Theresa opened her notes. The pages rustled, dense with ink. Diagrams crowded the margins. Measurements. Patrol timing marks in a shorthand she’d developed over four days. She laid them flat on the table between them.

"The fog first," she said.

She described how it clung to the ground, heavy and wrong, even from the road. The worn markers in the graveyard. Shapes moving through the mist. Patrol patterns, consistent, directed.

Dominic listened, chin resting on his hand.

He didn’t interrupt.

Then the hollow points. The mausoleum entry. The moment she descended. The ceiling height, the stone color, the carvings she’d committed to memory.

He leaned forward, tracing one of her drawings with a finger.

"How old do you think the place is?"

"Nothing above ground in Caldmore is that old," she said. "The graveyard has been untouched for forty years. The structure below might be centuries older, at least."

"Alarms? Traps?"

"Yes. Sophisticated. Pressure-sensitive floor sections, mana trip lines." She looked up. "Whoever built it were very skilled people."

"Hm. That’s impressive."

"The construction is old. The maintenance is recent. The current occupants most likely didn’t build it."

He filed that away.

She moved to the chamber. No embellishment. The scale of it. The ceiling lost in miasma. The chimeras, stitched together from parts that didn’t belong. Piled corpses along the far wall. The miasma pulling inward, toward something she hadn’t reached.

"How dense was it," he asked.

"Dense enough that going further would have compromised concealment."

"So you couldn’t go deeper."

"Yes. We needed information, not a confrontation." She turned to the last page. "The patrol count increased by two between day one and day four. Whatever is down there is producing more."

"Where do you think they get the bodies? Obviously not from Caldmore."

"Well, that’s for Frank to find out. We’ve done our part."

He was quiet for a moment, working through the information. She watched him. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

"You did well," he said. His hand came across the table, briefly touched her wrist. He was already looking back at the notes. "Going alone for four days into something uncharted. That was... it was well done."

She gave a small dry smile.

"Meanwhile you were busy almost dying," she said. "Someone had to work."

He didn’t respond, but the corner of his mouth shifted. A soft scoff escaped him.

Across the table, Wobbly had identified the bottom left corner of the patrol diagram as requiring investigation. It pressed against the paper with focus and made a very cute sound, as if contributing to the briefing.

Theresa moved it.

It tried again from a different angle.

She moved it again.

Wobbly paused, pondered, then tried the map.

"Don’t," Dominic said.

Theresa chuckled, watching Wobbly withdraw almost disappointedly and settle at the center of the table, still trying to seem like it was contributing.

***

They moved to the courtyard after.

Morning light filled the walled space, warm on the flagstones. Quiet. Private.

Dominic moved carefully, testing his body. Theresa matched the session to that. Basic footwork. Nothing that would strain him. She watched his range from a few feet away, correcting him occasionally. A hand angle here. A shifted stance there. He moved through the corrections without complaint.

Wobbly observed from the courtyard wall for a bit. Then it descended to the flagstones and attempted to replicate what it saw.

The problem was structural and total. A formless translucent blob has no legs. No discernible weight distribution. No center of gravity that responds to conscious direction. None of this appeared to concern Wobbly in the slightest.

It attempted a shuffle. Tipped. Wobbled sideways. Then somehow launched itself across the courtyard at speed, hit the far wall gently, and sat there glowing, apparently satisfied.

Dominic stopped moving.

He looked at Wobbly for a moment, then at Theresa. She met his eyes. The tension was still thick between them. They composed themselves and continued with the training. Wobbly relocated to the center of the courtyard and watched them like an instructor.

The system notification came up mid-drill. He slowed to look at it.

[NEW QUEST: FIRST THREAD]

[OBJECTIVE: ATTEMPT TO DRAW ON THE BOND: ACCESS THERESA’S AMPLIFICATION]

[REWARD: 50 GT TOKENS]

[NOTE: YOU HAVE A PERFECTLY GOOD SSS RANK MAGE STANDING RIGHT NEXT TO YOU. USE YOUR RESOURCES.]

He read it, then looked at Theresa.

She read his expression and waited.

He explained the notification. Almost instantly she turned into a very serious teacher. This was her area of expertise. She knew amplification the way a master craftsman knew their material. Years of teaching and practice. She was already thinking through how to explain it.

"The bond," she said. "Rather than see it like a chain to pull at, try looking for it inward, the same way you’d sense mana. Feel like connecting, then let it flow."

He nodded. He didn’t quite understand yet.

"Try."

He closed his eyes. Reached.

Nothing. He was reaching wrong, like someone struggling in water, grasping.

She watched him do it multiple times and shook her head.

"Stop trying to take it. Be aware of it. It’s already there. Stop forcing control."

He stilled himself. Took a deep breath. Just be present. The warmth of the sun. The rough stone under his feet. The space between them, like the heat from a fire.

Then something moved.

Subtle. He almost missed it.

A thread of warmth. Not his. Flowing in from somewhere, settling into his limbs like a second pulse running under his own. Strangely personal, like someone else’s heartbeat. Steady. Real.

As she’d said, he let it flow rather than grabbing it. Then it was there, settled in him properly.

He tried again. Amplified his body.

Basic physical enhancement. Strength, durability, speed. Not dramatic, not explosive. Just noticeably more than before. His next step landed differently. His hands felt heavier, steadier at his sides.

It held for ten seconds.

Then it released naturally, the warmth receding without disappearing entirely. The thread still present at the edge of awareness, even after the enhancement faded.

Theresa was watching him. Her expression softened. She was proud. A little surprised. And something more intimate underneath, something she tried and failed to hide.

Then Wobbly lost its mind.

There was no other way to describe it.

It launched off the flagstones. Began moving in rapid, erratic arcs around both of them. Its glow spiked to the brightest it had been since the day it arrived, producing a continuous, excited hum. It bounced between them. Off the wall. Back between them. A streak of light, completely, unmistakably a celebration.

They just stared as it completed another arc.

"Alright, Wobbly, we get it," Dominic said.

Wobbly did not acknowledge this. It just continued.

The system opened.

[QUEST COMPLETE: FIRST THREAD]

[REWARD: +50 GT TOKENS]

[BOND MATURATION STEP 1 ACHIEVED]

[MINOR POWER SHARING UNLOCKED]

[SHOP ITEM UNLOCKED: MANA THREAD BANDAGES — 80 GT TOKENS]

[INSTANT MINOR WOUND SEALING AND PAIN RELIEF]

[CURRENT GT TOKENS: 200]

He read through it. His eyes moved to the token count and stayed there. 200. The pull needed 500. He already had a quest with a 600 GT reward coming in two weeks. He could just spend the 200 on items while waiting to use the other reward for the pull.

He thought about it for a minute, then decided not to rush anything for now.

***

They sat in the courtyard after.

The morning had settled around them, warm and still. The walled space held the quiet the way good spaces did.

Wobbly had calmed from its rampage and relocated to a patch of sunlight near the wall, glowing slowly at intervals like it was conducting a private assessment.

They all just sat with the moment for a while and let it pass.

Dominic glanced at Theresa once more. The morning light caught the side of her face. For the first time, he realized how much he had come to rely on her being here. The thought settled in his chest, quiet and surprisingly comfortable.