CHAPTER 46: LEAVING (2)

Literally upside down. Feet hooked over the backrest, arms hanging loose, head nearly touching the floor.

Lucen blinked.

Gen smiled from his inverted position. "Everyone gone?"

"Mostly."

"Nice."

Lucen stared at him.

Gen grinned wider. "This is the part where I ask how a C-rank Spell Tracer blew apart a reaper’s mask without casting a single proper tracer spell."

Lucen didn’t flinch.

Didn’t blink.

Just said, "This is the part where I pretend not to know what that sentence means."

"Mm. Fun game." Gen swayed a little. His hair hung down toward the floor like it was trying to decide if gravity was real.

Lucen sipped his drink.

Gen said, "You know, the others like you."

"That’s unfortunate."

"Senna thinks you’re clever. Mira thinks you’re weird. Callen thinks you’re probably cursed."

"He’s not wrong."

"I think," Gen said, dragging the words out, "you’ve got multiple spells, and a system interface that doesn’t use default formatting."

Lucen leaned forward.

Not far.

Just enough that the table creaked.

"You’re getting close to being annoying."

"I’m always annoying."

Lucen smiled faintly. "At least you’re self-aware."

They sat there in silence for a second.

Then Gen rolled sideways out of the chair and landed on his feet with a gymnast’s ease.

He brushed imaginary dust off his coat. "I’m gonna go walk a perimeter. Or steal a vending machine. Haven’t decided yet."

Lucen asked, "Why not both?"

Gen grinned over his shoulder. "See, this is why we get along."

The door shut behind him with a soft click.

Lucen sat back in his chair.

The room was finally quiet.

For real this time.

No one breathing down his neck. No half-suspicious glances. No cracked shield on the couch or burnt mana smell in the air.

Just him.

And the system.

He opened the display.

Three spells active.

Four still open.

The cursor blinked on Slot 4 like it had something to prove.

Lucen didn’t touch it.

Not yet.

He leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling.

The paint was peeling above the vent. Water damage in the shape of a broken circle.

He said softly, "Next time, you’re giving me more than thirty seconds to design under pressure."

The system didn’t answer.

But it didn’t disagree.

—

Lucen stood slowly.

No hurry. No sound.

He let the last of the mana drink cool beside him. It wasn’t good. Mostly bark and whatever passed for cinnamon dust these days. But it had warmth, and warmth counted for something.

He tapped the empty mug twice against the table’s edge.

Not loud. Just enough to feel like punctuation.

Then he grabbed his coat from the wall.

The sleeve was still scorched near the cuff. Reaper strike, probably. Or one of Senna’s deflections. Hard to tell when everything was burning.

He didn’t fix it.

Just pulled it on.

Zipped halfway.

Shoulder strap on. Bag checked. Glyph stylus in place.

No one had left him instructions.

Good.

That meant fewer lies.

The safehouse door groaned faintly as he pushed it open. Rust on the hinge. The kind of detail that sticks with you more than the blood on your gloves.

Outside, the air had changed again.

Colder. Sharper. The kind of late-hour city chill that tasted like forgotten metal and fading magic.

Streetlights buzzed faintly above. A couple still flickered.

Lucen stepped onto the curb and shoved his hands into his coat pockets. The edge of a spell-tag crinkled under his fingers.

He didn’t pull it out.

Didn’t need to.

The road stretched quiet in both directions. No people. No cameras that hadn’t already been fried by the ambient drift fallout.

And no one waiting.

Not visibly.

Lucen started walking.

Slow. Uneventful.

Just another kid leaving a run-down building in the part of the city no one mapped properly.

A few blocks out, his system pinged.

Again.

Low.

Steady.

Not urgent.

[Updated Sync – New Spell Paths Now Available]

[Note: Recommended Design Window: Stable]

[Environmental Threads: Low Interference Detected]

Lucen kept walking.

He didn’t stop.

Didn’t respond.

Just muttered, "Yeah. I’ll build the next one when I can afford to drop half my mana in peace."

The system pulsed once in acknowledgment.

Then fell quiet.

He reached the edge of the next district, where the sidewalk turned from cracked stone to floating tile. Where the glyphposts flickered back into service, and the first hints of late-night market noise buzzed from somewhere a street over.

He didn’t turn toward the market.

Didn’t look for food or fun or fake IDs.

He turned right. Down the alley with the moss-patched bricks and the mana wiring duct that had never been inspected.

At the end, a door waited.

Plain. Locked. Unmarked.

He knocked once.

Then twice.

Then traced a half-circle against the stone beside it.

The seal glowed. Dim. Blue.

The door clicked open.

Lucen stepped inside.

Didn’t look back.

Didn’t wait for it to close.

Just vanished into the dark.

—

The door to the safehouse closed behind him with a sharp, clean sound.

Lucen didn’t look back.

He adjusted the strap on his shoulder, shoved both hands into his jacket pockets, and started walking.

The neighborhood didn’t get better at night.

Not worse either.

Just honest.

Streetlights buzzed in slow, flickering intervals, some still held faint charge, some didn’t even pretend. Most of the block was quiet. The kind of quiet that sat on your shoulders and made you check shadows without thinking about it.

Lucen didn’t flinch when something skittered across the alley ahead of him.

Just kept walking.

Two blocks. Then five. Then a curve through an underpass that smelled like wet metal and burnt spell wax.

A hollow crack echoed somewhere behind him. Distant.

He didn’t stop.

Not because he wasn’t tense. Just because if someone followed him all this way after everything that happened, they deserved the entertainment.

By the time he hit the outer transit district, his legs ached faintly.

Not from injury.

Just tired.

He tapped the glyph pad on the corner pillar and waited as the faded rail-line terminal blinked to life.

[Platform 9 – East Perimeter Route]

[Next Carriage Arrival: 4 minutes]

[Please Stand Behind the Warning Sigil]

Lucen stepped behind the faded red arc without looking at it.