Chapter 7: The Missing Benefactor

I was practicing the sword.

The maid Tanya informed me that Caleb had left the back ridge.

"Could he have been taken by some thing in the woods?"

Wiping my sword, I didn't even lift my head. "He's too hard to kill." My grip tightened on the hilt anyway, eyes flicking toward the ridge.

I smirked, twirling the blade. Tanya’s wide eyes searched my face for any hint of concern, but all she found was indifference.

After waiting in vain for Aubrey, he'd surely find a way to save himself.

If it were Caleb from back then, he would of course be doomed to die.

But the current Caleb is from a thousand years later.

It's just that, with no one to seek the Fire Lily for him and after needlessly losing half his power, I don't know whether he can still sit steady in the Order’s top seat.

I wondered if the new world would swallow him whole, if the Order’s council tucked in a red‑rock canyon near Sedona would still bow to his name. The desert doesn’t remember old kings; it only buries them.