Luke leaned toward the window and cracked the curtain just enough to look outside. The village was gone. Or rather, it had been swallowed in seconds by a snowstorm so violent it looked unreal, as if someone had dropped it onto the world from above. Cold seeped through the walls like a living thing, and the wind howled in broken, uneven bursts that reminded him of distant screams mixing with the groan of wood under pressure.

  People were scrambling across the streets. Some carried weapons, others grabbed whatever they could before fleeing indoors. Fire mages fought desperately to keep their flames alive, hurling streaks of heat against a blizzard determined to snuff them out. Panic spread through the villagers like a sickness. Many held their weapons with the same shaky grip they had used during the final event of the tutorial. It was clear the memory still haunted them.

  But all that chaos was nothing compared to the shape looming above the rooftops.

  Luke’s breath stalled as soon as his eyes found the massive silhouette in the sky. A ship. Not just a ship, but an enormous vessel carved from dark wood, shaped like something out of an old pirate movie he might have watched back in Maine. Except this was heavier, grander, built like a monument. It had multiple levels, long rows of windows, towering masts, and wide sails that refused to fold even in the storm. From the look of its size, Luke estimated it could house a thousand people without effort. Calling it a ship felt wrong. It was a floating fortress.

  And floating wasn’t exaggeration. It was actually suspended in the air.

  The sails snapped sharply in the wind, their surfaces lit by the glow of the many windows across its hull. Every sail carried a mark painted in deep blue… the outline of a dragon. Luke recognized it instantly. No one could mistake that insignia.

  The crest of the Rhiannon family.

  The sight of that colossal vessel knocked the air out of everyone who dared look up. Power radiated from it. Authority. A level of confidence so unshakable it bordered on arrogance, the kind only those at the top of the world could afford.

  Luke stepped away from the window and closed the curtain slowly, as if the act might somehow soften the reality he had just witnessed.

  “How did they find you here?” he asked. His voice was low, confused.

  “How?” Evangeline echoed. “Well, I mean… our arrival here probably wasn’t exactly subtle to the big shots of the world.”

  Allison sat in the armchair near the wall, pale enough to look sick. The moment she saw the dragon emblem, whatever color she had left drained away.

  “It’s been only a few hours,” Luke pressed. “How could they know she was here already? And even if they did, shouldn’t it have taken longer? Would they really come straight here with a floating warship? Wouldn’t they send someone smaller first? Why would the high-ranking members come in person?”

  Allison had only said one thing, but it was enough to unravel everything. That ship could only belong to her family. Their personal vessel. The most important one they had. They wouldn’t send an employee in something like that. There was only one explanation. The Rhiannon themselves had arrived.

  “I don’t know how they found out so fast or how they got here this quickly,” she said, rising from the armchair with tense, jerky movements. “Their ship can fly, but the distance from here to their kingdom is still a few days of travel by airship.”

  Luke looked through the gap in the curtain again. The suspended vessel hovered there, colossal and still, looming over the distant edge of the village like a patient predator waiting for the right moment to pounce.

  “It doesn’t matter. We’re leaving,” he said. “We already have everything we need. We’re going to Maine.”

  Jack, Eleanor, and Evangeline were there as well. Eleanor peered out the window with the same stunned disbelief Luke had felt, the sheer presence of that ship was nearly suffocating.

  “You don’t understand, Luke,” Allison replied. “We can’t run. They’ve probably already placed trusted people at the teleport point.”

  It made perfect sense. If they’d come in a flying ship and brought the family with them, they wouldn’t leave holes in their net.

  “We can run anyway. We can stay in the New World until things calm down,” Luke insisted. “This place is huge. Even if it takes a month, we disappear for a while and then find a way to get to Maine.”

  “We can’t. My face will be everywhere,” she said, her voice heavy with discouragement.

  “How not? You can literally use an item that turns you into a man. If your female face is plastered everywhere, who cares?”

  Allison let out a short laugh, but it was hollow — exhausted, brittle.

  “You can’t outrun a family that can snap its fingers and bend the whole New World. It’s over, Luke.”

  She brushed past him and headed toward the door, every step carrying a finality he hated.

  “Wait, what are you doing?” Luke reached her just before she touched the handle.

  “I’m going to surrender.”

  “Surrender? We can just slip out the back. You don’t have to give up this easily.”

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Evangeline stepped between them, worry tightening her expression. “I know things are messy for you two right now. But we need to decide what we’re going to do.”

  “It’s a real flying ship…” Jack muttered in disbelief, staring out the window as if his brain refused to accept the sight. “They’re supposed to be legends. Only the highest noble families have them… and this one… this must be one of the strongest ever built.”

  “This is the kind of power a World Government family holds,” Eleanor said, stepping away from the window, still stunned. “And here I was thinking I was important in high school because my dad worked for the CIA.”

  But for Allison, that ship held no awe. No grandeur. Only the crushing weight of everything she’d spent years trying to escape. Luke was the only one there who truly understood. To the others, she’d told a sanitized version of her past, a shallow explanation about not wanting to return. None of them knew how deep the wound truly went. They didn’t know she had chosen to die in the tutorial rather than spend another year under the Rhiannon family’s grip.

