A scream cut through the distance, sharp enough to stop him mid-step.
His mind jumped straight to Greyhaven — 'did someone recognize me from what happened there' — and he turned toward the sound braced for exactly that.
But it wasn't that at all.
A crowd had already formed around something up ahead, and a woman's scream kept climbing over the noise of it.
"What's going on?" He shoved forward through the bodies.
Close enough to see now — a masked man had a woman, maybe thirty, backed against him, a blade pressed to her throat, his free arm sawing an imaginary line across her skin like a threat he hadn't decided whether to make real yet.
"Anybody comes near me, I cut her open right here."
He leaned in against her ear, voice climbing. "Give me everything valuable you're carrying."
She sobbed, hands shaking as she dug through her handbag for anything worth handing over.
He laughed. "Nobody touches us. Especially not that 'F' bastard. You think killing off a few of us actually scares anyone?"
"We don't fear anything in this city."
Linoria ran thick with this kind of thing — robbery, murder, every flavor of crime the streets could hold. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, people whispered about "F" — a figure even the authorities seemed scared of, someone who punished the criminals the law couldn't touch. Nobody knew if it was one person or an organization. But the name had carved out a permanent place in people's heads as the thing that kept criminals looking over their shoulders.
Zekai froze at the edge of the crowd, unsure what to do in front of this many witnesses even with the power sitting right under his skin.
'Use it here, and I'm exposed.' The memory of what had happened before dragged that fear straight back to the surface.
He had more than enough Fool's Authority to bend Possibility and save her without a single soul noticing.
The problem sat underneath the power itself — using it warped the space around him, glitching reality in small, visible ways. Ordinary eyes couldn't catch it. Gravers could, clean as daylight — the same way any Reality Fracture registered instantly on their senses. If even one of them stood in this crowd, his own abnormal power would show up exactly like a fracture opening.
'Nobody else here is going to save her.' Irritation flared behind his eyes, and he pushed one foot forward, ready to bend Possibility and deal with the consequences later.
Something beat him to it. His eyes went wide.
Hira Kinsin materialized behind the criminal like he'd been standing there the whole time, seized both arms, and slammed him face-first into the ground in one motion.
Zekai couldn't process what he'd just watched. Hira — his own childhood friend — had taken this man down cold.
'Wait. Hira?'
'How did I not see him coming.' He stood there, stunned into stillness.
He couldn't trust his own eyes on this one — was it his own senses failing, or some power of Hira's he'd never noticed? He couldn't feel a trace of Grave Energy off him, or anything beyond it either. 'No way that's possible. I probably just need rest. My eyes will sort themselves out.'
He let out a breath. The woman was safe now.
Once the scene settled, police arrived and cuffed the attacker.
An officer looked at Hira, impressed. "Sir, how'd you catch this one? You've done so much for these people already — this is just one more."
Everyone around here knew exactly who Hira was—the man behind an international network of shelters for people abandoned by everyone else. Orphans. Homeless kids. The elderly with nowhere left to go. Families crushed by poverty with nothing left standing.
The crowd's murmurs rippled outward. "Oh — that's him. The Hearth Foundation's CEO. Hira Kinsin!"
"You didn't know? Lost his own father young and picked up the work himself — building something to help people instead of falling apart."
"And on top of everything — richest man in Thyra Covenant."
"Huh?" Zekai's eyes snapped back to Hira, and Hira had already caught him staring. He lifted a hand. "Hi."
He had zero interest in a reunion right now. He turned his head fast, pretending he hadn't seen anything, angling to slip away from the crowd.
A grip closed on his shoulder before he made it two steps.
He turned, slow, like a puppet on a string, resigned to being caught. "...Hello."
—
A few minutes later they sat across from each other in a café. Zekai took a sip of coffee and set the cup down on the table between them.
Hira set his own cup down, studying him. "So, Zekai. Your hometown finally crossed your mind?"
He blinked, thrown by the question — like he hadn't fully registered how he'd ended up back here at all.
"Zekai. Seriously — why so quiet?"
His grandfather's absence surfaced in his head all at once.
"My grandfather's been missing for a few days. I came to check if he's here."
Hira's brow shot up. "Wait — what? Have you filed anything?"
A flicker of guilt crossed his face. "Not yet."
"That's not something you sit on." Concern sharpened in his voice. "I know officers in Greyhaven — let me reach out to them." He was already pulling his phone from his coat pocket.
Zekai grabbed his wrist. "No — don't. I'll look for him myself. He's got friends here who might know something. If I come up empty, I'll file it myself."
Too much time had already slipped by. If he let this drag any further, he risked losing the last family he had left. Can't afford to wait any longer on this. If I do — his curse follows me the rest of my life.
Hira thought it over, deciding not to push against whatever Zekai had already decided. "Fine. Whatever you're dealing with — move fast on it. This isn't new territory for you."
Something told Hira there was more sitting under the surface than Zekai was letting on. He hesitated before pressing further. "But Zekai — you're actually doing okay?"
"You still think you're the reason your parents died?"
Zekai had no answer ready. His eyes went wide, mouth locked shut.
"You shouldn't think that. Your father was a damn good senior investigation officer. I knew him very well."
His parents had died at a criminal's hands — the same criminal his father had put away years earlier, back for revenge, running them off the road and leaving nothing behind. Zekai had been there for all of it.
He kept his head down, silent. Hira's questions kept echoing in his skull long after they'd been asked. Part of him wanted to lay the whole war going on inside him out on the table. He knew it wouldn't help anything.
He forced a small smile instead. "I'm fine."
Something in Hira's chest eased at that. He took Zekai's hand, steady. "Time fixes everything eventually."
End of chapter 77 - You Still Blame Yourself