The message arrived the way Hal always delivered things — casually, tossing between customers like it cost him nothing.
Your mom wants you at the restaurant. Something about you being late for the Hunter's Academy.
The words landed. Then they really landed.
Grey's feet were moving before the thought finished forming, his body making the decision his mind hadn't yet caught up to. He threw a hand up at Hal, who waved back without breaking stride, balancing two clay mugs and a plate of smoked cuts with the ease of a man who had never once dropped anything in his life. Grey had no such grace. He was already gone — sprinting down the road that curved out of the outer district and into Logshof proper, where the city pressed in on itself with stone and sound and morning smoke.
The restaurant appeared after several minutes of hard running. A glossy sign above the door caught the light. Jenna's — the letters painted in the same deep blue his mother had chosen when she first opened the place, before Grey was old enough to ask why she'd picked that color. He'd never remembered to ask since.
He pushed through the door and slowed.
The dining room was alive in the way it always was mid-morning — the comfortable noise of cutlery and conversation, the smell of braised meat and something sweet he could never quite name. Grey's gaze drifted across the room without intending to, landing on the familiar faces of regulars. He offered a nod here, a small smile there — the people who came in quietly, ate well, and left without incident. He had always appreciated them more than they knew.
Then his eyes caught the corner table. Nobles. The same kind who inspected everything before touching it, who requested adjustments to a meal they'd already half-finished, and who still somehow found cause to leave a review that made his mother's shoulders tighten when she thought no one was watching. Grey's expression settled into something unreadable.
He hadn't even taken another step before she found him.
"Come here — you're running late!"
The voice cut cleanly through the room's noise. Grey's composure didn't break so much as shift, the way a flame bends in wind without going out. He looked past the movement of waiters and saw her cutting through the dining floor like she owned every inch of it, because she did. Jenna Lucas, silver hair wound back in a precise band, her chef's whites immaculate even now, her eyes bright with that silver warmth that had always made it difficult to stay properly embarrassed around her.
She was carrying a bag. Dark blue, with white trim stitched along the zippers and handles. She held it in one hand and took his face in the other before he could greet her, pressing a kiss to one temple, then the other, then his forehead for good measure.
"Ha — mom —" The laugh that escaped him was involuntary. "That's — there are people —"
He heard the dining room shift around them. Some laughed warmly. Others stared with the particular impatience of people who had not come to a restaurant to witness affection. Grey registered all of it and buried the embarrassment somewhere beneath the understanding that this would be the last time she did this for a while. Possibly a long while.
He exhaled and leaned into it.
Her expression softened when she felt the small surrender in his posture, the way his shoulders dropped half an inch. Her lips curved, and she pressed one last, unhurried kiss to his forehead before pulling back and pushing the bag into his arms.
"Clean clothes," she said. "Enough for the first week. Undies too, folded on the left side."
The heat that rose to Grey's face had nothing to do with the kitchen warmth.
"I'll — yes. I'm going now."
She pulled him in again before the sentence finished. Her arms were stronger than you'd expected, a woman who spent her days cooking — years of lifting, stirring, carrying had made certain of that. He gripped back just as tightly, just for a moment, his chin resting briefly against her silver hair.
"My big baby," she murmured against his shoulder. "Stay safe for mommy, okay?"
"Yes." His voice was quieter than he intended.
He pulled back, adjusted the strap of the blue bag across his shoulder, and turned toward the door. Before stepping out he paused — not dramatically, not for long — and let his gaze sweep across the staff moving between tables.
"Don't give her any trouble," he said, calm and without elaboration.
His eyes moved to the corner table. Were noble were well attended to.
He held the look a beat longer than was necessary as though they weren't exempted from his warning, and then walked out.
Jenna followed to the doorway. She stood with her arms loose at her sides and watched the shape of her son move down the road until distance made him smaller than she wanted to admit, and smaller still, and then gone.
She smiled the whole time.
The bus station held the particular stillness of a place between things. Grey arrived breathing steadily, his gaze moving across the row of vehicles parked along the platform before settling on the largest — a long-bodied transport with a small mounted sign bolted to the roof panel: Hunter Academy. The letters were simple and official, it allowed no ambiguity.
He crossed toward it and lifted his foot to the first boarding step.
"Pass."
The word came from a man seemingly in his late twenty's, standing just inside the door with the easy authority of someone who had said it several thousand times. He was broad in the way that came from use rather than effort, he was donned in crackling armor, but still good enough have a go, his dark hair carried a faint blue sheen that caught the morning light strangely. A cigarette rested between his lips, unlit — His brown eyes held something that wasn't quite suspicion but was making a careful study of it.
Grey stopped. Something shifted in his chest — but the particular discomfort of a person who is certain they have forgotten something and suddenly is not certain at all. He lowered the bag from his shoulder and worked the zipper on the front pocket.
Inside: a blue card, crisp-edged, white text, and a photograph of his own face pressed beneath a thin laminate.
He stared at it for a moment. 'When was this made?' he thought.
'Did she procure this?' The thought arrived with the quiet certainty of something obvious. 'Of course she did, thanks mom.'
He held it out. The C-rank hunter — Milo, though Grey didn't know that yet, but he felt something about Milo that made him a bit hesitant— he took it with two fingers and brought it close. Milo examined the card closely, his gaze moved between the card and Grey's face several times, each pass more deliberate than the last, he leaned forward, muscles subtly bulging as he rubbed his chin with theatrical consideration.
"Hm." Milo tilted the card toward the light. "You don't look much like the person in this picture."
A / N: I'm going to be releasing chapters at a daily basis from now on, so make sure to follow up daily. Give power stones and a review to keep me motivated, Thank you.