Chương 79: Chapter 78 - Bring the World Some Truth

Kira sat on the bench, notebook open across her knees, and tried very hard not to look as excited as she felt. She failed. Probably visibly. Brannoc had taken Tovin to the far side of the yard and resumed footwork drills with the air of a man determined to return the morning to a shape he recognized. Every few exchanges, his attention cut back toward Kira. Never for long. Enough to tell her the aura test had moved her into a different category: armed, classed, strange, worth watching.

Kira couldn't argue with the classification. Bjorn sat beside her notebook, ruby paws placed with grave care on the bench slat. He looked like a paperweight. Kira knew better. She lowered her voice.

"I'm thinking of dumping three levels' worth of stats into one attribute." Bjorn's head turned sharply toward her.

"You gained three levels while I was watching the cat beneath the back window?" Kira blinked.

"What? No. Hypothetically. When I get three levels." Bjorn settled again.

"Then say hypothetically."

"I thought that was implied."

"It was not." Across the yard, wood cracked against wood as Brannoc corrected Tovin's guard.

"Spike it hard," she said.

"Thirty points. One stat. See what breaks open." Bjorn took long enough answering that Kira had to stop herself from leaning forward.

"That," he said at last, "is not a terrible idea." Kira's brows lifted.

"It is simply a terrible idea for you right now."

"Theeeere it is. Why?" Bjorn looked toward the street beyond the yard wall. More boots passed there. Metal. Voices. A wagon wheel complained under weight. Hartholm was getting busier, but the noise stayed outside the yard for now.

"You are unusual," Bjorn said. Kira pointed at him with the pencil.

"Dangerous opening."

"In a specific way."

"That's much worse."

"Attributes complement one another," Bjorn said.

"Push one too far ahead and eventually the others become the weakness." Kira tapped the pencil once.

"Example."

"Agility without enough Perception lets your body move faster than you can understand what it is moving through." Her pencil slowed.

"Strength without Endurance can make success injure you."

"That's a horrifying definition of success."

"A common one." Kira wrote faster. Bjorn's voice stayed soft.

"Intelligence without enough Will can outrun the self that must hold it. Will without enough Intelligence can become certainty with no windows." She looked up.

"And Presence?" Bjorn was quiet for a moment.

"I have not known many who deliberately spiked Presence far beyond their other attributes. Not in the way you mean." Kira looked at him.

"You're getting inconveniently good at me."

"I have been paying attention." She looked down at the page. Presence sat alone in the center of her notes.

"What do you think it would do?"

"I suspect it draws through the rest," Bjorn said.

"Presence without substance beneath it may become command without capacity. A banner over an empty keep." Kira wrote that down too.

"And with me?"

"I do not know what you are." She let that sit, and Bjorn met her eyes.

"That is not insult."

"I know."

"You began with more than most." Kira looked at him.

"More what?"

"More to work with than most."

"And I gain more every level. How abnormal?" Bjorn considered.

"Many classed people would need thirteen or fourteen levels before their total attributes resembled yours now." Kira looked at her sheet. Strength 17. Agility 23. Endurance 18. Vitality 17. Intelligence 28. Will 23. Perception 20. Presence 28. Level three made the numbers look ridiculous.

"Before my rest," Bjorn said, "it was not uncommon to find classed people of greater power than those you have mostly seen."

"Before your rest. You mean before you took a thousand-year cat nap in your box in a dungeon?" Bjorn gave her a long, quiet look. Kira held up both hands.

"Sorry. Sacred ancient dungeon nap. I'm done."

"You are not."

"I'm trying to be." Bjorn let it pass.

"Before my rest, Caelan's strength would have been respected," Bjorn said.

"It would not have been exceptional." Kira looked up.

"There were more classed people?"

"Where I knew, yes. Stronger old lines. Better teachers. More dangerous places." Bjorn paused.

"But I have seen very little of this age. I do not know what is typical anymore." Kira looked toward the street beyond the wall. Another group passed. She saw the top of a tall spear over the stones, a strip of blue cloth, a helm shaped wrong for local watch issue. Bjorn had noticed too.

"The people we have met are weaker, on average, than I expected," he said.

