Twenty minutes later, I’m waiting for Veric in one of the dorm rooms. I sit on the bed and start checking my inventory and profile.

Same VIP rooms as before. The ones reserved for top-rank students. A shame I never really got to use the academy’s amenities for what they were—I leveled out of their useful range inside Lost Ark, and most of what’s offered to a D-rank here will be obsolete to me before I can sit down to enjoy it.

The door swings open.

Veric leans against the frame with his arms crossed. He closes his eyes for a beat, like he doesn’t want to look at me directly while he chooses which words to use first.

"Sands. Good to see you back. But—"

He cracks one eye open to gauge me.

"But? Are you that disappointed to see me?"

"Some of the news isn’t going to be pleasant for you."

His shoulders are stiff. His grip on his own arms is tighter than it should be—closer to stressed than relaxed.

"Get to the point, Veric."

I don’t know if he’s stretching it on purpose, but it’s working. The anxiety is starting to install itself in my chest too.

"First. I found nothing on Alden Sands. The man simply vanished. Even the trail he left while he was still here looks like it’s been wiped clean."

"That isn’t new," I murmur, mostly to myself.

A short silence.

"That ’man’ is my father. By the way. You’ve changed since the first time I saw you."

Veric straightens. Clears his throat. Probably remembering his own father’s military bearing scolding him in his head.

I read between the lines. Veric is jittery because he’s worried I’m going to clam up about how I made all that money on Thirstfall. That’s how he’s wired.

"What are you talking about, Sands?" 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

"When I first met you, you were mocking my sword and calling me a rat."

"I still think you’re a rat. Just a useful one. Pet variety."

"You bastard." I’m smiling. Real smile.

He smiles back. The first real one I’ve seen on him since I walked in.

"Where are the others?"

I can already see his shoulders relaxing.

"Miss Vesper, she—"

I cut him off.

"Miss Vesper? Wait. What is that. Where’s Leech and all your other charming little nicknames?"

"Mind your own business, Sands. Do you want the update or not?"

He’s going red. Visibly uncomfortable.

I’m starting to understand him from the inside out. The arrogant noble veneer is a defense. Push the weak away, attract the strong. Now that he’s spent days alongside Rhayne, the calibration is shifting.

Rhayne is a rare jewel of pure support and quiet kindness. Not to mention how strong she is. My best investment. Of course she’d crack Veric’s armor without trying.

"Don’t tell me you’re catching feelings for her?"

He clicks his tongue, hits his limit, and turns to leave.

"Get back here. Come on. Tell me. Where are they?"

He sighs. Looks at me with bored eyes now.

"Rhayne’s been down here the whole time. She hasn’t gone back to Earth."

"She probably can’t afford a pearl..."

"Probably." Veric shrugs. "She’s been helping me look for your father. Actually—the only lead we have came from her, but I don’t think it’s anything serious."

"You either have a lead or you don’t, Veric."

"Rhayne said we should be looking in Southlake Forest. Better than anything my family’s intel could pull. It’s a dangerous area, so I sent two of my people to handle it."

He pulls a chair from the writing desk and sits down. Crosses his ankles.

"What’s strange is that every small village out there ignored my men. Stonewalled them. Even using the Azurea name, which doesn’t usually bounce off people that easily. But one old woman said something completely absurd while my guys were asking around in a tavern."

"And what did she say?"

I lean forward. This is starting to interest me.

"She said she once helped a man who looked badly hurt. Some time back. The man matched the description my guys were giving the bartender. But she said someone took him. Tied him up and dragged him out."

"Did she say where? Who? Any features?"

"That’s the thing, Sands. The old woman is blind. It could’ve been anyone. So I dropped it."

Veric is wrong.

For a blind woman to recognize physical features, she had to have been close. Up close. Touching distance. Blind hands map a face curve by curve. Voice, scent, gait—those come from sustained contact, not a passing greeting. She didn’t see those features. She learned them.

If that old woman isn’t lying, this is the warmest lead I could’ve hoped for.

If my father really was captured, it most likely happened the moment he stepped off a train into Southlake Forest. Same forest the other train spit me into. Same map on the system.

I file it. We have more urgent items to clear first.

"Oliver?"

"He went to Earth. Same time as you. He should be coming back any day now... though you came back faster than expected. You used your skill up there?"

So Oliver had a pearl tucked away. Good for him. He’d been living inside that subway station for over a year, surviving as an outlaw with one foot in the grave.

"I had to," I tell Veric.

"So, Sands. What do you want to do?"

"What I want to do..."

I take a beat to think. The meeting with his father plays back in my head. Garen’s posture. The cigar he kept lighting and re-lighting to mask the discomfort. The Black Thirst was knocking on his door already.

"Your father is in Thirstfall right now, isn’t he?"

Veric raises one eyebrow. Surprise crossing his face that I got it on the first try.

I let the silence sit. Then I deliver it flat.

"Like the waters of Azurea, I’ll find a way—or I’ll make one."

The blood drains out of Veric’s face.

He goes white as a ghost.

He doesn’t move. He doesn’t blink. He just sits there in the desk chair looking at me as if I’d suddenly grown a second head, or as if the wall behind me had opened up and his father had walked through it.

The silence between us thickens.

And I like it.