Night covered itself across Bellstone like an ordinary wool coat, heavy and breath-frosted, the lamps burning low through the winter mist. The street had fallen to quiet, only the occasional cart trundling by, wheels clinking against cobblestone, a distant horse snorting steam into the cold. Shops shuttered, awnings tied down, iron locks clicked like the final punctuation of the day. Ash stood with his hands resting loosely in his coat pockets, back turned to the coffee shop. Behind him, the metallic scrape of a bolt sliding home echoed softly, Rose finishing the lock. She paused, eyes lingering on his back, something sharp and searching flickering within them.
Something mix of suspicion and distance. The quiet discomfort of someone realizing the person they knew might have shifted beneath their feet. She turned again, clicked the second lock, tested the door gently, then stepped to his side. For a moment she simply stood there in the fog-kissed hush, lips pressed thin, shoulders held a little too stiff.
Ash looked at her. "You should head home now." Voice calm, almost soft.
Her breath misted in the air as she gave a single slow nod. "Mm." Then she walked, boots tapping mutely as she moved down the left street, coat brushing her knees, keys glinting in her hand.
Ash didn't watch long. He turned and headed for Ada Nett's building across the way, boots steady, posture straight. The fog curled around him, swallowing the tread of his steps until only silence remained. He pushed through the entrance door, the dim lobby swallowing him whole.
But Rose didn't continue toward home.
Hidden in the chill night, she lingered, pressed against a lamppost's. When Ash disappeared inside the building, she pushed herself lightly forward and followed, steps careful, eyes narrowed with worry and disbelief.
There was hurt there? Yes, but beneath it, something sharper. It was curiosity. Fear. A woman noticing the familiar had turned just a shade uncanny. Maybe the effect of an odd day she passed with a recognisable one.
She crossed the street swiftly, coat fluttering, footsteps nearly silent on slick stone. And as the building door swung shut behind her, the fog swallowed the last trace of her presence.
Rose checked the hallway and it was empty, quiet, the kind of quiet that presses in the ears. Ada Nett's ledger desk sat abandoned, not a soul or a quill in sight. Such an irresponsible bitch. People could walk in and out, thieves, bandits, anything, and that lazy hag would still be stuffing biscuits in her mouth upstairs.
Rose headed straight to the lift, boots soft against aged floorboards, breath shallow as if afraid the building itself might hear her. The lift groaned as she pulled the gate closed, brass bars rattling, gears humming a tired lullaby.
Inside Ash's room, the light was warm. Too warm for winter, too soft for a man like him.
His coat already hung in the wardrobe, neat, crisp. His shirt loosened, collar open, sleeves pushed up. He stood half-lit by the dim lamp, night wind tapping faintly at the glass like an uninvited thought.
He reached for the waistcoat.
"Now you're making me bored." Aardh's voice echoed like someone speaking from the back of his skull, foreign and familiar at once.
Ash didn't look up. "What do you mean?"
"You got power. You can grow strong.
Don't be caught off-guard. There are pirates, bandits, lords." Aardh continued.
Ash paused. His fingers rested on the waistcoat, then began folding it out of pointless habit. "You sound like them. Stupid and rushed." His tone was soft, like someone reciting a truth carved into bone. Even tho he was spitting truth.
He finished the fold, frowned at how wrong it looked, exhaled sharply, and hung it instead.
"They always chase, always hungry and at the end they burn out fast." He reached for the tie now, slow, precise.
"Power isn't a dog you summon with a whistle." He lifted the fabric, letting it slip like a silk river over his fingers. "It's a tool. And tools are only useful when you know what you're building."
"So you build nothing?" Aardh's tone was amused or irritated. Hard to tell.
Ash placed the tie beside the coat, smoothing it gently.
"I observe. Learn this body. This world. These people." A quiet breath, almost reverence for the word that followed. "Rose. The librarian. Even that pirate."
A flicker in his eyes. Memory, maybe dread, maybe ambition welded to fear.
"Rushing makes you reckless. Recklessness gets you killed." His voice lowered, heavy with a past only he had seen. "I didn't crawl through that shithole of a life just to die like an eager fool in this one."
He tucked the tie.
"Let the desperate chase power. I'll let it come to me. When the time is right…"
His jaw tightened. "I'll use it. Not because I'm eager. Because it's necessary."
Silence. Breathing. The hum of winter wind through the cracks.
"Cold logic." Aardh said at last.
Ash's eyes lingered on tucked garments, expressions unreadable. "It's the only logic that keeps you alive."
Ash's fingers left the wardrobe handle, the metal still warm against his skin when a voice cut through the room like a blade through silk.
"Who are you?"
He didn't move at first, instincts held him still, but his mind snapped, spine straightened, and his head turned sharply toward the window at his right.
A man sat in the frame as if the night itself had decided to take shape there.
One leg dangled lazily into the room, the other propped on the wooden sill, crease at the knee casual as a tavern seat. Right hand resting atop that leg. Left hand pinching a glimmering Golden Velm between fingers, rolling it with absent elegance.
Same black dust-stained Stetson.
Same trimmed beard.
Same silence-woven presence.
The same man from the café.
Ash's pupils tightened, not fear, but calculation sharpened by sudden presence.
"He's the same guy." Aardh's voice buzzed through his skull. Ash's thoughts pulled taut. "He asked who I am. He knows Ash. Is he...?"
A slow exhale, shoulders easing as if preparing his own mask. "Who are you?"
The man's lips pulled into a gentle, tired smile. "I asked first, kid."
A beat of stillness. The room held its breath like a church expecting confession. Ash turned away, steps unhurried. He walked to the desk beside the wardrobe, pulled open the drawer. Fingers brushed an old leather cover. The book. The one the original Ash had scribbled rituals in.
He lifted it. Turned. And threw it toward the man. The stranger caught it mid-air without breaking posture, as though reflex was older than thought.
He flipped open pages. Eyes traced ink that bled memory. Though he didn't need to read, the grief in the way his lashes stiffened betrayed him.
"You're his uncle, right?" Ash asked.
The man didn't look up. Didn't breathe for a second too long. The ache beneath his hat brim trembled barely. He swallowed whatever crawled up his throat like grief, regret, rage and shut the book slowly. With reverence. With mourning disguised as control. When he lifted his head, wetness clung to the edge of his eyes like mist reluctant to fall. At last a gentle and broken smile tugged.
"I'm Diego Silva." The coin clicked once between his fingers. "Navigator of the Blood Pirates."
Outside the window, night wind stirred cold, salted with distance.