The most experienced holder stepped forward and extended a hand.

"My name is Francis, a member of the Lunar Wolves." He nodded briefly toward the group behind him.

"The others are a mix of Association agents and guild members. We were sent in to assess the situation and bring you out."

Winston shook his hand. He had already run a quick Soul Trait check on the group and their intentions were clean with no hostility, only genuine relief that survivors were standing in front of them.

He let the handshake land naturally.

"Sorry for making you wait. We had something to finish before we could leave."

Francis’s eyes stayed level.

"And what would that be?"

The air in the room shifted slightly. Winston looked at the older champion and felt none of the pressure the question was probably intended to carry.

Francis was Rank Three — a Champion, the same classification as the academic supervisor who had been standing outside this gate worrying for three days.

By rank, that placed him several tiers above Winston on paper.

By actual output, the gap ran in the opposite direction. Winston didn’t say that.

"I’ll submit a full report through the proper channels. For now, I’d rather keep it between us."

Francis absorbed that without visible reaction. One of the other champions behind him did not.

"Do you understand how hierarchy works?"

An Association champion, younger than Francis, stepped forward with the expression of someone who had been looking for a reason to blow this out of proportion.

"You’re an initiate. It doesn’t matter what class you awakened. As your superiors in rank, we’re owed basic respect."

Zelda looked genuinely confused about what had been disrespectful. Freya’s expression stayed blank but something behind her violet eyes had gone very cold, very fast.

Francis said nothing.

The Association champion wasn’t his to correct; they were both from different organizations and under different leaders.

He turned his attention back to Winston instead, genuinely curious how this would land.

However Winston was no longer there.

Francis blinked and turned to see Winston already at the gate, one arm around Zelda’s waist, one around Freya’s, having crossed the full length of the throne room in the time it took Francis to register the movement.

He hadn’t seen it happen. His eyes had been on Winston the entire time.

"What—"

The Association champion — Daniel — had his mouth open. He had been watching Winston directly. Yet he had seen nothing. One moment Winston was standing in front of him, the next he was at the gate with the two girls bracketed against his sides like he’d teleported.

’How did he move like that?’

The other champions were equally frozen. Francis recovered first, and the corner of his mouth pulled up slightly.

"Well." He turned to Daniel. "Why does it look like you’ve seen a ghost?"

Daniel clicked his tongue and looked away.

The tension between the guild and the Association was a separate conversation for a separate day.

Then one of the female champions near the back of the group said something quietly.

"Wait — isn’t that Freya Valeria?"

The throne room went completely silent.

The briefing had been explicit.

Priority recovery target: Freya Valeria, daughter of Richard Valeria, demigod patriarch of the strongest class holder family in Key City.

Every champion in the room had known that walking in. The chaos of the throne room’s destruction had derailed them from thinking about it for approximately two minutes.

Now every head had turned toward the gate.

And realized simultaneously that Freya was standing against the side of an unknown initiate, his arm around her waist.

❖❖❖❖

Winston hadn’t confronted Daniel because of what the Soul Trait had shown him.

The champion’s soul had been running a clear agenda, bait Winston into a reaction, provoke something that could be used or reported.

Winston didn’t know the specific reason behind it, and he didn’t need to. Playing into someone else’s script was the fastest way to lose control of a situation.

So he had done the opposite of what Daniel wanted.

He had left.

The speed had been a byproduct of a soul boosted Realization plus the combat experience of the blood emperor integrating fully — the movement felt different now, more instinctive plus the gap between intention and execution was almost nonexistent.

Zelda and Freya both had wide eyes when they materialized in front of the gate.

"Sorry about that. Was it too sudden?"

"It’s fine." Zelda straightened her hair without looking particularly concerned about it.

Freya just nodded.

Winston confirmed they were okay, and the three of them stepped through the golden gate together.

The world inverted briefly — that familiar sense of space bending — and then they were out.

The noise was the first to hit.

Cameras, reporters and a crowd that had been growing since the news broke, pressing against the perimeter barriers with recording devices pointed at the gate.

Three Sacred class awakenings in a single First Entry was already extraordinary.

Three Sacred awakenings in a false gate that should have been a mass casualty event, involving a Valerian — that was the kind of story that wrote itself, and every outlet present knew it.

Winston barely had time to register the chaos before the atmosphere changed again.

Richard Valeria was moving toward them. The other two demigods flanked him at a distance that suggested presence rather than accompaniment.

Richard’s eyes were already on Freya before he reached her, scanning her in a way that was clinical rather than warm.

He stopped in front of her and nodded once.

"Peak Mastery. Good."

Freya met his gaze, readjusting her posture to show respect.

"Yes, Father."

"After you rest today, your elder sister will take you to receive your Trigger. The Crucible preparation begins immediately." A brief pause. "I expected you out sooner, but given the circumstances with the false gate classification, it makes the delay acceptable."

Winston stared at the almost robotic interaction between father and daughter.

He had never known his parents.

He didn’t have a reference point for what a father was supposed to look like in a moment like this — a daughter walking out of a gate that had been classified as unsurvivable, after three days of silence with a survival expectation below one percent.

But he was fairly certain it wasn’t this.

Not one question about whether she was hurt.

Not one moment of just, looking at her like she was alive and that mattered.

Winston started to say something, however Zelda’s hand closed around his wrist before he could.

He looked at her and in that brief moment she shook her head.

Winston exhaled and decided to let it go.

However Richard had already turned to face him. His eyes moved to Winston and narrowed, the particular sharpening of someone applying a serious assessment to an unexpected variable.

He scanned thoroughly and at length, but Trait Concealment held without a flicker.

"So you’re the Fortunate who cleared the gate." Richard’s voice carried no particular inflection. "There’s nothing remarkable about you. An Abstract Trait, standard presentation. Nothing that explains what you supposedly accomplished."

His eyes didn’t soften.

"Enlighten me. How does someone with nothing special about them defeat a Tier Three guardian?"