A week on the road and the wagon looked like a workshop.
Leather scraps everywhere. Mana stones in various stages of enchantment. Thread, tools, and half-finished bags spread across every flat surface. Lira had taken over the design side — sketching patterns, cutting leather to precise measurements, suggesting improvements that Yuki wouldn't have thought of.
"The opening needs to be wider on the cargo size. Merchants aren't going to carefully place items — they're going to shove crates in."
"Noted."
"And add a drawstring closure. The coin-purse sized ones keep flopping open."
"Also noted."
They'd built a full product line. Coin-purse sized — spatial pocket the size of a dresser drawer, perfect for valuables and small essentials. Standard bags — backpack-sized exteriors with wardrobe-scale interiors. And the flagship: cargo bags the size of a crate that could swallow several wagons' worth of goods. Every size had temporal stasis on the interior. Every size was anchored to a blue mana stone that recharged passively.
Varlen got the first cargo bag.
He looked at it. Looked inside it. Put his arm in up to the shoulder and kept reaching. Pulled his arm out. Looked at Yuki.
"This holds more than my wagons."
"All four of them, probably."
Varlen loaded it immediately. Heavy crates went first — the dense, awkward stuff that strained the axles and exhausted the horses. Then the perishables — barrels of salted meat, preserved fruit, anything that would spoil on a long road. The bag swallowed it all. The wagon creaked as its load lightened. The draft animals visibly perked up.
Varlen stood beside his suddenly half-empty wagon and didn't say anything for a long time.
"This changes everything," he said finally. "Do you understand that? This changes the entire trade. If every caravan had even one of these..."
"I'll make more."
Varlen looked at him. Then at Lira. Then back at Yuki. Something shifted in his expression — the same calculating look from the marriage conversation, but deeper. Like he was reassessing not just Yuki's value as a son-in-law but his value as a force.
"Yes," Varlen said. "You will."
That afternoon, Yuki went flying.
He told Lira he was going to scout ahead — standard practice, something he'd done a few times on the trip. She nodded, busy stitching a bag lining, and he lifted off from behind the wagon train.
He ascended fast. One kilometre. Two. The caravan shrank to a line of dots on the golden road. The Amber Plains spread beneath him — grassland to every horizon, the road cutting through it like a thread.
He scanned. Mana sense extended to maximum range, with visual scanning layered on top. Looking for settlements, landmarks, anything notable.
To the west, far distant — a smudge on the horizon that might be a town. Hard to tell at this range. He'd flag it for later.
To the north — nothing. Grass.
To the south — a river, wide and slow, maybe thirty kilometres out. Could be useful.
To the northeast — something else.
A cluster of structures. Low, crude, built from mud and scavenged wood. Not a human settlement — the construction was too rough, the layout too chaotic. Smoke rose from cook fires. Figures moved between the structures. Small, hunched, greenish.
Goblins.
He'd read about them in the Duke's library. Low-tier monsters. Individually weak but dangerous in numbers. Scavengers, raiders, slavers. They captured travellers and used them for labour, food, or worse.
He pushed his mana sense deeper into the settlement. Forty — no, fifty goblins. Armed with crude weapons. And at the centre of the camp, in a shallow pit —
Small mana signatures. Two of them. Alive, but faint. Not goblin. Not human either — something different. Brighter, warmer.
Children.
He descended like a meteor.
The goblins didn't see him coming. He hit the ground at the settlement's edge and sent out the daggers before his feet touched dirt.
Ten razor-sharp blades, launched from his belt in a radial pattern. Each one guided by its own thread of consciousness. Each one moving at a speed the goblins couldn't track.
The first wave died before they knew they were under attack. Daggers threading between mud huts, punching through skulls, extracting, banking to the next target. The goblins had no armour worth the name. No magical defence. No chance.
A few grabbed weapons. A few tried to run. The daggers found them all.
Fifty goblins. Maybe fifteen seconds.
When the last one dropped, Yuki stood in the centre of a silent camp. The absorption hit — a rush of mana and life energy pouring into him from fifty dead creatures simultaneously. It wasn't the ancient depth of the dragon. But fifty kills at once produced a collective surge that buzzed through his system like a strong caffeine hit.
He felt great. Energized. Awake.
Focus. The children.
He raised a hand and cast a disintegration spell — a broad, low-power wave that reduced organic matter to dust. The goblin corpses dissolved. Their crude weapons crumbled. In seconds, the camp was empty — just mud structures and ash.
He walked to the pit.
It was shallow — maybe two metres deep, roughly dug, with muddy walls and no way to climb out. At the bottom, pressed into the far corner, were two small figures.
Girls. Young — five or six years old. And not human.
