CHAPTER 71
Azra'il - POV
Roa appeared on the horizon shortly after midday, its walls cutting across the plain like a line too familiar to demand conscious attention.
The dark point hanging above the city, on the other hand, definitely hadn't been part of the landscape when I'd left.
I slowed my pace, examining it with the same scepticism normally reserved for street vendors offering "legendary artefacts" at bargain-bin prices. From a distance, it looked like just a dark smudge, too big to be a bird, too still to be anything natural. I considered, for one generous second, that it might just be a particularly dense cloud, or some ordinary flying object, or one of those optical distortions the plain's heat liked to produce on sunny afternoons.
The closer I got, though, the more that comfortable hypothesis kept losing credibility.
〈Eos.〉
[Detected.]
〈I was expecting a slightly more detailed analysis.〉
[The current distance does not permit a slightly more detailed analysis.]
I kept advancing, and gradually Eos managed to catalogue fragments, never gathering enough to offer a complete explanation.
[Spherical, or approximately spherical, structure. Elevated mana concentration. Presence of organised patterns incompatible with natural formation. Probable residual consequence, or active component, of a large-scale spell. Possible spatial alterations detected, though distance prevents confirmation.]
〈Threat level?〉
[Indeterminate.]
〈That answer remains one of my least favourite in your repertoire.〉
[Direct approach would allow for a more accurate assessment—]
〈Not a chance.〉
[I did not finish the recommendation.]
〈My answer remains no, however you finish that sentence.〉
The last time Eos had recommended a direct approach to an anomaly of that category, I'd ended up poking a magical black hole with a combat lance, just to test the phenomenon's consistency.
The lance had been absorbed first. Then my arm. Then the rest of me, in a sequence that was fairly quick, painful, and deeply humiliating for someone with my survival résumé.
[On that occasion, I recommended only an instrumental approach. You decided to touch the anomaly directly.]
〈The lance was an instrument.〉
[The lance was clutched in your hand.]
〈Irrelevant administrative details to the central argument.〉
The death itself had taken only eleven seconds. Unfortunately, my temporal perception had been stretched enough that it felt like, at minimum, some six hours of progressive magical spaghettification, pulled in directions no human body should ever consider anatomically available.
I'd rated the experience, at the time, one star out of five, with a formal complaint lodged on some administrative plane whose name I no longer even remembered.
I decided, therefore, not to repeat the mistake.
I covered my tunic, my hair, and most of my face with a plain cloak pulled from the inventory, tucking my hair inside it with reasonable care. I reduced my own ocular luminosity to the barest perceptible minimum and concealed my presence enough to pass for any ordinary traveller tired from a long journey. I entered Roa alongside a small queue of merchants who, as always, were arguing about taxes with that enthusiasm of people who never agreed with their own tax burden, choosing one of the less busy gates.
I'd left Roa without announcing my own departure to half the city. I saw no reason to return parading in like some little oriental deity freshly descended from the mountains to personally audit the mortal population.
The guard barely glanced at the cloak, asked the generic reason for the visit, received an equally generic answer, and let me through without any further curiosity.
It was only inside the walls that I managed to observe the sphere more closely.
A dark-red colour, almost organic. Apparently translucent surface, revealing something in constant motion just beneath its own skin, runes, or rune-like patterns, circling around at a rhythm too slow to be random. It pulsed, discreetly, at an interval that suggested purpose rather than instability. Small distortions in the light around it confirmed the absurd mana concentration Eos had already detected at a distance.
And, most unsettling of all, it had the clear feel of something still incomplete, like a sentence interrupted midway, waiting to be finished.
People kept walking normally beneath it.
Vendors shouted prices. Carts went by. Children played chase between the legs of adults too busy to notice. No one raised their eyes for more than a few seconds, as though that mass of unknown energy floating over the city was, essentially, urban furniture.
I stopped in front of the first street vendor I found, a man too fat for his own apron, surrounded by fruit of dubious quality.
"How long has that been up there?"
The man followed my gaze without much interest. "The sphere? Nearly a month now."
"And no one's done anything about it?"
"Plenty was done at the start. Screaming, praying, running in circles, buying too much food thinking it'd be the end of the world, trying to leave the city en masse. Then it simply didn't do anything."
"So everyone went back to work?"
"The bills didn't stop coming, missy."
That sentence, on its own, explained the entire normalisation more efficiently than any philosophical treatise on human resilience. People weren't stupid. They simply couldn't keep up real panic for an entire month against something they couldn't reach, understand, or influence in any practical way.
Capitalism, apparently, survived any apocalypse with a stubbornness I really ought to have anticipated a long time ago.
I confirmed as much a few steps later, passing an improvised stall where a child, no more than ten, hair unkempt, eyes of an experienced saleswoman, was offering small carved wooden amulets.
