Selene dragged Ethan into an old bookshop on the corner of the district, shoving him behind the rearmost shelf before finally letting go of him.
"You know who he is," Ethan said once his breathing had steadied a little. It wasn't a question. "From the way you reacted back there, you know who that black-robed man is."
Selene let out a long sigh and sat down on a stack of books as she peeled off her leather coat, soaked through by the rain. "Everyone in this district knows the name Veyrath. They're one of the five great clans that control most of Aldheim, and they're known for one thing—they never let anything valuable slip away."
Ethan sat on the dusty floor, trying to organize his thoughts. "Kael said his name was Kael, not Veyrath."
"Kael Veyrath," Selene corrected quietly. "The second heir of that clan. He vanished three years ago, right after his brother, the first heir, was found dead under circumstances that were never officially explained to the public. Since then, the entire clan has been searching for him, but not to bring him home with a warm embrace."
Ethan felt something shift in his head, fragments of information beginning to connect like a thread finally finding its end. "Kaelan," he murmured. "That name's too similar to be a coincidence."
"Kaelan Veyrath," Selene said with a slow nod. "Their father. The current head of the Veyrath clan, who lost his first heir and is now desperately trying to drag his second heir home, even if that means taking him by force from another person's body—even if it means hurting an innocent person caught in the middle."
Those words struck Ethan harder than he'd expected. It wasn't some outside enemy chasing him, but the birth father of the person whose body he now occupied—a father who had already lost one child and had no intention of losing the second, whatever it took. There was something tragic about it: a family that should have protected one another was instead hunting each other with swords and soldiers.
He thought of his own mother—how her voice had trembled at the hospital once, how her hands had gripped his tightly as though she were afraid of losing him a second time. The same pain surely lay beneath Kaelan Veyrath's cold composure, only wrapped in a far more dangerous form, one that twisted love into something suffocating instead of protective.
"Then why did Kael discard his own System?" Ethan asked, more to himself than to Selene. "If he just wanted to escape his clan, he could've run without throwing away the very power that should've protected him."
Selene shrugged. "Maybe he didn't want to be tracked through it. Or maybe he didn't want to inherit anything from a clan that got his brother killed."
Before Ethan could answer, the sound of shattering glass from the bookshop window broke the silence. A masked figure leaped inside and landed among the bookshelves, a short sword already gripped in one hand.
"Found you," the figure hissed. From outside the window, two more figures came in through the front door, which had been kicked wide open.
Ethan reacted faster than he realized. His body moved once more with that same foreign instinct, shoving Selene aside just before the first sword slashed toward them both. Its blade tore into the bookshelf behind them, sending wood splinters flying through the air.
[Warning: Synchronization Unstable. Fragment Ability Auto-Activated: Shadow Step.]
He deflected the second strike with his forearm. Pain shot through it, but not enough to stop him. His eyes swept quickly across the room, calculating the distance between the shelves, the position of the broken window, and the angle at which the lamplight cast the darkest shadow—the same way he used to memorize the fastest route for hauling boxes at the warehouse without a second thought.
He pulled Selene behind a large shelf, then shoved it with all his strength toward the two attackers who had just entered, momentarily trapping them beneath a chaotic avalanche of falling books.
"This way," Ethan said, fast and firm, pulling Selene toward a narrow staircase in the corner of the room that he'd noticed the moment they'd first come in.
"Since when did you get so good at planning escape routes?" Selene asked as she ran alongside him, slightly breathless from her own exertion.
"I'm a warehouse hauler," Ethan answered briefly, still running without looking back. "I'm used to memorizing room layouts in seconds so I can work fast. Turns out that habit's still useful, even in another world."
They dashed up the stairs just as the first masked figure managed to leap over the collapsed shelf and chase after them at a speed that was nothing to scoff at, his pace nearly matching Ethan's own.
On the upper floor, a small window faced the roof of the neighboring building—the only exit left. Ethan pushed it open, and the night wind slapped his face at once.
"Are you sure this will work?" Selene asked, eyeing the gap between the roofs. It was wide enough to make anyone hesitate, and her feet faltered as she edged toward the ledge.
"No," Ethan answered honestly without hesitation, "but we don't have any other choice."
The masked figure appeared at the top of the stairs just as the two of them leaped out the window, moving nimbly as he cleared two steps at a time. From below came furious shouting, signaling that the other attackers had already freed themselves from the wreckage of the fallen shelves.
Ethan landed hard on the neighboring roof, pulling Selene down with him. Both of them tumbled briefly across the wet tiles before finally coming to a stop. For a moment, they lay still, catching their breath beneath a night sky beginning to be wrapped in thin fog.
Then, from the distance, a new bell tolled. It was different from the earlier hunting bell, its tone deeper and more threatening, echoing through the night fog for a long time as though it wanted to be heard by the entire city without exception—announcing something far greater than an ordinary bounty hunt.
[City System Announcement: City Status Changed to Clan Alert. Clan Veyrath Has Officially Entered the Lower District. All Residents Are Requested to Remain Indoors.]