Lyra found Farworth in his office late that evening.

  He didn’t look surprised to see her.

  She told him everything.

  Not dramatically. Not emotionally. Just plainly, of Arata’s words on the balcony, the way he’d spoken about purpose, about death, about not understanding his own blood. About how tired he sounded.

  Farworth listened without interrupting.

  When she finished, he leaned back in his chair and folded his hands.

  “I see,” he said.

  Lyra waited.

  “What am I going to do?” she asked finally. "What can we do to help him?"

  Farworth’s gaze drifted toward the window, toward the distant glow of the academy wards.

  “I’ll have to think about it,” he said. "Arata's not like other Wyrmbounds we need to be careful with him."

  That was all.

  Lyra left with a feeling she couldn’t name, closest described maybe something between relief and dread.

  ***

  The next day Arata left the academy premises for the first time in three months, since he had been there. He left before the sirens rang.

  No announcement. No permission requested.

  When the noise inside him refused to settle, he travelled beyond the academy’s borders—past the wards, past the carved stone roads—until he reached a place most people avoided.

  A mental asylum.

  It was clean. White. Sterile.

  Orderly.

  He sat in waiting rooms. Walked in the corridors. Watched patients pace, rock, whisper to empty air. Some stared through him as if he wasn’t real. Others stared too intently, as if he was the only thing that was.

  Some laughed, some cried, but none gave him the answer for which he had come to the instirution.

  He listened.

  Hours passed.

  Days passed as he waited.

  The Academy must be in total chaos right now.

  But nothing clicked.

  Whatever lived inside him did not live here. The Mad Dragon had been unusually quiet since he had come here. Which was a welcome relief to Arata.

  The realization came quietly.

  He was standing near a half-open door when he overheard a doctor speaking to an attendant.

  “…we’ll have to quarantine him,” the doctor said, voice low but firm. “His mental illness is deteriorating. For his safety—and for everyone else’s.”

  Arata froze.

  The word mental illness.

  He left soon after.

  Outside, the air felt different. Sharper and more surreal.

  That was when it struck him.

  Madness and being mad were not the same thing.

  One was a condition.

  The other was a force. And he fortunately carried the latter.

  As he walked away from the asylum, Arata felt it.

  The pressure.

  A presence too careful to be coincidence.

  He glanced sideways—just once—and caught a reflection in a glass pane across the street. A figure that didn’t belong.The figure was too still. Too observant.

  A spy from the flame tribunal.

  They’d been watching him longer than he’d thought.

  Arata slowed.

  Then, deliberately, he kept walking.

  Not worth it, he decided.

  Not yet.

  He didn’t return to the academy immediately.

  Instead, his feet carried him somewhere familiar.

  Warm.

  Rhea’s forge greeted him with heat and sound—the steady rhythm of hammer on metal, sparks flaring like brief, angry stars. The air smelled of iron and oil and something comforting beneath it all.

  Rhea didn’t look up when he entered.

  “Took you long enough,” she said.

  Arata snorted softly. “Nice to see you too.”

  She finally glanced over, eyes sharp, assessing. Then she went back to her work.

  “You look thinner,” she added. “And worse than before.”

  “Been thinking.”

  “That explains it. You don't have the mental faculties for that sort of thing.”

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  He leaned against a nearby pillar, watching her work in silence for a moment.

  “…I went somewhere,” he said eventually.

  She waited.

  “A place where people go when their minds break.”

  Rhea’s hammer paused for half a second.

  “And?” she asked.

  “It wasn’t what I needed.”

  "I would hope so, I wouldn't want my creation in the hands of a mad man." She replied.

  After a while, Arata spoke again.

  “Do you know where Darwin is?”

  Rhea quenched the blade she’d been working on, steam hissing sharply.

  “Kohler called him,” she said. “Didn’t say why.”

  Arata exhaled slowly.

  “Figures.”

  Rhea glanced at him again—longer this time. "Don't pressure yourself too much with the Wyrmbound stuff. Those matters tend to sort themselves out with time."

  "How would you know?" Arata asked.

  Rhea sighed, "Don't forget that I was once in the same uniform, that you are wearing right now."

  Arata smiled faintly. "Take care Rhea"

  Arata returned to the academy without ceremony.

  No escort. No announcement. He crossed the gates the same way he had left—alone, hands in his coat pockets, expression unreadable.

  That didn’t stop the fuss.

  “Where the hell did you go?”

  Wanuy caught him before he’d made it halfway across the courtyard, death-calm fraying at the edges. Flint and Sierra weren’t far behind, Flint’s mechanical arm clicking faintly as he crossed his arms.

  “You vanished,” Flint said. “No notice. No trace. You know how that might look, right?”

  Sierra squinted at him. “You look different.”

  Arata shrugged. “Took a walk.”

