The myth attacks in Olympicõ had a pattern.
That was the problem.
Melissa had been on enough deployments to know the difference between opportunistic myth behaviour and something directed. Opportunistic was noise — myths following routes of least resistance, attacking population, retreating when resistance became costly. What was happening in Olympicõ was not noise. The attacks came at intervals. They targeted specific sections of the defensive perimeter. They probed and withdrew.
Someone was running reconnaissance.
She finished clearing the afternoon incursion — an SS-class Evogre that had gotten three blocks further into the residential district than it should have, corrected with a single dagger strike to the spine — and stood in the empty street while the city settled back into its interrupted business around her.
Leroy appeared at the end of the block. Large, SSS-ranked, built from different materials than most people. The scar from his ear to his collarbone had been there long enough to be part of his face. He was eating something. He always was.
"All clear east side," he said.
"Clear here." Melissa sheathed her daggers. "Fourth coordinated incursion since I arrived. No legendary class. Not once."
Leroy chewed — slowly, the way he processed everything. "Two possibilities," he said. "One: their legendary inventory is thin. Horus is gone. Fujin was at Velvetia. The others — unknown locations. Maybe they're running low."
"And two?"
"Two: they have legendary class and they're choosing not to deploy it here." He looked at her steadily. "Which means Olympicõ isn't the point. These attacks aren't trying to take the city. They're keeping us here. Keeping you here — they know who's stationed in Olympicõ. They know you being here means you're not somewhere else." He paused. "So the question is: where do they want you not to be?"
Melissa was quiet.
She thought about the portal network. The mystery man. The precision of Velvetia — the timing, the wall breach, two legendary class myths deployed like chess pieces. Someone patient. Someone running a plan that extended across kingdoms and months.
She thought about the trial in two weeks. Three students she'd trained personally, in a city she was currently not in.
"I need to get a report to Gabriel tonight," she said.
"Already on it," said Leroy.
—
The mayor's update came an hour later: two more weeks minimum on the wall reconstruction, possibly longer if the attacks continued.
Melissa received this information with the composed professionalism of someone who had learned to hear bad news without letting their face comment on it. She thanked the mayor. She waited until he left.
Then she went to the courtyard and looked at the tree that had survived everything the city had been through.
"Thinking face," said Leroy, appearing behind her. He sat on the bench. "The specific one."
"Two weeks minimum. The trial is in two weeks exactly." She didn't sit. "The mathematics are clear."
"Is it the trial or is it them?"
"Both." She looked at the tree. "The trial matters — first real assessment, shapes their deployment trajectory. But also—" She stopped. "Levi Baron lost his mother a month ago. He's been in a foreign city, in a borrowed house, training every single day for a test that determines whether he gets to become what he's been working toward his whole life." A pause. "He deserves to have someone in that arena who knows what Jane was. And knows what he is. And understands the difference between those two things."
Leroy was quiet for a long moment. "You'll make a plan," he said. "You always make a plan."
"I know." She looked at the tree. "I just need to figure out what it is."
The city continued its reconstruction around them. Somewhere to the north, crews were working on the wall by floodlight. Somewhere across the kingdom, three students were in their inner realms, training in their sleep, getting stronger by increments.
Melissa sat down and began working the problem.
✦ ✦ ✦
Charlotte stayed for dinner.
Nobody planned it — it emerged from the afternoon the way things did when nobody formally ended them. Chef Jeff set four places without being asked. The dining room had the settled quality of people who had done what they set out to do and were now entitled to eat.
Charlotte had gradually decompressed over the course of the day. The palace formality had lifted somewhere between the second training session and Priscilla making her laugh with something that Levi didn't catch but that had clearly been said with precision. The version of Charlotte at dinner was different from the one who had arrived at lunch — less performed. More present.
"You should come back next week," Sylvia said, across the table. She said it in the tone of someone making a concession they had nonetheless freely chosen.
Charlotte looked at her. "Was that an invitation?"
"It was an observation that your presence is becoming tolerable and that continued exposure would likely increase tolerance further."
"That," said Priscilla, "is the most Sylvia way anyone has ever invited someone to anything."
"It was an invitation," said Levi.
Sylvia looked at him. He looked back.
"Fine," she said. "It was an invitation."
Charlotte considered whether to accept graciously or make it slightly difficult. She chose graciously. Progress. "Next week, then," she said. "I want to see your numbers improve."
"They will."
"I don't doubt it." Charlotte looked at Levi. "You'll tell me if you hear from Melissa?"
"Sylvia hears first."
"Obviously. But you'll tell me."
There was something underneath the question — genuine concern wearing casual clothes. Charlotte cared about Melissa. She was asking the way people ask when they don't want to appear to be asking.
"I'll tell you," Levi said.
She nodded. Picked up her fork.
The dinner continued — four people around a table set for three, the Blaze mansion doing what it did in the evenings: warm, specific, a little louder than the day.
✦ ✦ ✦
Later, after Charlotte had gone and the house had settled, Levi sat on the patio alone.
Two weeks.
He'd arrived in Olympia with nothing but injuries and his mother's daggers. Six weeks later he was in the top class of the best military academy in the remaining kingdoms, had unlocked his 3rd form, had accessed his inner realm, and was sitting in a borrowed house with two people he trusted completely and a princess who was beginning to trust him back.
He thought about the trial. The military officials who would be watching. The assessment that would shape everything that came next.
He thought about what Charlotte had said: *she knew what she was doing and why she was doing it, and that combination was very difficult to argue with.*
He reached for the Flux — just to feel it, the way you check a familiar weight. It was there, steady and warm and larger than it had been six weeks ago. The tree in his inner realm was growing. He could feel it, the way you feel something without being able to see it directly.
Two weeks.
He closed his hand.
He was ready to find out what he was.