Chapter 25: Let Her Take the Boss Credit—I’m Betting on Myself for First

Chapter 25: Take Its Road First

At a public crossroads in the Ashen March, Joren’s cart was missing a crate.

Marek stood beside the shaft with both hands intact and his short hemp rope still hanging from his shoulder.

Four fresh scrape marks remained on the cart bed where the missing crate had been.

"What did you see?" Cassian asked.

Marek patted the cart bed.

"Low. Gray-white. Its back was lower than the bottom of the crate. Not human."

"How many legs?"

"Couldn’t count them. It kept close to the old lime road, and the crate blocked half of it. A layer of pale gold lit up below the slope."

"Did you follow?"

"Joren paid for hauling."

Marek looked at Cassian.

"He didn’t pay me to chase that thing. It didn’t chase the cart either. I brought the rest of the cargo back."

An unreasonable flare of anger rose in Cassian’s chest.

A man with judgment was valuable precisely because he knew what had not been sold. Cassian did not press him.

The anger did not disappear. It simply had no right to rewrite a boundary that had already been paid for.

"Lost a crate on the first day," Joren said. "And you’re up to twenty-eight."

"The crate held ordinary copper pieces. The crate and the cargo were both mine."

Cassian looked at him.

"So?"

"So I went to the first-ranked F-tier Lord."

There was no flattery in it.

Only then did Cassian notice the roll of clean linen beneath the crate that remained.

The roll had not even been opened. One pale corner showed beneath the cargo. His right shoulder tightened first. The wound had not split.

The old strip cut from the inside of his coat had simply hardened with dirt. Every time he raised his arm, it ground another layer against his flesh.

Joren had an entire roll of clean linen.

He was using it to pad a crate.

Envy came first. Irritation followed.

They were both F-tier Lords. Joren could put clean linen beneath ordinary cargo. Cassian had just gained two more points of Divine Essence, yet he did not even have a clean strip to replace the one on his shoulder.

It was an ugly contrast. Cassian did not let his gaze linger.

Joren only knew that the public number had gone up again. He did not know that only two of those twenty-eight points remained available.

That was still enough for him to put a price on Cassian.

Cassian did not like it.

But he wanted even more to know what had dared drag an iron-bound crate away from Marek.

If it came out for a crate, then it had to take the crate back.

A dead carrier could only answer what it was. A living one would drag its route home into the open.

Cassian wanted both.

The body could wait. First, he would make it surrender the road itself.

The loss belonged to Joren. Whatever risk came next had to begin with Cassian’s price.

"I’m not guarding your road long-term."

"I wasn’t planning to buy that long."

"I’ll find the thing. If it’s hostile divinity, I get first claim."

Joren thought for a moment.

"My road stays usable."

"I’ll give you one place to avoid this time. I won’t promise it won’t move."

"Enough."

Cassian pointed at the cargo on the cart.

"Take the real goods off the next trip. Leave an empty crate built the same way."

"The crate counts as my loss."

"It already is."

"Payment?"

"Coin."

Cassian’s gaze settled on the pale corner of cloth.

"And that roll of linen."

Envy would not make the old cloth clean. Putting it in the price would.

Joren followed his gaze. He did not ask about the wound.

"Give me something that lets me reroute. Then you get it."

"Fine."

Marek asked, "How far do I go?"

"Take the crate to where the last one was dragged away," Cassian said.

"Put it down and bring the cart back. If you see the gray-white thing, leave. Don’t chase it. Don’t wait for me."

"This trip counts as Joren’s second day."

"He bought your time. Settle that part with him."

Joren nodded. No loyalty had been added to the deal between the three of them.

One empty crate. One stretch of time already purchased. One roll of clean linen.

Enough.

After returning to the Mausoleum, Cassian did not raise the first black-gold span.

The road still lay submerged beneath the break. The warning had not been reset, and Marek’s right-palm authorization had already cleared.

The Chain Gate closed behind him.

When Cassian told Veyra what had happened outside, Orin’s half-mark was still face-down beside the closed main roll.

It had not been seated again.

