Chapter 69 – Three Months of Light and Ash
Three months passed.
The City of Sands changed with the season. The winds grew hotter, the dunes crept closer to the walls, and the sky carried a constant veil of gold dust that turned every sunrise into a quiet storm of color.
For most, it was just heat.
For John and his crew, it was progress.
The J-Crew's mansion had stopped being a home and become something else — half dojo, half laboratory.
Mornings were for cultivation drills in the courtyard; afternoons for potion work; nights for mercenary runs and contracts that kept the Merchant Association satisfied.
John always woke before the others.
He liked the silence before Ember stirred, before Tamara's voice called orders through the halls, before Blake started singing half-remembered songs from the taverns. The dawn air was cooler then, and his spirit light pulsed calm and steady under the skin.
He stood on the balcony most mornings, watching the city stretch awake. The smell of dust, metal, and spiced bread carried up from the lower streets. In that moment, it was easy to forget that there were darker hands somewhere below the foundations, carving sigils into the bones of the world.
Almost easy.
The past three months had been generous.
Every member of the team had climbed another step.
Lysa's precision with light threads could slice sand from air.
Mara's shield could now deflect attacks that once would've broken her arm.
Sera's healing art had advanced into a full combat technique, wrapping the wounded in glowing vines that drew essence straight from the ground.
Even Blake, who had started as the loudest and least disciplined, could now infuse his weapon with steady spirit flow — and hit hard enough to leave craters.
They were all Step Four now.
Vulgrat had become almost unrecognizable.
He'd grown leaner, sharper, faster with his hands. His hair was still a mess, but his eyes burned with the calm of someone who finally understood the language of flame. Step Three and climbing fast.
He handled most of the association contracts himself now —The quality was so perfect that the Merchant Association couldn't tell which bottles came from him and which from John.
That had earned him a new nickname from Blake: "Mini-Master."
Vulgrat hated it.
Tamara and John had grown close in ways neither of them understand completely.
It started with shared training sessions — quiet duels at twilight, her blades against his his. Then dinners after missions — just the two of them, a small table in a corner tavern that smelled like mint and grilled fish. At first they talked about work: how to coordinate attacks, how to ration essence potions, how to read enemy movement.
Then the talk shifted. It leaned more into their pasts. Tamara would always be vague about the kingdom of Rina.
Sometimes they didn't talk at all.
They just sat.
Once, after a particularly long night run through the dunes, Blake had caught them returning together.
He'd leaned against the doorframe, smirking.
"Should I start reserving a room for two, or are we still pretending this is 'mission debriefing'?"
Tamara had thrown a pebble at him hard enough to chip the wall.
John had just smiled and said, "Mind your own cultivation."
But the smile had lingered a little too long.
They all laughed more these days.
Meals turned into arguments over who cooked worse. Sparring sessions turned into brawls that ended with everyone on the ground and Ember chewing on someone's boot. There was an ease between them — a sense that they'd bled together long enough to trust the silence after laughter.
Even Ember had changed.
The little beast had grown, His fur shimmered between gold and white depending on his mood. His aura pulsed in sync with John's — when one advanced, the other followed.
Step Four, nearly Step Five.
When Ember released his light, the entire courtyard glowed.
John's laboratory was now the quiet heart of the house.
Tables lined with neatly arranged glassware. Rune-etched shelves heavy with essence stones. The air always carried a faint tang of ozone and herbs.
He'd nearly perfected the Step Four core potion — the formula stable, the essence balance pure. His notes filled two entire journals, each line precise, every rune redrawn until it felt alive.
Step Five was different.
It was a higher art — light condensed into matter, will forged into shape. He'd cracked it once or twice in the last month — a perfect burn, a stable glow — but the cost of materials was brutal. Each Tier Four core cost close to a million coins, more if fire-based. He'd managed to secure a few through the Merchant Association and Dokabas' quiet respect, but even that wasn't sustainable.
So he rationed them.
Still, the results came.
He could feel the threshold of Step Five like a door just barely ajar — the light inside spilling out through the cracks.
But not everything in the city was progress.
Whispers spread like smoke through the lower markets: people disappearing in the night. — alchemists, merchants, porters. Whole families vanishing without a trace. The guards doubled their patrols. The Mercenary Association offered bounties for information.
No one ever found bodies.
No one ever saw blood.
Just silence where laughter used to be.
Some said it was slavers.
Others said it was the desert itself, reclaiming those who dug too deep.
John didn't believe either story.
He'd been in too many dark places to mistake a pattern that clean.
Three months had hardened everyone.
Their auras had deepened; their presence, sharper. When the team walked through the streets together now, even guards stepped aside. They weren't just mercenaries anymore — they were a force.
John's essence had condensed to near perfection. His light wasn't pure white anymore but threaded with faint violet streaks — traces of Alaric's influence, a sign of refinement beyond simple cultivation. He could sustain his flame for hours without external focus, and his control over thermal energy had become frighteningly precise.
He could melt iron without burning the table beneath it.
He was standing one step short of Step Five.
The threshold teased him daily — that subtle click of something ready to shift, waiting for one last breath to fall in place.
He could almost taste it.
The day ended in noise and heat.
The crew returned from a desert hunt — the kind of contract no one wanted but paid well enough to matter. The sky was a bruise of orange and violet as they passed through the city gates, dust clinging to their boots, laughter spilling freely.
Blake slung his arm around Mara's shoulders. "You see me dodge that sand serpent? Fastest man alive."
"You tripped," Mara said flatly.
"It was tactical evasion."
"You screamed," Lysa added, without looking up from her notes.
"War cry," Blake said.
Sera snorted. "Sounded like a goat dying."
John smiled as they argued their way home.
Tamara walked beside him, quiet as usual, eyes scanning the crowd.
The mansion slept lightly that night.
John sat on the roof, back against the railing, Ember sprawled beside him like a glowing shadow. The city stretched endlessly below, its thousand lanterns burning in thin, uneven lines. The wind carried the scent of spice and sand and the faint rot of something hidden.
"You feel it," Alaric said from the back of his mind.
John nodded. "Yeah."
"There's a feeling of darkness that's growing."
"I noticed."
"You think it's connected to the disappearances?"
"I think it's everything."
Alaric was silent for a while, then said softly, "You're getting stronger, John. Strong enough that the world's starting to notice."
"That's not comforting."
"It's not meant to be."
They sat together in the dark, one man and one memory of fire. Below, the city breathed slow and steady — pretending to be asleep.
The next morning broke like every other.
The courtyard filled with motion — blades cutting the air, flame meeting shield, laughter colliding with exhaustion.
Vulgrat shouted at Blake for knocking over a cauldron.
Sera scolded Ember for stealing dumplings.
Mara organized the mission board.
Lysa wrote down everything.
Tamara and John trained until their clothes stuck to their skin and their breaths became rhythm.
They were ready for anything.
Or thought they were.
When the drills ended, John stood in the center of the courtyard, chest heaving, and watched the light fall across his team — his family.
He'd never been one for speeches, but the thought came uninvited:
If this is what strength looks like, I want to keep it.
He didn't say it aloud.
He didn't have to.
The City of Sands gleamed under the Long Sun, brilliant and deceptive.
But beneath the cobbled streets, deep past the water lines and old runic infrastructure, something else stirred.
The runes that had once been dormant began to glow again — faintly, rhythmically — as if answering an ancient call.
The people above didn't feel it yet.
But John did.
Every night when the wind stilled, he could sense it.
A presence rising from below.
A whisper building toward a roar.
And though he didn't know it yet, the season of light was ending.