Orestis stood very still and took stock of his failure.

  He had been careful in what he told Eirene. Deliberately so. He had warned her about the gods whose power carried immediate consequence—those wrapped in conditions, intermediaries, and attention by design.

  What he had not accounted for was the opposite case. He had not warned her about the one god who had never bothered with safeguards at all.

  Eleuthera was the Goddess of Freedom. She didn’t lock her power away, didn’t restrict access, didn’t pretend it was scarce or protected. Anyone could take from her. That had always been the point.

  People were free to steal from her, just as she was free to deal with them afterwards.

  He exhaled slowly. Given the intrusion, some form of response was to be expected. Still, it was not all bad. Eleuthera could be reasoned with. After she manifested an avatar, he could explain himself. He could—

  The pressure withdrew as abruptly as it had arrived.

  Wait… she left? Just like that?

  There was no rebuke. No resistance. Just a sense of something… amused. That, more than anything, unsettled him.

  While he was still trying to reconcile the absence with the implication it carried, Eirene asked, “What was that feeling just now?”

  “That’s what it feels like when a god turns their attention on you,” Orestis answered.

  She absorbed that without visible alarm. “Oh. So that’s what it was.”

  Most people would be terrified. She sounds mildly curious. I’m not sure whether that’s courage or a fundamental misunderstanding of what just happened.

  He looked at her then—really looked—and a conclusion he had never needed to consider settled into place.

  “You drew from Eleuthera,” he said quietly. “The Goddess of Freedom. She doesn’t stop anyone from taking. And she doesn’t miss it.”

  But she had withdrawn without friction; without warning; and without discussion. The only reason she would do that was if she had never objected to Eirene drawing from her in the first place.

  Why didn’t she object?

  The thought surfaced unbidden, sharp—and pushed all the clues into place with uncomfortable precision.

  Why would Eirene reach for Eleuthera from the countless choices available? Given her family’s background, the Merchant God should have been her first instinct.

  Then there was her mana. He had noticed it earlier—the lack of strain, the absence of minor resistances that should have been present at her stage. At the time, he had dismissed it as variance, or recent progress.

  Now it read differently. Like something unbound.

  Finally, his wards. They hadn’t reacted to her intrusion. Not even the passive ones. The room had remained quiet, as though nothing of consequence had passed through it. He had assumed an external explanation—some interaction he hadn’t accounted for.

  If I’m right, then the wards never registered her as an intrusion in the first place.

  “Eirene,” he said quietly. “How did you get into the room? The first time.”

  She blinked. “I walked in.”

  He waited.

  She frowned slightly, as if checking for a detail she might have missed. “The door wasn’t locked.”

  As if I’d be careless enough to leave my doors unlocked. Well, that settled it then.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “You’ve been blessed by Eleuthera,” he said. It was not a question.

  He didn’t ask how it had happened. Eirene would not know. Eleuthera didn’t choose by any standard that could be observed or explained.

  Eirene blinked. “Oh. Yes.”

  She registered his words, but whatever she took from them led her to a different conclusion entirely—one that left her untroubled, even faintly amused.

  She folded her arms, a small smile tugging at her lips. “Is that what this is about? What you told me years ago?”

  He frowned. “What did I tell you?”

  “You said the only way I could be less suited was if a god took an interest in me.”

  Recognition followed, slow and belated. He exhaled through his nose. “That was not what I meant.”

  He also remembered telling her that people became less free afterwards. There was a brief, unwelcome flicker of irony at the thought.

  Of all the gods that might have intervened, it just had to be the one who imposed no limits at all. The universe, it seems, has a sense of humor—and it’s aimed squarely at me.

  “We have larger problems than that,” he continued, more seriously. “Eleuthera’s blessings are not dangerous in the way people expect, but they do come with risks you may not be aware of.”

  Eirene’s smile faded, replaced by attentive focus. “I know the broad strokes,” she said. “I did some research after meeting her. Limits removed. Binding effects don’t hold. Accounts vary.”