  “A walk?” Wanuy repeated flatly. “You leave the academy for days and call it a walk?”

  Cadets nearby slowed, pretending not to listen. Pretending badly.

  Flint leaned closer. “Did something happen? Because Lyra didn’t say a word, and that alone is terrifying.”

  Arata’s gaze drifted past them—to the main hall steps.

  Lyra stood there, arms folded loosely, watching.

  She met his eyes for a moment.

  Didn’t ask anything.

  Didn’t look surprised.

  Farworth stood a few steps behind her, speaking quietly with another instructor. His eyes flicked toward Arata once—only once—before returning to his conversation.

  No alarm.

  No summons.

  No reprimand.

  Wanuy followed Arata’s line of sight and frowned.

  “…You talked to them, didn’t you?”

  Arata didn’t answer.

  Sierra clicked her tongue softly. “Great. That’s a yes.”

  “So?” Flint pressed. “You going to tell us where you went, or are we supposed to guess?”

  Arata looked back at them.

  “Somewhere quiet,” he said. “Somewhere loud.”

  That earned him three different looks of concern.

  Wanuy studied him for a long moment, then stepped aside.

  “…You alive?” he asked.

  Arata nodded. "What kind of question is that?"

  “Good,” Wanuy said. “We’ll take that for now.”

  From the steps, Lyra finally turned away.

  Farworth did the same.

  Whatever Arata had gone looking for — They already knew he’d found something.

  And for now, that was enough.

  *************************************

  Far from the Academy, in the war tent of the western front, Cyran Valen — the first prince of the Empire — stared down at the blood-soaked map of the Rinnett trenches.

  The lines had shifted again. Another ten kilometres lost. Another thousand lives gone.

  He could still smell the iron and gunpowder through the damp canvas. His men were exhausted, his generals silent. And yet, the Emperor’s letter lay open before him — stamped in black wax, the symbol of the Crown burning like judgement.

  The Wyrmbound Initiative is authorised for deployment under Imperial command.

  You will receive ten operatives within a fortnight. The first soldier will be sent by day after tomorrow.

  Use them to secure the west. No mercy. No retreat.

  — Alaric Valen, Emperor of Rammaset

  Cyran read it twice before folding it back.

  The rain outside had turned to sleet. In the distance, the mountains burned orange with artillery fire — the endless night of war painted by lightning and flame.

  He closed his eyes, whispering to no one but the ghosts he carried:

  “May the flame forgive us all.”

  The order came at dawn.

  The message was simple: Deploy the Wyrmbound.

  Ten were demanded.

  One name had been chosen.

  Only one would go for now.

  Darwin.

  He didn’t argue when Kohler told him. He didn’t bow, either.

  He just stood there, silent, with that faint, unreadable smile.

  “I’m not sending you,” Kohler said. “The Emperor is.”

  Darwin adjusted the collar of his uniform. “Does that make it better or worse?”

  Kohler didn’t answer.

  Darwin laughed softly. “Don’t worry, Magister. I’ll make sure they remember this day. Maybe too well.”

  The field was already dead before he arrived.

  The soil had turned to ash; the air smelled of rust and blood.

  The Rinnett artillery had reduced the trenches to mud and bone.

  Cyran watched from his command tower as the lone figure walked into the storm.

  No escort. No armor. Just a man and a horse by his side.

  The rain had turned to ash by the time Darwin arrived.

  The ground was already slick with blood — a smear of red and brown where men had drowned in mud instead of water.

  He could smell the cordite, the burnt oil, the fear.

  They called it the Valen Line, though there was nothing straight about it — a tangled network of trenches and broken artillery, where screams echoed longer than gunfire.

  Darwin walked through the smoke with a slow, measured pace, the sigil on his neck faintly glowing beneath his collar. His sword — Rainsong — rested on his shoulder, its silver edge glinting every time lightning split the sky.

  The soldiers didn’t notice him at first. When they did, they froze.

  A single man, walking calmly through artillery fire.

  Then he moved.

  The first Rinnett charge came screaming over the ridge, bayonets gleaming. Darwin stepped forward once — and the air itself bent.

  The rain changed direction, slicing sideways like knives.

  He drew Rainsong — one motion, impossibly fluid — and cut through the line.

  It wasn’t a fight. It was a demonstration.

  Each swing of his blade left arcs of silver light hanging in the air for half a second before the bodies fell.

  Steel armour split like parchment.

  Men collapsed mid-scream, their blood turning to vapour before it hit the ground.

  Darwin didn’t grunt. He didn’t roar. He simply moved. A surgeon in a storm of violence.

  By the time he stopped, the ridge was silent again, dozens of corpses lay at his feet — not mutilated, not dismembered, just… undone.

  He exhaled, the steam from his breath rising in faint blue wisps.

  “Enough,” he whispered to no one.

  But the war wasn’t done with him yet.