Chapter 129: Starfall Harmony
The receptionist at Divine Nexus’s front desk took one look at the name Aidan gave and went very carefully polite, the kind of politeness reserved for people the guild had decided not to ask too many questions about.
"Hina Riverfall isn’t stationed on Earth currently," she said, tapping through something on her console. "She’s been transferred off-world. Planet Terfulan, under the Elite Project nomination program."
"Elite Project." Aidan kept his voice level, filing the disappointment somewhere he didn’t have to look at right now. "That the thing for the SSS-rank prodigies?"
"Among others, yes." The receptionist glanced up, clearly curious why a stranger cared, and clearly deciding not to ask. "Will that be all?"
"That’ll be all." Aidan turned and left before the tightness in his chest could turn into anything worth commenting on.
...
"So we’re leaving again," Beatrix said the next morning, watching him pack with the particular resignation of someone who’d stopped being surprised by sudden departures a long time ago.
"Terfulan." Aidan zipped the last bag shut. "Won’t take long. Ship’s already booked."
Solenne didn’t look up from sharpening a blade that didn’t need sharpening. "The place with all the academies?"
"That’s the one."
"Fun." She sheathed the blade. "I’ve always wanted to see rich people pretend hunting is a hobby."
[Arthur: Does this planet have good food?]
"It has expensive food. Not the same thing."
[Arthur: I’ll be the judge of that.]
[Tom: You’re always the judge of that. Every planet’s food gets the same review from you.]
[Arthur: Because it’s always good!]
Aidan slung the last bag over his shoulder, already grinning despite the knot still sitting under his ribs from yesterday. "Load up. We leave within the hour."
...
The transport ship cleared Earth’s atmosphere within the hour, and Aidan spent most of the first day of the journey doing something he almost never did anymore.
He read the news.
Four Final-Stage Divine-rank guild leaders, dead within the same six-week span, official causes still listed as unknown.
A dozen more names sat beneath them, mid-tier officers and enforcers scattered across two territories that didn’t officially exist on most public maps, Desmeral and Nevelrot, both quietly infamous among people who knew where Terror influence actually rooted itself once it got comfortable.
One headline called it "The Silent Purge." Another ran a full page on a compound that had simply stopped answering communications one morning and never started again.
The articles called it a coordinated strike. Some blamed rival guilds looking to consolidate territory. One particularly enthusiastic columnist blamed a rogue Overlord acting alone, citing damage patterns nobody could otherwise explain.
Aidan read all of it with the mild, faraway interest of a man reading about weather in a city he used to live in.
’None of them coordinated anything.’ He scrolled past a grainy photo of a collapsed compound. ’That was just me, working through a list.’
[Tom: You look far too pleased with yourself for someone reading a body count.]
"I’m reading about consequences," Aidan said. "There’s a difference."
[Tom: Sure there is.]
...
Veyron answered the moment Aidan reached for the bond, the same way he always did, patient and absolute and never once in a hurry.
[Veyron: Location confirmed. Northern ridge, third moon of the Aldrek system. They’ve built deep. Tunnels, wards, the kind of patience that means they expect to stay a while.]
"How many?"
[Veyron: Enough. I have not engaged. You said watch, so I watch.]
"Good boy." Aidan grinned despite himself. "Keep watching. I’m about to send you some company."
[Veyron: ...Company.]
"You’ll like them. Probably."
...
The Shadow Phantoms surfaced from his inventory one at a time, dark and silent, a full roster of everyone Desmeral and Nevelrot had lost that Aidan had bothered to keep.
He looked them over the way a man looks over a toolbox, sorting by what was actually worth carrying.
Three stood apart from the rest immediately, retained weight and presence that hadn’t dimmed a fraction since the moment they’d died. Final-Stage Divine, all three, exactly as capable now as the guild leaders they’d once been.
The remaining dozen were smaller things by comparison. Useful once, maybe, but nothing Aidan needed cluttering his own reserves when he already had three at the top of the tier doing the same job better.
’Don’t need weight I’m not using.’ He turned toward the one member of the crew who very much did need exactly this.
"Arthur."
Arthur’s head came up fast, every scale suddenly alert. [Arthur: Is it time?]
"It’s time."
The dragon’s excitement lasted about half a second before something steadier settled underneath it, an old, patient hunger that had been waiting a long while for permission.
[Arthur: I’ve been ready for longer than you know.]
"I know, buddy." Aidan stepped back and gave him the room, and meant it when he said the next part. "You’ve been carrying this a long time. Go on. You earned every bit of it."
Arthur didn’t answer right away. He just looked at the row of dark, waiting shapes for a moment, something almost solemn passing behind eyes that were usually all mischief and appetite.
What followed wasn’t violence so much as transaction. Dark shapes dissolved one after another into a hunger that had earned this a long time ago, power passing hand to hand the way it had always been meant to.
