The next day, the city would not shut up about him.
Shinra realized that before he even left Sanctum.
He sat on a bench in one of the guild's inner courtyards, a small square of sky framed by buildings on all sides. The air was calmer here, the noise of outside dulled. A single tree had been planted in the middle years ago, its branches stretching stubbornly upward.
Someone had draped a scarf around one of its lower limbs when it was small. The scarf was still there, sun-faded but holding on.
[You're doing nothing, Great Master.]
Arios' voice drifted through his thoughts, mild as ever.
"I'm resting," Shinra replied silently. "You told me to."
[I did.]
[You strained your seal too far yesterday. Internal fractures are stable but present.]
"I heard the lecture already," he said. "Twice."
[I will happily repeat it a third time.]
He didn't doubt that.
He leaned back on the bench and let his gaze follow a pair of birds hopping between branches overhead. His hands no longer trembled. The dull ache under his ribs had faded to something faint and forgettable.
Outside, things weren't forgettable at all.
[Information density about you has increased,] Arios reported.
[Name: Shinra. Taglines: "Sanctum's Tier 1", "Hub Guardian", "Unregistered Monster", "The Quiet One".]
"'The Quiet One,'" Shinra repeated. "At least that one fits."
[Public channels are conflicted,] Arios went on.
[Some call you a savior for stabilizing the Hub. Others note that scanners fried when you moved, and call you a walking anomaly.]
"That was your fault," Shinra said.
[It was partly physics' fault,] Arios replied primly.
[And partly yours.]
Footsteps approached.
He glanced over.
Yuna stepped into the courtyard, hands in her coat pockets, hair tied in its usual high, practical tail. She crossed the stone walkway and stopped in front of his bench.
"You look like you're hiding," she said.
"I'm 'resting,'" he said. "Arios' orders."
"Good," she said. "If he didn't say it, I would've."
She dropped onto the bench beside him with a soft exhale.
For a while, they didn't say anything.
The tree rustled. Someone shouted faintly from a training hall. Somewhere nearby, Riku was yelling at a vending machine like it had personally betrayed him.
"You've seen the feeds?" Yuna asked eventually.
"Yes," Shinra said.
"Well," she amended, "you've heard about them. I doubt you're scrolling through comment sections."
"I have Arios for that," he said. "He filters."
[Poorly paid, chronically underappreciated,] Arios added.
Yuna snorted, like she could somehow hear that.
"Half the city thinks you saved the Hub," she said. "Half thinks you nearly destroyed it. Authority hasn't decided which story is worse for them yet."
"And you?" he asked.
"I think you made sure my squad and the people above that Hub are still breathing," she said. "That's enough."
She tilted her head back, looking at the patch of sky.
"It's messy, though," she admitted. "You could have done nothing. That would've been… simpler. For us, at least."
"For a few days," Shinra said.
"For a few days," she agreed.
A breeze slipped into the courtyard.
"So," she continued, "are you going to stay in here all day, hiding from the fact the city learned your name?"
"Someone else said I was hiding," he said. "I prefer 'resting.'"
"Come walk with me," Yuna said, ignoring that. "If half the city is going to stare at you, might as well see it yourself."
"Is this part of my official rehabilitation?" he asked.
"Consider it exposure therapy," she said, standing up and dusting off her coat. "Besides, we need to pick up something from the market for Hana. She's threatening to replace Riku's lunch with nutrient blocks if he keeps skipping vegetables."
"That sounds efficient," Shinra said.
"Don't encourage her," Yuna sighed.
***
They left Sanctum by the front entrance.
The receptionist waved them out. A few guild members loitering near the doors glanced Shinra's way and then away again, nodding with that unsure mix of respect and unease.
The moment they stepped fully into the street, he felt it.
Eyes.
The street outside the guild wasn't especially crowded, but everyone seemed aware of him in a subtle, sideways way. Conversations dipped when he passed and resumed a little too quickly. People who might normally cut in front of them gave a bit more space.
Not dramatically.
Enough.
"Feels weird, doesn't it," Yuna said quietly.
"I've had worse," Shinra said.
"From your old world?" she asked.
"Yes," he said simply.
She let that sit.
They walked toward one of the busier side markets, the kind tucked between larger arterial roads, favored by workers and small families. The path took them through a wide plaza with benches and an old, cracked fountain that still worked when it felt like it.
Children played near it, their guardians chatting on the edges.
As Shinra and Yuna approached, the atmosphere shifted again.
A pair of little kids chased each other in circles. A small boy with messy hair tripped over his own foot and went down hard, scraping his knee. He looked at it, eyes widening, then did what almost all children did.
He wailed.
The sound startled a few pigeons, and one of the adults by the benches stood halfway, hand reaching toward him.
Before she could take a step, Shinra was already crouching.
The boy hiccupped mid-cry, big eyes staring up at the stranger beside him.