"That is all I can say with confidence." Kira tapped the pencil against her notebook.

"And the ones walking through town?"

"Some are stronger than most we have seen."

"You can sense that?"

"Somewhat."

"Where are the really powerful ones?"

"Somewhere." Kira looked at him.

"You don't know."

"No." Kira's pencil tapped once against the page. Bjorn returned to the point.

"If you ask what I would do," he said, "I would bring the foundations up first. Thirty, perhaps. Then choose where imbalance is worth the cost." Kira set the pencil down.

"Every stat to thirty. That is ob-sceeeene."

"For most."

"For me, that's still several levels."

"You just told me not to spike, then gave me the most tempting long-term benchmark imaginable."

"I gave you a foundation."

"That's what people call temptations when they want them to sound responsible." She looked at the numbers again. Every stat to thirty. Strength. Endurance. Vitality. Perception. The lagging four. Then choices. Then spikes. Then thresholds. Thirty was the target now.

"Oh no," she whispered. Bjorn's ears tilted.

"Catastrophic thinking oh no."

"Better now than in a fight." I hate that he's right. Across the yard, Tovin yelped as Brannoc's practice blade rapped his knuckles. Kira looked up. The boy shook out his hand, then caught himself looking toward her again. Brannoc followed the direction of the glance. Kira looked back at her notebook as if she had been doing nothing at all. Bjorn made a soft sound.

"No," Kira murmured. He made it again. Kira ignored him. Brannoc called from the far side of the yard.

"You resting or plotting?"

"Yes," Kira called back.

"That answer worries me."

"Usually." Brannoc studied her, then Tovin, then her again.

"You want to be useful while you wait?" Kira blinked.

"Depeeeends on the definition of useful."

"Tovin needs a partner who won't teach him my timing by accident." Tovin's eyes widened.

"Master Fenwick."

"She won't kill you." Kira stood.

"That sounds less like a request and more like a hostage negotiation." Brannoc walked to the rack and tossed her a wooden sword. She caught it by instinct.

"Do not break the kid," he said.

"I wasn't planning to." Brannoc gave her a look. She sighed.

"Fine. I will actively not break the kid."

"Better." Tovin glanced toward the gate. Kira rolled the wooden sword in her hand. It was heavier than she expected. Blunt, balanced badly compared to her actual blade, but serviceable. Her One-Handed Weapons skill wasn't high. Not compared to what she could do with movement and Wraithfire. Still, she had training. More importantly, Tovin's stats were probably nowhere near hers.

"Rules?" she asked. Brannoc folded his arms.

"Slow first. Guard drills. He attacks. You defend and return one touch. No tricks." Kira lifted a brow.

"Define tricks."

"No disappearing. No glowing. No invisible bars. No climbing the air. No cutting yourself."

"That last one happened once."

"Once was plenty." Bjorn sat on the bench beside the notebook and watched with the solemnity of a judge carved from ruby. Brannoc glanced at him.

"So," he said.

"You're a tiny red bear." Bjorn looked up.

"Yes."

"How's that happen?" Bjorn's ears settled flat before he answered.

"Luck," Bjorn said. Brannoc stared at him while Kira pressed her lips together.

"That's not the worst answer," she said.

"It's not a good one either," Brannoc replied.

"No." Tovin adjusted his grip on the practice sword and tried very hard to look like he wasn't terrified. Kira softened her stance.

"Relax your shoulders," she said. He blinked.

"Sorry?"

"Your shoulders. They're up around your ears. Makes you slower. Also makes you look like you expect the sword to apologize before it hits you." Brannoc's mouth moved faintly. Tovin lowered his shoulders by a fraction. Kira nodded.

"Better." He attacked too hard. He didn't know what she would do, so he committed instead of watching. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. Kira stepped aside. No Step. No Wraithfire. No trick. Just Agility twenty-three, Perception twenty, Kinetic Acrobatics, and a body that had spent yesterday learning how good clean motion could feel. His blade passed where she had been. She tapped his ribs. Lightly. He stumbled anyway.

"Again," Brannoc said. Tovin reset. Again. This time he tried to feint. The feint announced itself in his left shoulder, right hip, and face. Mostly face. Kira let him finish lying, then touched his forearm.

