The walk out of Hollow Creek the next morning felt like performing a version of himself he barely had the energy to play.
Halvard had done what she could for him before the cohort woke, cleaning the cut on his forearm and binding it properly, checking his ribs with careful hands and pronouncing nothing broken, just bruised deep enough to ache for a week.
It helped.
It didn’t fix the way he moved, stiff and careful, or the shadows under his eyes that no amount of sleep from the last few hours had touched.
Bexley gathered the cohort at the gate before they set out and kept it short.
“There was an incident on last night’s watch.
Instructor Halvard handled it.
Varun’s cleared to travel, and he’ll see a proper healer once we’re back at the guild.” His tone left no room for questions, the particular flatness instructors used when they wanted a thing understood rather than discussed.
“That’s the whole briefing.
Move out.”
It worked, mostly.
Tobias fell in beside him near the front of the group, easy and loud the way he always was after a long trip, already narrating some theory about what the guild would feed them once they were back.
Wren walked a little quieter, glancing over twice without saying anything.
Neither of them knew the real shape of it, only the sanded-down version Bexley had handed them, and that was apparently enough to file under handled and leave alone.
“You look like something ran you over,” Tobias said, not unkindly, more the observation of someone who’d fought beside Varun enough times to know what his usual tired looked like and clock that this wasn’t it.
“Bexley said an incident.
That’s a very small word for whatever your face is doing right now.”
“It’s a fair word.
Mostly.”
“Halvard didn’t have a scratch on her, though.
Whatever handled it, she handled it clean.” Tobias didn’t push it further, just filed the observation the way he filed everything, patient rather than suspicious these days.
“Guess I believe him that it’s handled.
Doesn’t mean you look it.”
“I’ll live,” Varun said, and let the conversation drift somewhere easier.
Wren caught up with him a little later, once Tobias had drifted ahead to argue with someone else about the guild’s dining hall menu.
She didn’t ask him anything directly.
She never did.
She just walked beside him for a stretch, quiet, the same way she had back when she’d first clocked his improved accuracy and decided to file it away instead of pressing.
“You’ll tell us if it’s actually bad,” she said eventually.
Not a question either.
“I’ll tell you if it’s actually bad.”
“Okay.” She let it go at that, and somehow the not-pushing felt more like being seen than an actual question would have.
Varun kept his face doing what a tired cohort member’s face should do.
It wasn’t hard, exactly.
He was tired.
That part wasn’t a performance.
Wolfy hadn’t come back yet.
He didn’t push it.
The soul realm didn’t run on his clock, and after everything Wolfy had taken last night, healing fast still meant healing on its own schedule.
Varun walked the rest of the way alone and let his mind circle the same handful of things it had been circling since Halvard sat down against that rock.
Meera.
Ashgrave.
A dungeon that had changed shape so completely the person who knew it best couldn’t find her own memories in it anymore.
A creature that was, by Halvard’s own account, the smallest thing worth being afraid of down there.
He didn’t have room to hold all of that and also be a normal cohort member walking home from a training exercise.
He held it anyway.
There wasn’t another option.
He almost made it to his room clean.
Riya was coming down the hall as he came up it, and whatever she’d been about to say died the second she actually looked at him.
He watched her take in the stiff way he was holding his ribs, the bandage on his forearm, the general wrongness of how he was standing, and her face went from ordinary tired-of-a-long-day to something else entirely in under a second.
“Varun.” Her voice cracked up sharp, all the careful older-sister composure gone at once.
“What happened to you.”
“It’s handled.
I’m fine.”
“You are very clearly not fine.” She crossed the distance between them fast, hands already reaching for his arm before he could step back, checking the bandage, checking his face, checking him the way she’d checked him a hundred times growing up whenever his Anchor-tuned instincts told her something was wrong before he’d said a word.
“Who did this.
What happened.
Bexley sent a runner ahead saying there was an incident, that’s the whole message I got, one word, and now you’re standing here looking like you went through a wall.”
“I did go through a wall, actually.” It came out before he could stop it, half true and half an attempt to defuse her with something almost like a joke.
It didn’t land.
“That’s not funny.”
“I know.” He softened, because her fear wasn’t performance, it was real and it was aimed entirely at him.
“I’m okay, Riya.
Really.
Halvard already looked me over.
Nothing’s broken.
I just need to sleep it off.”
“You need a real healer, not a field checkup from someone who was in whatever this was with you.” She hadn’t let go of his arm yet.