The first thing he noticed was the ears. Large, triangular, covered in fine fur — one pair silver-white, the other black. They sat atop their heads, flattened down in fear. Tails, too — bushy, fox-like, curled tight against their bodies. The silver-eared girl was in front, shielding the smaller black-eared girl behind her with her body.
Beastkin. Fox-type. Children.
They were filthy. Torn clothing barely covering them. Bare feet. Cuts and bruises everywhere. The smaller one was bleeding from a wound on her leg — a deep gash, still open, crusted with dirt.
Yuki crouched at the pit's edge. Slowly. No sudden movements.
"Hey," he said. Quiet. Gentle. "The monsters are gone. I'm here to help."
The silver-eared girl stared up at him. Her eyes were wide — amber, bright, terrified. She pressed further back, pushing her sister behind her.
"I won't hurt you. I promise."
Nothing. They didn't move. The little one behind was whimpering softly.
He sat down. Cross-legged, at the edge of the pit. Making himself smaller. Less threatening. He waited.
A minute passed. Two. The silver-eared girl's ears gradually shifted — from flat-back fear to cautious half-raised attention. She was watching him. Evaluating.
Slowly, carefully, she stepped forward. One step. Then another. She reached the centre of the pit and stopped.
"My name is Kana," she said. Her voice was small but steady. Brave, for a child who'd been caged by goblins.
"I'm Yuki. Are you hurt?"
"I'm okay." She glanced behind her. "But my sister is hurt. Her leg is infected."
The smaller girl was still pressed against the wall. Black ears flat, black tail wrapped around herself, dark eyes peeking out from behind Kana's tattered clothes. She clutched her sister's shirt with both hands. Silent.
Yuki could see the wound from here — the gash on her leg was deep and infected. She needed healing now.
"Can I heal her leg? I can fix it."
Kana perked up. Her ears went fully upright — silver triangles catching the light. "You can? Please — please do!"
He dropped into the pit. Landed softly. Knelt in front of the smaller girl, keeping distance, keeping calm.
"Hey there. I'm going to make your leg feel better, okay?"
She didn't respond. Just stared at him with dark eyes that were too old for her face.
He placed his hand over the wound without touching it. Mana flowed — healing light, warm and gentle. He cleaned the infection first, then closed the gash, then reinforced the surrounding tissue. She was malnourished — he could feel it through the healing connection. Depleted. So he pushed more mana in — strengthening spells layered on top of healing, reinforcing her bones, boosting her immune system, giving her body the energy it desperately needed.
The wound sealed. The bruising faded. Colour returned to her face.
Her eyes fluttered. She swayed — exhaustion catching up now that the pain was gone. Kana caught her.
"What's her name?" Yuki asked.
The little one didn't answer. Her eyes were closing.
"She's my little sister," Kana said, holding her carefully. "Her name is Hana. She hasn't talked since..." She trailed off. Her ears drooped.
Yuki understood. He didn't push.
"Your family — are they nearby?"
Kana's face crumbled. Behind her, Hana started crying — silent tears, no sound, just her small body shaking.
Gone.
"It's okay," Yuki said quickly. "You don't have to talk about it." He took a breath. "How about this — you both can come with me. I have friends. A safe camp. Warm food."
Kana looked at him. Suspicious, hopeful, scared — all at once.
"Really?"
"Really. Are you hungry?"
He pulled two bowls from dimensional storage — Lira's beef stew, still warm from the temporal stasis. Then two sunbloom citrus fruits and a skin of berry juice, made from the health-restoring starberries at his homestead.
Both pairs of ears went up.
Kana grabbed a bowl and started eating before he'd finished setting the other one down. She ate like someone who hadn't seen food in days — fast, desperate, barely chewing.
"You can have another bowl, but only if you eat this first bowl slowly. If you eat too fast, you will get sick. Okay?"
Kana thought this through and attempted to hold herself back and ate slower.
Hana ate more slowly, but she ate. The stew disappeared. The fruit disappeared. They drank the juice and Kana asked for more and he gave her more.
When they finished, he gave them water. Hana's eyes were drooping again — full belly, healed leg, exhaustion pulling her under.
"Okay," Yuki said. "You're coming with me. But first — let's get you cleaned up."
He cast a cleaning spell. Warm water, conjured from humidity and heated to a comfortable temperature, flowed over them in a gentle cascade — washing away the dirt, the grime, the dried blood. Like a warm shower, contained in a bubble of mana.
Kana squealed. Hana flinched — then for just a moment, giggled. A tiny, surprised sound. The first positive noise she'd made.
Yuki's heart cracked open.
Protect them. Whatever it takes.