"Your face confesses crimes," she said. Tovin flushed.

"Again?"

"Again," Brannoc said. They worked for twenty minutes. Kira kept herself slow. Slower than she wanted. Slower than her body found interesting. Holding back without getting sloppy took more attention than beating him would have. She had to let Tovin finish mistakes she could have punished instantly, then use only enough force to show him where he'd failed. He improved. Brannoc stopped correcting every exchange. He stopped lunging with his whole life. He began noticing that Kira's return touches weren't random.

Forearm when his guard drifted. Ribs when his centerline opened. Shoulder when he overcommitted high. He stopped reacting to the loss and started watching for what caused it. Now there was something he could actually correct. After the third clean exchange, Brannoc grunted. Kira decided to count it as approval.

"You've had training," he said.

"Yes."

"Circus?" Kira turned her head. Brannoc shrugged.

"The way you move. Soldiers don't teach that first. Duelists don't teach falling unless they're honest. Circus folk teach you how to recover when your footing goes wrong." Kira smiled despite herself.

"Circus," she said.

"Good people?"

"The best kind of unreasonable."

"That tracks." Tovin attacked again. This time his shoulder didn't betray him until halfway through the motion. Kira caught the blade on hers, let the force slide, stepped inside, and touched his sternum. He stopped.

"Better," she said. Tovin looked down at the wooden sword touching his chest. Then at her.

"Really?"

"Yes." Brannoc said, "Don't make it sentimental." Kira withdrew the blade.

"Heaven forbid." Tovin grinned before he could stop himself. Then Brannoc hit him lightly behind the knee with his own practice sword.

"Guard." The grin vanished. Kira liked him a little more for that. By the time Bjorn judged her channels settled enough to begin planning the second aura test, the road outside the yard had become impossible to ignore. Kira heard boots, hooves, harness, the clink of armor, a barked laugh, a prayer chanted under someone's breath in a language she didn't know. The air smelled of wet leather, horse sweat, iron oil, and travel. Brannoc heard it too. His attention kept cutting toward the gate road.

Kira handed the wooden sword back.

"I'll be back," she said. Brannoc took it.

"Leaving?"

"Walking."

"That's different from leaving only if you come back."

"Philosophical."

"Practical." Bjorn climbed from the bench to her shoulder. Kira gathered her notebook and tucked it under one arm. Tovin looked disappointed and tried not to show it. Kira pointed at him.

"Your face is doing it again." He covered his face with one hand. Brannoc said, "It does that." Kira left the yard before the boy could die of embarrassment. The street outside the inn had filled with armed classed travelers. She knew it before anyone told her. Not because a pane appeared over their heads. Not because they glowed. They carried expensive weapons with the casual familiarity of tools they'd used before. Too many professional fighters. Too many expensive weapons. Too many healers.

Nobody gathered that mix for anything harmless. So what the hell was north? A woman with pale horns and a monk's wrapped hands walked barefoot through the mud without seeming to notice it. Two broad-shouldered men in furred mantles carried axes that looked older than their grandfathers. A halfling in dark green leathers rode on the back of a shaggy pony and laughed at something no one else had said. Three priests in travel-stained white and gold moved together with hard eyes and sunbursts on their clasps.

A towering orc woman in lacquered scale carried a hammer over one shoulder and a sleeping child in the other arm. North. All of them moving north. Hartholm wasn't panicking. Not yet. Trade towns knew how to absorb crowds. But the town was watching itself now. Doors stayed open, but eyes followed strangers. Stableboys ran. Innkeepers counted. Watchmen kept looking north. Kira slowed enough to watch without looking like she was watching. Bjorn said nothing. That meant he was seeing more too.

At the edge of the stableyard behind the Black Axle, a man in coral half-plate was unloading his own saddlebags from a horse the color of stormwater. The coral color ran through the armor itself, layered in smooth ridges and pale rose-orange plates like something harvested from a reef and persuaded into war. His spear leaned against the stable wall, long and sharp, the head carved from some pale aquatic bone that held a blue-white enchantment along its edge.

