He woke up in a bed for the first time in months and didn't know where he was.
Ceiling. Wooden beams. Not stone. Not sky. The mattress crinkled beneath him. Sounds — voices, cart wheels, the muffled clatter of a kitchen. A town. An inn. Millhaven.
Right. He was a person again.
He lay there for a minute, letting the reality settle. Then he washed his face in the basin, pulled on his mana-woven clothes, and went downstairs.
Lira was already at a table, eating something that smelled like eggs and toasted bread. She looked up when he appeared and smiled — quick, bright, slightly self-conscious.
"Morning. Sleep well?"
"Best I've slept in months."
"Low bar?"
"You have no idea."
She kicked the chair across from her out. He sat.
Breakfast was eggs, bread, cured meat, and something hot and bitter that passed for coffee in this world. Yuki ate slowly, savouring the normalcy of it. A table. Plates. Silverware. Someone else's cooking.
Lira watched him eat the way you watch someone who hasn't seen food before.
"I want to show you the town today," she said. "Properly. Not the guild-and-appraiser speed run."
"You don't have to—"
"I want to." No hesitation. Direct. She held his gaze for a beat longer than necessary, then looked down at her plate. "Besides. My father's handling the cargo today and I've got nothing to do."
"Okay."
"Okay." She smiled again. He was starting to catalogue her smiles — the teasing one, the warm one, the nervous one. This was the nervous one.
He liked all of them.
Millhaven was bigger than it had seemed from the gate.
Lira walked him through it sector by sector. The market district — stalls selling everything from produce to weapons to fabrics dyed in colours he didn't have names for. The craftsmen's quarter — blacksmiths, leatherworkers, alchemists, a woman who sold enchanted trinkets from a cart and winked at Yuki when he passed. The residential blocks — dense, noisy, laundry hanging between buildings, children running in packs through narrow alleys.
She narrated as they walked. Not a tour guide speech — more like someone sharing a place they knew well and wanted him to understand.
"Millhaven's a crossroads town. Everything passes through here — people, goods, information. It's not big by western standards, but for the frontier it's practically a capital."
"What's further west?"
"Bigger cities. Kingdoms with walls and standing armies. The Dominion." She said the last word the way people say the name of a storm they've been watching on the horizon. "They've been expanding for twenty years. Swallowed three kingdoms already. Everyone's waiting to see which direction they push next."
"And this area?"
"Amber Plains? Too far east, too close to the Ashspine. Not worth conquering. Yet." She paused at a fruit stall, bought two of something round and red, tossed one to him. "We exist because we're not important enough to fight over. For now."
He bit into the fruit. Sweet, dense, unfamiliar. Good.
"What about magic?" he asked. "You said true mages are rare."
"Rare is generous. Maybe one in a thousand people can use magic at all. Of those, most can barely light a candle. Real mages — the ones who can fight with it — are maybe one in ten thousand. They train in academies in the western cities or serve in military orders. Out here, you're lucky if the town has a healer who can mend a broken bone."
One in ten thousand. And those few used formal systems — incantations, circles, structured spells built on centuries of tradition.
And I'm sitting here with functionally infinite mana and an imagination full of anime.
"You said you can use magic 'a little,'" Lira said, watching him sideways.
"I did say that."
"Is that another of your understatements?"
He took another bite of the fruit instead of answering.
She shook her head. That same head-shake from yesterday — not frustration, just resigned amusement. "You're impossible."
"I've been told."
He still hadn't been told. But it was becoming a habit.
They ended up at the guild around midday.
The common room was busier than yesterday — tables full, the notice board surrounded by a cluster of adventurers scanning the postings. The noise level was significant. Arguments about pay rates. Someone bragging loudly about a hunt. A group in matching armour drinking in a corner with the quiet confidence of people who were very good at their jobs.
"Want to take a quest?" Lira asked.
"That's the point of the tag, right?"
She led him to the board. The postings were organised by rank — Iron at the bottom, higher ranks ascending. The Iron section was mostly what he expected: monster patrols, herb gathering, escort jobs, pest control. Low-risk, low-pay, low-prestige.
One caught his eye. A subjugation quest — a pack of razorbacks had been harassing farms north of town. Eliminate or drive off the pack. Reward: five silver. Recommended party size: four to six Iron-rank adventurers.
He pulled it off the board.
"That one's a group quest," Lira said, reading over his shoulder.
"I know."
"You're going to solo it."
"Probably."
She opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. "Can I come? Not to fight — I can handle myself, but I want to see..." She trailed off.
"See what?"
"What you actually look like when you're not holding back."
Fair enough. "Stay at range."
She grinned. The teasing one.
They submitted the quest at the counter. The administrator looked at the posting, looked at Yuki's iron tag, looked at the fact that he had no party.
"This is a four-to-six person job."
"I'll manage."
She stamped the form with an expression that said your funeral and waved them off.