"Visitor?" Keal brows narrowed slightly stepping out of the bathtub.Donning his robes, he looked at the door and said,"Come in!"The next moment, the door was pushed open and a figure walked in, steps unhurried glancing down at Kael."And you are?" Kael's expression stiffened, staring at the figure, not making a recollection of where he had known him."Kael," The figure said, his voice even, like he was used to being the one who controlled how a conversation started. "You don't know me.""Clearly," Kael said, tightening the sash on his robe, eyes on the stranger. "Which makes me wonder why you're in my room."The figure was tall. Broader than most people Kael had seen walking around the estate. He carried himself the way people did when they had never really had a reason to make themselves smaller for anyone. His eyes moved around the room once before settling back on Kael with something in them that wasn't quite hostility.Not yet anyway."James is my brother," The figure chuckled,

The shopkeeper was talking. Kael couldn't catch the words from here there was too much noise between them but he could see the way the man's hands moved. Easy gestures. Unhurried. The posture of someone making a case."What case could he possibly be making to Jace?" Kael muttered, his brow narrowing as a cold feeling settled in his stomach.Kael's mind was already turning through the possibilities, and none of the ones rising to the top felt comfortable.He didn't know how long they had been standing there. He didn't know if Jace had run into the man by chance or if this was something that had been arranged. He didn't know what was being offered, what was being asked, or what Jace had already said yes or no to.What he did know was that the man from the Pill Pavilion had no reason to be talking to his best friend on a street corner that Kael just happened to be walking down.That wasn't nothing.That was something.Riley's voice came low, just beside his ear. "Do you want to go arou

The soul was harder to describe than the body. Progress in body cultivation was physical you felt it in your muscles, your bones, the way your body moved. Progress in soul cultivation was something else entirely. It was like light getting brighter in a room that had always been dim. Like something that had been slightly out of focus slowly sharpening.The herb helped. More than he had expected it to.The soul absorbed it differently from how the body absorbed a herb. Cleaner. More direct. He could feel it feeding into exactly the places that needed it, filling the gaps that had been holding him back, building the foundation he needed to push through.He pushed.There was resistance here too. Different from the body. The soul resisted quietly, not loudly. It didn't fight back. It just sat there, heavy and stubborn, not moving until it was ready.Kael was patient.He kept working, kept pushing, steady and consistent, not forcing it but not letting up either.And then it moved.It moved

That was what made it different from most cultivation aids. Most things you took worked through the body first, moved into the energy channels, and then reached the soul as a secondary effect. Slow. Filtered. The Soul Ember Fruit skipped all of that. It went straight to the source. Cleanly and fast."For my soul cultivation... this is perfect," Kael thought, his gaze locked onto the dark treasure. "With this, pushing through to full Intermediate won't take weeks. It will take days."He stared at it. The two fighters were still going at each other. Neither of them was close to the tree right now. They had drifted toward the center of the clearing as the fight moved, and the fruit was sitting on the far end, patient, not going anywhere.Kael thought about it for exactly as long as it needed thinking about. Then he made his decision."It's mine," he said softly.He moved along the tree line instead of crossing open ground.That was the first thing. Crossing open ground meant being seen t

He nodded once. "James?" he asked."No idea," She said it plainly. No particular feeling in either direction about it.Kael didn't push that thread.She fell into step beside him without being asked, which was exactly what he expected her to do. They walked in silence for a moment, just getting used to the fact of each other being there."You didn't run into anyone?" Kael asked after a while."One person," Lina said, staring straight ahead. "They took one look at me and decided they had somewhere else to be."Kael glanced at her, raising a brow slightly. She said it without any expression on her face, like it was the most ordinary thing in the world."Smart of them," He said, a faint smirk forming at the corner of his lips.The corner of her mouth moved. Just barely."Yes," She agreed softly. "It was."They walked for a little while without any particular destination.That was fine with Kael. He was still getting his bearings back after all the running, and walking with Lina beside hi