The man himself had sea-dark skin, close-cropped black hair, and gills along the sides of his neck that flexed once as he lifted the saddlebag down. Kira slowed. Meletrifys, probably. The armor looked like sea-temple work. Less sun, more tide. Less polished chapel, more drowning oath. The man caught her looking. His eyes flicked to Bjorn, lingered there, then returned to Kira with the polite caution of someone who had seen enough roads not to begin with assumptions.

"Morning," he said.

"Morning." She nodded toward the street.

"Busy road."

"That it is."

"Festival?" One corner of his mouth lifted.

"Of a kind."

"Bad kind?"

"The expensive kind." Kira liked that answer. He set the saddlebag down and checked his horse's foreleg himself despite the stablehands nearby. Kira glanced toward the road.

"Everyone's headed north?"

"Everyone with a class, a weapon, a healing prayer, a death wish, or a monarch's summons." He straightened. The gills at his neck opened slightly, then closed.

"A dungeon broke north of the border," he said.

"Not opened. Broke. The dead are coming out faster than the local holdings can contain them." Her thumb pressed hard into the notebook's edge. Bjorn's ears flattened, his attention gone entirely to the man's voice.

"How bad?"

"Bad enough that villages are emptying south and the king is pulling anyone useful north." Kira looked toward the road. Another group passed: four riders in black leather and silver masks, silent as knives. Behind them came a laughing giant-blooded woman with a barrel on one shoulder and a shield on her back.

"Undead," Kira said. Not rumor anymore. The man watched her.

"You headed that way?"

"No." The answer came too fast. One eyebrow moved. Too fast.

"I have other work," she said.

"That's what everyone says until the dead reach the road behind them."

"Encouraging."

"I'm a paladin. We're trained to be uplifting."

"Meletrifys?" He looked mildly surprised.

"Yes."

"The spear gave you away."

"The gills didn't?"

"I was being polite." He smiled then, briefly and without much energy.

"Ser Odran Quillanth of the Ninth Tide," he said.

"Tideward of Meletrifys." Kira blinked.

"That's a lot of name."

"The temple shortens it for travel."

"Mercifully." Kira liked him immediately and resented the efficiency of it.

"Kira," she said. She didn't offer more. He accepted the omission, and his gaze moved to Bjorn again.

"And your companion?" Bjorn lifted his head.

"Bjorn." Ser Odran paused, then said only, "Well met." Odran tightened the saddle strap and looked toward the packed street.

"Whatever your work is, Kira, do it quickly. Roads are going to get worse before they get better."

"Because everyone is moving north."

"Because soon the people who can't fight will be coming the other way." Her stomach tightened. Later is getting crowded. She thanked him and returned toward the inn yard with Bjorn silent on her shoulder and the sound of armed people moving north filling Hartholm behind her. At the gate back into the training yard, she stopped. Brannoc was watching the street too, and Tovin was pretending not to. Kira looked down at her notebook, then back toward the road. Undead. Dungeon breach. Classed fighters moving north.

Fighters north. Civilians south. The fox's words stirred again, quiet as a card being placed face down. Watch the hinges.

"No," Kira said under her breath. Bjorn's ears angled.

"I'm leaving tomorrow. Direction undecided." Bjorn said nothing.

"Later," she told the universe. She went back into the yard. There was still work to do. For the next hour and forty minutes, Kira worked through the notebook one problem at a time. She didn't repeat the first test. Bjorn refused, which was unfair because he was correct and therefore harder to argue with.

Instead, she worked around the absence of the aura: Sphere control at different radii, Wraithbar stability under changing grip angles, Step timing, Bind release, Blade modulation, channel strain, recovery intervals. Presence hadn't handed her competence. Good. That meant she was still testing an effect, not a shortcut. The costs remained. The channel strain remained. The places where she overreached still punished her with warmth under the skin and a faint glassy pressure that meant stop being an idiot soon.

But the repetitions after the aura were better. The difference was small but consistent, like a lock opening more smoothly after a key had once turned correctly. The Sphere formed with less wobble. Wraith Bind accepted narrower anchor changes. Step caught momentum more cleanly if she prepared the vector before the landing instead of after. Her channels recovered from short bursts faster once she stopped treating recovery time as wasted time and started treating it like part of the experiment.