"Amulet against the sphere, miss! Guaranteed protection or your money back!"
"Guaranteed by whom?"
"By me!"
"Do you have any evidence of efficacy?"
"No one who used my amulet has been hit by the sphere yet!"
"No one's been hit at all, girl."
"Exactly! The amulet is working perfectly!"
I kept walking, genuinely impressed by that child's flawless commercial logic, who would probably have a brilliant career in any merchant guild that deigned to hire her before she turned twelve.
Further on, a tavern advertised, in large and badly painted letters, the "End of the World Special", half price on any drink, "because it's better to toast while there's still time." A woman was selling embroidered handkerchiefs with the phrase "I Survived Roa's Red Eye (For Now)." A group of children was playing "who can stare at the sphere without blinking the longest," a game I strongly suspected wouldn't end well for any participant in the long run.
I asked an older woman, sitting at her doorway with a sewing basket, what she thought it was.
"A divine punishment, surely," she said, without looking up from her work. "Or a new moon. My neighbour thinks it's a forgotten weapon from some ancient kingdom. The baker on the corner swears it's an omen about the Boreas family."
"And what's the popular nickname?"
"They call it the Red Eye. Some prefer Dark Moon. I heard an old man call it the Sky Jewel, but I think he just wanted to sound poetic."
I thanked her for the information and moved on, processing the full picture with a mix of professional exasperation and genuine discomfort.
I'd left Roa for the express purpose of gaining enough strength to protect the people who mattered when some inevitable disaster finally arrived. I hadn't expected to return, barely over a month later, and find a calamity already parked over the city itself, patiently accumulating mana, with an entire population sleeping peacefully right beneath it as though none of that was, potentially, the prelude to something catastrophic.
It was, essentially, a magical shit-bomb suspended over every single person I intended to protect.
Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.
〈Eos, official threat classification.〉
[The classification as a "bomb" cannot be confirmed with the data currently available.]
〈Mass of unknown energy, created by some unidentified spell, suspended over an entire city, accumulating mana with no apparent explanation.〉
[Correct, strictly speaking.]
〈Bomb.〉
[Emotional classification provisionally accepted, without formal scientific validation.]
I decided not to act immediately. Flying up there would draw too much attention in a city already nervous enough, and I had no guarantee whatsoever that touching it wouldn't result in a particularly painful reprise of the black-hole incident. First I needed to understand what had happened during my absence, gather enough information to act with intelligence rather than suicidal enthusiasm.
〈Eos, locate Chubby-Cheeks.〉
[Signature found. Approximate distance: two kilometres and three hundred metres. Location consistent with the Boreas property. Marking route.]
I followed the mentally marked point, crossing the streets still under the cloak, with no one showing any sign of recognition. Arriving at the property, I deliberately avoided the main entrance, using it would require explaining my disappearance to servants, guards, and anyone else idle enough to recognise me in the process, and I scaled the side wall with the naturalness of someone who already lived there and, therefore, quite logically chose the most suspicious available route.
The wall demanded only legs.
I now possessed, rather better legs.
I found the three of them in the training courtyard, exactly where Eos had indicated.
Rudeus was trying, with visibly exhausted patience, to teach Eris and Ghislaine to keep a small sphere of water suspended in the air without letting it explode against any nearby surface.
"You're not meant to throw the water, Eris. You're meant to keep it stable."
"It was stable before it hit the wall!"
"That's not what stable means!"
He had rings under his eyes deep enough to rival theatrical make-up, his hair messed up beyond any reasonable recovery, his clothes crumpled in a way that suggested sleeping dressed on more than one recent occasion. His voice came out tired, almost automatic. Scattered notes covered part of the ground around him, and a mug of something that definitely wasn't water was going cold, forgotten, on a nearby bench.
Rudeus seemed to have aged a good three years during my five weeks of absence.
Considering he was, on paper, still eight, the effect was particularly impressive.
I stood watching for a few extra seconds, hidden under the hood, assessing his teaching with a genuine surprise I hadn't expected to feel. He'd done a decent job, even while looking a single lesson away from abandoning formal education entirely and going to live isolated in the forest.
It was Ghislaine who noticed me first.
Even with my presence concealed, she caught something, a familiar scent beneath the layers of travel, or simply the sharp warrior's intuition that never fully switched off. She instinctively placed herself between the hooded stranger and the two children.
"Who are you?"
Rudeus and Eris looked in the same direction.
I pulled back the hood.
The white hair fell first, the red ribbon holding part of it in place. Then came the eyes, luminous, the silver sparks slowly spinning behind the iris. Then the whole face, too refined to seem entirely natural.
There was a strange silence.