"You fell," Shinra said matter-of-factly.
The boy sniffed. "It… hurts…"
"Yes," Shinra said. "That happens when you introduce your skin to the ground."
The boy blinked, confused enough to forget how loudly he was supposed to cry.
Shinra glanced at the scrape—shallow, a little blood, nothing serious. No need for power. Just—
He reached into the small pocket of his coat and pulled out a strip of clean cloth, neatly folded. He carried it for many reasons. Most of them were not knees.
He wrapped it around the boy's leg, tying it snug but not tight.
"This will help until you get a better one," he said. "Try not to fall again."
The boy sniffed one last time, then nodded solemnly.
"…'Kay."
"You're very calm about strangers," Shinra observed.
"My mom says people with guild bands are heroes," the boy said.
A murmur went through the nearby adults.
One of them stood fully now—a Mundane woman with tired eyes and a cleaning uniform. Her gaze caught the emblem on Shinra's wrist.
"Sanctum," she breathed. "You're… from Sanctum?"
"Yes," Shinra said, standing.
"Thank you," she said. "I'm sorry if he bothered you. He runs faster than his legs know how to exist."
"He was fine," Shinra said. "The ground handled most of it."
Yuna made a choked sound that might have been a cough or a laugh.
The woman gave a small, quick bow of her head.
"People say a lot of things about Ascendants," she said. "But Sanctum… you always show up when it matters."
Her voice softened.
"Whatever they're saying about you," she added, looking Shinra in the eye, "some of us are just glad you were there yesterday."
Shinra held her gaze for a beat.
"…You're welcome," he said, and meant it.
The boy waved once, tentative.
Shinra lifted a hand in acknowledgment.
They walked on.
As soon as they were a few steps away, Yuna elbowed him lightly.
"Heroes, huh," she said.
"That's a heavy word," he replied.
"You handled it better than I expected," she said. "You didn't freeze. Or run."
"I've been called worse," he said. "If some people choose to see us that way, I won't take it from them. As long as we don't start believing it ourselves."
"Careful," she said. "You're starting to sound like Kaizen."
He didn't answer that.
They turned onto a busier street.
The noise increased—vendors calling out prices, hover-carts humming, shop awnings flickering with digital signage.
They passed a stall selling cheap skewers. The owner glanced up, saw Yuna's guild band, and nodded to her with the easy familiarity of someone who'd seen Sanctum uniforms around for years.
Then he noticed Shinra.
His eyes widened slightly. "You're—"
"Just passing by," Shinra said calmly.
The man swallowed a reply and just nodded again, almost too quickly.
They kept going.
A small group of construction workers took a break near a scaffolding, one of them scrolling through a holo-feed projected from his wristband.
"…I'm telling you, that's him," the worker said, tilting the projection so his friends could see. "Look—grainy, but from the Hub. That pressure? Everyone felt it."
"I heard half the Elite scanners went dark," another muttered.
"Authority's pretending nothing happened," a third said. "They don't like admitting there's someone they can't rank properly."
As Shinra and Yuna passed, one of them looked up.
His gaze stuck.
Whispered words followed.
"That's Shinra."
"Sanctum's Tier 1."
"Looks normal."
"Normal doesn't fry sensors."
The whispers weren't loud, but they weren't subtle either.
Yuna's jaw tightened, but she didn't say anything.
Shinra let the words pass through him like water.
[They're afraid,] Arios observed.
[Not in the immediate, fight-or-flight sense. In the way people are afraid of storms that don't have names yet.]
Not entirely, Shinra thought back.
He remembered the boy's simple, trusting little face. The cleaning woman's small bow.
Not everyone looked at him as if he were a blade.
Some saw a shield.
They reached the market Yuna had mentioned—a street lined with stalls under patchwork canopies. The air smelled of spices, grilled food, and the faint tang of metal from a nearby repair shop.
Yuna stopped at a vegetable vendor and began picking through the options with the focus of someone performing surgery.
"Hana said green," she muttered. "Actual green, not those tired, dying things."
The vendor, an older man with a bushy beard, smiled as she worked. "You're the captain from Sanctum, yes?" he asked. "You always buy for your squad."
"If I don't, they'll live on processed sugar and denial," Yuna said.
He laughed, then turned his attention to Shinra.
"I know you," he said. "From the news."
Shinra considered denying it and decided against it.
"I'm in some of them," he said.
The man's eyes were sharp despite his friendly tone.
"They say you nearly tore the Hub open," he said. "They also say you kept it from collapsing."
"People enjoy extremes," Shinra said.
"Yes," the man agreed. "It's easier to be afraid or worship than to understand."
He parceled vegetables into a bag and handed them to Yuna.
"I saw the damage," he added to Shinra. "My nephew works in one of the shops above. He's alive. That's enough for me."
Shinra inclined his head slightly. "I'm glad," he said.