"Gray-white. Dragged away an iron-bound crate. Pale-gold light below a lime slope," Veyra repeated.

She did not give it a name.

"Do you recognize it?"

"Not from that."

"I want it whole."

His fingers tapped the bent broken-chain blade.

"I want its road home too."

Veyra’s gaze moved to Orin’s face-down half-mark.

"When the enemy reached in here through a name, it did not use a fixed door."

She drew her hand away from the half-mark.

"The hole you remember today may be dead stone tomorrow."

"Then I won’t guard a hole."

"I’ll find what it can’t hide before it opens one."

"Orin’s half-mark does not leave this place."

"I wasn’t planning to feed it to the road."

If a complete gray-white thing truly appeared before him, killing and devouring it would put value in his hands immediately.

But one body paid only once. The road behind it might hold a second body, a third, or even the hand holding the name strip.

The simplest method would be to wait at the slope, activate Predator Step, and kill it directly.

Loose lime might not hold beneath his knee.

More importantly, one hammer blow would kill the only answer capable of walking.

Cassian was not asking for less. He merely wanted that body to work for him first.

He opened the small bottle of equipment oil. Dark oil slid slowly around the inside of the bottle.

On the second day, Joren unloaded the real cargo elsewhere. The empty crate still had the same iron bands.

Cassian crouched and spread a thin measure of equipment oil along both sides of the crate’s underside and the lowest edges of the bands.

Joren watched his hands. He still did not know how Cassian intended to find the thing.

"This is what twenty-eight points came up with?"

"No."

Cassian closed the oil bottle.

"This is what one bottle of ordinary equipment oil came up with."

Joren looked at the underside of the crate. He did not laugh.

"The real cargo isn’t here. The crate can be lost."

"Remember that."

Marek loaded the empty crate onto the cart.

He followed yesterday’s lime road to the slope and stopped where the four drag marks began. The crate hit the ground.

The wheels turned away at once.

No testing. No waiting for even one extra breath.

Marek brought the empty cart back behind the bend.

The short hemp rope still hung from his shoulder. Joren retreated to the next crossroads and watched only his cart and the man he had paid.

Cassian remained alone on the lime slope. A kiln had half collapsed to his left.

To his right lay a shallow ditch leading back to the main road. Neither retreat route led toward the Mausoleum.

He hid in the shadow of the cracked kiln, lowered the bent blade, and kept the iron hammer near his right hand.

Wind pushed downhill from the slope. White lime dust rolled close to the ground.

The empty crate did not move.

A long time passed.

Then three thin threads of dust beside the collapsed seam pulled inward against the wind.

Pale-gold light rose along those three traces. A scraping sound came from beneath the slope—not a bell, but something like thick bone slowly turning under stone.

A gray-white thing crawled close to the slope and emerged. It was even lower than Marek had described.

Its body had no obvious head. Six thick, short bone limbs gripped the ground, and a groove deep enough to support a load ran along the center of its back.

Gray-white divinity flickered between the bones.

Complete.

Heat reached Cassian’s palm first. His throat went dry after it.

The thing did not search for a person. It crawled straight toward the iron-bound crate.

Two forelimbs slid beneath the crate. The groove on its back pressed into the wood, and its entire body sank lower.

The iron bands scraped over the lime.

The first black streak of oil cut across the white ground.

Clear and unmistakable, it dragged downhill.

Cassian’s right foot had already moved half an inch forward.

If he activated Predator Step now, he could wedge the blade into the back groove, smash the forelimbs with his hammer, and leave the complete body on the ground.

Divine Devourer might give him another point. Two. Perhaps even more.

A sharp pain tightened through his right knee before he could push off.

Cassian ignored the pain. He watched the black trail grow longer.

The gray-white thing was sketching its retreat route for him.

Killing it now would be far too cheap.

Cassian slowly drew his foot back.

"Keep going," he murmured, too softly for anyone else to hear.

That half inch came back slowly. The hunger in his stomach did not retreat with it.

One section of black trail after another marked the pale dust.

Cassian waited until the thing had completely vanished from sight before leaving the kiln.