No one recognised me immediately, not because I'd turned into someone else, but because everyone was expecting the Azra'il of a month before, with no great changes. The figure before them looked more like a young foreign martial artist who'd wandered onto the property by some serious geographical mistake.
"You all fell silent with that look of shock," I finally said. "I was expecting a slightly quicker recognition."
Rudeus blinked. "Azra'il?"
"In person. Or, to be precise, in person with some adjustments."
It was as though a dam had burst.
"You finally showed up!" he said, the relief in his voice giving way, almost immediately, to a more detailed visual assessment. "I was about to lose it here."
"Really, that's the first thing you say after more than a month without word from your own sister?"
"The second thing. The first was 'Azra'il?', which I'm already counting, to be honest."
He circled around me, examining with a curiosity that quickly exceeded any reasonable limit of personal space, bringing his face too close to my eyes in a clear attempt to identify the silver sparks up close.
"You've grown!" he said, stepping back a little, his eyes measuring the height difference with almost clinical attention. "All that in just over a month!"
His face grew visibly more downcast as the implication settled in, I'd always been taller than him, a fact he'd been actively trying to ignore for years with a noteworthy optimism, and now the difference had only grown, crushing once and for all any residual hope of ever catching up with me through pure natural growth.
I put my hand on his forehead and pushed lightly, re-establishing the minimum distance of decency.
"You went off to do who knows what and came back looking like the lead of a Chinese period drama," he added, still trying to visually recover his own ego.
I stared at him a second longer than strictly necessary. "And you still look like someone who sleeps dressed and considers cold coffee a complete food group. Everyone evolves at their own pace."
Ghislaine approached next, her eyes running over me with an attention that went well beyond simple appearance.
"You're different," she said.
"That observation seems quite popular today."
"I'm not talking only about appearance." Her eyes narrowed, assessing something I suspected only a true warrior would notice. "Your presence is different. Denser, but quieter at the same time."
"It hasn't disappeared. It's just learned to stay quiet when I don't want to be noticed."
I noticed her hand settle, almost instinctively, near her own sword hilt, not out of conscious threat, but because her body, trained over years to recognise danger, had identified something in me that deserved renewed respect, even without quite understanding what.
Eris, until then, had remained still for far too long to be normal.
"YOU!" she finally exploded, the fury built up over whole weeks escaping all at once.
"Me."
"YOU SAID FOUR WEEKS AT MOST!"
"Technically, I said approximately three or four."
"THIRTY-FOUR DAYS ISN'T FOUR WEEKS!"
She advanced, clearly ready to continue the scolding with all the vigour that month of waiting had built up.
Then she got close enough to actually look.
The longer hair. The skin with that discreet luminosity. The eyes with the silver sparks slowly spinning. The more harmonious face. The strange, clearly foreign tunic.
She froze in the middle of her own fury.
"You're..."
I waited. "I'm?"
"You're..."
She stopped again, her face starting to take on a colour that definitely had nothing to do with anger.
〈Eos, any detectable neurological damage in her?〉
[Elevated heart rate. Noticeable rise in facial temperature. No identifiable damage.]
〈Then why has she stopped forming complete sentences?〉
[A hypothesis is available.]
〈I don't think I want to hear that hypothesis, Eos.〉
[Voluntary disinterest logged.]
Eris seemed to remember, with considerable effort, that she was still in the middle of a legitimate complaint.
"You're strange!" she declared, with the authority of someone who'd just reached a brilliant conclusion after whole seconds of confused silence.
"Was that the final conclusion?"
"YES!"
"It took quite a while to get there."
She reached out her hand, almost without noticing the movement, lightly touching a loose lock of my hair, probably hypnotised by the new texture, before yanking her hand back quickly, as though she'd touched something forbidden.
The anger returned, but visibly weakened. "You took too long!"
"I know."
"You could have warned me."
"I know."
"Idiot."
"I know that too."
I didn't offer a half-baked apology or a technical justification. I just acknowledged, with a sincerity I rarely dispensed so easily, that she was right to be upset.
She then grabbed the sleeve of my tunic with her fingers and categorically refused to let go for the next few minutes, as though that were a silent agreement requiring no explanation at all.
It was Ghislaine who returned to the practical question, her eyes still running over the tunic's fabric with renewed curiosity.
"Are these garments from the Dragon King's Realm?"
I looked down, as though only in that instant I'd remembered I was no longer wearing the same clothes I'd left Roa in.
"Possibly."
"Possibly?" Rudeus repeated, already suspicious.
"There's a considerably long story behind them."
Ghislaine crossed her arms. "Tell it."
I understood, in that exact moment, that there were two options available. The first would be to explain the dimensional inventory, the previous lives, the entire cultivation system, the cavern, the spirit lake, and the real origin of a garment kept for several cycles inside a space that, strictly speaking, shouldn't exist anywhere.
