The days that followed blurred together in a steady rush, each one folding into the next without ever truly slowing. Trafalgar found himself moving constantly, shifting from place to place, conversation to conversation, as if standing still was no longer an option. Mornings turned into afternoons before he realized it, and evenings arrived with the quiet exhaustion of someone who had done too much yet felt there was still more waiting.

He met with Zafira, then Cynthia and Xavier, spoke at length with Bartholomew, crossed paths with Arden and Marella, and made time for Garrika as well. None of those meetings felt trivial. Each carried its own weight, its own tone, its own unspoken understanding. Some conversations were short and practical, others lingered longer than expected, touching on things left unsaid before. Even so, Trafalgar never rushed them. No matter how tight his schedule became, he made room, adjusting his time like a blade finding its balance.

There was a sense of constant motion around him, like gears turning beneath the surface of everyday life. Relationships didn't remain static; they tightened, shifted, settled into new shapes. People were changing, and so was he, even if the process felt quiet rather than dramatic. Nothing was waiting in suspension. Nothing was paused. Everything was moving forward together.

The meeting with Augusto took place in Trafalgar's local in Velkaris, tucked between streets that never truly slept. It was familiar ground now, a place that no longer felt borrowed or temporary. Augusto had arrived from Mariven Port without ceremony, his expression shifting the moment his eyes fell on what Trafalgar had laid out for him.

At first, he simply stared. There was no attempt to hide his disbelief. Mythril from a mine had already been difficult enough to accept. Materials taken from a Leviathan pushed that disbelief into something closer to awe. He ran his fingers along one of the samples, slow and careful, as if expecting it to vanish the moment he looked away.

"This is getting absurd," Augusto muttered at one point, though there was no complaint in it. Only amazement.

The terms were simple, unchanged from their last deal. The same structure, the same discretion. This time, the funds would be transferred directly to Euclid. Augusto didn't object. If anything, he seemed relieved that there was nothing new to negotiate. With the limited time Trafalgar had, that suited him perfectly.

"There won't be any trouble selling this," Augusto said with confidence once the initial shock wore off. He hesitated briefly before adding, "In fact, even the lord of Mariven has started buying directly from my store."

That alone said more than words ever could. In the past, they had kept their distance, careful not to be associated too closely. Now, they were doing the opposite, drawing nearer, testing the waters, making sure they had a foothold where influence was clearly growing.

Trafalgar noted it silently. It was good. Useful. Proof that momentum had shifted in his favor.

The meeting ended as quickly as it began. No wasted motion, no unnecessary talk. Just an exchange of information, understanding, and intent. By the time Augusto left, the shop felt quieter, but Trafalgar didn't linger on that. The result was what mattered, and it was exactly what he needed.

Mornings returned to a familiar rhythm. Trafalgar attended his classes as expected, moving through lectures and halls with the same outward calm as everyone else, even as the undercurrent of what was coming quietly took shape. Nothing about his routine drew attention. That, in itself, was intentional.

The reply from his father arrived through Caelum not long after. Short. Clear. Decisive. The meeting would take place in Euclid, the very next day. No extended circle. Just the four of them: Trafalgar and Aubrelle, Valttair du Morgain, and Aubrelle's father. It wasn't framed as a discussion, but as something closer to a confirmation. A line already drawn, waiting to be acknowledged.

The secrecy around it was uneven, and Trafalgar was keenly aware of the difference. Within House Morgain, only Caelum and Valttair knew. No whispers among relatives. No loose tongues. That silence felt heavy, like a blade kept sheathed until the exact moment it was needed.

House Rosenthal was the opposite.

Everyone knew.

Aubrelle's return from the war, the reason she had been sent back to the academy, the weight she carried afterward—none of it had been ignored. She was cherished openly, protected fiercely. Her siblings, her parents, even those tied to the house by marriage had welcomed the news without hesitation. To them, this wasn't merely politics. It was their daughter finding something good after surviving something brutal.

They were happy for her. Genuinely so.

Trafalgar understood what that meant. Support came easier when affection was already there, when the person at the center of the matter was loved rather than merely useful. It didn't remove the politics, but it softened the edges.

By the time the day ended, everything was in motion.

Evenings settled into a quieter pattern.

The additional classes that had once threatened to eat into Trafalgar's time were quietly dropped. It became evident, after only a short review, that he didn't need them. What that left him with was something rarer than free hours: unclaimed time. And more often than not, that time ended up being spent with Bartholomew.

They studied together regularly now. Not in lecture halls or shared study rooms, but in spaces where the air felt less formal, where silence wasn't oppressive. It was during those evenings that something long left unspoken finally gained shape.

Some time ago—far enough back that it almost felt like another version of himself—Trafalgar had given Bartholomew two notebooks. Old ones. Worn. Their covers etched with unfamiliar runes pulled from primordial ruins. They hadn't been a gift in the sentimental sense. They were payment. A quiet agreement meant to buy silence after the incident involving the second shard.

