All heads turned to Lyra, who lay on her back with her hands pillowed beneath her head.

“But we’re finally together again.” Ian pushed himself up from a similar position and fixed his sister with a stern stare. “Liv’s waiting for us to come back, and so are Shain and Shery.”

“Still, I won’t go back. I miss Liv, you know I do. But I’d much rather be out here sleeping in the dirt than back in Varai Village doing chores all day for your stupid aunt. She hates me…they all do.”

“They don’t hate you, Lyra.”

“Well, I hate them. Things might be nice for you and Liv, but it’s different for me. I’m not set to inherit the entire place, for heaven’s sake.”

“Neither am I. After your mother’s Condemning, me and Liv left the family. Since then people hardly talk to us, even when we visit the village. Heston and Hala are the heirs now, so it’s the same for us! Tell her, Nolan.”

He let out a flustered cough, which Nyla found sort of forced.

“Uh, yeah, he’s not on good terms with the Varai clan. I mean, he and your sister live in this tiny cabin on the outskirts of the valley, and they mostly wear clothes that they make themselves. He hates them for what they did to you and your mom, and so does Liv.”

“Yeah, and we wouldn’t be living in Varai Village, or in Lowen, or anywhere else. Everything south of the River Straight that isn’t Nolan’s, is mine and Liv’s.”

Though anger was still visible on Lyra’s face, her tone lost all sense of confrontation. “I suppose I can stop by to say hello. But only if they can join us.”

Alicia and the girls shied away from all of the gazes, though Nyla spoke up before Nolan could answer.

“Of course they can. I mean, if they want to.”

“If you wouldn’t mind having us, then we’d be very grateful.” Alicia stroked Aine's head as the teary-eyed girl slept through the conversation. “I just hope we don’t slow you down. You’re all very strong, and we’re only in the middle levels of Profound Entry. Even just allowing us to tag along to Frostport is more help than we could ever ask for.”

“Don’t worry about things like that. Good people should stick together.”

After getting to know them, Nyla was quite fond of the girls. Her type of lifestyle didn’t leave much room for making friends, which had made her envious of them back when she had first joined the same caravan. They’d spotted her and Lyra jogging wordlessly alongside their wagon, and insisted that they join them. Thanks to the girls, they were able to rest and relax throughout most of their travels.

“I’ll be honest,” Nolan cut in. “There’s something me and Nyla have to take care of after we get to North Island, so while we’re doing that you all can go around and see the sights.”

“Let’s talk about that later.” There were still plenty of things that she and Nolan needed to share with one another, things that they couldn’t bring up in front of the others. “Hey, can we talk somewhere away from everyone else?”

She almost laughed when she saw his flustered look, and the misunderstanding gazes that he exchanged with Ian and Sean.

“We can definitely do that.”

She almost snickered, though held back as she led him far enough from their little camp that even Ian wouldn’t be able to see or hear them. Once she’d stopped, he laid a thick blanket on the ground and settled down, cross-legged.

“So, uh, the weather…”

She mimicked his tone. “So, uh, Uncle Grey…”

He cleared his throat as the purpose of their talk became clear. “Ah, right. Obviously.”

It turned out that Uncle Grey had sensed a powerful aura on that battlefield in Hauss, one that had apparently locked onto Nolan’s life signal. The old ghost hadn’t hesitated to take control over his body and flee the scene, for this person was a member of the Bloodhand Sect, and strong enough that taking her and Lyra along with him would have only endangered them further. This individual chased them down, though their master was able to shake them off at the cost of his connection to Nolan’s mind.

He went on to tell her about everything he’d experienced since they parted ways. The weeks he’d spent in the Three-River Valley, the people he’d met there and his involvement in the battles that took place when they were invaded by another community. Another stint in the glade, where he’d learned a whole lot more about spiritual arrayments and the diagrams that formed their bases. He spoke of his time in Malben Valley, of all places, and how he and his friends had put an end to the tyranny of Count Algrave and his mass kidnappings. From there they’d gone on to the kingdom of Ridgerock, where they’d won the good graces of the royal family but also the ire of a powerful elder that belonged to a sect she’d never heard of.

Once he’d finished with his account of things, she told him about how she and Lyra had fought their way into the Dragon’s Tail from the war-torn countryside of Hauss, where they’d struggled through the ambushes of hungry animals and demonic beasts to find the Dreadstone Pass. Chills ran down her back as she talked about the frightening monsters inside, particularly the huge titan spiders that caused so many problems for them and the disciples that they encountered while in the depths of the dark chasm. He was incredulous that they’d discovered the entrance to a Vespasian tomb in such a remote place, and was even more shocked when she pulled out the strange painting that she’d taken from there.

After looking it over for a moment beneath the soft moonlight, he nodded, impressed. “Well, you don’t see this every day. This thing’s an essence fusion object, and a talisman. They probably made it this way so that it could be used more than once. What about that other thing you picked up in the tomb? And you said Lyra found a sword there?”

