Chapter 99: Two Days

Lucien, Elias and Ayan sat looking directly at Kai as if he had just announced the sky was being taken down for repairs.

The private sitting room near the guest wing was quiet enough that the words still seemed to hang in the air after he finished saying them. Afternoon light came through the tall windows in soft pale bands and made the whole moment feel too calm for what it actually was. Kai remained standing because sitting would have made it feel like a discussion open to votes, and this was not that.

"I am leaving Eldoria," he said again, clearer the second time. "In two days."

Lucien recovered first, though the composure looked forced around the edges.

"Leaving to where?"

"The capital."

Elias leaned back in his chair and let out a short breath that was almost a laugh and almost not.

"Of course you are. Because the last time we mixed ourselves up with capital business and Red Ledger attention, that ended so peacefully."

Ayan had gone still in a different way from the other two. His hands tightened against his knees and his eyes stayed on Kai with a kind of fragile alarm that he was clearly trying not to show too openly.

"The Red Ledger is still out there," Ayan said. "The Auditor is still out there. You remember what happened in the warehouse. You remember what he said."

"I remember," Kai answered.

Lucien’s voice stayed careful.

"Then why walk back toward it?"

Kai looked at the three of them and felt the old pressure of too many concerns aiming at him from different directions. The floating city had given him air, beauty, and a temporary soft landing. It had also become another place where people watched his choices like they personally owned the outcome.

"Because I cannot stay here just because it is safer on paper," he said. "If I keep moving only when nothing dangerous is attached to the road, I will never move again. I am leaving in two days. Anyone who wants to join me is free to."

Elias raised a brow, already interested in the shape of the trouble.

"You already know my answer. I am down for anything. Capital, Red Ledger, dramatic reunion, stupid odds. Pick a disaster and I will find a coat for it."

Lucien did not look nearly as entertained.

"This is not a joke, Elias."

"I did not say it was. I said I am coming."

Kai watched them both and then did something he had already turned over more than once before walking into the room. He let the offer hang long enough to be real, then closed it.

He decided to take the first true steps towards peacefulness.

"No."

Elias tilted his head.

"No?"

"After thinking about it carefully, I would rather go alone this time."

The silence that followed was deeper than the first one.

Lucien’s expression tightened.

"That is an incredibly terrible idea."

"I know what it is," Kai said. "I am still doing it."

Ayan’s voice came smaller than before.

"I... I do not know."

Kai gave him a side glance and did not answer him directly. If he spoke into that uncertainty too carefully, Ayan’s fear would spill all the way into the open and turn the whole conversation into a rescue operation. Kai was not in the mood to become one more person’s emotional railing today. He looked back to Lucien and Elias instead and kept his tone practical.

"This is not a dramatic disappearance. It is a departure. Two days. I will settle what needs settling here, then I leave for the capital."

Elias studied him with less humor now and more actual attention.

"You really want none of us on the road with you."

"I want a stretch of movement that belongs to me," Kai said. "Every route lately has become a group decision, a shared crisis, or a political consequence. I am tired of checking five directions before I take one step."

Lucien’s hands curled slightly against the arm of his chair.

"And if the Auditor finds you while you are alone?"

"Then I deal with it."

"That is not a plan."

"It is still my plan."

Ayan looked between them like he wanted to add something and kept failing to find a version that would not sound like begging. The fear in him was obvious enough without being unpacked.

All of it sat right under his skin. Kai saw it and still chose not to open that door in front of the others.

Elias ran his tongue over his teeth and then shrugged once.

"Fine. You want alone, take alone. But I am not staying in Eldoria playing house while you walk back into the board. If you are leaving in two days, then so am I."

Kai frowned slightly.

"You just said you wanted to come with me."

"And you refused," Elias replied. "So I will go back to my city and report to Aster. Dome business does not freeze just because you decided to become a solo act."

That landed with a different kind of weight. Elias was already turning the departure into his own motion, and there was something almost respectful in how quickly he stopped arguing once Kai’s line was clear.

Lucien looked less able to do the same.

"So that is it? You leave for the capital. Elias returns to Aster. And the rest of us remain behind pretending this is an ordinary goodbye."

Kai met his eyes and did not soften the truth into something prettier.

"I am not asking anyone to pretend. I am telling you what I am doing."

The room settled into the kind of quiet that follows a decision people dislike but cannot cleanly overturn. Outside the windows, Eldoria continued looking beautiful and unreal, a floating city full of light and peace. Inside the sitting room, that beauty suddenly felt temporary.

Ayan finally found a thin sentence.

"Will we see you again?"

Kai did not answer too fast. He could have said yes for comfort. He could have made a promise shaped like a leash. Instead he gave them the only version that felt honest.

"I do not know when. Or where. But this is not me trying to erase everybody from my life. It is me leaving a place I have stayed in long enough."

Elias smirked without much warmth.

"How mature of you."

"Do not start."

Lucien rose from his chair as if remaining seated had become impossible. He did not cross all the way into Kai’s space this time. The memory of the last time he pushed too close was still too recent for that.

"Two days," he said.

"Two days," Kai confirmed.

Elias stood as well and stretched his shoulders like a man already preparing for a different road.

"Then I leave in two days too. If Aster asks whether you are still breathing, I will tell him you were arrogant enough to walk alone and stubborn enough that it might actually work."

Ayan remained seated a second longer than both of them, then got up more slowly. He looked like he had more fear than words and had decided to keep most of it behind his teeth. Kai appreciated that more than a speech.

There was nothing left to vote on after that. The verdict was simple. Kai was leaving Eldoria in two days. Elias was leaving too, headed back toward Aster and the old machinery of the Dome. Whether any of their paths would cross again soon was no longer a thing the room could settle by staring hard enough.

When the others finally left and the sitting room emptied, Kai stayed by the window and looked out over the floating terraces without really seeing them. For the first time in a long while the next stretch of road looked narrow on purpose. No party formation, No shared contingency, No immediate tangle of other people’s urgency wrapped around his ankles.

He was tired of the adventuring life.

Not in the childish sense of wanting the world to become gentle. He was tired of the constant forward motion that never quite belonged to him, tired of surviving one crisis only to be claimed by the next, tired of every city becoming another stage where someone else tried to decide what he was for. Eldoria had been beautiful. Miloria had been warm. None of that changed the fact that he needed to leave before the softer days made him forget the parts of himself still unfinished elsewhere.