The second would be to lie with conviction.
I chose the responsible option.
"During my journey, I met an old monk master originally from the Dragon King's Realm. A red panda named Master Shifu."
Silence returned to the entire courtyard.
Rudeus stared at me. Ghislaine remained perfectly serious. Eris blinked a few times in a row.
"A red panda?" she finally asked.
"Yes. Small, furry, extremely grumpy. Had impressive eyebrows and an unhealthy relationship with staircases."
Rudeus narrowed his eyes. "You just made that up."
"That's a fairly serious accusation."
"You paused before saying 'red panda'."
"I was choosing the most appropriate translation."
"Translation of what?"
"Of the secret dialect of the Dragon King's Realm's monks."
He kept staring at me with the expression of someone who recognised a lie in progress perfectly well, but still couldn't calculate the full extent of the crime being committed in real time.
Ghislaine completely ignored the side discussion. "Was he strong?"
"Extraordinarily. He could incapacitate an opponent by touching specific points on the body with just two fingers."
Her ears perked up, alert. "A pressure-point technique?"
"Exactly. He could also defeat people using only a staff, sarcasm, and paternal disappointment."
Rudeus opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. "What does 'paternal disappointment' mean as a combat technique?"
"You'd understand if you knew Master Shifu."
"He doesn't exist!"
"That kind of prejudice is exactly why the great masters prefer to live isolated in the mountains, far from sceptics like you."
Eris leaned in another step, clearly more interested than any sensible person should be at that moment. "And he trained you?"
"After observing me for approximately seven seconds, he concluded that I possessed great potential, questionable discipline, and a worrying tendency to answer simple questions with unnecessary commentary."
Rudeus nodded slowly, against his own will. "That last part sounds true."
I ignored him. "Master Shifu took me to a temple built atop a mountain. To get there, one had to climb a staircase of several thousand steps."
"How many?" Eris asked.
"No one knew for certain. Everyone gave up counting before the halfway point."
"Did you manage to climb it?"
"No."
She blinked. "No?"
"I used wind magic and flew to the top."
Ghislaine nodded, approving the practical solution without hesitation. Rudeus put a hand to his face.
"Did the master get angry?" Eris asked.
"Deeply. He said I needed to learn humility, perseverance, and respect for the traditional path."
"And what did you say?"
"That building a temple atop a mountain and then complaining when people avoided the staircase was, essentially, a poorly resolved urban-planning problem."
Rudeus's shoulders began to shake. I couldn't immediately determine whether he was laughing or suffering deeply. Probably both at once.
"After that," I continued, "I was introduced to the Furious Five."
Rudeus slowly lowered his hand. "Of course there were five."
"Why wouldn't there be?"
"Because you're making all of this up as you go, with no visible planning whatsoever!"
"Keep interrupting, and I'll turn the Furious Five into the Furious Seven just to make your mental tally harder."
He shut his mouth immediately.
"Who were they?" Eris asked, unable to hide her growing enthusiasm.
"The temple's best disciples. A violent tigress with serious issues showing affection, a gentle snake with no limbs whatsoever, an excessively sociable monkey, a praying mantis with an evident size complex, and a crane who seemed to silently question every life decision that had led her there."
Eris broke into a wide grin. "I liked the tigress."
"I have absolutely no doubt about that."
"And did you fight all of them?"
"Not immediately. First I was put through the whole temple's traditional training."
Ghislaine leaned her body slightly forward. "What training?"
"Carrying buckets of water, keeping balance on bamboo poles, dodging various traps, parrying blows blindfolded, achieving inner peace, and catching steamed dumplings before Master Shifu snatched them out of my reach."
"Were the dumplings an official part of the training?" Eris asked, incredulous.
"It was, without doubt, the most violent part of the entire process."
Rudeus let out a short, completely incredulous laugh. "The panda master trained you using food."
"Red panda."
"That doesn't make the story any more believable!"
"I'm not trying to make it believable. I'm reporting facts with precision."
"You just admitted, minutes ago, that it was a lie!"
"Lies can also be reported with consistent internal precision, Rudeus."
He fell silent, probably trying to figure out at exactly what point he'd completely lost control of that conversation.
"Over the following weeks," I went on, giving him no room to recover, "I trained alongside the Furious Five. The Tigress tried to break three of my ribs on the very first day."
"Did she manage it?" Eris asked.
"Of course not."
"Did you break hers?"
"Also not. Master Shifu had very strict rules about permanently damaging training partners."
Eris seemed genuinely disappointed by that peaceful outcome.
