Chapter 49: A New Beginning

Chapter 49: Chapter 49: A New Beginning

Monday morning, the mission plaza was already crowded by the time Felix’s team gathered and one member in particular looked noticeably different.

Seraphina. The dullness that used to sit behind her eyes was gone, replaced with actual light, her expression calm but carrying a subtle brightness that hadn’t been there before. And, more surprising than any of that

She was talking.

"Good morning."

"Morning."

"Sleep well?"

"Yes."

"Ready for the mission?"

"Yes."

Barely anything, by most standards but for a woman who’d gone seven full years without saying a single word to anyone, it was seismic.

Kael had nearly tripped over himself the first time she answered him. Lena stared for a solid few seconds. Mira looked openly delighted.

Even Darius raised an eyebrow.

Felix just treated it like the most ordinary thing in the world, smiling every time she spoke, which only seemed to make her happier.

She’d also gotten noticeably more attached to him physically, walking beside him whenever the group moved, standing close whenever they stopped, her fingers catching his hand for a second here, a hand on his shoulder while she talked to him there.

Never enough to make him uncomfortable. Never enough for anyone else to really notice.

Every bit of it was deliberate.

Years of forced observation had taught her something useful: people were predictable, if you gave yourself enough time to actually study them: habits, weaknesses, preferences, fears, all of it eventually surfaced for anyone patient enough to watch.

She’d had nothing but time. Now she intended to use everything she’d learned, on exactly one project.

She wanted Felix. And she intended to make sure he eventually came to the same conclusion on his own.

Her eyes drifted across the rest of the team while she thought it over. Lena first, clearly interested in Kael, watching him whenever she thought no one was looking, and Kael either completely oblivious or pretending hard enough to convince himself.

Too much pride on both sides to admit anything yet. An odd pair, but no threat to her.

Mira, next, treated everyone like family, Felix included, more like a little sister than any kind of rival. No threat there either.

Then Aria, and Seraphina’s expression sharpened slightly. Harder to read. Confident, sharp, independent, with history tangled up in Felix’s family, she remembered him mentioning the Frost name during his niece’s celebration and Aria watched Felix in a way that didn’t give up an easy answer either direction.

*I need to keep an eye on her,* Seraphina thought.

And then Liora. Another Tier 1, and unlike everyone else on this team, one with absolutely nobody: no family, no friends, no one else she trusted. Felix was quickly becoming the only pillar she had.

That made her dangerous. *I need to make sure she never gets the chance.*

Then her thoughts turned warmer, Felix had told her once that out of all five prisoners, she’d been the one he picked first. He’d believed she could be brought back before he even knew her story, trusted her before he’d met her at all.

Her face warmed at the thought. *He chose me first.*

She dropped her gaze to hide the smile trying to surface.

"Okay, everyone," Aria said, snapping her back to the present. Seraphina turned her attention to the briefing without missing a beat.

Aria stood in front of a massive holographic rift. "Today’s gate leads here." The image shifted to a vast green world. "We’ve got some information already, the dominant species looks to be lizardmen, and we’re lucky enough to have a language reference. A hero party cleared this exact gate fifty years ago and documented it extensively before pulling out. According to their notes, the lizardmen’s language is close to one still spoken somewhere on our side."

"So communication won’t be a problem?" Kael asked.

"Not necessarily, fifty years is a long time for a language to drift. We don’t know how much has changed." She gestured at the map. "Our first objective isn’t combat. We make contact first, then figure out what’s actually causing this gate to exist."

"Understood," the group answered together.

---

Hours later they boarded the air transport, the gate sat far enough from Valemont that ground travel wasn’t practical and the aircraft climbed steadily through the clouds. Seraphina sat beside Felix, quiet at first, until she turned to the window and her eyes went wide.

The world below looked impossibly vast: cities shrunk to tiny clusters, mountains reduced to faint ridgelines, clouds stretching out in every direction underneath them.

Felix caught her expression. "Never flown before?"

She shook her head, not pulling her gaze away from the horizon. "Only in transport shuttles between facilities. The windows were blacked out."

​"Right. Association paranoia," Felix said, leaning an arm against the headrest between them. "So this is the first time you’re seeing the world from the outside."

​"Everything is so small," she murmured. Her fingers lightly touched the cold glass, tracing the curve of a distant river. "Down there, the walls feel like they never end. But from here... the whole continent...looks like dust."

​​"Makes you think, doesn’t it?" Felix’s voice softened. "The world is pretty big once you get past the cages."

She let out a quiet breath. "I thought skies like this were only in books." She turned to look at him.

​​"An airship is just a ride," Felix said with an easy grin. "The real fun is when there’s no glass between you and the wind."

​Her brow furrowed slightly. "What do you mean?"

"You’ll be able to fly yourself someday."

She turned to him. "Really?"

"Once you hit Ultra in Lightning, yeah."

Her eyes lit up instantly. "Can you fly?"

"Not yet." He shrugged. "Maybe once I break through to Absolute myself."

"Absolute?" Her eyes widened further. "I thought only SSS-rank could even reach that."

He grinned. "I can."

"Why?"

He leaned back, entirely too pleased with himself. "Because I’m Felix. I’ve got a habit of breaking the rules everyone else thinks are fixed."

She looked at him for a long moment, then smiled. "I’m sure you will."

"Obviously," he said, laughing, and their eyes met for a beat, both of them smiling at the same time.

A few rows back, Kael glanced at Lena.

Aria just cut her eyes sideways toward Felix and Seraphina once, expression giving away absolutely nothing, before turning back to her own window.

The transport kept climbing toward the distant rift, and beside Felix, Seraphina watched the clouds go by.