Chelsea walked at his left side, Gran Rosalinda at his right. Both of them were quiet, taking in the scale of the welcome with the same slightly stunned expression Jake suspected was on his own face.

Eskar had been directed to the servants’ quarters by one of the maidens and had gone without complaint, which was probably the most sensible decision he had made in the last week.

At the villa doors stood a woman who had not knelt with the others.

She was perhaps fifty, with silver-streaked hair pulled back precisely and a face that had the kind of settled authority that came from decades of running a large household and tolerating no nonsense in the process. Her clothes were those of a senior servant, dark and well-made, with small silver buttons at the collar that Jake suspected indicated rank.

She bowed when Jake reached her, a deep and formal bow, then straightened and met his eyes directly.

"Young master," she said, her voice clear and unhurried.

"I am Sova. Head maid of Raaya Villa. We have been waiting for your return with great anticipation, and it is my honor to welcome you home."

She paused just briefly, and something in her expression softened without losing its composure. "Your mother would be pleased."

Jake didn’t know what to say to that, so he thanked her, and Sova accepted the thanks with a small nod and immediately began moving, gesturing for him to follow with the brisk efficiency of someone who had a schedule and intended to keep it.

She led him through the entrance hall, which was high-ceilinged and warm, lit by hanging lanterns and lined with carved stonework that depicted scenes Jake didn’t have enough context to interpret yet but that clearly told a story.

She ordered other maids to take Chelsea and Rosa while she led Jake.

Then up a wide staircase to the second floor, down a corridor that was quieter and more private, and finally to a set of doors at the corridor’s end that were larger than the others.

She opened them and stood aside.

The rooms beyond were more than Jake had expected, which was already saying something given that his expectations had been recalibrating upward all evening.

A sitting room first, furnished with comfortable chairs and a low table near a window that looked out over the city lights spreading down the mountain below. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

Then a bedroom with a bed that was genuinely the largest Jake had ever seen, draped in deep blues and greys, with a writing desk along one wall and a separate washroom through an arched doorway.

Before he could fully take stock of it, four women in servant uniforms appeared from a side door he hadn’t noticed, carrying towels and a change of clothes and moving with the calm, organized energy of people who knew exactly what they were doing.

They drew a bath without being asked, filled it with hot water and something that smelled like cedar and something else Jake couldn’t identify, and then waited with the patient professionalism of people who had done this many times.

Jake bathed.

It was, after everything, one of the better experiences of the week.

The fresh clothes they had prepared for him were not the rough practical gear of a traveling mercenary. Dark trousers and a fitted tunic in deep grey with subtle black embroidery at the collar and cuffs, simple enough that it didn’t feel like a costume but clearly made for someone rather than purchased off a shelf.

He put them on and looked at himself briefly in the polished mirror on the washroom wall and barely recognized the person looking back.

One of the servants informed him, with careful courtesy, that there would be a gathering in the great hall that evening and that the maidens hoped he would attend.

Then they withdrew and left him alone.

Jake sat down on the bed.

He sat there for a long moment doing nothing at all, not accessing the system, not turning over plans in his mind, just sitting in the middle of a bed in a villa named after his mother in a city he had never visited before and trying to locate the seam between the life he had been living a week ago and whatever this was supposed to be.

It didn’t feel real.

That was the plainest way to put it.

The guild office felt real. Chelsea’s kitchen felt real. Even the Greyswood and the hegoblin and Eskar’s grunt-sigh felt real in the way that ordinary things felt real because they fit inside the shape of a life he understood.

This did not fit inside any shape he had previously constructed.

He lay back on the bed intending to rest briefly before the evening gathering.

He was asleep in under three minutes.

*

When he woke, the light had changed, and one of the servants was standing at a respectful distance near the door, waiting silently. Jake sat up, gathered himself, and followed her down to the great hall.

The hall was on the ground floor of the villa, wide and high-ceilinged, with long tables arranged in a horseshoe shape and lanterns burning warm and bright along all four walls.

The maidens filled the room, more of them than Jake had seen together before, thirty or more in their dark robes, and when he entered through the main doors, the conversation stopped and every face turned toward him with an eagerness that was almost overwhelming in its collective intensity.

These were people who had been waiting for something for a long time, and the waiting was written plainly on all of them.

Jake stood at the head of the room and looked at them looking at him.

He thought about what to say. He was not naturally a speechmaker. He was naturally a man who made quiet observations and dry remarks and preferred to let conversations happen around him rather than directing them.

But these people deserved something honest, and honest was the one thing he could reliably offer.

"I won’t pretend this feels normal to me," he said, and his voice carried in the quiet hall without him needing to raise it.