  Her relationship with them was worse than slavery. She was a prisoner of a name, of a bloodline, of a legacy. And that kind of prison didn’t have doors.

  Allison didn’t wait another second. She turned the handle and bolted outside.

  “Wait, Allison! You’re being way too impulsive, you’re not thinking straight!” Luke ran after her.

  The moment Luke stepped through the door, the cold hit him like he had plunged into a frozen lake. It wasn’t normal cold. It had weight, intention, the kind of magic that ignored the laws of nature. By all logic, the houses of the village should have frozen solid. Yet the cold stayed outside, pressing in from every direction, as if deliberately fencing the place in.

  “Luke, you should go back inside,” she said without looking at him.

  He didn’t listen. He pushed forward until he was beside her, boots sinking into snow that was heavy, wet, and deep. Every step felt like wading through cement.

  Allison walked straight ahead with a focus that bordered on trance. Even the blizzard seemed to peel away before her, opening a narrow path through the storm. The sky itself avoided touching her.

  Luke hurried and stepped in front of her again.

  “Okay, maybe the plan to escape to Maine fell apart. But we still have plan B. I go with you, we negotiate like we talked about. You give up leveling in the system, abandon your family, and… with luck we’re in Maine by tonight.”

  He tried to sound hopeful. Tried to anchor her to something. But her eyes held the same look she wore in the castle during the tutorial. The look of someone who had already let go.

  He knew that expression.

  “We can try, Allison,” he insisted.

  Behind them, he heard crunching footsteps. Evangeline, Jack, and Eleanor had stepped outside, watching from the doorway with growing unease.

  Allison finally met his gaze. A small smile curved her lips, faint and completely beaten.

  “Sometimes… we need to know when to give up, Luke.”

  She brushed past him and kept walking. She didn’t raise her head anymore; she carried it like a burden.

  Luke refused to accept that. He wouldn’t. He would go with her. He would board the damn ship at her side and try to negotiate.

  And then a voice cut through the air. “Well, well… Allison.”

  The voice didn’t just speak. It pressed. The air tightened, colder than before. Even the snowfall seemed to slow, drifting in sluggish spirals.

  They turned toward it.

  Figures emerged through the storm, the blizzard bending away from them as though ordered not to touch. Wind avoided their clothes. Snowflakes veered before landing. The world behaved around them the way servants behave around royalty: cautious, reverent, afraid to offend.

  And yet, each figure displaced more air than they should have. Pressure radiated from them, a presence so dense Luke felt it in his ribs. He knew instantly who they were. The Rhiannon family.

  Eight figures stood in a perfect line. Five men and three women. The men wore flawless suits and long coats cut with such precision the fabric seemed sculpted rather than sewn. The women wore formal gowns that had no business existing in a blizzard, shimmering subtly under distant torchlight.

  Each one wore a white mask, smooth and expressionless, marked with the deep blue crest of the Rhiannon on the forehead. Only their eyes showed through: cold, analytical, silent as the snow around them.

  The woman in the center stepped forward. The voice from moments earlier belonged to her.

  “It has been a long time, Allison.”

  She didn’t simply stand there; she radiated. The air around her hummed, as if gravity had been quietly increased in her presence. Luke felt the pressure along his spine, fighting the instinct to bow his head.

  Then it struck him. Her eyes weren’t human. They glowed, a soft, luminous blue in the left, and a deep, chaotic red in the right. Vertical pupils, thin and sharp like a dragon’s. There was something hypnotic about them, something that felt ancient and merciless staring back.

  She wore a pale blue dress that might have looked delicate anywhere else, but here it had the weight of a royal mantle. Her hair was white and long, falling like strands of fresh snow.

  “My queen…” Allison whispered, voice small, submissive, cracking.

  And Luke understood. This woman was the head of the Rhiannon family. One of the people who held the title of King of the World. The top of the hierarchy. Absolute power on Earth.

  People approached in confusion, clutching weapons and torches. A squad of soldiers ran across the snow, Eugene leading with his spear raised.

  “Who are you?!” he shouted as he charged toward the stranger.

  The queen barely turned her head. “Silence.”

  She lifted a single finger. Nothing more. A light, simple, almost lazy gesture. And the world froze.

  Luke saw it unfold, unable to move in time: a white flash bursting from her fingertip, silent, yet catastrophic. In less than a second, the light washed across the entire village. People mid-stride halted instantly. Their bodies stiffened. Frost crawled across their clothes, their hair, their skin.

  Then soldiers, children, elders, adults, everyone, became gleaming statues of ice.

  The cold hit Luke a heartbeat later. It climbed his skin, spread across his chest, down his legs, into his lungs. He tried to move. Nothing. Ice swallowed him whole. But he could still see, hear, and think.

  Unable to intervene. Only one person remained free.

  Allison stepped forward, directly in front of him. As if the spell had never been aimed her way.

  “Allison, Allison…” the queen said, annoyance sharp in her voice. “You disrespected me. You allowed yourself to be fully integrated into the system. You chose to enter the tutorial. I was disrespected, by you, of all people. The bastard daughter of a maid.”

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