The Extra's Rise

I don't like underground fights. The air sticks to your throat and the sound comes back at you wrong. But shadow seekers love tunnels, so here we are—me, Alastor Creighton, and six meters of cold brick under Wintermark.

"Left," I said.

He didn't ask how I knew. God's Eyes had already mapped the flicker in the black. I stepped and cut; air compressed along my blade and the shadow peeled off the pillar like wet paint. It had a face for a heartbeat, long and hungry. Ice took it, and the shape broke into a drift of ash.

"Two more," Alastor said behind me, voice even. A tight circle of nine sigils glowed faintly around his boots—clean geometry, ninth-circle work. He never wastes mana.

The tunnel bent. Their leader tried for theater, letting the torches gutter out one by one. The last torch died and I would've laughed if I were fifteen. At fifteen I'd have applauded. At twenty I'd have burned the corridor down.

I'm not fifteen.

Six elements spun around my wrist in quiet bands—fire, ice, water, lightning, wind, earth. I let wind move first, a whisper that shifted the dust. Footfall patterns showed themselves. Water bled from the air into a thin film over the flagstones. The shadow seeker in front skidded and threw a hand out to catch himself.

"Now," I said.

Alastor's array widened by a palm and laid a pale net across the corridor—anti-umbric lattice, nothing holy about it, just very competent light and warding. It erased the places shadow wanted to collect. The seeker's body made sense in that light—bones, joints, a human being with a knife who thought "dark" meant "safe." I met him in three simple cuts and let the fourth be merciful. The knife rang on stone. He didn't get up.

The last one tried to ghost through the wall. I sent frost through the mortar, a neat line that turned into a bar. His shoulder hit it; lightning met him after, not cruel, just final.

Silence came with the clean end of a job done right. My breath fogged once in the cold, then went clear.

Alastor walked the bodies without disgust or joy—just a king cataloging what his city will not suffer. He's taller than me by a finger and older by two decades and some old wars. The white in his hair suits him.

"That's the last cell," he said. "For this district."

"For this week," I corrected. We both know how the world breathes.

He gave me a look I knew from the old days when I tried to get cute in training—steady, unimpressed, almost fond. He used to pull me out of bad habits with that look. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it made me worse.

We climbed the service stairs into hard light. Wintermark's frost hung from gutter edges; the sun made a fair attempt at pretending it was warm. Creighton banners snapped on high poles—blue and white with the crown drawn, not shouted.

We were halfway across the plaza when it hit.

At first I thought the light shifted. It wasn't light. It was preference. The world wanted to be a softer thing for a moment. The hair on my arms rose; every sense tilted.

Alastor glanced at me. "You feel—"

"Yes," I said. "Moon-side."

He felt it a breath after I named it, jaw setting like a man hearing an old enemy laugh across a room. Ninth-circle control pulled tight around him, sigils dimming to almost nothing as he braced.

"Divine," I said, and I don't use the word loosely.

He closed his eyes once, brief, the way fathers do when fear lines up exactly with memory. Rachel is his, even when she's Saintess and mine and ours in a dozen complicated ways. She's also her own. If she were here she'd tell him to breathe. He'd pretend he didn't need the reminder.

"Arthur?" he asked.

"He's there," I said. "Luna. Tiamat. The others. They'll hold."

"I know," he said. He said it to himself as much as to me.

The plaza snapped back into proper proportion. The pressure faded as cleanly as it arrived. Civilians didn't know they'd been brushed by a god's attention. Good. They shouldn't have to.

I sent a tight pulse northward—Deia, Seol-ah. They answered from the high tower that always smells faintly of tea. Deia: "Felt a nudge. Not ours?" Seol-ah: "Routes ready if we move a wing to the coast."

"Hold," I said. "Arthur turned the tide. Something very big looked down."

Deia: "Understood." Seol-ah: "Tell the moon to behave."

"You can tell it yourself when we go up," I said.

We walked the perimeter once more. Alastor checked a ward stone with the side of his hand. "You sensed first," he said—calibration, not compliment.

"I'm stronger than you now," I said. No pride, no apology. Measurement.

He nodded. "Yes."

We stood at the top of the steps over Wintermark's river. He doesn't talk unless it matters. Maybe it did now.

"I was wrong about you," he said at last.

I let the wind go around us, not between. "You were right then," I said. "About the boy I was. And right choosing Arthur. You spared Rachel a job that would have broken her."

He exhaled a laugh, small and tired. "She'd move the mountain even if it broke her."

"She will anyway," I said. "But with him, it breaks the mountain back."

He looked at the pale sky where you can't see the moon in daylight but you know it's there. The lines at his eyes are old. He earned them the hard way.

"I trained you to stand," he said. "And you stand. I can live with that."

"I trained with you to fight," I said. "And you still fight. I can live with that."

We don't hug. It would be false. Respect suits us better than forgiveness.

A runner jogged up with a bow that didn't waste time. "Your Majesties," he said—easy way to be wrong and right with one word—"final reports: eastern sub-levels clean. Copy shrine torn down. No civilians hurt."

"Good," Alastor said. "Close the schedule. Families back on the street by evening."

The runner sprinted off. The plaza began breathing the way cities do when the thing you couldn't name leaves quietly.

"What do you make of him?" Alastor asked. He didn't need to say who.

"Arthur?" I said. "He's what the story needed and, more irritatingly, what the world wants. I am second because he exists. Used to annoy me. Now it saves time."

He huffed. "Honesty from a Windward. Mark the date."

"Ask Rachel," I said. "She'll carve it into a pillar."

At his daughter's name, his eyes softened, then hid it, then failed to for a heartbeat. I didn't make it worse by pointing.

We walked to the training yard behind the hall. The stone still held ghosts of the last session here ten years ago, when he disarmed me eleven times and told me to stop being clever and start being inevitable.

"Again?" he asked, lifting his blade.

I smiled without teeth. "Again."

We went slow and neat. No element flares, no grand art. Just lines, timing, the way feet talk to stone. He still has timing I respect. I still have eyes that cheat. We worked to the edge of our breath and stopped there.

A tremor ran down the sky as we sheathed. Not the divine brush this time. Smaller, closer—the first scouts in a war who think they're ghosts because they cannot imagine dying. The East will cut theirs. The South will smile and burn theirs out of the air. The West will charge a fee and do it anyway. The North? The North will stand and let them come.

"Move the border watch up," Alastor said.

"Done," I said, and Deia was answering before I finished.

I faced the sky once more in companionable silence. My fiancées keep the North calm. Alastor keeps a continent sober. Arthur shows the world new rules and grins while doing it. I used to think I'd hate that. I don't.

I pressed the charm and counted to eight while wind curled the yard flags and let them go. Somewhere up there, a Demon Lord of Lust looked down and noticed a human man who isn't a god and intends to be something even gods plan around.

"Watch me," I told the sky. It didn't answer. It doesn't have to. It will.