Bartholomew had never asked what Trafalgar had done.

He didn't know the details, and he didn't try to pry them loose. Loyalty, in his case, wasn't loud or dramatic. It was simple. He kept his mouth shut. He didn't even tell Cynthia, despite how close they were. Trafalgar knew that much, and it mattered more than any oath.

In truth, the notebooks were considered worthless by most standards. Relics without immediate function. Curiosities at best. The kind of things scholars glanced at once before shelving and forgetting. In the wider world, they held no recognized value.

Yet something about them had changed Bartholomew.

It wasn't obvious at first. Not a sudden transformation or a sharp break from who he had always been. But when Bartholomew worked with the notebooks open in front of him, his voice steadied. The habitual stutter faded. His shoulders didn't draw inward. He spoke with confidence, tracing connections, forming ideas aloud without hesitation, as if the words had finally found a clear path out.

Trafalgar noticed.

He noticed every time Bartholomew explained something without faltering, every moment his eyes lit up with understanding rather than doubt. And he chose not to comment on it. Some changes were fragile. Calling attention to them too early risked snapping them back into place.

So he watched in silence, letting Bartholomew grow into that confidence on his own. Whatever those notebooks truly were, whatever doors they were quietly opening, Trafalgar suspected they were planting seeds far deeper than either of them realized.

Trafalgar lay back on the bed, one arm resting behind his head, the other holding a notebook he didn't truly understand. The symbols etched across its pages felt dense, layered, like looking at the surface of deep water without being able to tell how far it went down. No matter how long he stared, nothing clicked. It was inert in his hands.

Across the room, Bartholomew was the opposite.

He sat at the table, posture straight, eyes locked onto the second notebook. He hadn't moved in a while. Not to turn a page, not to speak. Completely absorbed. The room settled into a long, unbroken silence, broken only by the faint sound of breathing and the soft rustle of paper.

Trafalgar let his gaze drift away from the book and upward.

"Status," he murmured.

The familiar window unfolded in front of him.

[Host: Trafalgar du Morgain]

[Title: Cursed Heir]

[Age: 16]

[Race: Half-Human/Half-primordial]

[Bloodline: Primordial Being]

[Core: Flow]

[Class: Swordsman / Riftspawn]

[Talent: SSS]

[Abilities: Passive Skills: Primordial Body (Lv.Max), Riftborn Feast, Sword Insight (Lv.Max), Morgain Blade (Lv.Max).

Active Skills: Arc Slash (Lv.2) - Common, Severing Fang (Lv.2) - Rare, Severance Step (Lv.2) - Epic, Earthsplitter (Lv.1) - Epic, Morgain's Requiem - Unique, Morgain's Final Crescent - Unique.]

[Items: Maledicta (Evolutive Weapon, Rare), Oathbinder - Legendary ring, Leather Undersuit - Uncommon, Blazewich Torch - Common, Widow's Whisper - Rare, Nightpiercer - Epic, Shadowhide Leather Armor - Rare, Armor of the Unborn Star - Unique, Winter Jacket - Common, Leviathan Fang Pendant - Legendary Rank.]

He stared at it longer than he usually did.

'…I really do have a lot,' he thought, and there was a strange weight to that. Not pride, not greed. More like the realization that his life had turned into a collection of tools and sharp edges.

His eyes slid back up to the abilities, pausing on the active skills.

'Severance Step is Lv.2 now.' His jaw tightened slightly. 'Good. But I need the others to move too. The sooner they climb, the sooner I stop worrying about being caught lacking. Max level means reliability. Max level means strength I don't have to think twice about.'

Then his gaze dropped to Riftborn Feast.

He exhaled through his nose.

'That one…' he thought. 'If I could feed it properly, I could become much stronger. Faster than training. Faster than duels. But the problem is the same as always.'

His fingers tapped once against the edge of the notebook in his hand, slow and thoughtful.

'Void creatures don't appear on command. It's random. A bad system to rely on.'

And yet, the answer came anyway, pulled from memory like a hook catching cloth.

Selendra's vision.

The warped space. The wrongness in the air. The things that didn't belong.

'There were void creatures there too,' he realized. 'So maybe that's it. Maybe that's when I'll run into them again. If the world wants to throw that kind of filth in my path, I might as well be ready to take advantage of it.'

His gaze drifted down to his items, and his expression flattened.

'Still… I'm missing utility.' He looked at Blazewich Torch and felt nothing. 'Food. Water. Support items. Something that keeps me going when things get ugly. There has to be something like that out there.'

He let the status window fade with a quiet breath and looked back across the room.

Bartholomew still hadn't moved.

Then, suddenly, a sound tore through the quiet so sharply it didn't even feel real at first.

"I HAVE IT!"

Trafalgar sat up instantly, the notebook slipping from his hand onto the bed. In two steps he was at the table, leaning in without meaning to, eyes locked on Bartholomew's page.

Bartholomew's face was lit in a way Trafalgar had almost never seen before.

Whatever he'd just connected, it wasn't small.

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