Veric comes back to himself in pieces.

His soul drips back into his body in pieces—slow first, then all at once. There are so many questions sitting on his face that I couldn’t number half of them.

"How did you—?"

The first one he manages to verbalize.

"Same way I made eighteen Plates in two weeks."

The silence comes back. He’s processing each word individually, turning them over, looking for the seams.

"Fucking hell, Sands." He blinks twice. Slow. "I really underestimated you. How the hell did you find my father on Earth?"

His sentences are coming out half-shaped. The brain is using too much bandwidth on the math, and the language module is brownouting.

"Calm down and take me to the old man. We have things to talk about."

I stand up. Adjust Eventide on my hip.

Veric runs both hands through his hair. I can’t tell if it’s despair, discomfort, or some private negotiation happening between our power dynamic and his survival instincts.

He stands too.

"Let’s go. He’s at the fortress."

The words come out heavier than I’d like to hear. Like something inside him has already decided to surrender.

"Cheer up. You’re still my favorite rat."

I throw his earlier jab back at him. Veric smiles—crooked, not happy, but real—and gives me a small punch on the shoulder.

"I can’t tell if you’re calling my father a rat or just me. Let’s go ask him."

His words land like blades. Counter-strike.

"Bastard. You really don’t lose your footing, do you?"

We leave the room and walk down the corridor toward the dorm exit.

Veric in his Tidebreaker, me in the Horizon—we attract enough attention that heads swivel as we pass. Cadets stop conversations mid-sentence. Two girls in the common area straight-up forget what they were doing. It’s like a runway show with two models nobody invited.

"Looks like discretion is no longer an option," I tell Veric.

"It was never an option for me. Get used to it."

But the lack of discretion is exactly what trips us into trouble.

I’ve spent a lot of time chewing on Chaos Theory and the conclusion I’ve landed on is that it functions less like a system and more like Murphy’s Law with teeth. Some things I can dodge. Others arrive on schedule.

Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

I haven’t even finished the thought when it materializes in front of me.

If we’re attracting attention, the problem is going to come find us. That’s how Chaos Theory works.

Five students start to fan out around us in the corridor. And in front of them, Freya Gunnulf. The ice valkyrie.

"Well, well. Putting on a show, are we, partner?"

Her red hair falls in immaculate waves, completely immune to humidity, dust, the burnt-OXI smell of Thirstfall. As if a thin barrier of ice keeps the world from touching it.

Freya is beautiful in a way that interrupts conversations. Symmetry that doesn’t apologize. Strong, deliberate features. A jaw that gives orders. Her blue eyes carry a brightness that reads through any lie you bring within ten feet of her—as captivating as it is unsettling. She doesn’t have to work to be the center of any room she enters. Her voice and her presence are weapons—as sharp and efficient as the skin armor on her shoulders.

"You’re the real cat model here, Freya."

I let it land with a honeyed edge. If you’re going to attack someone popular, attack the ego first.

"You little—"

One of her boys steps forward. Looking to pick a fight on her behalf.

Freya stops him by raising one finger. Doesn’t even look at him.

He stops.

She starts walking toward me.

"Freya. We’re in a hurry. Let me through."

She’s already breached my personal space. She leans in close to my ear. Inhales—just enough that I feel it on the side of my neck.

"You still smell like trouble, Sands..." The whisper is half words, half breath. "Trouble my instincts keep insisting on solving."

My HUD lights up red. Alerts firing at the corner of my vision the way it would if something were trying to hack me. Freya is the only person I’ve ever met capable of waking Chaos Theory deliberately. With everything else the passive runs silent—it builds bizarre situations without ever announcing itself.

But with her, the passive screams. The contrast is total.

"There are things we need to settle, Gunnulf. Just not now. By the way—the rat you sent to follow me in the train station? He didn’t even whimper before he died."

The air around me starts to crystallize. A fine glaze of ice. Diamond dust in suspension. Freya’s gaze drops several degrees colder. She’s already past calculation. She’s at decision.

"We have an appointment with my father. Right now. Are you going to defy a royal order, Freya? Because I would love to kick that fat, beautiful ass of yours with pleasure."

Veric steps forward. The arrogant, authoritative tone I’m more used to hearing from him slides back into place like a sword being seated in a sheath.

The ice particles in the air evaporate. Gone.

"Hm." Freya kills me with her eyes. "Let’s go, boys."

She gives the order and turns. The five fall in behind her.

The same boy who stepped up earlier walks past me. He shoulder-checks me on the way—hard. Looks me dead in the eye. I don’t have to calculate the malice or the killing intent in the look. It’s all surface.

He whispers as he passes.

"I noticed the little one is gone. You kill her, Sands? The way you kill everyone around you?"

My hand goes to Eventide.

A heat I can’t control climbs up my throat. My pulse fills my ears. Every measured calculation I’ve been running in this corridor empties out of me in one breath.

The names I had ranked.

The favors I owed.

The doors I needed to keep open.

All of it gone.

The corridor narrows down to one face and one name, and the system in my chest stops pretending it has rules.

The blade screams my name under my palm. The shadow-edge wants to wake up against my hip in a low, hungry note that nobody else in this corridor wants to hear.

I turn fully toward him. He’s still walking. He hasn’t realized he just stepped on a mine.

"Don’t put her name in your mouth."