The corridor outside the training wing was still dripping.

Not from any pipe. Just the residual water that had followed Noah through the void blink, clinging to his boots and leaving a trail across the floor that Kelvin kept looking at with the expression of a man doing damage calculations in his head.

"Four feet," Kelvin said, not for the first time. "Four feet of composite layering. I argued with three engineers about that. Three. They told me I was overbuilding." He looked at Noah. "I was not overbuilding."

"You weren’t," Noah agreed.

"The outer hull is going to need full resurfacing on the left side. The pressure seal alone is a three day job minimum. The composite panels have to be ordered, they are not standard stock, I had them manufactured specifically, which means lead time, which means—"

"Kelvin."

"What."

"I know." Noah glanced at him. "I know what went into it. The depth positioning, the layered redundancies, the passive water resistance calculations. All of it." He paused. "It was genuinely impressive work."

Kelvin stared at him for a second.

"Okay," he said. "Good. That’s good. Thank you." He fell back into step beside him, the tablet still in his hand, the damage calculations still clearly running somewhere behind his eyes. Then after a moment he stopped walking entirely.

"Seriously though," Kelvin said.

Noah and Lucas both stopped and looked at him.

"What kind of monster did you become out there?" Kelvin said. Not dramatically. Just genuinely asking, the way Kelvin asked things when he actually wanted the answer. "Because I had Lucas gauged. Properly gauged. The last two years I rebuilt the suit from scratch, lighter frame, denser material, faster response time. Sophie spent a full year training under Master Anng and came back an entirely different problem on the field. Lila is Lila, quietly terrifying as always. Seraleth has been tanking hits that would hospitalise most S ranks and teaching chi on the side." He looked at Noah. "Lucas was still the most busted person in this building. By a significant margin. And you just one punched the thing I built to replicate a four horn Harbinger." He spread his hands. "So what happened?"

Noah looked at him for a moment.

Then at Lucas.

Then he said, "I went back in time."

Silence.

"To fight Arthur," Noah continued. "And Gigarose. Medieval timeline. Dragons, knights, actual swords, the whole thing."

More silence.

"What," Lucas said.

"What," Kelvin said, at exactly the same time, with a completely different energy behind it.

"What the actual—" Kelvin started.

"It doesn’t matter," Noah said, and he almost smiled because the looks on both their faces were worth something. "The point is I thought I won. I’m still not completely sure I did. Because something is happening to me and I haven’t figured out the full shape of it yet."

He reached up and pushed his hood back.

The white was visible immediately. Not subtle, not something you had to look for. Starting at the temples and running back through the dark in uneven streaks that had no business being there on a twenty one year old.

Lucas looked at it. Said nothing.

Kelvin looked at it. Said, "That’s new."

"New mutation," Noah said. "Came with the level up. The system flagged a class change and some of it is still..." he paused, searching for the right word, "developing. I’m still working out what that means."

"Your system," Kelvin said carefully, because Kelvin always got careful when the system came up, always aware of the boundary between what he could understand and what he couldn’t, "flagged a class change."

"Yes."

"To what."

"Something I’m still figuring out."

Kelvin looked at the white hair again. Then at Noah’s general frame, the height, the way he was standing, the quality of stillness that had been present since he came back and that Kelvin had been trying to find a scientific framework for and kept failing.

"Okay," Kelvin said. "Okay. Fine. You’ll tell me when you know more."

"I’ll tell you when I know more," Noah confirmed.

They started walking again. The corridor was quieter now, the distant sound of the building crew already being coordinated somewhere below them, Sam’s doing presumably.

"How are you and Diana?" Noah asked.

Lucas made a sound. Not quite a laugh. More like the sound a person made when they were trying not to be the one who said it first and had just lost that particular battle with themselves.

Noah looked at him.

Then at Kelvin.

Kelvin shrugged, the elaborate shrug of someone who had decided to own something completely. "I proposed."

Noah stopped walking.

"You," Noah said.

"Me."

"Proposed."

"Yes."

Noah stared at him. Kelvin looked back with the calm of a man who had made a decision he was at complete peace with and found everyone else’s surprise about it mildly entertaining.

"The last time," Kelvin said, and his voice shifted slightly, lost the performance quality it sometimes carried, became just him talking, "I nearly lost her forever. She was in that bed and I was looking at her and I was thinking about all the things I hadn’t said yet and all the time I had assumed I had." He looked at the floor briefly then back up. "So. No more assuming. Every moment I have, I’m going to use it properly."

The corridor was quiet for a second.

"That’s genuinely mature, Kelvin," Noah said.

"I know," Kelvin said. "I surprised myself."

Lucas nodded, the nod of someone who respected something without needing to make a speech about it.

Then Kelvin’s expression shifted back into something more familiar and he looked at Noah with the curiosity of a man who had just shared something personal and felt entitled to reciprocate the vulnerability in the other direction.

"So," Kelvin said. "You and your harem. You catch up with them yet or..."

Lucas straightened up immediately, suddenly very interested in the ceiling, the floor, the general architecture of the corridor, anywhere except Noah’s face while still absolutely listening.

"We talked," Noah said.

"Talked," Kelvin repeated.

"Yes."

"All four of them?"

"Yes."

"And Angel kissed you in front of the entire faction," Kelvin said. "We all saw that. The stream saw that. I believe it is currently the most clipped moment in Eclipse streaming history." He tilted his head. "So by my count you have been back for two weeks, you went into your domain for most of it, you came out, you one punched my life’s work, and the most romantic thing that happened was someone else initiating."