  “That’s the problem,” Orestis replied. “They vary because the effects are contextual. There is no standard failure mode.” He paused. “What did you find out about mana, specifically?”

  She considered the question. “That I no longer have limits on my mana capacity. That I can keep advancing without hitting the usual thresholds.”

  “Yes,” he said. “And what you haven’t been told is that the thresholds are not there for ambition. They are there for feedback.”

  She paused, as if reassessing what she understood. “Feedback?”

  Orestis nodded. “Limits are how the body tells you to stop. Strain, resistance, instability. They are crude, but they are early. Without them, damage does not announce itself. It accumulates.”

  “I am being careful,” Eirene said. There was no defensiveness in her tone, only certainty. “I am not forcing anything.”

  “I know,” Orestis replied. “That is not sufficient anymore.”

  She hesitated, considering his words, but she did not interrupt him.

  “Care only works when the system pushes back,” he continued. “When it does not, you can exceed tolerance without realising it. By the time consequences appear, the correction window is gone.”

  Eirene was quiet for a moment. “So what do I do?”

  He didn’t answer immediately. The problem was familiar in shape, if not in cause. Kallistrate was currently training their soldiers under the same assumption—that damage could be tolerated so long as it did not surface immediately. Aura instead of mana, but the consequences would be the same.

  In her case, though, aura could provide a buffer.

  “You choose structure,” he said. “Deliberately.”

  Her brow creased. “Structure how?”

  “Aura training,” he answered. “Not for power. For reinforcement—to externalize load. It will give your body redundancy where your mana no longer will.”

  She absorbed that. “You think I’m moving too fast.”

  “I think speed has become a misleading metric,” he said. “You are not constrained the way others are. That makes comparison meaningless.”

  “Wouldn’t aura training just compound the problem?” she pushed back. “Based on what I’ve read, the blessing would have removed any limits on aura as well.”

  “Yes, but unlike mana—which circulates on its own—aura capacity does not increase without physical strain. But it still has the benefit of reinforcing all aspects of your physique—which includes your mana channels.”

  Eirene studied him for a moment and asked the question that must have remained unasked in the back of her mind for years. “How do you know all this?”

  He took a moment to think about that. Because the honest answer was not one he could give. Because I have lived long enough to recognize how systems fail would sound like arrogance, and anything less would be a lie.

  He had seen this before. Not often—but often enough. People favoured by Eleuthera did not burn out the way others did. They did not receive warnings, did not feel strain until it was far too late. They mistook the absence of resistance for safety, and paid for it later in ways no blessing could undo.

  One of them had broken himself on Orestis.

  But that wasn’t the point. The point was that he would have lasted longer—much longer—if someone had taught him where the hidden stresses accumulated instead of trusting freedom to be kind.

  “I pay attention to where things fail,” Orestis said at last. “Especially when they stop failing where they’re supposed to.”

  “And you’re not telling me everything,” she said quietly.

  “No,” he agreed. “Not yet.”

  She studied him for a moment longer, then nodded once. “All right. Then we do it your way.”

  He inclined his head in acknowledgment, relief tempered by the knowledge that this was only a provisional solution. For now, anyway.

  “Have you already settled somewhere?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “Not yet. Does this place have vacancies?”

  “I believe so.”

  Eirene nodded. “All right. That would be more convenient.”

  She headed for the stairs without hesitation, turning the decision into action.

  Once she was gone, Orestis took a breath and said softly, “Eleuthera. Are you still watching?”

  There was no response. No clear acknowledgement that she was watching or listening. Which meant nothing, either way.

  “I just want to live a quiet life,” he said to the empty room. “To be left alone.”

  Orestis remained where he was for a moment longer. Then he turned back to the desk and began revising his schedule.

  Even so, a thought kept scratching at the back of his head: he really wasn’t doing a good job of quietly waiting for death, was he.

  Patreon, along with extra lore and author notes.