Free Web NovelChapter 42: Saga 42: Preparations
The following week passed in a blur of relentless drills, ward reinforcement, and increasingly grim briefings that stretched long into every night. Renodin’s Six Brigades mobilized in full for the first time in a generation, patrol routes doubling across every district, palace guard rotations tightening to the point of open paranoia among the staff.
Azure Blake trained harder than they had in months, harder perhaps than they ever had before—not sparring for fun the way they sometimes did between missions, but drilling coordinated tactics against hypothetical Mythic-tier threats, running simulations Claire designed specifically to be brutally, deliberately unfair.
"Again," Sylvia said, sweat-soaked and breathing hard, for the fifteenth time that afternoon, already resetting into position.
"We’ve run this exact scenario twelve times," Yuki groaned, flat on his back in the dirt. "I’ve died in eleven of them. Statistically, I think we’ve learned everything this simulation has to teach us."
"Then we run it a thirteenth time, and you try not dying for once."
"Character growth isn’t linear, Sylvia."
Kael had, in the meantime, been quietly testing the limits of his newly acquired Supreme Abilities in private sessions away from the others, wanting to understand exactly what he was capable of before he had to rely on it in a real fight. Black Hole let him tear localized gravity wells that could swallow projectiles whole, crushing them into nothing; Indomitable Vitality made him borderline impossible to put down for good, regenerating from wounds that should have been outright fatal within seconds. Combined with Quitax Barrier’s absolute negation, he’d become something uncomfortably close to unkillable, at least in short, controlled bursts.
[You’re getting stronger faster than any host I’ve ever tracked across any timeline. Careful, though. Power without proper control just means a bigger, messier catastrophe when things eventually go wrong.]
’Thanks for the vote of confidence.’
[I calls it like I sees it. Also, your form on that last Black Hole attempt was sloppy. Tighten your focus before you accidentally swallow a building.]
Harriden spent his nights mapping every shadow-accessible tunnel beneath the palace district, memorizing escape routes and choke points no ordinary map would ever show, working from memory sketches he refused to commit to paper for security reasons. Claire buried herself in defensive ward theory late into every night, trying desperately to reverse-engineer wards strong enough to hold against a genuine Mythic-tier assault, dark circles forming under her eyes that no amount of sleep seemed to fix. Even Adian, usually more decoration than deterrent in most people’s estimation, threw himself fully into liaison work between the guild and the royal family, smoothing tensions and cutting through bureaucratic red tape that would’ve otherwise slowed every preparation to a frustrating crawl.
Late one night, Kael found Sylvia alone on the training grounds long after everyone else had collapsed into exhausted sleep, still running through sword forms with mechanical, joyless precision under the moonlight.
"You need to rest," he said, approaching carefully.
"I need to be ready." She didn’t break her rhythm, blade cutting through the night air in practiced arcs.
"You will be ready. We all will be." He caught her hand mid-swing, gently, stopping the motion without force. "But not if you run yourself completely into the ground before the actual fight even starts. That helps no one, least of all yourself."
She let the momentum carry her into him instead of pulling away, forehead resting briefly against his shoulder—a rare, unguarded moment of exhaustion finally breaking through her usual iron composure.
"I’m scared," she admitted, so quietly he almost missed it entirely beneath the sound of wind through the training yard. "Not for me. For all of you. I’ve lost people before, Kael. I don’t know if I could survive losing any of you."
"I know." Kael wrapped his arms around her properly, holding on. "Me too. Every single day since Sumbiya, honestly. But we’re stronger together than any of us could ever be alone. That has to count for something against whatever’s coming."
Neither of them held any illusions about what was truly coming. But at least, for tonight, standing together beneath a sky that hadn’t yet started burning, they didn’t have to face that fear alone.
They stayed out there long after most reasonable people would have gone to bed, talking quietly about everything and nothing—old memories, half-formed fears, small hopes neither of them had voiced to anyone else. At some point, Sylvia finally set her sword aside entirely, letting herself simply sit beside him on the cool grass, watching the stars wheel slowly overhead.
"Do you ever wonder what happens after all this?" she asked. "Assuming we survive whatever’s coming?"
"Sometimes. I try not to get too attached to specific futures, though. Feels like tempting fate."
"That’s very unlike you. You’ve never struck me as the superstitious type."
"I’ve absorbed a mythical heart and threatened an ancient evil organization on principle. I’ve earned the right to be a little superstitious about fate at this point."
That drew a genuine laugh out of her, rare and warm in the quiet of the training grounds. "Fair enough. Though for what it’s worth, if we do survive this, I’d like to see what comes after. With you, specifically. Not just in the vague sense of the team continuing on."
"I’d like that too. Very much."
They sat together a while longer, the weight of tomorrow’s preparations momentarily forgotten in favor of tonight’s quiet company, until exhaustion finally won out and they made their way back toward the safehouse, hand in hand, ready to face whatever the coming days demanded of them.
Inside, they found Claire still awake, hunched over stacks of ward theory texts by candlelight, muttering calculations under her breath. Harriden sat nearby, sharpening blades that were already sharp enough to split a hair, more out of restless habit than necessity.
"You two are still up," Sylvia observed.
"Somebody has to figure out how to actually stop a three-thousand-year-old monster," Claire said without looking up. "Turns out that’s not something you can improvise on the spot."
"Any progress?"
"Some. The bloodline wards the Concordance used relied on active mana contribution from descendants of the founding houses. Problem is, most of those bloodlines have thinned out or gone extinct over three centuries. We might not have enough active contributors left to reinforce the seal properly."
"So what’s the backup plan?"
Claire finally looked up, dark circles evident beneath her eyes. "Brute force, probably. Which is exactly the kind of backup plan I hate relying on, but here we are."
—
End of Chapter—