"The Snake taught control and flexibility. The Monkey tried to teach me to fight using unpredictable movements, though half of them basically consisted of climbing where he hadn't been invited. The Mantis insisted that size didn't matter while spending far too much time talking exclusively about his own size. The Crane taught balance, aerial movement, and the fine art of looking exhausted without ever saying a single word about it."
Rudeus discreetly pointed at Ghislaine. "She already masters that last technique, by the way."
Ghislaine solemnly ignored him.
"Did you fight all five?" she asked.
"After some time training."
"All together?" Eris wanted to know.
"Not at first. First individually. Then in pairs. Finally, all simultaneously."
Eris's eyes lit up with an almost physical enthusiasm. "And did you win?"
"On the third attempt."
"And the first two?"
"I gained valuable information about my own limits."
Rudeus let out another laugh, louder this time. "You lost."
"'Lose' is an emotionally charged word to describe practical data collection through repeated bodily impact."
"You got beaten up."
"With a clearly defined scientific purpose."
"That's still getting beaten up, from any angle you look at it."
"Your stubborn commitment to simplistic terminology is, in a way, admirable."
Eris seemed increasingly enchanted by the whole story, her eyes fixed on me as though every word were pure gold. "After that did you become the strongest warrior of all?"
"No. Master Shifu declared that strength, speed, and technique weren't enough on their own. According to him, I still needed to achieve true inner peace."
Rudeus looked at me, sceptical. "You? Inner peace?"
"Me, myself."
"That sounds physically impossible."
"It was a rather difficult week for everyone involved in the process, I admit."
"I can imagine."
"I was placed before a lake high on the mountain and instructed to remain in absolute silence until I understood the true nature of my own spirit."
"And did you manage it?" Ghislaine asked.
"After mentally expelling every individual who insisted on trying to talk to me during the process."
Rudeus narrowed his eyes, suspicious. "That part sounds suspiciously close to what you probably actually did."
"Narrative coincidences occur with a certain frequency."
"You're mixing truth into the lie on purpose."
"That's exactly what gives any good story structural stability, Rudeus. You should write that down."
"So what happened next?" Eris interrupted, impatient with the metanarrative digression.
"After finally achieving inner peace, Master Shifu announced that I'd face the temple's final trial."
"The Furious Five again?"
"No."
"A dragon, then?"
"Also not."
"Then what?"
"A snow leopard named Tai Lung. A former disciple of the master himself, an accomplished martial-arts expert, a fugitive from a prison considered impossible to escape, and the bearer of daddy issues so dense they probably had their own gravity and a measurable orbit."
Rudeus slowly ran a hand over his face. "Where do you come up with this stuff?"
"From memory."
"Memory of what, exactly?"
"Of the battle against Tai Lung."
"Which didn't happen!"
"Were you present to confirm that for certain?"
"No..."
"Then your position lacks solid evidence."
He opened his mouth again, but Ghislaine spoke first. "Was he stronger than the five disciples?"
"Considerably. He knew all the temple's techniques, mastered pressure-point attacks, and could cut through an entire small military formation without losing speed in the process."
Ghislaine grew more serious, absorbing the information with real tactical interest. "How did you win?"
"First I destroyed the terrain around us to limit his movement."
Rudeus pointed at me, almost relieved. "That part I believe without question."
"Then I let him get close enough."
"Why?" Eris asked.
"Because excessively confident opponents tend to explain their entire goals once they already believe they've won the fight. Tai Lung spent several whole minutes talking about destiny, recognition, and the Dragon Scroll."
Eris tilted her head.
"What was the Dragon Scroll?"
"The temple's most important relic. According to Master Shifu, it contained the secret of absolute power, a technique or knowledge capable of turning the chosen warrior into someone practically invincible."
Eris's eyes widened immediately.
"And could anyone read it?"
"No. The scroll was only ever to be handed to whoever was recognised as the true Dragon Warrior."
"You?"
"Eventually."
Rudeus let out a short laugh through his nose.
"Tai Lung believed the title should have been his. He'd spent his entire life training under Master Shifu's guidance, mastered every technique the temple had, and grown convinced that receiving the scroll was his inevitable destiny."
"But he didn't receive it," Ghislaine concluded.
"No. The masters decided he didn't possess the balance necessary to receive such power. Tai Lung reacted to the rejection with the emotional stability of someone who considered destroying an entire valley a reasonable way to request a second evaluation."
Eris crossed her arms.
"So he wanted to steal the scroll."
"Exactly. The entire training, the escape from a prison considered impossible, and the return to the temple all happened because he believed that by getting his hands on that relic he'd finally receive the power he judged belonged to him."
"And what was inside the scroll?" Eris asked, eyes wide.
"Nothing."
She blinked.
"Nothing?"
"It was a golden, reflective surface. That's all. The great spiritual message was that there was no secret ingredient at all and that true power came entirely from believing in oneself."
