Malakar's viewpoint.
I found the opportunity to examine my own binding more closely than I had dared in three centuries during a rare, unsupervised moment nearly two weeks after my punishment — my master's attention consumed by Vessyl's final preparations for the coordinated assault, leaving the closer supervision he had initially imposed on me somewhat, mercifully, relaxed.
The binding itself manifested as a mark, invisible to ordinary sight but plainly obvious to my own senses, spanning the entirety of what remained of my chest — a complex, layered sigil that had grown more intricate over the centuries as my master reinforced it following each small act of hesitation or doubt I had, apparently, never fully managed to hide from him despite my best efforts.
I studied it with an intensity I had never before permitted myself, tracing its structure with careful, deliberate attention, searching for anything resembling a weakness or flaw in its otherwise seamless construction.
I found, to my considerable surprise, something I had genuinely never noticed before — a small, almost imperceptible inconsistency near the mark's edge, where the original binding, cast three centuries earlier in the immediate aftermath of my village's desperate volunteering, met the additional reinforcements my master had layered atop it following my recent act of open defiance.
The original binding, I realized, studying the inconsistency carefully, had been cast with my willing consent, however desperate and uninformed that consent had actually been. The reinforcements added after my punishment, by contrast, had been imposed entirely against my will, layered atop the original structure rather than fully integrated with it.
It was a small distinction, perhaps meaningless to anyone without my particular, hard-won familiarity with the binding's exact structure. But it suggested, tantalizingly, that the newer reinforcements might occupy a fundamentally different, potentially more fragile category than the original three-century-old foundation beneath them.
I did not know enough about magical binding theory to safely test this theory alone, and I dared not risk drawing my master's attention by investigating too openly while still confined under his close supervision. But I found myself, for the first time in three centuries, genuinely believing that escape — or at least meaningful weakening of my master's absolute control — might not be entirely beyond possibility.
I needed help. Specifically, I needed help from someone with genuine expertise in magical theory, someone I could trust not to immediately report my inquiry back to my master, and someone with sufficient power to actually act on whatever solution such expertise might eventually reveal.
I thought of Selene, the scholar Lukas had mentioned during our garden conversation — someone who had spent years investigating exactly the kind of ancient, obscure magical theory that might illuminate a binding this old and this carefully constructed. I thought, too, of Lukas himself, whose own Skill Creation ability might, if my growing suspicion about the binding's layered structure proved accurate, provide exactly the kind of precise, targeted intervention needed to sever the newer reinforcements without risking catastrophic backlash from disturbing the original three-century-old foundation.
It was a dangerous plan, requiring another unsupervised escape from my master's realm, another act of open defiance that would almost certainly result in further punishment if discovered before I could act on whatever solution Lukas and Selene together might devise.
I decided, turning the risk over with the same careful, desperate hope that had first driven me to volunteer for this binding three centuries earlier, that it was a risk worth taking regardless.
I would find a way to reach Lukas Gigonos again, whatever the cost. And this time, I would not merely warn him of my master's plans.
I would ask him, directly, for the help he had already, freely offered.