“The sword is too heavy to use, at least for us.” She handed him a small ring beset with three black gemstones. “You can store inner essence and spiritual energy inside of this, but for some reason the energy just slips out after a few minutes.”

“Did you try dripping some blood onto it?”

“That’s the last thing I thought to do.”

He handed it back to her, along with a tiny black needle. “Sometimes you need to put blood on an arrayment to activate it. Think of how slave-master contracts work.”

She poked her left thumb and let a drop of blood fall onto its surface, surprised as a hot tingle of energy shot up her arm and connected with her dantian.

“I think you were right.”

“Can I see it?”

He poured some energy into it, though she felt it drift away in the following minutes. When she tried, the energy stayed regardless of how much she injected. Leave it to him to figure this out so quickly.

“Damn. This thing’s probably worth a ridiculous amount of spirit stones. Wait, hold on. Mentioning the master-slave contracts got me thinking. Far as I know, the only time a contract doesn’t work is when the would-be slave is already contracted to another person. What happened, Nyla? Why didn’t those contracts work on you?”

Her face became flushed as she told him what had happened.

“Damn Black Cloak, I knew something was up with that guy.”

“Black Cloak?”

“That’s what he told us to call him. We ran into him just after Malben, and he flew us over to Smolen as a favour.” Nolan began to grind his teeth as he shook his head with a disgruntled expression. “He gave me another one of those pellets, too. Oh, that piece of shit.”

Her heart sunk. “You didn’t take it, did you?”

“I thought about it, but no, I ended up destroying it.”

“So you were smart about it.”

“Nyla, how the hell were you supposed to know that the guy that saved our lives made some secret enslavement method to corner us like this? No, this guy’s clearly a crafty sonofabitch.”

“Lyra says we should stay away from the Dragon’s Tail until we can get this sorted out, and I agree with her. If we bump into this Black Cloak again, he could make me do anything, even kill myself. I don’t like knowing that someone has that sort of power over me.”

He pinched at his tear ducts and sighed. “This…this is fucked.”

Seeing how stressed he’d become, she reached out and rested a hand on his forearm. “I’m sure Uncle Grey can help me out, if we can get him to agree.”

“I’ve talked to him about master-slave contracts before, after I freed that girl from the slave auction in Greenwall. It was like a month after we met him."

“What did he say?”

“He was really vague. One way to break the contract is if the master willingly releases the slave, and that can only happen if they drink each other’s blood. Aside from that, the only other way is to kill the master.”

“Can’t…can’t Uncle Grey just remove it? It’s an arrayment, after all. If anyone can get rid of it, it’s him.”

“We better hope so, or else we won’t be able to head back to the Three-River Valley. Not until we can kill Black Cloak.” He grabbed her hand, which was still on his arm. “I promise that if Uncle Grey can’t take care of this, then I’ll find that guy and make him wish he never saved us.”

His words reassured her, though only for a moment. Black Cloak, as he was apparently called, was able to fly, and could also project his voice into people’s minds. This meant that he was at the Genesis stage, a realm of cultivation where an individual could flatten a city in the blink of an eye. If the fact that he could include a master-slave contract into a medicinal pellet was any indication, then she doubted that he was in the earlier levels.

“You think I’m full of it. I’m not kidding! If we spend half a year in North Island, then we can visit the glade at least five times, maybe six. Each stay is around a year and a half now. Even more by then, I bet. With all of us here, is there anybody that we need to worry about? Not only that, I’m gonna scour North Island for more people from my home world, and train them up before we head back to the valley.”

That’s right. It’s not just us anymore.

“Thank you. You’re right, I’m sure things will end up fine.”

“Better than fine.” The moonlight was so bright that his eyes appeared hazel, which matched well with his robes. “Collectively we own like five percent of Three-River Valley—the place where Lyra grew up. You just gave me over ten thousand empty spirit stones, which we’ll turn into ten thousand superior ones, basically a fortune. We’ll build up the sect, keep to ourselves and live like kings and queens.”

“Eventually…”

“Yeah, this is kind of down the road, but still. Think about all the other stuff we’ve been through. Is any of this really that new?”

“I suppose not. I just hope you don’t leave again. I don’t know how much longer I could’ve lasted with just Lyra.” They had become friends, sure, but that didn’t mean that she was fine with the girl starting fights everywhere they went, or talking down to her at every turn in conversation. “Things are always more interesting when you’re around.”

“Whether that’s a good or a bad thing…you know what, don’t say it.”

“It’s not a bad thing, Nolan. Far from it.”

She wasn’t sure who initiated the kiss, but it lasted for a long while. He’d pressed her down to the blanket, and they lay there, staring at one another beneath the cloudless, starry sky.

“You know,” she whispered into his ear, “with so many people in the group, we probably won’t get another chance to be alone like this.”

“Well, we could always just go somewhere else like we are now and…” He coughed and then cleared his throat. “Yeah, you’re right.”

She didn’t want to keep talking, so she’d reached into his pants and grabbed down.