Arthur took each one without waste, without hesitation, and by the time the last shape dissolved into him his whole frame had gone rigid with something building toward release.
[Breakthrough condition met.]
Light tore out of him a heartbeat later, gold-red and enormous, filling the ship’s cargo hold with heat that made the walls groan in protest. Aidan threw an arm up against the glare and didn’t look away anyway, grinning the whole time.
[Arthur: Argon Bloodsun Cyber Dragon.]
[Rank: Legendary-10 → Divine-1.]
When the light finally settled, Arthur stood taller than the hold had room for, scales darker and denser, a weight to his presence that hadn’t existed a minute earlier. Even the air around him felt different, thicker, charged with something new.
He looked at his own claws for a long moment, flexing them slowly, like he didn’t quite trust the size of what he was feeling.
"How’s it feel?" Aidan asked, unable to keep the grin off his face.
[Arthur: ...Buddy. I think I could eat a mountain right now.]
"Don’t." Aidan clapped a hand against a foreleg that hadn’t been quite this solid yesterday. "We just calmed one of those down."
[Arthur: A SMALL mountain.]
"Congratulations, by the way." He kept the hand there a moment longer than strictly necessary. "You’ve been chasing this since before I even properly knew you. Divine-rank looks good on you."
[Arthur: Damn right it does.] Something in the dragon’s voice cracked just slightly under the bravado, real and grateful underneath it. [Thank you. For letting me actually get here.]
"Wasn’t me who did the work." Aidan bumped a fist against one massive claw. "That was all you, buddy."
...
The three Final-Stage Divine Shadow Phantoms went next, dissolving into shadow one by one and slipping out through the hull without so much as disturbing the ship’s wards.
[Veyron: They’ve arrived.] The bond carried something that might have been mild surprise. [Final-Stage Divine, all three. You’ve been busy.]
"A little busy." Aidan leaned back against a cargo crate, watching the stars crawl past the viewport. "Keep them close. Keep watching. I’ll deal with that base properly once I’ve sorted my own business out."
[Veyron: Understood. Take your time, Player Aidan.]
The bond went quiet again, patient as ever, and Aidan let the silence sit a while longer before heading back to the rest of his very confused, very curious crew.
...
Terfulan announced itself long before the ship actually landed.
The planet hung in the viewport wrapped in visible light, entire continents lit gold and silver even from orbit, spires taller than anything Earth had ever built clustered together like a forest grown from money instead of trees.
"Okay," Beatrix said, pressed against the glass. "That’s a lot of planet."
[Finn: SO MUCH LIGHT. Is the whole planet made of light? Can I live here?]
[Cameron: I would need to check the housing regulations first.]
[Anrita: Preliminary scans indicate a Spirit Energy saturation roughly forty times denser than Earth’s average. This planet is, statistically, showing off.]
"Home to more guilds and academies than anywhere else in the Realms." Aidan pulled the last piece of Garen’s disguise into place, features shifting subtle and practiced. "Rich, loud, and absolutely convinced of its own importance. You’ll fit right in."
"I resent that."
"You’ll resent it while enjoying yourself," Solenne said, already checking her own gear.
The landing pad opened onto a plaza that made the market district back home look like a back alley, marble underfoot, fountains that ran on visibly captured Spirit Energy, crowds of young Hunters in academy colors moving with the easy confidence of people who’d never once worried about where their next meal came from.
Banners hung between the spires advertising academies Aidan had never heard of, each one boasting numbers that would have seemed absurd anywhere else. Enrollment figures. Graduate placement rates. A running count of how many alumni had gone on to Divine-rank before turning thirty.
Aidan took it all in with the specific, wary appreciation of a man calculating exactly how much of this was going to try to sell him something.
[Tom: Everything here smells like money.]
"That’s because it is money," Aidan said. "Just wearing a nicer coat."
...
The leaderboard sat at the plaza’s center, a massive holographic column stretching three stories into the open air, names scrolling in tiers Aidan hadn’t expected to see anywhere.
Under 25. Epic-rank. Legendary-rank. Divine-rank.
"They rank the kids separately," Beatrix said. "By age bracket."
"Guess when you’re breeding SSS-rank talents on purpose, you want to know which ones are winning." Aidan scanned the Legendary column without much hope, mostly out of habit.
But a name stopped him cold.
Hina Riverfall. Rank seven. Legendary-rank. Starfall Harmony Academy.
"There she is." Beatrix muttered as she also saw the name.
Rank seven. Legendary-rank, at her age, without a single billion years of borrowed time to get there. Whatever else had happened since the last time he’d actually spoken to her, she’d clearly spent every day of it becoming someone worth that number.
"Starfall Harmony," he said. "That’s where we’re headed."