The carriage rolled across the snow-packed road, rattling faintly under its own weight, the steady rhythm of hooves striking the road carrying through the cabin floor.
Aela sat across from me, perched on a cushioned bench upholstered in deep red, her attention already drifting out the window on her side.
We passed alongside a massive stone wall, its edges rough with age, and my gaze caught on something rising in the distance beyond it, a compound of buildings large enough to qualify as its own small district.
The Main Line quarters.
House Claiom, like each of the other major houses, was massive in its own right, split across countless sub-lines and collateral branches, entire families spreading out from a single root.
The Main Line itself stayed small by comparison, just Harren, his brother Roderic and Roderic’s family, his sister Vesna, and elder Osric rounding it out.
That had not always been the case, but things had changed a few decades back when the house had carried out an expedition to the Dead Continent.
The sub-lines and collateral branches, though, were enormous.
That estate ahead of us was where elder Osric lived, along with Roderic, Ilsa, and their twins.
Just the sight of it seemed to set something off in Aela beside me, her fists clenching slightly in her lap. Her dislike of Ilsa ran deep, and the same held true for Kessler, Ilsa’s son.
Both of them, more than anyone else in this family, had shaped exactly how Yun had come to be seen by the rest of the house, and she knew that as well as I did.
Lucidia itself split cleanly into four rings. At the centre sat the main line hold, with the manor for the head along with quarters for the rest of the main line.
Moving outward from there came the sub-line district, then the collateral district, each one sprawling enough to house most of the family members who chose to actually live in Claiom rather than settle elsewhere in the world.
Past all of that sat the outer city, the largest ring by far, home to the markets, the trade, everything that actually made this place function as a living city. That was also where we were headed.
As the carriage rolled forward through the rings, Aela filled the quiet with idle chatter, mostly rambling about nothing in particular, and I found myself smiling, just listening to her talk.
This isn’t so bad.
If it was just for one day, I decided I could let myself have this. I let the guilt I usually carried around her ease back, just for the length of this one day.
Just for today.
Rolling through the collateral district a while later, I took in the people moving along either side of the road. Both the sub-line and collateral districts functioned almost like small cities of their own, rows of stone houses lining wide central streets, smoke curling steadily from chimneys.
A few caught sight of the carriage as we passed, recognising it instantly for what it was, the lord’s own, pale white with the same crest worked into its side in dark iron. They bowed properly. But their eyes lingered afterward, a second too long.
That same faint pressure pressed down on me regardless of what it actually was, the pressure of being looked down upon by strangers, one that Yun had long been used to, before the carriage rolled past and out of their sightline.
Aela noticed it too. She sat up sharply, pounding a fist once against the carriage’s wooden ceiling.
"Balan, faster. Get us out of here."
Her voice cracked with real frustration.
"Damn bastards," she muttered, dropping back into her seat and crossing her arms tight.
"Hey, hey. It is fine," I said, a small, tired chuckle slipping out as I watched her scowl deepen.
The carriage finally passed through a third matching gate, the last of the concentric rings behind us now, and we crossed properly into the outer city.
The moment we crossed that threshold, everything shifted. The quiet, orderly rows of the collateral district gave way almost instantly to noise. Crowds, colour, the layered smell of woodsmoke and roasting meat and something sweet I could not immediately place.
The carriage slowed near the edge of the market square.
People seemed to bend in quick bows as we passed on foot, shopkeepers straightening their aprons, a couple of vendors nudging each other and nodding in our direction.
Aela grabbed my hand almost the instant we had cleared the carriage, tugging me forward with open excitement she clearly never got to show inside the walls.
The market unfolded ahead of us, stalls packed tight along both sides of the street.
Further down, a stall sold long strips of dried meat that smelled sharp and smoky, and past that, another sold small glass vials containing something that looked unsettling.
It was a weird sight.
Like, I had written all of this into existence, and yet never known that a side like this existed in this world.
"Old Tam!" Aela called out, already dragging me toward a stall stacked with polished stone jewellery.
The vendor, an older man with a weathered face and a missing front tooth, broke into a grin the second he spotted her.
"Lady Aela. Back again already? Thought you would have grown out of my little trinkets by now."
"Never," she said, sorting through a tray of necklaces. "Yun, look at this one."
Before I could really object, she had looped a thin silver chain over my head, a small carved wolf pendant settling against my chest.
"There. Suits you," she said, satisfied, ignoring old Tam’s amused expression entirely.
