Toradol woke without realizing it had changed.

  The city sounded the same at first—boots on stone, shutters creaking open, distant hammering where walls were still being mended. But beneath it all ran a hesitation Sei couldn’t ignore. Conversations paused when he passed. Laughter softened. Eyes lingered a fraction longer than politeness required.

  Not hostile.

  Not welcoming.

  Aware.

  He felt it in the way a woman gathered her child closer as he walked by. In the way two soldiers lowered their voices mid-sentence, nodding to Eva but avoiding his gaze. Even gratitude, when it came, carried weight now—spoken carefully, as though the words themselves might mean more than intended.

  Eva walked half a step behind him, her presence steady, familiar. To anyone watching, she looked unchanged: Vanguard Captain, composed, unshaken. But Sei had learned her silences. Her hand stayed closer to her weapon than usual. Her eyes moved constantly, not searching for enemies—watching people.

  “You’re walking faster,” she said casually.

  Sei blinked. “Am I?”

  He slowed without thinking.

  She didn’t comment further, but after a few steps she spoke again. “People are talking.”

  “I know.”

  She glanced at him. “Do you?”

  Sei exhaled. “I hear the parts they don’t say out loud.”

  That earned him a longer look, sharp but not unkind. Then she faced forward again.

  “They’re afraid,” Eva said. “And they don’t know what to do with that yet.”

  Sei almost laughed. Almost.

  The rumors hadn’t exploded. They had formed.

  Carefully. Quietly. Like sediment settling into shape.

  “He healed someone who was already dead.”“I heard the man was breathing—barely.”“That light wasn’t healing. Healing magic doesn’t look like that.”“You think the Dominion doesn’t have tricks?”

  Each version carried a different edge. None of them needed proof.

  Truth didn’t vanish—it fractured. And fear filled the cracks.

  They paused near a stone fountain, its water clear despite the dust and debris still clinging to the city. Sei rested his hands on the rim, grounding himself in the cold stone.

  “I didn’t mean to—” he started, then stopped.

  Eva waited.

  “I didn’t plan to be this,” he finished.

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  She didn’t pretend not to understand.

  “No one ever does,” she said softly.

  He wasn’t summoned to the council chambers.

  That, more than anything else, told him how precarious things had become.

  Instead, the pressure arrived in pieces.

  A messenger from the Adventurers’ Guild, polite and apologetic, asking if Sei might refrain from public healing until “procedures” could be discussed.

  A civic official suggesting that any magical activity be formally documented, for the sake of public reassurance.

  A nervous soldier relaying—almost whispering—that patrols had been reassigned in certain districts “to maintain order.”

  Containment without accusation.

  Control without confrontation.

  Somewhere behind it all, the council was shifting. Not united. Not divided enough to fracture—but no longer balanced.

  Brannic Vale was buying time. Sei could feel it in the pauses, the softened language, the way decisions didn’t quite land.

  Marshal Durn Halbrecht would be pushing back just as hard in the opposite direction. He didn’t need to hear the man’s voice to know that.

  And Inquisitor Kaelen Rhyse—

  That silence was different.

  It wasn’t caution.

  It was observation.

  Eva stopped him in a narrow courtyard tucked between administrative buildings, far from the main streets. The noise of the city dulled here, replaced by echoes and distant work.

  “Sei,” she said, turning to face him fully now. “If this turns—if they decide you’re dangerous instead of uncertain—what will you do?”

  The question hit harder than any accusation could have.

  He opened his mouth.

  Nothing came out.

  Images flickered unbidden: Greymark drowned in light, his hands shaking, the pressure tearing through him as everything he’d held back burst all at once.

  “I don’t want to hurt anyone,” he said finally.

  “That wasn’t my question.”

  He swallowed. “I don’t know.”

  Eva nodded once.

  “That answer may not be enough for them.”

  For the first time since he’d met her, she sounded unsure—not of him, but of the city she’d sworn herself to protect.

  The interference came quietly.

  A healer in the eastern district found her satchel ruined—salves spoiled, instruments warped as if exposed to sudden heat. She swore nothing had happened.

  A wounded dockworker refused Sei’s help outright, eyes wide with something between fear and anger.

  “I won’t be your experiment,” the man snapped.

  No witnesses. No culprit. No proof.

  Just enough to push unease into something sharper.

  Someone was guiding the fear.

  Not creating it.

  Aiming it.

  They passed through a small plaza where soldiers and civilians worked side by side, rebuilding what the siege had broken. Fresh mortar marked old stone. New beams braced ancient walls.

  A boy stumbled, dropping a bundle of tools. One of the soldiers laughed and helped him gather them, ruffling his hair before sending him off again.

  Normal.

  Painfully, stubbornly normal.

  “This is what I wanted,” Sei said suddenly.

  Eva looked at him.

  “I wanted to help,” he continued. “Not just stop people from dying. Not just fix wounds. I wanted to make things better enough that they wouldn’t need someone like me.”

  She said nothing, letting the words breathe.

  “But now,” he went on, fingers curling at his sides, “every time I act, it feels like I’m choosing for them. And every time I don’t—something breaks anyway.”

  Eva exhaled slowly. “Welcome to responsibility,” she said. “It never asks permission.”

  By dusk, exhaustion settled into Sei’s bones heavier than any battle fatigue.

  He stopped again at the overlook, Toradol spread beneath him in soft gold and deepening shadow. The city looked the same.

  That was the worst part.

  Every window felt like an eye now. Every street, a question.

  He rested a hand against the cold stone, steadying himself as the weight pressed down—not suddenly, not violently, but relentlessly.

  Healing hadn’t made him dangerous.

  Power hadn’t either.

  Expectation had.

  And Toradol was deciding what to do with him.