Ravian climbed the stairs alongside Karius, and they turned right at the landing, the cold evening air drifting through the corridor and drying the blood still clinging to Ravian’s body from the battlefield — none of it his own, of course.

The next floor opened into a long hallway with rooms running along both sides, and at the far end stood a set of double doors that looked distinct from every other room on that floor.

The doors looked like they were made from some kind of reinforced compressed wood — Ravian had no idea how they had managed to produce something like that even in this world, though he did not dwell on it.

Because by the time they reached those double doors at the end of the hall, Ravian had already started sensing the people on the other side.

He did not know exactly when it had started, but ever since he woke up in this body, there had been a certain threshold of energy that made him acutely sensitive to any being carrying it.

And right now, what he was sensing through the gap in those doors was an enormous soul energy — one that only Karius himself surpassed — radiating from the people inside without even the slightest attempt at restraint, clear enough that Ravian could feel it leaking through the crack in the door.

"That’s..." The words left him before he could stop them, the sheer gap between his own level and what he was sensing genuinely hard to process.

"Looks like you’ve already felt them. Mythic-grade soul energy really is something else," Karius said, glancing at Ravian from the corner of his eye, then shoved the doors open.

The moment they swung inward, the energy hit Ravian like a wall — raw and completely unrestrained — slamming into his face hard enough to nearly knock him back a step.

But Ravian clenched his jaw, straightened up, and walked forward against it, meeting the gazes of the people inside head-on.

"Well, look at what we have here. Seems Sir Karius has found himself a truly exceptional student," said one of the men in the room — a man who looked to be in his thirties, with short black hair, a full suit of armor resting beside him and a long sword leaning against it.

’Close-range fighter,’ Ravian noted, studying the man’s eyes.

They were a deep black, and they were watching him with an intensity that felt off — even accounting for the fact that he was his commander’s new student.

The look was closer to...

’Suspicion?’ Ravian guessed inwardly, though nothing crossed his face.

"I agree. My father found a student who’s truly... one of a kind," said the woman with golden hair and blue eyes, studying Ravian in turn — though he caught no suspicion in her gaze, just something different he could not quite place.

’Strange, her look is noticeably different from his... wait. Did she just say "my father"?!’

Ravian had been quietly cataloguing everyone in the room when the word finally registered. He turned to Karius quickly, eyes wide.

"Your daughter is one of the faction leaders under your command? No — wait. You have a daughter her age and you’re still that young?!" The shock came out before he could rein it in.

For a moment, the room went completely silent, nobody filling it for a few full seconds — and then—

"Bwahahahahaha!" Most of the room, the men in particular, burst into loud, mocking laughter.

"Young? Me?" Karius repeated, pointing to himself. He was the only man in the room who had simply smiled and not laughed — because he knew, better than anyone, that Ravian had no real understanding of what Awakened beings were yet.

"Ravian, I am not young by any measure. I passed a hundred years of age some time ago. And never mind my daughter Isabelle — I came to visit you with my granddaughter Angelina while you were still unconscious. Didn’t Lysandra tell you?" He frowned, since he had specifically reminded Lysandra to mention that part.

’A hundred years?! The man looks forty at most. Soul energy must play a big role in that. As for the granddaughter...’

Ravian was still absorbing the fact that Karius’s age bore absolutely no relation to his appearance when he tried to pull up what Lysandra had actually said to him when he first woke up—

Smack.

He slapped his own forehead when the memory surfaced.

’Right. She mentioned some granddaughter belonging to the old man. Said her name was Angelina, or something like that.’

He looked over at Isabelle — Karius’s daughter — as the pieces started clicking together.

’So does that mean Angelina is Isabelle’s daughter...?’

"No," Karius said suddenly, looking directly at Ravian.

"Hmm?" Ravian tilted his head, not quite catching his meaning.

"Angelina is not Isabelle’s daughter." That was all Karius offered — no elaboration, no further explanation.

Ravian held his gaze for two quiet seconds, then looked away without a word and gave a single, simple nod.

Every faction leader in the room noticed it.

Because Ravian had been remarkably unguarded since the moment he walked in — impulsive, candid, almost carelessly open — and yet in that single instant, he had shifted into someone completely different.

Composed. Measured. The kind of self-control that was genuinely striking to watch, unless...

’Unless everything he’s done since walking in here was deliberate — an attempt to pull out as much information as possible before leaving.’

The thought occurred to every one of them at roughly the same moment, as they watched Ravian turn his attention away from them entirely and begin quietly scanning the corners of the room and the décor, for reasons none of them could place.

And they were right.

Every reaction Ravian had shown since entering this room had been aimed at getting these people to say what they knew without making him look more curious than was natural.

He did not particularly care whether they had noticed or not — what he had done had not worked against them in any way.

And he was not finished yet.

He was simply waiting for the right opportunity to learn more about this world, because knowledge, here, was everything.

When Karius noticed that the initial round of silent assessments had run its course and nobody seemed to have any further questions, he decided it was time to get to what had actually brought them all here.

"Frank," Karius called.

"Yes, Commander!" Frank answered immediately, with a sharpness that reminded Ravian of soldiers from his previous world.

"Give me your report. The rest of you follow after him. Begin," Karius said, then settled into the seat at the head of the long table where his five faction leaders were already gathered.

Ravian stepped closer and stood beside him.

The man with short black hair was seated to Karius’s left, and Isabelle had taken the seat to his right — which put Ravian standing between Karius and Isabelle.

Karius glanced at him, and his thoughts seemed to drift somewhere for a moment before a faint smile crossed his face.

Isabelle caught her father’s smile and looked back at Ravian. After a few seconds of studying him, her eyes widened slightly — for a reason Ravian could not figure out, though he noticed the look clearly enough.

"Frank," Karius repeated, his tone carrying a quiet edge of command this time, having noticed Frank staring at Ravian with the unmistakable look of someone silently asking whether certain things could be said in front of him.

"Alright, alright. We have three matters today," Frank began.

"First, I’ll cover what happened with the infiltrators from the Twilight Empire during the night watch.

Second, a report on today’s casualties and the damage we inflicted on the enemy’s mercenary forces — or the monster wave, as we call them. And third, and last—" His expression shifted as he reached the final point, settling into something noticeably heavier.

"We’ve received a report from the Imperial Capital, Theatros — specifically from the Second Prince."

"The Capital?" Karius repeated, and genuine surprise crossed his face for the first time since they had entered the room.

"Yes, my lord. It appears there are traces along every border of the Viera Empire of what they’re calling the seed of one of the Fourteen Taboos," Frank said — and at the last part of that sentence, his gaze fixed directly on Ravian.

He was not the only one. Nearly everyone in the room looked at Ravian in that moment — everyone except Karius, who appeared entirely unmoved by what had just been said.

’What in the hell is going on right now?’

Ravian’s expression did not change. But cold sweat was already sliding down his back as the weight of all those gazes — from people who outclassed him in power by several orders of magnitude — landed on him at once.

What Ravian did not know was that this meeting was about to change his entire understanding of this world.