Recovery counted as part of the experiment now. Of course recovery counts. She obeyed it anyway. By the time Bjorn finally said, "Enough," Kira had dirt on one cheek, sweat cooling at the back of her neck, and five new lines glowing in the corner of her vision. She sat on the bench, very carefully, then opened the panes. Mana Channels has advanced: Rare 15% → 16%.

"Oh, hello," she whispered. Bjorn's ears angled forward as another pane waited. Sphere of Wraithfire has advanced: 18% → 19%. Sphere earned a smile. Step made her sit straighter. Wraith Step has advanced: 16% → 17%. Then: Wraith Bind has advanced: 24% → 25%. And finally: Field Sense has advanced: Rare 25% → 26%. Her pencil stopped over the page. That last one hadn't moved in a while. She read it twice, then wrote all five down before the System could develop shame and take them back.

Observed gains: Mana Channels: 15 → 16 Sphere: 18 → 19 Step: 16 → 17 Bind: 24 → 25 Field Sense: 25 → 26 She tapped the pencil against Field Sense.

"Huh." Bjorn looked at the pane.

"Field Sense."

"Yes," Kira said.

"That's the interesting one." Bjorn looked at her, unreadable. Field Sense was the anomaly. Aura exposure? Sphere work? The road full of classed people? Residual Presence effects? Too many variables.

"I have too many variables." She wrote: Control quality: terrible. She flipped back two pages, found the notes from the Presence-only test, and worked through the sequence again. Temporary Presence elevation. Cleaner ability handoffs. Core tick early. Sphere and Bind movement. Mana Channels growth after continued work. Field Sense finally moving.

"What if Presence doesn't make me learn faster? What if it just makes more of the repetition count?" Bjorn considered. Across the yard, Brannoc had stopped pretending not to listen, though he was too far to hear the details. Tovin was practicing the same guard transition again, jaw clenched with concentration. Bjorn said, "I cannot rule it out." Kira's eyes narrowed.

"That's not the same as agreeing."

"No." Kira nodded and wrote faster. Hypothesis: Presence may not "extend first ten rule" directly. More likely increases expression alignment / ability recognition. Cleaner repetitions count more fully. Early-window effect may appear prolonged because wasted repetitions decrease. Test over time: compare gains with and without aura assistance, same drill, same duration, same reserve spend. She paused. Then added: Presence and I are friends again. Tentatively. Bjorn read it.

"Tentatively."

"She earned the probation." Bjorn said nothing. Kira kept writing, then glanced at her character sheet. Presence twenty-eight. Perception twenty. Eight points suddenly feels like a lot.

"Perception needs love," she muttered.

"And Strength. Endurance. Vitality. Basically everything if we're doing the all-to-thirty nightmare." Bjorn waited.

"Presence may get extra love."

"That is possible." Kira wrote it down. She leaned back, then regretted it when her channels gave a low, warm complaint under her ribs. The warmth wasn't pain yet, but it was close enough to a warning that ignoring it would be stupid. Kira shut the notebook.

"Fine. No more channel work for a bit. I'm still doing work."

"What work?" No more channel work. Which left perception. Field Sense had just moved, and her eyes had already caught things ordinary sight should have missed.

"Eyes." Kira rubbed at her temples, then looked across the yard at Brannoc and Tovin.

"My eyes have seen divine script that shouldn't have been there. They helped me work on Wraithfire bonds inside a dead paladin's soul architecture. They keep catching edges of things before I understand what I'm seeing. Field Sense just moved. I want to know whether I can push that toward Identify."

"Identify is a skill."

"So is throwing a rock, and somehow the System made it official."

"That is not a complete argument."

"It's a spiritually complete argument." One of Bjorn's ears flicked. Kira stood, stretched her shoulders, and called across the yard, "Brannoc." The drillmaster looked over.

"Do you mind if I stare at you and your apprentice for a few minutes?" Tovin missed the next guard transition, and Brannoc lowered his practice sword.

"For what purpose?"

"Science." Brannoc shook his head.

"Kid, you are strange."

"I get that a lot."

"Stare if you need to stare. If the boy gets worse because of it, I'm blaming you." Tovin looked betrayed.

"Master Fenwick."

