Hajin leaned against a thick tree at the edge of a clearing just outside the capital walls, his arms crossed loosely over his chest while he watched Juna move through her forms about thirty feet away.

She was fast, way faster than before the evolution, her white hair whipping behind her every time she changed direction, the silver claws catching sunlight as she cut through invisible targets with clean, precise strikes that barely disturbed the air.

’She’s still getting used to it,’ he thought, watching the way her feet occasionally over-committed on the sharper turns, her new speed outrunning the muscle memory she had built at her old level. ’Give her another week and she’ll have it down perfectly.’

He pulled up the system panel out of habit, scrolling past the stream status to the summoning tab. The notification was still sitting there, pulsing with a soft gold light that refused to be ignored.

[ Summoning Skill Cooldown Completed ]

[ You may now summon a new soul from the Veil ]

He stared at it for a while, then closed the panel and looked back at Juna.

’Hard to believe it’s only been a week,’ he thought, watching her drive her claws into a thick branch, the wood splitting clean in half before hitting the ground. ’It feels like I’ve known her for months.’

His mind drifted back to the first time he used the summoning skill. He remembered the dark gold circle forming in front of him, the light pulling together into a shape, and then a naked wolf beastkin girl dropping out of it and hitting the ground on her knees.

He remembered the absolute panic in her eyes when she woke up, the way she bolted into the trees before he could even get a single word out.

He remembered chasing her down, trying to explain what was happening while she snarled and clawed at him like a cornered animal.

’And then I named her,’ he thought, a faint smile pulling at his mouth. ’Just said Juna without even thinking about it. The insignia appeared on her chest right after and the loose mana around her body pulled in tight.’

The name had come out of nowhere, but the moment it left his mouth, it felt right. Like he was returning something to her instead of giving her something new. 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

The mark was still the strangest part. A golden insignia that appeared on the center of her chest the instant the name locked in, stabilizing her entire form and anchoring her soul to this world. He still didn’t fully understand how it worked, just that without it, a summoned soul would eventually unravel and disappear.

’After all of that, the skill locked itself,’ he thought, tapping his thumb against his arm. ’Years of having a summoning ability that did absolutely nothing, and the moment it finally works, it goes straight into cooldown.’

He had spent most of that cooldown period convincing himself he didn’t care. He had Juna, and she was more than enough to handle everything they had run into. But now that the skill was available again, his mind kept circling back to the same set of questions.

’Should I use it right away?’

The system had made the rules very clear back when the Veil connection first opened. He could only summon female souls, the ones trapped in the severed deep cycle that broke when the Goddess of Reincarnation fell.

Male souls still passed through the standard cycle normally, which left only women drifting in the Veil.

It sounded simple on paper. Open the connection, pull a soul out, name her, done.

But nothing about this was simple.

Juna came out terrified, hostile, and carrying an entire lifetime of trauma from being hunted and killed by humans. She didn’t trust him for days, flinching at every sudden movement and sleeping with one eye open.

Building even a basic level of trust with her had taken real time and effort, and he nearly got his face clawed off at least twice before she stopped treating him like a threat.

’What if the next one is worse?’ he thought, his brow pulling together slightly. ’What if she comes out completely broken from drifting in the Veil for too long? The system said some souls lose parts of themselves the longer they stay in there. What if I pull someone out who doesn’t even remember her own name?’

He chewed on that for a second.

’Or what if she’s the opposite,’ he thought, ’what if she comes out swinging and I have to deal with a fully hostile combatant while Juna is standing right there? Two summons who hate each other sounds like the worst possible outcome.’

The system didn’t let him choose who he got. There was no menu, filter or preview, he simply pushed mana into the Veil and whatever soul answered the call would manifest. It was completely random, and that lack of control made his stomach feel a little tight.

’And then there’s the naming,’ he thought, rubbing the back of his neck. ’I have to name her on the spot before her form destabilizes... no pressure at all.’

He let out a slow breath through his nose, his eyes drifting back to Juna as she finished a sequence of rapid strikes and stood still, her chest rising and falling evenly while steam curled off her shoulders in the air.

She looked strong, confident and completely different from the trembling, feral girl who had tried to run away from him.

’The first summon changed my entire life,’ he thought, watching the light catch the white fur on her ears. ’The second one might change it again, and I have no idea which direction it’ll go.’

He looked at the system panel one more time, then dismissed it.

’Not yet,’ he decided, pushing off the tree and walking toward the clearing. ’I need to think about this a little more before I make a decision that big.’

Juna heard him coming before he was even halfway there, her ears swiveling back to track his footsteps in the grass. She didn’t turn around, just kept her stance low while she caught her breath.

His boots pressed into the dirt behind her, steady and casual at first. She followed the rhythm without looking, her ears doing the work for her while she flexed the stiffness out of her fingers.

Then the rhythm changed.

The steps got lighter, the weight behind each one shrinking until the sound thinned out to almost nothing. Her ears twitched harder, straining to catch what was left, but the grass had gone completely quiet.

’Wait,’ she thought, her tail going stiff. ’When did he get that silent?’

She spun around fast and found him standing right in front of her, close enough to touch, his right fist already pulled back and cutting forward.

Her body moved before her brain finished processing. She dropped her weight, letting the punch slide past her jaw by less than an inch, the displaced air brushing across her cheek as she planted one hand on the ground and kicked off sideways.

She landed in a low crouch a few feet away, her claws already out and her eyes locked onto him.

He was standing exactly where she had been a second ago, his fist still extended, looking at her with a calm expression that didn’t match the speed of that punch at all.

Her heart was pounding, but the adrenaline quickly gave way to a sharp, competitive grin as she straightened up and retracted her claws.

"Your footwork is getting better," she said, brushing dirt off her palm. "But your breathing gave you away at the end. You held it right before you swung."

He pulled his fist back and rolled his shoulder once, the corner of his mouth lifting. "You still dodged it."

"Obviously," she said, her tail flicking once behind her. "You’ll need to do a lot better than that if you want to catch me off guard, Master."

He looked at her for a second, then dropped into a low stance, his weight shifting forward onto the balls of his feet while his eyes sharpened.

"Play with me for a bit," he said.