“Dad’s going to want to know everything the second he’s up.”
“I’ll tell him what I can.”
“That’s not the same as everything, and we both know it.” Riya searched his face a moment longer, the same watchfulness she’d carried around him since he was five years old and cracking ability stones with nothing behind them yet, and something in whatever she found there made her exhale and finally let go of his arm instead of pushing further.
“Go sleep.
We’re talking about this properly tomorrow.
I mean it.”
“Tomorrow,” he agreed, mostly to end it kindly rather than because he intended to actually explain much.
She watched him all the way to his door before she finally turned back down the hall, and he understood, closing it behind him, that he hadn’t actually gotten away with anything.
He’d just bought himself until morning.
Vikram had already been asleep, or pretending to be, and Varun found himself grateful for it either way.
His father had made a call before this trip even started, had asked someone he trusted to watch his son without ever fully explaining why even to himself.
That was its own conversation, one Varun wasn’t ready to start either, not tonight, maybe not for a while yet.
He sat on the edge of his bed and let himself feel, for one full minute, exactly as wrecked as he actually was.
He wasn’t ready to hand Riya Meera’s name tonight either.
Maybe not for a while.
That felt like its own decision, separate from everything else, one he didn’t have the strength left to make properly right now.
It was there, alone with the door shut, that he felt it: warmth low in his chest, the particular pull of a bond deciding to answer instead of waiting to be called.
Wolfy stepped out of nothing beside the bed, four paws landing solid on the floor, black-gold light steady across his coat again, no trace of the limp.
“You’re walking fine,” Varun said, and heard the relief in his own voice before he’d decided to let it show.
“Soul realm’s good for more than a nap, apparently.” Wolfy settled close, near enough their shoulders would have brushed if Varun were still standing.
“How are you.”
“Walking fine too.
Mostly.”
“Mostly.” Wolfy didn’t push past that word, just let it sit there, acknowledged.
“You could’ve stayed longer.
Rested more.”
“I rested enough.
I just wasn’t going to leave you facing your sister alone if I could help it, and I couldn’t get here in time for that part anyway.” Wolfy nudged his hand once with his nose, brief and matter-of-fact, the closest thing he had to checking someone over without making a production of it.
“I heard some of that, from the soul realm.
She sounded terrifying.”
“She was terrifying.”
“You’re not as fine as you’re telling everyone you are.”
“I know.”
“Good.
Just wanted to make sure you knew it too.”
Then he checked the interface.
He hadn’t looked at it since before the fight.
TASK: THE UNINVITED
Objective: Find it.
Defeat it.
Result: Found.
Engaged.
Not Defeated.
Varun read that twice.
It was accurate.
It still stung a little to see it laid out that plainly.
Assessment: Contribution substantial.
Threat directly confronted and driven back through sustained combat, third-party intervention noted and accounted for separately.
Objective incomplete, but not for lack of effort measured.
Reward (partial, scaled to result): Soul Beast Control manifestation probability increased.
Current standing: Near maximum.
Effect at near-maximum probability: elemental compatibility for the next bonded beast will be optimal or functionally indistinguishable from optimal.
He sat with that for a moment, reading it a third time, like the words might rearrange themselves into something more forgiving if he waited long enough.
They didn’t.
The interface never dressed things up more than they’d actually earned, and he supposed he’d rather have that than a comfortable lie carved in gold.
“So we didn’t get the full thing,” he said out loud, mostly for Wolfy’s benefit.
“No guaranteed perfect match.
Just almost.”
“Almost is still further than you were an hour ago.” Wolfy’s voice had an edge to it Varun didn’t immediately recognize.
“Further than you were before any of this started, actually.”
“You sound like that bothers you.”
Wolfy was quiet for a second.
“It used to.
Back at Hollow Creek, when the system first started talking about probability and new beasts in the same breath, I didn’t like hearing what we have measured out like that.
Like a number deciding whether you’d want someone else standing beside you.”
“And now?”
“Now I’ve been the only thing standing beside you, and I felt exactly how much that wasn’t enough.” Wolfy’s tone had gone plain, no humor in it at all.
“I don’t feel weird about the number anymore, Varun.
I felt what happens without it last night.
I’d rather you have someone else who can actually hold a line when I can’t.”
That landed harder than the system text had.
Varun looked at his own hands, still faintly marked from the fight, and thought about the exact moment in that chamber when he’d understood the shape of the problem: one beast, one form at a time, never both.
Never a blade in his hand and a body beside him in the same breath, not without paying for it in the worst possible second.