The man nodded back, accepting that with simple sincerity.
As they paid and turned away, the crowd shifted.
Someone bumped into Shinra's shoulder, harder than necessary.
"Watch where you go," a voice snapped.
Shinra turned.
A young woman in a sleek coat glared at him, her aura bright and carefully groomed. Her guild band glowed with an emblem he recognized from Arios' data—one of the more elite, image-conscious guilds, neither friendly nor hostile to Sanctum. They liked cameras.
She realized who she'd run into half a second too late.
Her eyes flicked to his face, then to his band.
Her breath hitched.
"You—" she said.
Her two companions, also Ascendants, stopped beside her, following her gaze.
Silence pressed in.
In that moment, Shinra could see the war in her eyes—offended pride, training, and the story she'd heard a thousand variations of since last night.
Unregistered anomaly.
Scanner-killer.
Too strong.
Her fingers twitched like she wanted to reach for her weapon and knew how stupid that would be.
Something else flickered under it.
Fear.
Not of him as a person. Of what he represented.
He stepped back slightly, giving her space, tone even.
"You weren't watching where you were going," he said. "But no harm was done. Let's leave it there."
Her jaw tightened.
She expected mockery, probably. Or arrogance. Or some kind of pressure.
Relief and indignation collided in her expression.
"…Fine," she said stiffly. "Just— keep your presence under control."
She turned sharply and walked away, her friends shadowing her, one of them muttering under his breath.
"Feel that? Like we walked past a Breach…"
"Shut up," she hissed.
Yuna let out a slow breath as they moved on.
"That could have gone worse," she murmured.
"I know," Shinra said.
"You didn't do anything," she added.
"That's why," he said.
She was quiet for a few steps.
"Do you regret it?" she asked. "Letting the city feel what you can do?"
He thought about it.
"No," he said. "If I hadn't, the Hub would be gone. You would be gone. A lot of people I don't know would be gone. I don't regret preventing that."
"And the fear?" she pressed.
"That's the cost," he said.
[You say that very calmly, Great Master,] Arios commented.
[In your previous era, people also feared you.]
They did, Shinra admitted. Some with reason. Some without.
"Just," Yuna said, "remember they're not used to someone like you. There's no… manual for this. For them, or for you."
"For you either," he said.
She smiled faintly. "We're making it up as we go," she said. "Sanctum's specialty."
***
On the way back, the city watched them.
Old folks sitting on stoops watched him pass with tight curiosity, some whispering to each other behind hands. A pair of teens wearing cheap fake guild bands followed at a distance for half a block, trying—and failing—not to stare openly.
One of them bumped into a lamppost.
The other laughed too loud.
A group of low-tier Ascendants in patched jackets nodded to Yuna with clear respect. When their eyes met Shinra's, they hesitated.
Then one of them, a girl with faint sparks flickering uncertainly at her fingertips, bowed slightly.
"Thank you," she said quietly. "For the Hub."
Her friends looked at her like she'd jumped off a roof, but they didn't pull her back.
Shinra paused.
"You've been in a Breach?" he asked.
She flinched. "A small one," she said. "My old guild… we weren't ready. A Sanctum squad pulled us out. I know what happens when those things aren't stopped."
"And what's your tier?" he asked.
She fidgeted. "…Six."
"Then you're not useless," he said. "You're just early."
Her eyes widened, like it was the first time anyone had said it that way.
Behind her, one of her friends muttered, "Damn," under his breath.
Yuna gave Shinra a look that said: keep doing that.
He did.
By the time they reached Sanctum again, the watching didn't feel as sharp.
It was still there.
But now it had shape.
Fear from those used to being in control.
Hope from those used to being stepped on.
Curiosity from everyone in between.
The city wasn't looking at him like at a god or a monster.
Not yet.
It was looking at him like an unsolved equation it couldn't decide whether to be grateful for or terrified of.
As they stepped into the guild lobby, the noise shifted back to something familiar—clerks, footsteps, laughter, arguments over scheduling.
Riku was waiting near the stairs, arms crossed.
"You went outside without me?" he demanded.
"You were losing a fight with soup," Yuna said.
"I was winning, actually—" he started.
"You were not," Hana's voice drifted in from behind a pillar.
Daren stood near the mission board, scanning updates.
Shinra looked around once.
Sanctum was still standing.
His legs felt more solid than they had in days.
[This is your anchor point now, Great Master,] Arios said softly.
[Whatever the city decides to call you, this is where the meaning of your name will settle first.]
If I ever remember it, Shinra thought.
He started up the stairs with Yuna beside him, the others falling into step along the way.
Behind him, beyond the walls and the emblem and the stubborn tree in the courtyard, the city kept watching.
Some with fear.
Some with hope.
And somewhere far beyond, in cracks between worlds,
something else watched too—
with a recognition the city didn't yet have,
and a hunger it didn't yet remember.