Forty minutes later, the corridor outside Elara's lab was still empty.
Morning classes had started, so Revan stood alone in the hallway. His shirt was tucked in, his back was straight, and his wounds were closed enough that breathing didn't feel like a negotiation anymore. Elara had wanted him to stay and rest for a while, and maybe talk about what happened. Both offers had gotten a polite no.
One hand went to his pocket.
The obsidian coin was warm again. Fresh warm, like someone had pressed a hot thumb against it a few minutes ago.
Left, right, the alcove by the stairs, even the gap under the supply closet door. Nothing in the corridor moved.
But the coin didn't lie. Whoever gave it to him could activate it from a distance, and she had chosen to do it while he was sitting in Elara's lab with his shirt off and his guard down.
'Message received. You know where I am. How reassuring.'
The coin went back into his pocket, and he walked.
***
A black envelope was waiting on his pillow.
Revan stopped in the doorway and stared at it for three full seconds. Purple wax, stamped with the Vespera crest.
'Of course. Didn't I literally just survive the night? Can't a man enjoy being alive for four whole hours?'
Then he crossed the room and broke the seal. Inside was a slip of black paper with Sylvia's small, sharp silver handwriting.
East Tower. Room 4. Now.
Air hissed out between his teeth.
'That's so her.'
After folding the note into his breast pocket, he checked the mirror one last time. Wounds hidden. Posture clean. Face set to its default mode of respectful emptiness.
'Showtime.'
On the way to the East Tower, he kept every step even, because Sylvia would notice even a slight limp. What bothered him more was the summons itself. No reason, no warning, just a place and an order. That was normal for her, but today it made him nervous.
'Did she find out about last night? Is this an interrogation? Or is it about the train again, the Crimson Tears, something new she found?'
Not knowing meant walking onto a battlefield blind.
***
The East Tower was the oldest building at Aethelgard. Everywhere else, the campus had been renovated for the noble families paying tuition, but nobody had touched the tower. Its stone walls were black with age, the windows were narrow, and the stairs creaked under every step.
Nobody used it, which was exactly why Sylvia did.
Room 4 was on the third floor, with one desk, two chairs, and a window over the academy's eastern wall. Past it, the rooftops of Valorheim faded into the morning haze.
Sylvia was already sitting at the desk and didn't look up.
Papers were spread out in front of her. Her left hand held a quill above a half-written reply, and her right hand lay flat on the desk without moving.
Too still.
Revan noticed it right away. A whole life of reading her moods from tiny changes in her face and in the air around her had taught him that a flat right hand meant she was holding something back. The quill hadn't moved for at least ten seconds, so she had stopped writing before he came in and just hadn't put it down.
Whatever was bothering her, she was working hard to hide it.
Once the door was closed behind him, he stood at attention and waited. Five seconds passed.
"You took nine minutes."
"The East Tower stairs are steep, My Lady."
"The East Tower stairs haven't changed in three hundred years, and you've climbed them often enough to know which ones creak."
'I got stabbed three times last night, but sure, let's blame the stairs.'
"My body was sluggish this morning. I will fix it."
Finally, the quill moved. She crossed out three words, put the pen down, and looked up. Those violet eyes moved over him, and Revan held still while she searched for anything wrong.
Normally she would have also scolded him for not using the teleport anchor carved under the windowsill. Today she didn't mention it.
"Sit."
Like a good dog, he sat.
A document slid across the desk toward him. The paper was thick and official, and the seal at the top showed a silver crescent moon inside a ring of thorns.
The Imperial Transit Authority.
'A transport mandate.'
"Read it."
Two pages of formal legal language. House Vespera had been hired to escort a sealed cargo by armored train from Valorheim Central Station to Outpost Halgrim in the Borderlands. Departure in forty-eight hours. Four days on the express line. The contents were classified, and the escort would be Lady Sylvia von Vespera and her personal retinue.
That meant him.
'The Borderlands.'
His chest tightened. In the game, the Borderlands were endgame territory, where the map ended and the monsters began. Past the last towns there was nothing but wasteland, and in neither of his lives had he been there.
And the last time Sylvia had escorted cargo by train, Revan had lost an arm, grown it back, and died.
'I'm sure this time will be totally different and nothing will go wrong at all.'
"Questions?"
About thirty came to mind, starting with what was in the cargo and ending with whether she was going to make him fight another monster alone in under five minutes. In the end, he picked the safest one.
"The escort team. How many?"
"Six at the core. You, me, and four others. The family will send support units for the rest."
Real relief washed through him.
'Meat shields. Lots of them.'
If Sylvia threw him at another Master-rank monster and demanded the impossible, at least he wouldn't die alone. He could arrange a tragic, heroic sacrifice for the new people, and if the enemy was too slow to kill them, Revan was more than happy to help them reach their noble martyrdom himself. A knife in the back during the chaos of battle, all for the sake of the mission.
'What a comforting thought.'
"Departure?"
"The day after tomorrow, at dawn."
"Route?"
"Valorheim Central to Halgrim. The express line through the Ashenmoor Corridor."
The relief disappeared. His jaw tightened a little, and he hoped she hadn't seen it.
The Ashenmoor Corridor was three hundred miles of track through the worst Dead Zones on the continent. In those places mana disappeared completely, and healing magic stopped working. For a Warrior like Revan, that was annoying. A Mage like Sylvia, though, would lose everything she could do.
Her eyes hadn't left him.
"You seem tense."
"There are seventeen recorded Dead Zones on that route, My Lady. Some of them last almost an hour without mana. In those stretches, you would be—"
"I'm aware."
"If something happens while—"
"I said I'm aware."
Her voice stayed level, but the room felt colder, and Revan knew the conversation was over. With his mouth shut, he nodded.
That bothered him. Usually, when someone worried about something, Sylvia answered with a solution so complete that they felt stupid for worrying. This time she gave him nothing. No counterargument, no plan.
Either she was hiding a plan from him, or she didn't have one at all.
Which one scared him more, he honestly couldn't decide.
Without another word, she stood up, gathered the documents, and walked past him. Revan turned his head to watch her go. Her back was straight, like always. Then the heavy door closed behind her.
The room was silent.
For a long time he stayed in his chair and went over the conversation again. The more he thought about it, the worse he felt, and the Dead Zones were only part of it. Since the night of the first train, she hadn't told him anything. Who the traitor really worked for, what she had been investigating all week, none of it. And now, after all that silence, she was taking another secret cargo to the edge of the map.
The words of the woman in the servants' passage came back to him. Someone with money, connections, and a clean reputation to hide behind.
Revan's jaw clenched.
'Is House Vespera really part of this?'
The door his master had just walked through stayed shut, and he sighed, long and tired.