They spilled into Highbloom City like a small storm—carriage wheels clacking, horse breath steaming in the chill air, and a curious little dragon peeking from a wicker basket. Highbloom’s walls were vast and exacting: watchtowers bristled with spears, customs booths stamped papers with brisk hands, and the gate guards checked every strap and seal as if the kingdom itself were a vault.
At the gate the name alone caused a ripple. Blade stepped down from the carriage; his fame carried ahead of him in murmurs—an ember that set tavern talk to flame. Nearby, Shira’s ears twitched below her hood and Kaira watched the crowd through half-lidded eyes. Cinder hopped up to a low wall and announced himself in three precise chirps, which only made the guards stare wider.
“The Adventurers’ Guild asked us to send word if Blade arrived,” one guard said, not unkindly. “They said the master will want to see him at once.”
Blade pretended to groan. “Fame is the world’s most persistent companion,” he muttered. Shira put on an entirely irresistible pleading look, and for the life of him Blade couldn’t refuse. They followed the guild runner through narrow lanes that smelled of roasting meats and oiled leather to the great doors of the Flarewood Adventurers' Guild.
Inside, the receptionist—a girl with ink-dark hair and a scrawl of a smile—blinked when she saw the red-eyed boy step in. “Blade Lunaria?” she squeaked. “The Master’s been expecting you since word of your coming reached the gates. Please—Guild Master Thera wants an audience immediately.” She almost dropped her parchment at the mention.
They were led past banners and trophy hallways into a room warmed by coal and authority. Guild Master Thera rose from behind a wide desk that carried badges, old maps, and a crack in the wood from a long-ago duel. She looked the kind of person who’d once wrestled a rampaging boar for breakfast and then written the minutes of a council meeting for afternoon tea.
“Blade Lunaria,” Thera said, voice both amused and official. “You have come far, and the tales that followed you are louder than the gate drums. The Guild convened purposefully to consider your deeds.” She tapped the ledger where several seals and signatures waited. “By unanimous vote, the Guild promotes you from Rank-A to Rank-S+.”
For a heartbeat the room held its breath. Adventurers’ ranks were law; they were the measure of danger a soul had faced and the mark by which kings and merchants judged a man. Rank-S was rare—monsters of old, heroes once-sung—but Rank-S+ was the new threshold, a name whispered like legend. The assembled guild members—seasoned hunters, grizzled trackers, and apprentice mages—started. Even Shira and Kaira exchanged looks of stunned delight that brightened the dim room.
“You are the first human to pass Rank-S into S+ in living memory,” Thera continued, eyes glittering with the thrill of history. “There remains only Rank-S++ above you—the standard of myth. If you succeed against the Southern Demon Lord, the council will consider S++.”
Blade’s mouth twitched with complicated humor and a shadow that slid along his thoughts. The promotion should have been pure elation, but it tugged at promises tucked in the mind he shared with someone else. In the quiet fold of his thoughts he felt the old pact: the bargain made under a goddess’s name—Goddess Elmyria—between hands that were not entirely mortal. He remembered Shujin’s voice telling him, once, that if he reached the pinnacle he would be returned to whatever truth the pact required. He had accepted a gift and a debt in one breath.
Blade’s face smoothed into a grin at Thera and the applauding crowd. “I’ll do my best,” he said, publicly modest. Inside, a colder calculus ticked: if he achieved S++, would the man called Blade—this vessel—be returned to that original soul waiting in Shujin’s deeper mind? The thought was an echo; he swallowed it under the feast of celebration.
Before the echoes of congratulations could die down, steel-clad figures filled the guild doors. The royal guards arrived in a precise sweep of protocol and courtesy. A herald read a summons: the young king requested the presence of the famed adventurer and his companions at the castle. The city’s rumor-mill had already braided Blade’s name to the fate of the Southern Demon Lord; the crown wanted to meet the one who might drive the threat from their borders.
Shira emitted a delighted squeak. “The king!” she breathed, hopping in place like a child at a festival. Blade found the sudden attention disagreeable and oddly flattering in equal measure. “Why are you so happy?” he asked, laughing as he helped her up into the carriage when the guards led them away.
Kaira only inclined her head, silent as a closed book, and watched the procession with the same distance she reserved for knives. Even so, Blade noticed the way her fingers flexed for a moment on a hidden hilt before she let them rest.
They were escorted to the castle of Young King Aurelian, whose banners flew the colors of growth and iron. The royal party’s reception was flawless—a display of civility designed to welcome and to remind a famous man that the crown’s favor could be given as easily as it could be withheld.
Meanwhile, far across the sea at Darkensport, another memory stirred. Aethelred Vi Regis sat among waiting ministers and the ink-worn ledgers, and recollection unfolded in him like pages flipping to a marked passage. The deal—and the promise—made under Goddess Elmyria’s name returned to him in pieces: the vow Shujin had once whispered—Shujin who had guided Aethelred’s hand and now, in turn, had made a king of him—meant that when the goals were reached the vessels would be restored to their original souls.
Shujin’s plan had matured into something almost unbearably close to completion. To Blade, a great adventurer standing newly S+, went a rank and the promise of a possible ultimate prize. To Aethelred, who had won the Federation a precarious peace, went a crown and the responsibility to reshape a nation. And to the deeper self who had practiced both—Kiyoshi Ishida—came the private calculation that his time in other men’s skins had given him knowledge: how to steer hearts and how to keep a promise.
As they moved toward the throne room for the audience with the young king, Blade let the city’s sunlight warm his shoulders. He was tired in a bone-deep way but pleased; he had a rank that would write his deeds in guild ledgers and a crown’s eyes on his target. Shira chattered about the splendid banquet rumored to follow the meeting, and Cinder circled the brooch on Blade’s cloak as if marking it for future mischief. Kaira rode with her usual silence, but Blade could tell she was sharpening for what lay ahead.
They entered the castle—and with that the next step of the story waited: the private audience with Young King Aurelian, and the crossing of a threshold where rank met politics, and promises made in secret might begin to be paid.
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✦ To be continued...