“You almost died because of that gap,” Varun said quietly.
“The swap.
The half-second you weren’t a body anymore.”
“I know exactly which half-second you mean.
I was there for it.” Something almost fond crept into Wolfy’s voice despite everything.
“I’m not saying this because I’m scared of it happening again, though I am, a little.
I’m saying it because I trust you to choose someone worth trusting, the same way I trusted you back when I was thirty crystals deep in a counter and had no reason to yet.”
“That’s a low bar.
You didn’t know me at all yet.”
“I knew enough.
I’ll know enough again when the time comes.” Wolfy huffed something that was almost a laugh.
“Don’t overthink the sentiment.
I’m allowed to want you safer without it being complicated.”
“You’re allowed.” Varun let himself smile, small and tired, the first real one since before the fight.
“Doesn’t mean I won’t think about it anyway.
Overthinking things is sort of what I do.”
“Believe me, I’ve noticed.”
“Near maximum,” Varun said again, testing the shape of the words.
“Whatever beast I bond next, whatever element I choose.
It’ll fit properly.”
“It’ll fit properly,” Wolfy agreed.
“That’s not nothing.”
“It’s not everything either.
It doesn’t fix tonight.
It doesn’t tell us anything about Ashgrave, or what’s above that thing down there, or what I’m supposed to do with any of what Halvard told me.” Varun exhaled slowly.
“But it’s something I can actually act on.
Everything else is just weight I have to carry until I know more.
This is a door I can actually walk through.”
“Crystal or trust,” Wolfy said.
“You’ll have to decide which path eventually, if you’re serious about this.”
“I know.” Varun had turned that particular question over before, back when it was still hypothetical.
A crystal let him choose the element and left the rest to luck.
Trust meant finding a beast willing to bond without one, no guarantee of anything except whatever they actually built together first.
“I don’t know yet.
Ask me again once I’ve slept.”
“Fair enough.”
Wolfy settled down beside the bed, close enough that Varun could feel the warmth off his coat.
“So walk through it.
Eventually.
Not tonight.”
“Not tonight.” Varun managed something that wasn’t quite a laugh.
“Tonight I want to sleep for about a year.”
“Fair.
The door’ll still be there tomorrow.”
He believed that, mostly.
He lay back without bothering to change out of his ruined shirt, and for the first time since the chamber, since the blade of light, since Halvard’s voice saying his mother’s name like it cost her something to spend it, his mind went quiet enough to actually rest.
Somewhere underneath everything else, a decision had already been made without him needing to announce it out loud again.
He was going to bond a second beast.
Soon.
Properly.
Not because a number told him the odds were good, but because he’d felt, in his own ribs, exactly what it cost to go on being one person holding two jobs at once.
The probability was almost maximum.
He intended to use it.
_______________
Author’s Note:
That’s a wrap on the Hollow Creek arc.
Started as a “safe, low-rank training exercise” back at the start and ended up cracking open the biggest thing in Varun’s life he never saw coming.
Writing the fight across these last few chapters wore me out in the best way, and getting to finally let Halvard actually be someone instead of just a mysterious instructor in the background was something I’d been sitting on for a while.
From here the story’s turning toward something Varun can actually act on: a second bond.
What that looks like, and who (or what) it ends up being, is going to shape a lot of what comes next, so I’d love to hear your theories in the comments.
Thanks for sticking with this arc through all the twists.
Next chapter starts a new stretch.
See you there.
It’s been a wild stretch getting here.
The last several chapters especially have been some of the hardest and most fun I’ve written so far — Hollow Creek turned into a lot more than anyone expected, Varun and Wolfy went through the wringer, and there’s a lot more coming out of what just happened than I think anyone’s expecting yet.
Writing it has genuinely been a rush, and I hope reading it has been too.
Can I be honest about something?
I haven’t gotten a single comment on this story yet.
Not one.
I see the read counts, I know people are actually getting to the end of these chapters, but the comment section stays completely quiet, and that’s been a little hard to sit with some days.
I get that’s just how reading goes for a lot of people, you read and move on, and that’s fine.
But it’s a strange kind of quiet on the other end of something I’ve been carrying around for years before it was ever words on a page.
I’m not asking for ratings or reviews, just a comment.
Even one line.
What worked, what didn’t, a favorite moment, anything at all.
It genuinely helps me keep going, more than I think most readers realize.
Thanks for sticking with Varun this far.
More is coming, and it’s about to get bigger.
xking099