There’s a limit to what a human being can take in provocation. And this piece of shit just crossed mine.

I turn fully toward him. My energy detonates—a contained blast that sends every nearby cadet’s instinct screaming at once. Freya, already several paces away, stops. Looks back over her shoulder.

I take the first step. My instinct is already calculating the second step as an explosive dash. My grip seats on Eventide’s hilt, ready for the draw.

A hand closes over mine before I can pull.

Veric.

He looks deep into my eyes and shakes his head. A clear ’don’t.’

"Not here, Sands. Look around you."

I hear his voice and I look around.

A few dozen cadets have already turned toward us. Conversations frozen mid-sentence. The training instructor at the far end of the corridor has stopped tracking the wall clock and started tracking me.

Freya’s lackey—the one who whispered—swallows hard. The audacity I’m projecting has visibly shaken him.

But fear makes humans do stupid things. He doubles down.

"See? You must’ve killed her. You’re a serial killer."

I tried, Veric. I swear I tried.

I trigger Eventide while it still hangs at my waist. The moment the dark blade erupts, it bites directly into the outside of my Horizon armor. The clash yields a harsh, high-pitched scream like a plasma torch, instantly proving both the hunger of the weapon and the incredible density of the armor.

Freya’s eyes lock onto my weapon.

The floor around her starts to glaze. A pale film of frost spreads in a slow ring, extending toward me.

"Sands," Veric says. A serious tone I’ve never heard from him before.

I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood. Controlling the heat by force.

This son of a bitch touched an open wound... twice...

I cut Eventide. The note dies, and I turn to leave.

"Control your boy, Veric. Next time I’ll read it as an act of war." I hear Freya’s voice behind me. Then, she said sharply to her lackey, "Idiot. You want to die that badly?"

I raise an arm without turning. Wave once and so walk on.

Veric catches up and slings an arm around my shoulders. Then he grinds his knuckles into the top of my head—a hard, fast rub. Just like an older brother punishing a younger one for nearly getting them both killed.

"You absolute lunatic. You’re going to start a fight with the academy’s celebrity in the main courtyard?"

"He said I killed Lola." My voice comes out flatter than I expected. "He went too far."

Veric takes the weight of that one in the chest. He heard the line. He didn’t understand the weight inside me until now.

Now he knows.

"I don’t know what the hell you went through down there. But that was the first time I’ve seen you lose your head."

I don’t answer for a few steps.

"Lola sacrificed herself to save me. That’s the only thing you need to know."

His face goes unreadable. Frozen the way stone freezes—nothing moves, but you can feel the cold.

He doesn’t try to fill the silence with comfort. He doesn’t try to fix it. He just walks beside me. For Veric, that’s a major gesture.

"Let’s drop it," I tell him. "Move."

We walk on through the academy gates and into the city.

Azure Prime is the only city in Thirstfall that still looks like it’s breathing.

It’s the one place where you can still find smiles and good-natured exchanges that seem real. Whether the people behind those smiles are genuine or performing—that’s a different read. Hard to separate the actors from the honest ones.

The streets curve up from the academy in a long, slow climb. Lantern-lit cafés with their windows open to the sea air. Vendors hawking grilled fish at corners. A child laughing at something I don’t see. Someone playing a string instrument in a doorway, badly.

Ten minutes of walking gets us to the high point of the city.

Up here, the ocean sky feels closer. Like you could lift a hand and run your fingers through the water above our heads.

People have tried to touch it before.

A few had flight skills. The sky is staggeringly high—farther than the eye reads it—and the ones who came back from the climb described a near-death sensation.

Souls being pulled out from the inside. The atmospheric pressure intolerable in a way that wasn’t physical anymore. And, between layers of pressure that high, the silhouettes of monsters never catalogued in any registry. Briefly visible. Sometimes turning toward the climber. Sometimes following.

Most of them came back. The ones who didn’t dare.

Nobody serious tries the climb anymore. Every few years some Diver with more rank than sense gives it a shot anyway, and the city quietly removes them from the registry a week later.

The castle of the King of Thirstfall sits on the high promontory.

It’s a strange structure. Not a relic. Not a palace from any timeline I’d recognize. A fusion—old stone walls reinforced with seamless metal alloys, narrow windows lit from inside with cold blue light, towers that taper into communication arrays. A futuristic skin grafted onto a fortress’s bones. Not cyberpunk but just—further along the road than the rest of the world.

Most of the technology came from the deep. Nobles who can afford to do so buy blueprints that drop from certain monsters, things only Rank A or higher can hunt down. The royal houses have the best of those blueprints.

I look up.

On a high balcony, a figure stands in profile against the open oceanic sky.

Garen Azurea.

Hands behind his back. Watching the city. Watching us.

Veric tracks my line of sight and finds his father. He sighs. The complaint leaves him almost involuntarily.

"Fuck my life..."

Garen tilts his head. A small nod, just enough that I can be sure he saw both of us. Then he turns and walks back inside the castle.

Veric and I exchange a look.

We climb the steps to the gate.