he had expected.
The effect was absurdly simple. And overwhelmingly effective.
He turned the mote slowly between his fingers.
"Point Blank mote."
With understanding came its name. Like Point Aegis, Point Blank belonged to the strength pathway. And like all motes of that path, its Thought cost was low. Activating it required only around ten thousand Thoughts.
Its restraint was what made it terrifying.
When activated, the mote applied only to Kael's fingertips. Nothing more.
It gathered all the strength Kael could exert if he threw a full-force punch and compressed it into a single, infinitesimal moment of contact.
Kael smiled openly now, teeth showing.
To release devastating force, all it took was a brush of his fingertips, the same method Lauren had used.
His muscles wouldn't tire, even in extended combat. More importantly, he no longer needed to rely on Point Aegis when striking at full strength. By compressing all exerted strength into a single point of contact, Point Blank removed recoil entirely and spared his body any backlash.
In simple terms, Kael could snap a tree in half with Point Blank alone, without defending his hand at all.
But with it came a flaw.
Point Blank could only exert force equal to what its user could physically produce. In the hands of someone who did not cultivate the strength path in any meaningful way, it would be useless. Give it to a child, for instance, and the result would be negligible at best.
Of course, Kael had used the Golden Horned mote. For him, the flaw might as well not exist.
His thoughts drifted back to the fight with Lauren.
The backstab should never have worked. The only reason it did was because Torin had unleashed such overwhelming power that she was forced to counter it, and because her mind had already been fracturing. If she had been thinking clearly, Kael suspected she would have killed him with the very first strike.
He looked down at the mote again.
Its surface was formed of the same dark, metallic material as Point Aegis.
'Are they related,' he wondered, 'or is it just an insane coincidence?'
He didn't know.
A soft laugh escaped him as another thought surfaced.
"I managed to steal a mote from someone's inner realm."
The excitement was quiet and contained, but unmistakable.
Until Lauren, it had only been theoretical. But the more he examined it now, the more obvious it seemed that it should work. The moment he had pierced Lauren's heart, she had been as good as dead. And when someone truly believed death was inevitable, clarity often followed. That was the moment many used what little energy they had left to enter their inner realm and detonate their motes.
Under normal circumstances, entering another person's inner realm was impossible unless they willingly allowed it, as Elara had when Kael claimed the Lure mote. Without consent, the inner realm was completely sealed.
But what happened when someone was already crossing the threshold of death?
Kael had wondered about that for a long time.
Now, he finally had his answer.
The moment Kael pierced her heart, she had known it. And in that instant of certainty, when all resistance collapsed and her Will turned inward, the boundary had weakened just enough.
Kael had gambled on that moment.
Because of the earlier battle, he had nearly exhausted all of his Thoughts. So in the heat of it, when he entered Lauren's inner realm, he detonated the Titanwood Stalker mote and reclaimed all the Thoughts and Will bound within it.
He had no regrets.
That sacrifice had allowed him to activate Obsidian Shard and seize more precise control of his Will and Thoughts long enough to claim the Point Blank mote.
He dismissed the mote and turned his attention to the colossal river of Will flowing before him.
His soul was healing from the backlash of losing the Golden Rod, but the damage remained. Cracks were still visible no matter where he looked, thin fractures running through everything he was.
Kael rested his arms on the armrest.
The cabin filled his vision once more.