Garima woke before Donari began to run.
The training hall was empty. The sky still dark but shifting—-black bleeding into deep blue at the edges. She found her usual quiet corner and began.
Her body remembered more now.
For twenty minutes, mohiniyattam carried her somewhere else entirely. She danced alone in borrowed clothes, barefoot on an unfamiliar floor with no bells at her ankles.There was no vocalist or any melody in the air. Yet she moved through the familiar motions. She could hear the steady heartbeat of the mrigandam in the memory of her muscles. Feel the vibrations of the cymbals lingering at the edge of every gesture. The phantom notes of the flute seemed to float through her mind. She danced. Each movement became an act of remembrance, a thread tying her to the home she could not return to.
Then she exhaled.
The softness drained from her posture. Grace gave way to purpose. The curved form of her body straightened settling into another form—the older one. Her feet found the ground. She lowered her centre of gravity and stepped into a stance her body knew. The ancient martial art layered into her bones since childhood. The training her grandfather had started and abandoned, then her father had insisted she continue.
Kicks. Strikes. Footwork patterns that required absolute presence.
She practiced. The memories of the dance had softened her. Now the same ones hardened her resolve.
She was sweating, breathing hard, when the bells rang.
But she never thought this was the last moment of peace she would have all day.
—
Sir Lawrance wasn't in the courtyard. She waited a few minutes, then gave up and headed towards the dining hall---That's when she saw Agatha cutting fast across the corridor toward a side room.
Garima hurriedly fell into step beside her."Why are the hurry?"
"There's a situation," Agatha said, closing the door behind them. "It concerns Sir Lawrance."
Lawrance was inside with Priest Hill, his expression apologetic before he'd even said anything.
"I'm leaving for Domnur," he said. "The Scholar's Association needs me."
"What?" Garima gasped. "What happened?"
"A trade dispute," Sir Lawrance said."Between the merchants in southern provinces. It's been escalating since Erva's letter arrived yesterday — apparently Elira Goldleaf has asked her for assistance and has gone personally to negotiate, which means the scholars are now involved whether they want to be or not. As headmaster, I'm expected to join them."
Garima felt her stomach tighten. She had written about those in snippets. "How serious?"
"The Duke is involved." Hill said quietly. "Tariffs and territory."
Garima's mind sharpened. She could work with this. She had mentioned it as a small problem with consequences which happen later. But the Devils would attack without these consequences too.
"I can help," Garima said immediately. "I can mediate. I am good with people."
"Not this time," Agatha said flatly. "This requires years of knowledge of trade agreements you've never read."
"Then tell me everything. I'll learn it tonight—"
Lawrence exchanged a look with Hill. The kind of look that meant: she still doesn't understand her own limits.
"Garima," Hill said gently. "Sometimes things happen without you."
She was about to argue when the scream came.
From upstairs. From the residential corridor.
All three of them moved. Garima was the fastest.
Dylan was on the floor outside her room, his arm blistered and still faintly smoking.
Garima dropped to her knees beside him before anyone else reached the top of the stairs.
The smell hit her first. Burned flesh.
"What happened?" Agatha was already kneeling on his other side, examining the damage.
"I was looking for Garima." Dylan's voice came out thin, shock pulling at the edges of it. His eyes moved from her face to Agatha's and back. "Alo — Orb — he kept running in and out of her room. I followed him in and saw something. A package. I opened it up and it was like—" He stopped, jaw tight. "I don't remember."
Garima's grip on his shoulder tightened.
Zihan appeared at the end of the corridor. Then Ava who looked too shocked to say anything. Then Riley from a side passage. Within minutes they had all gathered — surrounding Dylan, who was shaking — and Garima had to make herself move back, make space for them.
She had no immediate remedy for burns. But energy work could help more than hovering.
"It's the sword," Garima whispered.
"What sword?" Agatha's voice sharpened.
Before she could answer, Duke Ruslan appeared beside her.
She didn't know when he had arrived. She had been supposed to train with him after breakfast.
He looked at the gathered priests. At Dylan. At the scorch marks. Then he walked past all of them directly into her room.
Duke Ruslan emerged holding the half opened cloth-wrapped blade.
He didn't unwrap it. Holding it carefully.
"This blade has a specific owner," he said. "Sentient weapons don't bond with just anyone. They reject the wrong hands." He glanced at Dylan, and his voice tightened. "You're lucky. It could have taken the arm instead of blistering it."
Then he looked at Garima.
"Is it yours?"
The corridor was completely silent.
She reached out and touched the hilt.
Nothing happened.
"Of course it's hers," Riley said. "She touched it and nothing happened. The sword recognized her."
"Where did it come from? Why is it here in Garima?" Ava asked. Her voice quivering. "Did you bring it?"
"A vision," Garima said, the lie coming easily. "I had a vision. I needed to retrieve it. I was going to tell you when—"
"When?" Agatha's voice was sharp.
"When the time was right."
"The time was right when you brought a dangerous magical artifact into a building full of people without telling anyone," Agatha said. She looked very angry.
