The Last Godfall: Transmigrated as the Young Master-Chapter 146: A Failed Chase

Larion knelt, pressing two fingers to the soil. The trail bent away from the academy grounds, angled toward cover and elevation. Clean. Intentional. Malox had planned his escape routes well. Therell, for all his recklessness, had followed.

Larion rose again, drawing a breath through his nose. Chasing them further would serve nothing. Whatever they carried, whatever truth or liability they represented, it had already passed beyond his reach.

Responsibility shifted its weight.

He turned back the way he had come, steps lengthening as Baron Lucienor’s manor came into view through the trees.

The estate had changed in his absence.

Lanterns burned in places they usually remained dark. Voices overlapped in clipped bursts, orders traded between men who carried themselves like soldiers rather than house guards. At the main entrance, bodies were being moved with brisk efficiency, students shepherded out in small clusters, their protests ignored or cut short.

Larion slowed.

He caught one of the men by the shoulder as he passed, armor marked with dust and the crest of a a silver-winged moon worked into the leather.

"Who commands you," Larion asked.

The man straightened at once. "House Vicorra, sir."

The answer struck harder than Larion expected.

Vicorra. Vencian had prepared more deeply than he had let on. He had brought soldiers into the capital, into another noble’s manor, and done so quietly. That alone spoke volumes.

"How many," Larion asked.

"Two squads," the soldier replied. "Dispatched at dawn."

"And your lord."

The man’s jaw tightened. "We searched the manor. Every wing. Cellars, upper floors, servants’ corridors. Lord Vicorra was here earlier. He has since vanished."

Of course he has, Larion thought.

"I will assist," Larion said. "Show me where you began."

The soldier hesitated, recognition dawning as he took in Larion’s sigil and bearing. "High Preceptor."

Larion inclined his head once. "Time matters."

They moved through the manor together. The corridors smelled of oil and old stone, the faint metallic edge of recent violence lingering beneath it. A tapestry lay slashed along one wall. A door hung from a single hinge. In the side gallery, two guards questioned a shaking apprentice who could barely form words.

Larion listened, absorbing fragments. Confusion. Sudden orders. A figure escorted away under guard. A second figure fleeing toward the gardens.

Vencian had been here. That much was certain. He had acted, then disappeared again, leaving others to manage the aftermath.

They reached the central hall.

That was where Larion saw them.

Two students stood near the far column, partially obscured by the movement of soldiers. A boy held a girl close, one arm wrapped around her shoulders, his hand pressed awkwardly against her upper back. She cried into his tunic, shoulders shaking, breath coming in broken pulls that fought for control.

-- -- --

Vencian moved through the forest with Seris in his arms, breath rasping low in his chest, boots slipping on leaf rot and exposed roots.

Her weight had stopped being a measure of strength a while ago. It had become a timer. Each step took something he had already spent earlier in the night, something he could not replace by will alone.

He kept going anyway.

Branches caught at his sleeves. Thorns scored shallow lines across his hands. The forest closed around him, dense and uneven, the ground rising and falling in ways that made distance hard to judge. He adjusted his grip when Seris shifted slightly, her head lolling against his shoulder. She did not wake. Her body remained slack, breath faint and regular, hair stuck to her cheek with sweat.

That steadiness frightened him more than panic would have.

His legs finally gave warning in the form of a tremor that traveled upward and stayed. He pushed past it for several more steps, then another, then another, and then there was nothing left to push with.

He stopped.

The silence pressed in at once, broken only by his breathing and the distant creak of trees settling. He bent forward, hands braced on his knees, Seris still held tight, vision narrowing at the edges.

Long enough, a part of him said, clear and clinical. Cooldown existed. The device had limits. Any pursuit would hesitate. Time favored stillness.

Another part answered immediately, sharper and less patient. Devices stacked. People planned redundancies. Anyone hunting Seris planned for obscured vision, disrupted tracking, and time lost.

He argued the details. Distance gained. Energy remaining. Terrain unknown. Risk vectors shifting with every minute he lingered.

No answer satisfied him.

The compromise surfaced slowly, heavy with reluctance. He hated it the moment it took shape. Illusion. Again. Deeper this time. Thicker. A false quiet wrapped around them, not for eyes but for intent. He told himself it would hold. He told himself the forest would swallow any residue.

Seris decided it for him.

Her breathing caught once, a faint hitch, then smoothed out again. The sound landed hard in his chest. He lowered her carefully to the ground, easing her back against the trunk of a wide, low-branching tree.

Only after he stepped away did he realize his mistake. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

The ground dipped here, funneling rain and rot into a shallow basin. Mud sucked at his boots. Fallen leaves masked uneven stone. The tree’s roots spread wide and shallow, exposed like knuckles, offering cover that worked only from a single angle.

He had chosen speed over assessment. Habit over training.

The thought came too late to matter. He shifted her a few feet upslope, then stopped, knowing the correction was cosmetic at best.

He dropped to one knee, then sat, back against the same tree, head tilted forward as he pulled air in slow, careful draws. His hands shook when he tried to still them. He focused on Seris instead, on the rise and fall of her chest, on the way her fingers twitched once and then relaxed again.

Quenya spoke into the quiet.

Her voice arrived gently, threaded through the bond rather than the air. "Earlier," she said, thoughtful rather than urgent, "when you used the device. Did you feel anything."

The question caught him off balance.

He lifted his head, blinking, gaze unfocused. "Feel," he repeated aloud, more to anchor himself than to answer her.

"Yes," Quenya said. "Something that stayed. Even briefly."

He considered lying to spare effort, then dismissed it. There was no point. She would know.

"I did," he said. "Pressure first. Then something else."

"What kind of something else."

His mouth opened, then closed. He searched for precision and found only impressions. "Like stepping into a memory that belonged to the ground rather than to me."

He paused, then added, quieter, "Trees. Density. A sense of direction that felt borrowed."

Quenya absorbed that. He felt her attention turn inward, examining the shape of his answer rather than the words.

He did not tell her that the image had looked like this forest, or one close enough that the distinction felt thin. He had dismissed it at the time, filed it with dreams and echoes and the other things that followed him now, blurring lines he used to trust.

Those lines had been eroding for weeks.

He leaned his head back against the tree, eyes half-lidded, breath finally slowing into something that resembled control. The forest remained still around them, illusion holding, Seris unmoving at his side.

Reality and memory pressed together, overlapping just enough to make certainty expensive.