Ashgrove reached Roy’s garrison two days after fleeing the camp, his leg still stiff from the wound Hoju had opened along it, his pride considerably worse off than the injury itself.
“Doss and Renn,” Roy said, reading the answer plainly in the man’s face before he’d finished crossing the room.
“Dead,” Ashgrove confirmed.
“Both of them, inside a minute.
I managed to poison him before I disengaged, but it wasn’t enough to finish it.
He and the girl vanished the same way the first pair reported.
Straight into thin air.”
Roy said nothing for a long moment, turning the report over with the same grim thoroughness he’d once used assessing battlefield losses.
“Two trained rankers dead in under a minute,” he said finally, “against a boy this kingdom’s own records still list as level two.”
“Whatever he is,” Ashgrove said, “level has nothing to do with it anymore.”
Inside the domain, the poison took its time letting go of him.
Hoju drifted in and out of a fevered, restless sleep for the better part of two days, Fresha rarely leaving his side through any of it, cooling cloths and quiet, stubborn patience the only tools she had against a toxin neither of them fully understood.
Quick Heal worked at it steadily in the background, slow and grinding, and by the second evening the fever finally broke, leaving him weak but lucid, staring up at the same warm, familiar ceiling that had sheltered them both more times than he liked to count.
“You scared me,” Fresha said, setting aside a damp cloth she no longer needed.
“I scare myself sometimes too,” Hoju admitted, voice rough.
“That poison should have finished me if Quick Heal hadn’t already grown past what it started as.”
A soft golden panel confirmed it a moment later, flickering into view above him.
**Condition met.
Skill created: Poison Resistance.**
“Of course.
Nearly die, and the system hands you a receipt for it.”
“That’s not funny,” Fresha said, though the corner of her mouth twitched despite herself.
She sat with him through the rest of his recovery, and it was during one of those quiet stretches, Hoju finally strong enough to sit upright without the room tilting, that her eyes drifted to the far wall of the domain’s study, where the curved blade Gogohut had died holding hung mounted above a shelf he rarely touched.
“You never use it,” she said.
“Not once, since he gave it to you.
You fight bare handed, or with that plain sword you bought off a merchant in the last town.
Why keep a blade like that just hanging there?”
Hoju followed her gaze, something complicated settling over his face.
“It’s not an ordinary sword,” he said.
“It belonged to a being who was stronger than anything either of us can properly imagine.
A star, Fresha.
He carried that blade through fights that could have leveled mountains, and he chose to hand it to me, along with everything else, in the last few minutes of his life.”
“So use it,” Fresha said, simple and direct in the way only she had ever managed with him.
“You’ve earned every part of what he gave you.
Why not the sword too?”
Hoju was quiet for a long moment, turning the question over more carefully than she probably expected.
“Because I’m not worthy of it yet,” he said finally.
“Not the way he was.
That blade carried a star’s whole life behind it, everything he fought for, everything he believed I could become when he barely knew me at all.
If I pick it up too soon, before I’ve actually grown into what he saw in me, it’ll just be a sharp piece of metal in the hands of someone borrowing a legacy he hasn’t earned.” He shook his head slowly.
“When I’m ready, I’ll know. The source of this chapter is g.com.
Until then, it stays exactly where it is, and I keep training until the day I deserve to hold it properly.”
Fresha studied him for a long moment, something soft and proud crossing her expression.
“You’ve changed,” she said quietly.
“From the boy who used to apologize just for existing in Teria’s square.”
“I had a good teacher,” Hoju said.
“For a few hours, anyway.
Long enough to matter.”
She was quiet after that, and when she finally spoke again, her voice carried a different kind of energy entirely, something bright and forward looking that had been building in her since the moment she’d chosen to walk away from Teria at his side.
“I think about my own Awakening sometimes,” she said.
“It’s still a few years off, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot already.
Whatever I awaken as, whatever number the monument gives me, I want to actually use it.
Not to hide, not to just survive quietly the way we’ve been doing.
I want to fight beside you properly, Hoju.
I want to be someone you can actually count on out there, instead of someone you’re always protecting.”
Hoju looked at her for a long moment, pride and worry tangled together in a way he didn’t fully know how to separate.
“We’ll see what the monument gives you,” he said carefully.
“But whatever it is, I’d like that.
Fighting beside you, instead of just ahead of you.”
Fresha smiled, wide and genuine, the first real smile he’d seen from her in longer than either of them probably realized, and for a while, the domain held nothing but quiet, comfortable peace.