Ranvir spent the rest of the day with the others at the orphanage before finally taking a sleepy Frija home. Menace trailed behind them for a while until they reached the forest. The kitten roamed for a few minutes before returning and climbing his shoulders.

It was thus he came home. Frija drooling onto his shirt, her saliva lost in the water coalescing on his skin and soaking his shirt. Menace complaining loudly, constantly leaping on and off his shoulders, because he kept getting wet.

Emotion, a full riot of colors, overflowed Ranvir as he looked at the dim interior of his and Frija’s home. The living room was unlit, low-ceilinged, and a leak had developed in the roof, causing water to drip onto the floor. It had finally stopped raining, but apparently something of a reservoir had snuck in and gathered somewhere.

For a few moments, he struggled with himself. Standing at the threshold, holding his daughter in his arm and the weight of the last two weeks clawing gouges into his shoulders.

He looked down at Frija’s face. Peaceful in her slumber, her mouth was slightly open, her hair matted and wet against his chest. She deserved better than this. She deserved better than him.

Ranvir realized, even as he was watching his little girl, part of him was scanning the surroundings. Listening, eyes wandering, tether-sense sweeping, and tension rising.

He needed to let go, somehow.

Ranvir crossed the threshold, the movement coinciding with Frija yawning. “Are we home?” she asked, sleepily. What he’d said about his arm hadn’t fixed things. She still felt wary about him and this adventure, but she carried some kernel of hope within her now. The idea that he could fix himself had been seeded, if not yet harvested.

“We are, Firehearth,” Ranvir said to her in Elensk. “Let’s get you to bed,” he gently set her down. She was a little unsteady on her feet, but eventually got going. They moved through their usual night-time routine, the motions helping settle some of Ranvir’s prevalent emotions.

Once Frija was settled in bed, Menace cuddling her affectionately, Ranvir retreated from her room. Stepping into his own, he examined the cramped space. Between the bed, trunk, and bookcase, he had little more than a body’s length of space. Cramped did not begin to describe it.

Returning to the living room, the feeling did not leave him. Another cavern, larger but no less a hideout. He wasn’t in danger any longer. He didn’t need to worry about being hunted. Yet, the tension wouldn’t leave him. It crawled in his shoulders, white and frigid, like a ghost, the remnants of its passing covering him like frost on the grass.

He huffed a deep breath and stepped fully outside. The night sky of Korfyi was a little different from Vednar’s, dark and empty. Emptier, really, since Korfyi only had the one moon. There were hints of something flickering, but even with his Perception, Ranvir could barely make it out. Tiny lights flickering, but whatever effect had caused them, the mana was failing and had been for some time.

He shook his head and sat down before the step, crossing his legs. Ranvir lacked experience dealing with himself. He couldn’t remember how he felt in the months after his mother was hit, only that over time the pain weakened. It became less all-consuming. But he could not wait for months to pass. He could hardly be a father to Frija if he was stuck in such a state.

But his father hadn’t gotten turned into that. He’d overcome it somehow, stepped forth when his wife and son needed him. Could Ranvir do the same now? What would he need to do to move forward?

He thought back to the long nights with his father, watching as mother fought the fever, intermittently sweating through blankets, then freezing despite the swaddling. Dad had told him a story back then, some nonsense about a young man, an old man, and an ugly frog…

He kept thinking on it, but couldn’t come up with the exact story. At the time, it had just seemed like empty words to him. Another meaningless story to fill the time. He shook his head. Maybe if he returned, he would ask his father.

So he took his mind elsewhere. He needed to let go of the Orykto fold and what happened in those dark spaces. Perhaps, I should hold a funeral for the ones I killed. Attempt to let them go… Ranvir considered it, but couldn’t honestly remember that much about any of them. In fact, as he kept thinking on it, dark shadows crept up within him, long tendrils sinking claws into him as Ranvir’s mind took a turn.

Shaking his head, Ranvir got up and ran a few rounds around the house. He was already muddy from walking home, so the dirt didn’t bother him as he squelched around the house for half an hour.

Finally, he stopped. Ranvir breathed a little faster, but not hard enough for it to be an actual effort for him, just enough that his blood pumped a bit. This time, as he knelt, his mind turned to another task.

The cage he’d forged within himself. The egg Latresekt had left behind, the egg that left a mark on his chest, was still contained within his barriers and seals, still unable to escape. Unable to move, or even hatch, Ranvir suspected.

Taking long breaths, Ranvir focused his mind and will on an image. Harnessing the idea of a shield, hammering into steel with his will. Forging it with the ideal of protection. Then he turned his soul on the cage, his intent filtering through the layers and pressing on the infant spirit of war settled within him.