He followed the oil marks. They crossed a field of abandoned stone troughs, then turned into a drainage ditch overgrown with dead thorns.

The corner of the crate occasionally struck the stone wall and left fresh wood splinters behind.

The gray-white thing stopped twice ahead of him. Cassian stopped as well.

He did not let his footsteps expose the distance between them. By the third scrape, the pale-gold light beneath the ground had grown brighter.

There was no road at the end of the drainage ditch. Only a bed of old ash collapsed inward. A shallower crack lay closer on either side.

The gray-white carrier chose neither one.

It dragged the crate past the first crack, then the second, and stopped where the old ash crossed the drainage ditch.

The wind still blew toward the bottom of the ditch.

But three threads of ash at the carrier’s feet drew thinly inward against it.

Pale-gold light clung beneath the ash and crawled in the same direction.

Just as it had before the carrier emerged from below the lime slope.

Cassian gripped the blade and did not blink.

Only when all three threads vanished into the seam did the ground open inward, forming a narrow mouth barely wide enough for the crate.

The carrier lowered the groove in its back. The iron-bound crate sank inch by inch into the golden light.

The last length of the oil trail crossed the edge, black as a blade cut.

If Cassian lunged now, he might still reach the last bone limb. The complete body and the Divine Essence he might gain were both still there.

But the second opening sign had already appeared.

What he had truly come to test today was already his.

There was no known footing beneath the narrow mouth. Cassian would not risk his life running a second test after today’s question had already been answered.

He stood on safe stone and watched the last bone limb sink into the golden light.

The empty crate vanished. The narrow mouth closed immediately after it, leaving the oil trail at its edge.

The heat in Cassian’s chest hollowed out with it, while his stomach jerked as though hooked by that gray-white divinity.

No Divine Essence.

No corpse.

Those one or two points might already have been inside his body.

Divine Devourer remained empty. The hunger did not lessen just because his calculation had been right.

He stared at the closed seam. For one breath, his foot wanted to step forward again.

This was not a coordinate.

It was a way to find the next mouth.

What he had confirmed was the dust drawing inward against the wind, followed by the pale-gold light.

Whether old kilns and ash ditches were the mouths’ preferred terrain would take another observation.

Cassian memorized the broken corner of the kiln, the forked dead thorn, and the direction of the ash ditch. He planted no marker and did not touch the edge of the mouth.

When Joren heard the result, he asked only, "Can that stretch of road still be used?"

"Use another one," Cassian said.

"Avoid yesterday’s collapsed kiln and old ash ditch. I won’t promise the mouth will open there again. If you keep sending iron-bound crates through that stretch and lose another one, don’t ask me to pay for it."

Joren watched him for a moment.

"That’s the result I bought."

He handed over a coin pouch and the roll of clean linen.

There was no thanks.

Nor did he ask where Cassian had followed the carrier.

"I still have one of Marek’s days," Joren said.

"I remember."

Cassian took the linen. It was dry and light—far lighter than one complete gray-white body.

Back in the stone hall, he removed the old cloth from his shoulder.

The fabric had stuck to the scab. Peeling it away sent a jolt through his right arm.

Cassian cleaned away the old grime with fresh linen and bound the wound tightly again.

The wound did not heal.

His shoulder did not grow stronger.

But when the clean cloth touched his skin, he still closed his eyes and let the comfort remain for one extra breath.

The coin pouch rested on the stone beside him.

First place could not stop bleeding. Twenty-eight points could not change his bandage for him.

Clean linen against the wound—that was something he had actually gained today.

The bottle of equipment oil was a little lighter. The two points of Divine Essence remained quiet inside him.

Veyra noticed the new linen.

"Found it?"

"I did."

"The corpse?"

"Gone."

He still disliked the word.

Cassian marked the first relay on the stone, then drew a short moving line outside it.

Marek could hold a fixed position. A moving mouth needed another pair of eyes—eyes that could travel, read traces, and withdraw before contact.

"The next hand has to know how to move."

He looked toward the closed Chain Gate.

Next time, those eyes would find the mouth first.

Cassian would be waiting where it opened.

The complete prey would still belong to him.