Eris's face crumpled with immediate disdain.
"That's idiotic!"
"That's exactly what I said at the time. Word for word."
Rudeus started properly laughing.
"You insulted the temple's great spiritual lesson?"
"I'd climbed a mountain, trained for weeks, and faced five martial-arts experts consecutively. I expected, at the very least, some practical and useful instruction as a reward."
"And what did Master Shifu say?"
"That I still hadn't understood the true meaning."
"And did you understand it later?"
"No. I simply accepted that arguing philosophy with an elderly red panda was a particularly inefficient use of my available time."
Rudeus had to cover his own mouth to contain another, louder laugh.
"And Tai Lung?" Ghislaine pressed, returning to the tactical point.
"When he realised he'd dedicated his entire life to obtaining a golden mirror that essentially told him to believe in himself, he suffered a rather inconvenient existential crisis for the fight's schedule."
"Did he stop fighting?" Eris asked.
"Not completely. But he stood still long enough, staring at his own reflection and reconsidering every decision he'd made since childhood."
"And what did you do?"
"I took advantage of the distraction and used the Wuxi Finger Hold."
Eris's eyes immediately went to my hands.
"What does it do?"
I slowly raised my little finger.
"This."
She waited.
Ghislaine waited.
Rudeus, against all good sense shown up to that point, also waited.
"This what?" Eris finally asked.
"I can't demonstrate it in practice. The target would stop occupying this region of space."
Eris took a step back on pure instinct. Ghislaine watched my finger with renewed and visibly respectful attention.
Rudeus let out a tired sigh.
"You're trying to scare them just so no one asks for a real demonstration," he said.
"It's working quite well, as it happens."
"It isn't," declared Eris, stubborn. "I want to learn that technique."
"The Wuxi Finger Hold requires whole decades of dedicated training."
"You were only gone for a month!"
"The flow of time inside the Valley of Peace is considerably more complex than it first appears."
Rudeus let out an involuntary laugh at the sheer absurdity of the story. "Now there's a Valley of Peace too?"
"Naturally there is. Where else would a temple full of animals who are experts in advanced martial arts be located?"
"Nowhere, because none of this exists for real!"
"Your geographical knowledge remains fairly limited, despite everything."
"I've lived in this whole world for eight years! And I've never heard of this valley!"
"And have you ever personally visited the Dragon King's Realm?"
He hesitated, visibly caught off guard by the question. "No..."
"Exactly my point. You've never left the Fittoa region, you have a lot to learn."
He kept staring at me, genuinely offended that I'd used the complete absence of contrary evidence as though it were, itself, solid evidence in my favour.
"After defeating Tai Lung," I continued, giving him no time to reorganise his own reasoning, "I returned to the main temple. Master Shifu gathered the Furious Five, handed me the Scroll, and officially declared me the Dragon Warrior."
Eris looked again at my tunic. "And he gave you these clothes?"
"Yes. Official symbol of the newly earned position."
Rudeus narrowed his eyes, suspicious again. "Didn't you just say the Scroll was with Tai Lung until that point?"
"I recovered it during the final confrontation, obviously."
"And the temple already had clothes ready, exactly your size, waiting?"
"Ancient prophecies tend to make advance clothing planning considerably easier."
He stayed silent for several whole seconds. "You just thought of that right this second."
"Naturally I just thought of it. The story needed to close that logical gap."
"Azra'il!"
"I'm merely maintaining narrative consistency throughout the account."
Ghislaine, who'd followed everything with almost clinical attention, finally spoke. "This entire story is clearly a lie. A well-crafted and interesting one to listen to."
"Completely, from start to finish."
Rudeus raised both hands to the sky, in a gesture of belated victory. "Finally someone admits that out loud!"
Ghislaine continued, unshaken. "You don't intend to explain where you actually got those clothes, nor what really happened during training or to you."
"No, I really don't."
She nodded, with no visible indignation. "Understood."
Rudeus looked from Ghislaine to me, incredulous at the speed of that acceptance. "And you just accept that, just like that, no further questions?"
"She made it absolutely clear she won't actually answer."
"After telling a whole story about a red panda, five warrior animals, an empty scroll, and a leopard with deep daddy issues!"
"She was quite clear about her own limits, Rudeus."
He opened his mouth again, but found no argument against that particular logic.
Eris, however, still hadn't given up on the question that actually mattered to her. "Can I become a Dragon Warrior someday too?"
"Perhaps, with enough dedication."
"What do I need to do?"
"Climb the entire staircase."
"How many steps, exactly?"
"Several thousand, at minimum."
"I can do that!"
"Without using any magic at all, and carrying two full buckets of water the whole time."
She hesitated, for the first time since the conversation began. "Is that an official part of the training?"