"You were getting worse before she asked." Kira pressed her lips together. Bjorn made a sound. A very small sound. Kira turned slowly.

"Did you just chuckle?"

"No." Brannoc squinted at him.

"Bear laughs?"

"Rarely," Kira said.

"And with plausible deniability." Bjorn settled again. Kira faced Brannoc and Tovin, planted her feet, and let her eyes work. Nothing happened. She focused on Brannoc's stance. Weight distribution. Old injury in the left knee, maybe. Scarring along the knuckles. The way his right shoulder guarded itself when he lifted the practice blade above a certain angle. Soldier, retired. Drillmaster now. Comfortable in command. Classed, almost certainly. Higher than her, but not absurdly higher. No pane.

She narrowed her attention. Her instinct was to open the Sphere. She resisted it and let Field Sense reach out in the smallest possible thread, less cast than attention. Field Sense picked up Brannoc's breath, Tovin's jumping pulse, and the faint metallic pressure from the road beyond the wall. Still no pane.

"Bjorn," she said quietly.

"Can you see Brannoc's class?"

"Yes." Kira stopped writing.

"Level too?"

"Yes."

"Names?"

"When I choose." Kira set down the pencil.

"Bjorn."

"Yes, child."

"I'm having several reactions to this, and none of them are mature."

"Hmmm."

"You have been sitting on Identify-vision."

"It is not Identify." Kira narrowed her eyes.

"That is not the part of that sentence you should be correcting. What's it, then?"

"I was made to reveal," he said. The crack of Brannoc's practice blade faded from her attention.

"Reveal what?" Kira asked quietly.

"Truth. Falsehood. Hidden names. Buried nature." His gaze drifted past the street.

"I remember words. Not the moment clearly. Only the words, pressed into me after the rest grew dim." Kira didn't interrupt. When Bjorn spoke again, the cadence wasn't quite his.

"Bring the world some truth," he said.

"It has grown fat on lies and called them laws." Oh. Those aren't his words. Whoever had spoken them had been angry enough to carve the anger into memory. Kira didn't write. For once, the notebook could wait.

"That's a hell of a design brief," she said quietly. Bjorn didn't answer the joke.

"Do you want to talk about that?"

"No."

"Okay." Bjorn inclined his head. Light caught in the white-gold lattice beneath his ruby surface. Light passes through him. Kira's focus snapped back to Bjorn.

"Wait. You don't just know what you see. You reveal it." Kira narrowed her eyes.

"What happens if I look through you?" He didn't answer immediately. You knew.

"You knew I could try this."

"I knew it was possible."

"And you didn't mention it."

"You had other things to learn."

"I was born ready for a forbidden microscope." Kira laughed once, mostly because the alternative was yelling.

"I'm going to need a new category of betrayal."

"Hmmm." Kira set the notebook down before she threw it.

"How?"

"Hold me up and look through me." Kira hesitated.

"Through you."

"Yes."

"That's a sentence from a nightmare written by a jeweler."

"It is safe."

"Good enough." She picked him up. He was warm in her hands, heavier than his size should allow and lighter than the age of him deserved. Holding him like this felt vaguely sacrilegious despite his size. She held him up toward Brannoc.

"Are you comfortable with this?"

"Yes." She lifted him until the ruby crystal sat between her eyes and Brannoc. The world bent. Kira nearly dropped him. Bjorn didn't flinch. Her vision passed through ruby. No. Through lattice. Through light trapped inside crystal and taught to behave as witness. Brannoc snapped into impossible clarity. The air above his head caught, folded, and opened like a page. A pane of clear information appeared. Not System-blue. Not hers.

It felt older and cleaner than a System pane, less like an interface and more like the world admitting what it had been hiding. Brannoc Fenwick Retired Sunreach Armsman - Level 18 Kira forgot to inhale. Then remembered breathing had strategic value.

"Oh my god." Bjorn said nothing. She shifted her gaze to Tovin. Tovin's shoulders jerked when her attention shifted to him. A smaller pane resolved. Tovin Marrel Watch Apprentice - Level 2 Kira lowered Bjorn. The panes vanished. Raised him. They returned. Kira laughed under her breath.

"It's optical."

"In part." Kira lowered him enough to look directly at him.