Latresekt, itself, had confirmed that he could overwhelm another system’s method of function if he pressed long and hard enough with his own intent, reforging its rule to fit him. Even if the change was only slight.

Now, Ranvir turned it on the poisonous progeny the spirit had left his soul.

“Daddy?”

Ranvir didn’t realize how long he’d been meditating over the egg until Frija called on him. Leaving his soul, he found her standing in the doorframe, only in her nightshirt. It was one of his old ones. One sleeve had torn off. Despite that, it was still long enough to function as a full dress for her; the tails dragging on the floor.

“Frija,” Ranvir said, opening his arms.

She sniffed and waddled out to him, Menace prowling behind her, eyes carefully scanning the environment. “You weren’t in your bed.”

“I know, Fireheart,” he replied, wrapping his arms about her. “Daddy was seeing to some business he’d yet to do,” though she’d woken up, it wasn’t yet daytime. In fact, it was pretty close to the time when he’d drop her off at Elpir’s. Frija threw one arm around his neck, the other, unable to reach, clutched at his soaked shirt.

He rubbed her back as she slowly relaxed into him. “Did you have a nightmare?” he asked, after a time. She nodded as Menace returned after relieving himself.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

She shook her head.

“But I should keep holding you?”

She nodded.

He kissed her on the top of her sleep-mussed hair. “Very well, then.”

He held her then, for a long time. Ranvir couldn’t see the sundial from where he was sitting, so he couldn’t tell the exact flare, though some instinct warned him they were close to dawn. Throughout that time, he felt something inside give a little. It wasn’t a fix, instantly changing him into someone else, someone better than the man who’d carried his daughter home last night. But sitting with his daughter soothed in a way none of his thinking had.

“Do you want to see something cool?” Ranvir asked, finally.

Frija was quiet for a while. “Maybe…”

“Okay.”

She was quiet for a while longer. “What would you show me?”

Ranvir smiled into her hair. “The dawn.”

“What’s that?”

He rubbed a finger against his forehead, squeezing his eyes together. “Bad habit. Daybreak.”

“Oh…” she replied. A while later, “Is that cool?”

“I think it is. Of course, we would have to climb over the trees to see it.”

Frija thought over that for a moment, before finally pulling away, giving him a look of confusion. He smiled down at her.

“I wanna see.”

He nodded, wrapped them in a pocket and carried them high into the sky, before depositing them on lines of purple tightly gridded together. Frija looked around for a moment, before head-butting him in the chest and squeezing her eyes shut.

Ranvir chuckled to himself and wrapped her up tighter. “You’re safe with me, Fireheart.”

“But we’re up so high,” she whispered.

“Yet safe nonetheless,” he replied unworried. From here he could see that they had a quarter flare’s time before the moon turned into the sun, the bronze disk throwing off faint silver light. Though it had stopped raining, clouds still cluttered the firmament surrounding Eriene like a second forest canopy. In the distance, he could see a potragos traveling on the swollen riverways, as well as hear Menace frantically hissing.

He swiftly created another pocket-space and sent it down to Menace, opening it up for him to see. Cautiously, the cat entered and was swiftly swept into Frija’s arms. He gave her a few minutes before his daughter’s natural curiosity won out.

Sure enough, eventually she began sneaking quick glimpses before burying her head in his chest again. Presently, those glimpses turned into gazes, turned into long looks over the landscape. Menace seemed to enjoy it less, Frija’s white-knuckle grip on its fur probably making the experience somewhat less enjoyable.

She stopped once to pick at the hardened space, but lines of purple didn’t budge at her touch. “It’s so weird,” she muttered, tightening her grip further on Menace as the kitten squirmed underneath her fingers.

“Alright, ease up,” Ranvir said, gently gripping the cat by scruff. “I got him, you don’t have to worry,” he nodded to the sundial. “Besides, it’s about time.”

Frija stilled, standing breathlessly as the last flare filled out. For a moment, all the little lights glowed white and silver before flashing into a brilliant day. First, the light gained color, reds and deep oranges, the color of sunrise, transitioning then into the colors of autumn, leaving behind the reds for brighter yellows.

The dark, shadowed clouds, still swollen with water, changed under the light of the morning sun. Golden oranges and brilliant yellows turned their otherwise shadowed, showing a brighter side as daybreak lit them. And below those looming shapes, the sun revealed the holes in their cover.

Beams of light, flecks of sun, lit the forests and their surroundings. Frija took it all in with her eyes wide, her mouth dropped open, and Ranvir took in her wonder, her marveling at the nature before them and one last daybreak happened within him, revealing the love for his daughter and all the marvels of the world.

Ranvir smiled and hugged her back to his chest and kissed her hair. “I love you, daughter mine.”

“Thanks, dad.”