"No. The temple's spiritual lift has been broken for decades."
Rudeus slowly lowered himself until he crouched on the ground, laughing with both hands covering his entire face, his shoulders shaking uncontrollably.
I watched him for a few seconds, considering, with genuine sisterly concern, whether thirty-four whole days teaching Eris alone while also running our little shampoo business had caused far greater damage than I'd originally estimated before leaving.
The entry into the mansion proper was, at the very least, memorable.
The servants themselves took a good while to recognise me. Two maids completely stopped working in the middle of the corridor. An elderly butler nearly asked, out loud, who exactly I was before recognising, too late, his own misidentification. The news spread across the entire property with impressive speed: Miss Azra'il was back, wearing strange clothes from the Dragon King's Realm, had grown quite a bit, her hair was enormous, and maybe she'd been adopted by mysterious monks, or was secretly a foreign princess, or had personally defeated some legendary leopard in the process.
Within about twenty minutes, I calculated, the story would already have at least seven different versions circulating around the whole house, and one of them would almost certainly involve me inheriting an entire temple by birthright.
Philip received me with that same calm courtesy as always, his eyes assessing my height, my clothes, my hair, and, above all, my eyes with an attention that suggested a much quicker understanding than anyone else in the house had shown so far.
"You were gone a little over a month," he said.
"Correct."
"And you've come back considerably taller, dressed as a foreign martial artist, and looking as though you'd been adopted by some noble family of the Dragon King's Realm."
"Also correct, in essence."
"What happened, exactly?"
"Master Shifu."
"Who?"
"A red panda monk."
Philip remained silent for several whole seconds, processing that with admirable calm. "You don't intend to actually explain."
"You're a sharp man."
"Thank you, then, for sparing our mutual time with a politely short lie."
He was too intelligent to argue with a lie built on purpose to be recognised as a lie from the start.
"People will find it quite strange," he added, already thinking through the social and political implications.
"Then say I had a sudden growth spurt."
"And the hair too?"
"A concurrent capillary spurt. Quite rare, but documented."
Sauros, on the other hand, heard only the words "training," "Dragon Warrior," and "master," and immediately lost all interest in the rest of the details.
"WHERE IS THIS MOUNTAIN?!" he bellowed, already rising from his own chair with a dangerous enthusiasm.
"Far away."
"HOW FAR EXACTLY?"
"Beyond the Valley of Peace."
"SEND A LETTER AT ONCE! I WANT TO CHALLENGE THIS MASTER PERSONALLY!"
"He's rather small in stature."
"EVEN BETTER! I WON'T NEED TO HOLD BACK AT ALL!"
He believed the story completely, I realised, not because he was naive, but because the story was too good to be questioned by someone with his own enthusiastic temperament. He also demanded, with considerable insistence, a practical demonstration of my new strength as soon as possible. I promised another day, after being absolutely certain I wouldn't accidentally demolish the entire courtyard in the process.
Lady Hilda, predictably, had the most intense reaction of all once the subject turned to the hair.
She came closer, touched a lock with almost reverent care, and grew genuinely horrified when I mentioned, in passing, that I intended to ask one of the maids to cut it.
"Cut it?"
The word came out low, carrying the same disbelief someone might use before confessing to a particularly barbaric crime.
"Yes."
"You really intend to cut this hair?"
"That's usually the most efficient solution when it gets too long."
"How much do you intend to cut?"
"Back to how it was before."
Lady Hilda took half a step back.
"Azra'il, any young noblewoman would envy hair like this. Even ladies of the royal family would covet that shine and texture."
"I'm glad for them. I still prefer mine short."
"Hair is an important part of a girl's beauty."
"I don't intend to compete in any beauty contest."
"It isn't a competition. Long, well-kept hair is a sign of elegance and femininity."
"It's also easier to grab during a fight."
Lady Hilda stared at me in silence.
"You can't evaluate everything as though it were combat equipment."
"I can. I have quite a lot of practice at it."
"Cutting this would be a crime against every beauty in this world."
"It's hair, Lady Hilda. It grows back."
She turned to a nearby maid with the immediate authority of someone who'd just identified a grave threat within her own household.
"No one in this house touches that hair with a pair of scissors without my personal, express authorisation."
The maid straightened her posture.
"Yes, ma'am."
"It's my hair," I observed.
"While you're in this house, preventing avoidable tragedies is also my responsibility."
"I didn't know the Boreas family's hospitality included compulsory capillary guardianship."
"It does now."
Eris, who'd so far kept a cautious distance, agreed far too quickly for it to be coincidence.
"She's right!"
Everyone present turned towards her.
Eris stiffened.
"Because... because it'd look stupid short again!" she finished, visibly blushing.
"It was short before, Eris."