Noah opened his mouth.

"Years," Kelvin continued, with the energy of someone who had been waiting to say this for a while. "You were gone for years. Dimension hopping, time travel, medieval warfare apparently, and you still somehow plateaued in the romance department. I genuinely thought the Angel situation before you left was a turning point. I had hope. I want you to know I had real hope and you have done something to it."

"We were busy," Noah said. "There’s a five horn Harbinger. There’s Gigarose. There’s—"

"There is always something," Lucas said, and he said it without judgment, just the flat delivery of someone stating a fact they had personal experience with. He put a hand briefly on Noah’s shoulder. "Our parents were born into this war. We were born into this war. Everyone we know has grown up inside it." He looked at Noah. "That was never an excuse for any of them and it is not one for you."

Noah looked at him.

Lucas removed his hand and started walking again.

Kelvin followed, glancing back at Noah with an expression that said the conversation wasn’t over, just paused.

---

Sophie’s office was on the third level, the one with the viewport that looked out at the harbor floor at an angle that caught the facility’s external lighting properly. Noah had been told this when Sam gave him the layout. He had filed it away the way he filed most things, efficiently and without thinking too hard about why certain details stuck.

He knocked once and pushed the door open.

Sophie was at her desk, three screens running, a physical notebook open beside the keyboard that she still used despite everything being digital because Sophie had always thought better with a pen in her hand. She looked up when he came in and the professional expression she wore when she was mid-task softened into something else.

"Hey," she said. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

"Hey." He sat down across from her. "Am I interrupting?"

"Sector four contract debrief," she said, closing the notebook. "It can wait." She looked at him properly. "How’s Kelvin?"

"Upset about his wall."

"He’ll rebuild it in a week and make it better and be fine," Sophie said. "He always is."

Noah nodded. They sat for a moment in the comfortable quiet that only existed between people who had enough history that silence didn’t need filling.

"Tell me about it," Sophie said.

"About what."

"Where you were. What it was like." She leaned back in her chair. "You said you’d tell me everything."

Noah looked at the viewport. The dark water outside, a slow current moving through the edge of the light.

"It was long," he said.

"I gathered."

"Medieval. Actual horses, actual swords. Politics and wars and people who had never heard of an awakened human." He paused. "It was someone else’s life for a while. I was living it and fighting in it and trying to find my way back the whole time."

Sophie watched him. He could feel her reading the gaps in what he was saying, the things he was choosing not to put words to yet.

"Did you meet anyone?" she asked. Casual. Almost too casual.

Noah thought about Nami. The harbor watch in the dark, her knees pulled up, telling him about four brothers who never noticed what she held together. The way she had squeezed his arm once outside the capital gate and said yes without any other words.

Nothing happened, he thought. And that was true.

"No," he said. "No one like that."

Sophie nodded slowly.

"What about you," Noah said.

She laughed. Actually laughed, the kind that started in her chest and came out before she could decide whether to let it. "Are you serious?"

"I’m asking."

"Noah." She shook her head. "Who was going to top a handsome..." she stood up from behind the desk, still smiling, "tall..." she crossed the space between them slowly, "SSS ranked soldier who is..." she stopped in front of him, close, looking up at him the way she looked at things she was genuinely happy to see, and then her eyes caught something and her voice dropped to almost nothing.

"Greying?"

Her hand moved toward his temple.

Noah groaned. "It’s a long story."

"Is this the time dilation thing?" she said. "Because Kelvin was going on about cellular acceleration and biological clock variance a month ago and I told him it was complete nonsense and he needed to sleep."

Noah laughed, actually laughed, and could picture it perfectly. Kelvin at whatever hour needing someone to talk at and Sophie sitting there with the patient expression she wore when she had decided to let something run its course.

"Poor Kelvin," Noah said.

"Poor me," Sophie corrected. "He went on for two hours." But she was still smiling, her hand still near his temple, fingers light against the white streak. "Certain things have changed, you said."

"Yes."

"Well." She tilted her head, studying him. "The white suits you, for what it’s worth." Her eyes moved across his face, down, back up. "You’re taller."

"Little bit."

She looked at him for another moment and then her voice dropped to just above a whisper. "You’re hotter too."

"Thanks," Noah said.

Sophie physically flinched. Stepped back. Her hand came up between them and her face had gone from warm to alarmed in the space of half a second.

"Noah what the hell," she said.

"What?"

"You’re burning."

He looked down.

The sleeve of his hoodie where her hand had been closest was smoking at the edge, the fabric darkening, heat radiating off his skin in visible waves.

"And your eyes," Sophie said, another step back now, her voice careful in the way it got when she was processing something she didn’t have an understanding of yet. "They’re red."

Noah looked at his hand. The fabric at his wrist was catching properly now, a small flame running along the hem, his skin underneath completely unmarked.

"Excuse me," he said.

He blinked out.

---

His bathroom was cold and clean and the mirror was directly opposite the door. He was in front of it before he had finished arriving, the void blink depositing him exactly where he needed to be.

He looked at his eyes.

The irises were normal. Dark, the way they had always been, the faint purple that the void energy had been pushing into them since his abilities developed were sitting at its usual level.

But around them. Just at the edge, where the white of the eye met the skin.

A ring. A Thin, vivid and unmistakable red ring.

He leaned closer. It didn’t change. Didn’t fade. Just sat there, looking back at him, new and completely unexplained.

"What the hell is this," he said, to his own reflection.

His field of vision flickered.

A system notification appeared.

[Dragon’s Lust]