Lyra spoke to my mother as soon as we returned.

  I stayed nearby, listening without interrupting as she explained the incident—skipping nothing this time. The teleportation. The boss. The injuries.

  My mother’s expression tightened with every sentence.

  When she finally looked at me, worry was written plainly on her face.

  “I’m perfectly fine,” I said before she could speak. “Really.”

  She didn’t look convinced, but after a moment she nodded. The matter was set aside—for now.

  The following days were quieter.

  Not peaceful. Focused.

  Documents were brought in from the guild archives—maps, reports, post-clear records from other dungeons. Lyra remained present, occasionally pointing out irregularities, while my mother reviewed the material with practiced efficiency.

  I helped where I could.

  Dates. Locations. Monster classifications. Dungeon grades. Any report that mentioned abnormalities was pulled aside. Bosses stronger than expected. Layouts that shifted. Mana readings that didn’t align with established patterns.

  Helping my mother came naturally now.

  I didn’t think about it much. When reports arrived, I sorted them. When something looked off, I flagged it. It wasn’t an assignment—it was just part of being there.

  Some days, I accompanied my father to the magic tower. I stayed quiet, listened, watched how discussions unfolded. Mana measurements. Structural assessments. The slow, methodical work that kept the territory stable.

  No one treated it as unusual.

  I wasn’t praised for helping. I wasn’t pushed away either. I was simply included.

  Somewhere along the way, I realized this had become normal.

  I learned about Lyra’s place in the family a few days later.

  Not through an announcement. Not through some formal explanation.

  Just… naturally.

  My mother mentioned it while we were reviewing territorial correspondence, as if it were an obvious thing I should already know.

  She had two brothers.

  The younger one was the Duke of House Zephyros—the wind-aligned territory, visible, public, and firmly rooted in noble politics. The kind of position everyone noticed.

  The older one had chosen a different path.

  Royal Advisor.

  No land to govern. No banners to raise. Just proximity to the crown, access to information that never reached the public record, and the responsibility of seeing problems before they became disasters.

  That was Lyra’s father.

  It explained more than I expected.

  Why she moved freely across territories. Why she noticed inconsistencies in dungeon records the moment she saw them.

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  And why she treated protecting me as something closer to obligation than choice.

  One thing finally made sense.

  Why Lyra could address my father so casually.

  Old man.

  At first, I had thought it was irreverent. Even disrespectful. No one else spoke to him like that—not servants, not officials, not even visiting nobles.

  But Lyra wasn’t speaking as a subordinate.

  She spoke as someone who had known him for a long time.

  Rank mattered in public.

  History mattered in private.

  My father didn’t correct her because there was nothing to correct.

  That was why she could say it.

  And why no one ever questioned it.

  ___

  Months passed quietly after the dungeon incident.

  The following days were quieter.

  Without the constant pressure of combat or deadlines, life settled into a slower rhythm. Training still continued, but it no longer felt frantic. During sword practice, I added a new refinement to my quick draw—quick slash. Not a separate technique, but an extension. Draw and cut in a single breath. No pause. No wasted motion. It wasn’t flashy, but it was efficient.

  I also replied to the letters my brother had sent. It had already been five months since he left for the academy. Reading his words, I could almost picture him there—busy, adapting, moving ahead on his own path. He mentioned he would return home in two months, during the mid-semester holiday. Somehow, that felt closer than expected.

  My magic training came to an end around the same time. There was nothing dramatic about it. No final test, no grand declaration. Lyra simply nodded one morning and said there was nothing more she needed to teach me for now. The basics were done. Anything beyond that would require time, experience, and my own understanding.

  On the day she left, she stopped me before mounting her carriage.

  She handed me a bracelet.

  It looked simple—dark metal, unadorned, almost plain. But the moment I touched it, I could feel the space folded inside. A subspace bracelet. Storage-type. Twenty kilograms of capacity. Expensive. Far more than what a “basic instructor” should casually give away.

  I looked up at her, momentarily at a loss for words.

  “For completing your lessons,” she said lightly.

  I hesitated. “Isn’t this a bit much?”

  She waved it off. “You’ll need it sooner or later.”

  I tightened my grip on the bracelet. “…Thank you.”

  She smiled, then tilted her head slightly, studying my face.

  “Don’t overthink it,” she said. “Just make sure you stay alive long enough to use it.”

  I nodded. “Yes, sister.”

  For a moment, her expression froze. Then she laughed softly.

  “You’re getting used to that quickly,” she said.

  The carriage departed soon after, leaving behind a quiet courtyard—and a sense that something had ended, even as something else was quietly beginning.

  Life in the territory returned to its usual rhythm, as if nothing had happened—at least on the surface.

  I was skimming through the documents when it clicked.

  At first, it was just inconsistencies. Dungeon layouts that didn’t match. Boss monsters exhibiting growth patterns that couldn’t occur naturally. Mana signatures that felt… guided.

  Then I noticed the mark.

  Not clearly drawn. Not officially acknowledged. Just enough repetition across reports to suggest intent.

  I leaned back, letting the papers rest in my hands.

  I knew this.

  Not from this world—but from the novel.

  The Ashen Covenant.

  A terrorist organization whose goal was the revival of demons. Not summoning them outright—bringing their influence back into the human realm through contracts and distortions.

  Demons didn’t invade. They bargained.

  They existed elsewhere, indifferent to human affairs unless invited. And when they were, it was never free. Wishes were granted precisely as spoken, never as intended. Those who weren’t careful paid far more than they realized.

  Sacrifices varied. Souls were simply the most convenient.

  That was why the Empire banned it. Why even researching such contracts was a crime.

  I exhaled slowly.

  A strengthened boss monster. A teleportation effect that shouldn’t exist. A mark hidden just well enough to avoid attention.

  This wasn’t random.

  Someone was testing something.

  And if the Ashen Covenant was involved—

  Then the dungeon incident wasn’t an anomaly.

  It was a probe.

  As I went through the records again, the pattern became clearer.

  This wasn’t the work of the organization as a whole.

  It was one individual.

  Kael Vorthain.

  A beast tamer affiliated with the Ashen Covenant. In the novel, he was never on the front lines. He worked in the shadows—strengthening monsters, bending dungeon rules, observing the aftermath.

  His demon contract allowed him to push creatures beyond their natural limits. Control them. Enhance them. Turn dungeons into laboratories.

  The incident I was caught in…

  It was likely nothing more than one of his experiments.

  I had simply been unlucky.

  Four months before the academy begins, he would cause another incident. One far more visible.

  In the original story, it was this event that gave birth to the first antagonist the academy’s protagonist would face.