"I know! And it looked stupid before too!"
I narrowed my eyes at her.
"Thank you for the exceptional tact."
"That wasn't a compliment!"
"Curious. You seem rather invested in stopping me looking stupid again."
Eris opened her mouth, but no coherent answer managed to make it through.
"Just don't cut it!" she finally blurted out.
"That sounded dangerously close to a request."
"It wasn't!"
"Naturally."
"And stop answering like that!"
Lady Hilda could no longer hold back her laughter, bringing one hand to her lips as she watched her daughter turn even redder.
"There's nothing funny about this!" Eris protested.
"Of course not," she replied, still smiling. "But I'm glad we finally agree on something."
Lady Hilda, satisfied with her own triumph, proposed a reasonable compromise: the maids would see to washing, combing, and trimming only the ends, perhaps cutting a few front locks that got in the way of my sight, while the overall length would be kept for a few days before any more definitive decision.
I accepted, mainly because arguing hair aesthetics with Lady Hilda and Eris didn't seem like a battle worth fighting at that moment.
But I quietly decided that, once the dust settled, I'd ask Ghislaine to cut the rest discreetly, away from the collective scrutiny of the whole house.
I gathered everyone later, once the initial excitement had finally started to settle, Philip, Hilda, Sauros, Eris, Ghislaine, and Rudeus, to deal with the matter that actually mattered.
"The process took longer than I'd originally estimated," I said, without unnecessary preamble. "I should have arranged some means of communication, or at least set a wider time margin before leaving. I apologise for the delay and for the worry it caused."
I didn't go into technical detail. I simply took full responsibility, without trying to soften my own planning failure.
"I'll make up for the extra days with extra hours of lessons for Eris and Ghislaine over the coming weeks."
Ghislaine accepted with immediate calm. Philip approved with a brief nod. Sauros thought the idea excellent, probably already imagining new opportunities to challenge me between one lesson and the next.
Eris took a whole second to process the full implication. "Wait."
"Yes?"
"You vanished, came back late, and now I have to study even more?"
"Correct."
"HOW IS THAT COMPENSATION FOR ME SPECIFICALLY?!"
"You'll receive additional education at no cost whatsoever, Little Pepper. Consider it a free investment in your own future."
"I DON'T WANT THAT INVESTMENT!"
"Your enthusiasm remains deeply inspiring, as always."
Rudeus smiled for the first time in whole weeks, relieved enough to look physically lighter. "I actually think it's fair!"
Eris turned on him immediately. "TRAITOR!"
"I haven't slept properly in five straight weeks, Eris. I'll take any relief offered to me, even at your expense!"
I looked at him with genuine consideration. "You kept everything running while I was away."
"Almost everything."
"That's already more than I honestly expected, considering the circumstances."
"That compliment got slightly offensive by the end there, you know."
"Entirely unintentional, I assure you."
Later that night, after the meal, after explaining things repeatedly to different audiences, and after the small silent mutiny against any scissors that came near my hair, I went back to my room.
Eris followed, claiming she still hadn't finished complaining about the extra lessons and, probably, determined to personally make sure I wouldn't vanish again during the night. As soon as she came in, she threw herself face-down onto my bed, hugged one of the pillows, and stayed there, occasionally grumbling against the fabric.
I let her continue her own silent protest and went to the window.
The sphere was still there, visible against the now-dark sky, looking even redder under the night light than it had during the day.
〈Eos, any changes logged?〉
[No measurable change in the brief observation period available so far.]
〈Keep logging its pulse pattern.〉
[Daily monitoring scheduled.]
〈And tell me if it changes in any way.〉
[Please define "changes."]
〈Glows more intensely, accumulates visible energy, descends towards the ground, opens, explodes, starts singing, or exhibits any behaviour normally associated with the beginning of the end of an entire city.〉
[Broad parameters, though duly logged for future reference.]
"I still don't understand why you disappearing for over a month means I have to study more."
Eris's indignant voice came from my bed.
She was lying face-down on the covers, her face half-buried in the pillow and her arms crossed under her chin, as though the injustice of the extra lessons required an appropriately suffering physical position.
"It's compensation for the lost teaching time."
"But you were the one who lost the time!"
"And now I'll make up for it."
"With my time!"
"Exactly."
"That's not compensation! It's punishment!"
"It can be both."
Eris let out a muffled noise against the pillow that probably contained several rather impolite opinions about my teaching methods.
I'd left Roa to become strong enough to protect the people I'd left behind there. I'd come back stronger, faster, and four centimetres taller.
Unfortunately, the possible magical bomb suspended over the entire city seemed completely indifferent to all those personal achievements, remaining there, patient and silent, as though it had all the time in the world.
Which, considering its nature, might well be literally true.