As I watched her haggle over the price a moment later, sharp and quick despite her obvious wealth, something in me eased at the sight of it.
I found myself laughing along with her more than once, caught up entirely in the noise and colour of it.
We wandered deeper into the market after that, Aela pulling me from stall to stall with no real destination in mind, pointing out anything that caught her eye, teasing me when I flinched slightly at the price of a carved hollow-bone dagger I had only glanced at out of curiosity.
A few more of those same lingering stares followed us as we moved, faces turning toward us a second longer than felt entirely comfortable.
Aela, though, seemed to have stopped noticing them at all, or decided not to, her attention fixed on me instead, dragging me toward whatever next caught her interest before I had even finished looking at the last thing.
Eventually the crowd thinned slightly as we turned down a narrower side street, the smell of roasting meat and something rich and smoky pulling us toward a squat stone building tucked between two larger shops, steam fogging its windows from whatever was cooking inside.
A simple wooden sign hung above the door, carved with a steaming bowl and the name burned into the wood beneath it.
"This place," Aela said, practically pulling me through the door. "I have been trying to get here for weeks. Every time I am back from Reliqua something gets in the way."
We settled at a small table near the back, and she insisted immediately that I try the stew, a thick, dark broth studded with root vegetables and slow-cooked meat.
It was good. Better than good, honestly.
I had barely gotten through my first few bites when I felt it. A shift in the air near the entrance, and Aela’s posture stiffening slightly across from me.
Kessler saw us first.
Oh, for fuck’s sake, not this moron.
I had not met him properly before, though Yun’s memories filled in plenty. Kessler and Wren, Ilsa and Roderic’s twins, both eighteen.
And also, how could I not know her?
Wren.
She had been one of the characters in the main cast three years from now, part of the very group he had created. Only now he was dead, so I was not really sure where that put her.
She had been one of the fan-favourite characters, with her playfulness.
But there was another thing to her character as well.
And now, seeing her in front of me, I realised just how much they really had in common.
I had written her based on my own sister, after all. They even shared the same name.
Letting my eyes turn away from her before she realised I was staring, I turned to look at him.
Kessler, that damn brat.
While Wren had been an important character, he really had not. I had killed him off in one of the earlier arcs just to give Wren more depth, oh, and how I almost cherished that decision now.
He had always resented Yun after all, quietly at first and then openly once he realised nobody in the family was going to stop him. Wren had never joined in outright, though she had never exactly stopped him either, watching more than participating.
Kessler’s silver hair was cropped shorter than most of the family wore it, his eyes carrying arrogance as they landed on me. Wren stood a step behind him, quieter, her own eyes flicking between us.
Whatever Kessler had been saying to his sister died halfway out of his mouth, replaced by something considerably more interested.
"Did not expect to find you slumming it down here," he said, his gaze dropping to the faint marks visible along my forearm, assessing, already amused by whatever conclusion he had landed on.
"Still cannot believe they are actually letting you into the Rite after the trash Aspect that you landed with. I will try not to make it too embarrassing for the house."
"Sure," I said simply, not bothering to look up from my bowl. "Let me know how that goes for you," I added, bringing another spoonful to my mouth, savouring the taste as I closed my eyes.
The dismissal clearly was not the reaction he wanted. His jaw tightened slightly, a flicker of irritation crossing his face at being brushed off so easily.
"You think this is a joke?" he said, stepping closer, his voice rising half a register. "You do realise everyone will be watching that day to see how badly I embarrass you, right?"
I set my spoon down slowly, finally meeting his eyes directly.
"You need everyone watching for this to feel real to you, do you not?" I muttered, my voice almost sounding amused.
"Must be exhausting, needing an audience just to feel sure of yourself."
For a second, nobody moved or even said anything.
But then Aela’s short, almost subdued chuckle broke the silence.
Then Kessler’s composure cracked properly, colour rising fast in his face, his hand twitching at his side like he was genuinely considering closing the distance between us.
"You..."
"Kessler." Wren’s hand landed on his arm, light but final.
She looked at me a moment longer, something unreadable passing behind her eyes, before steering her brother firmly away without another word, the two of them disappearing back out into the crowded street.
Watching them go, I became properly aware, for the first time, of exactly how many people nearby had been watching the whole exchange. Countless silver-haired faces scattered across the room, most wearing some quiet version of the same verdict Kessler had just said out loud.
They really did think I was weak.
Fine. Let them keep thinking that a little longer.
Once the Rite finally arrived, I would show every single one of them exactly how wrong they were.