Priest Hill was already helping Dylan up. Zihan knelt beside Dylan, channeling energy as his hands moved carefully over the burns. Ava stood near Dylan and looked at Garima with an expression she couldn't read.
"So, training is cancelled?," Duke Ruslan asked.
"Yes," Garima said.
She didn't notice when he left.
The rest of the day came apart in pieces.
Rowan's messenger arrived mid-afternoon. Garima heard about it secondhand, from Riley, because she hadn't left Dylan's side long enough to receive anyone. His burns were superficial — Ava had confirmed it twice — but they looked gruesome and she couldn't make herself move.
By late afternoon, word reached her that Renya had separated from the caravan, which meant she was somewhere in Solmere alone while Garima sat beside Dylan's bed feeling useless.
The weight of everything she wasn't handling had settled fully onto her shoulders. The trade dispute in Domnur. Agatha's unanswered questions about the sword. Hill quiet in his room, meditating on implications she didn't fully understand. Ava present but unreachable, her attention locked entirely on Dylan.
And Renya was out there.
Zihan was the one who finally said it plainly:
"go."
Garima didn't want to leave Dylan. But Riley was already waiting with Filly at the door. Garima knew what they were doing. If they waited for her to decide, she never would.
—
They searched the small alleys first. Then enquired at the crafts quarter. The shops near the east gate. Renya hadn't registered at any inn.
They were cutting through the market when Riley stopped walking.
Renya was sitting on a bench near a food stall, eating buns.
She didn't look like someone who was desperate to reach Solmere. She didn't look exhausted or broken.
Garima stopped.
Filly's hand landed gently on her shoulder. "Is that her?"
"Yes," Garima said.
Riley already walked up to her.
Renya looked up. Her eyes found Garima across the crowd.
She set her meat bun down and stood cautious.
And that was when Garima felt it. The quiet unraveling of everything she had constructed. All the urgency, all the guilt, all the careful orchestration — none of it had matched the reality sitting on that bench eating street food with bronze coins she had apparently earned herself.
Renya wasn't wounded.
Renya had simply walked into the city and bought herself dinner.
She didn't need saving.
But Garima needed her. So she crossed the market and introduced herself,
"Hello, are you a Swordswoman?" she asked.
"Yes." Renya said. "But how do you know? I don't even own a sword."
"You look like one." Garima said "and you keep trying to reach for the hilt."
"What do you want?"
They talked — carefully. Garima didn't mention visions. Renya didn't care about Saintesses. She wanted work. Honest work, with honest terms.
So Garima offered her a job.
"Will you be my bodyguard?" she asked. "Room and board will be provided. The pay will be good."
Renya considered it for a moment. Her eyes moved over Garima's face, sizing her up. Speculating. Scrutinizing.
"I don't trust you," she said finally.
"I know," Garima said. "I'm not asking you to. I'm asking you to work for me. Those are different things."
Renya looked at her for another beat. Then nodded.
---
They brought her back to the shrine as Phael was coming up.
Agatha took one look at her and said, "So a bodyguard."
Renya responded with a tight smile
Garima watched her move through the shrine as Priest Filly took her to the guest rooms.
She had returned to Dylan's room with Riley. Zihan and Ava were there.
Outside the window the city was dark. Dylan looked a little better. His hand was bandaged. Renya was in a guest room down the hall, alive and capable and nothing like the version Garima had imagined. Zihan and Riley had gone to fetch their bedding and might or might not come back tonight.
Ava sat beside Dylan's bed, her attention entirely on him.
Garima stood near the window.
She had felt certain exactly once today. This morning, before the bells. When she was alone— not the Saintess, not the author, not the person who had made promises she was only now beginning to understand the weight of.
She had failed the boy she called her brother.
The artifact pulsed faintly in her hand.
"I failed him," she whispered.
"You didn't know it would happen," Cosmo replied. "That's not the same as failing."
"I didn't see it coming. I thought I had it all accounted for."
"You thought a lot of things," Cosmo said, with a gentleness that made it worse. "What matters now is that Dylan will recover. Renya is here. That's what today accomplished."
Garima didn't answer.
"The trade dispute isn't yours to resolve," Cosmo continued. "Kingdoms have survived their own politics. You cannot carry everything."
"I know," Garima said.
"Then let it be enough."
"It doesn't feel like enough."
"It will have to be," Cosmo said quietly.
"Because it's the edge of what you can actually control."
"What exactly are the plotholes,Cosmo?" She asked.
"You will know once you see them." Cosmo said.
Garima felt a flicker of irritation. But then she looked at Ava—her focus unwavering, her hands careful, her back turned. She had every right to be upset. Garima wasn't going to pretend otherwise.
She looked at Dylan, sleeping.
Somewhere in the exhaustion of the day, something had happened.
She couldn't name it yet. But she was beginning to understand—not what she had to do, exactly, but what it was going to cost her.
That was probably enough for one day. She didn't believe it. But she told herself so anyway.