"Light passes through you and comes out telling secrets."

"That is one way to describe it."

"You have had far too long to get used to yourself." Kira turned toward the street. Names and classes began resolving over the people moving past the gate. The effect wasn't perfect. People moved too quickly, overlapped, vanished behind wagons, walls, bodies, horses, and rain-damp canvas. But wherever Bjorn's sight caught and held, truth surfaced. Harl Bracken Greyhide Reaver - Level 16 Sister Aveline Cor Dawn Healer - Level 24 A woman in lacquered scale crossed between two wagons, hammer over one shoulder.

Urzha Korr Stormmaul Guardian - Level 27 Twenty-seven. Higher than almost anyone she'd met since arriving in Baer. Then a rider in dark silver passed north at the far edge of the street, hood low, spear strapped along his saddle. The pane flickered only for a second. Ser Caldris Veyne Oathbound Warden - Level 34 Thirty-four. Okay. The scale is wrong. Kira lowered Bjorn and looked at him. Weeks. She had been carrying the right tool for weeks. Bjorn looked back calmly.

"You did not ask."

"That sentence has expired." Bjorn's ears angled.

"From now on, I'm asking broader questions. Do you have any other basic functions you've neglected to mention?" Bjorn considered.

"It depends what you consider basic." Kira pinched the bridge of her nose. Brannoc called across the yard, "Everything all right over there?" Kira looked over.

"You're level eighteen?" Brannoc's hand settled more firmly around his practice sword. Tovin's practice sword dipped. Bjorn said, softly, "Kira." She winced.

"Ah. Was that rude?"

"Yes," Bjorn said. Brannoc's expression closed.

"How do you know that?" he asked. Kira held Bjorn against her chest.

"Bear-related incident." Brannoc's expression didn't improve. Kira sighed.

"I was testing sight. I didn't realize it would work that well."

"Do not shout people's levels in the road."

"Understood."

"Tovin, close your mouth." Tovin closed it. Then opened it again.

"I'm level two?" Brannoc looked at Tovin. Tovin closed his mouth again. Kira covered her own mouth with one hand.

"Do not laugh," he murmured.

"I'm trying so hard."

"You are failing in spirit."

"I know." Brannoc closed his eyes briefly.

"Strange kid," he said. Kira opened the notebook immediately. Field Sense. Bjorn sight. Identify-equivalent data accessible through bonded companion as optical revelator. Names, classes, levels. Severe etiquette hazard. Do not announce levels aloud unless trying to be stabbed, arrested, recruited, or socially murdered. She paused. Then added: Critical note: Could have been using Bjorn as lens for weeks. Emotional response: unacceptable. Practical response: use immediately. Later response: interrogate bear.

She looked at the last line, then underlined interrogate bear. Bjorn read it.

"Hmmm."

"You earned the underline."

"I accept it." Kira looked at him.

"Of coooourse you do." She wrote again: Field Sense training direction: learn to see without Bjorn. Goal: native Identify-equivalent perception. Likely requires Perception, Presence, Field Sense, and bond resonance. Bjorn may serve as training lens. Bjorn may have been usable as a training lens all along. Betrayal useful. Still betrayal. She looked at the road again. Names and classes were invisible now, but she knew they were there. All those people moving north. Level sixteen. Twenty-four. Twenty-seven.

Thirty-four. Higher than Caelan? Some of them, maybe. Different classes. Different scales. The world was larger than the slice she had been living inside. The old world, Bjorn's world, hadn't vanished completely. It was walking through Hartholm in travel-stained armor, heading north to fight the dead. Kira sat. Her channels had cooled. Her plans hadn't.

"Bjorn."

"Hmmm."

"We're not done talking about you. And I'm learning to see what you see."

"I assumed you would." Kira looked toward the road.

"And we're pretending I'm not thinking about going north." Bjorn said nothing.

"I hate accuracy."

"No, child. You worship it until it inconveniences you." Kira pointed at him.

"That was mean."

"It was... accurate." Beyond the wall, another armed group passed north. Kira opened a clean page. At the top, she wrote: Second problem: the world is moving north. Under it: First problem: I want to know why. Then, after a pause: Actual first problem: I already do.