Roman hadn’t thought twice before he ran after her.

The street was busy enough that it was not a clean chase. People were moving in both directions and she was smaller and faster through gaps than he was, ducking between a vendor and his display table, cutting left around a group of people who were standing and talking and had no idea they were suddenly in the middle of something.

Roman followed as best he could.

"Hey," he said, loud enough to carry but not loud enough to draw attention from the whole street.

"Hey, I am not going to hurt you."

She did not slow down.

He tried again. "Your grandfather sent me."

Still running...

Either she could not hear him over the noise of the street or she had decided that anyone claiming to have been sent by her grandfather was automatically lying. Either way, the gap between them was not closing in any meaningful way and he was drawing more looks than he wanted.

He pushed harder and closed a few metres, enough that he thought he might be able to get her attention without having to shout.

Then he turned a corner and walked directly into two of the Strength City guards who had been looking for him since the morning.

Exactly the same figures!

They all registered each other at the same time.

And immediately, Roman turned and ran back the way he had come.

The guards came after him immediately, and now he had the guards behind him and the girl somewhere ahead of him, and the only thing that made any sense was to keep moving in the same direction and hope the two situations resolved into one.

He cut right off the main street into a narrower road, the guards shouting behind him, and he caught a glimpse of the black bag turning left at the far end of the narrow road and went after it.

The guards were loud and they were not stopping, and a few people on the narrow road flattened themselves against the walls as Roman went through, which at least made the path clearer for him even if it also made it clearer for whoever was behind him.

He went left at the end.

The girl was still ahead, still running, and now he was close enough to try again.

"Your grandfather sent me," he called out. "He is looking for you. I am not one of them."

She suddenly looked back once more, and this time she actually looked at him for longer than a second, assessing something, but then she turned and kept going and took a right he had not anticipated and when he followed the road, it was quieter on the other side.

He stayed with her through two more turns, and by the time the noise of the guards behind him had faded to something distant, the street ahead had changed completely.

It was narrow and dim, the buildings on either side rising tall enough to block most of the sky, and it was largely empty. A few doorways, a couple of crates stacked against one wall, no people moving.

He stopped, and looked around.

She was gone.

Roman stood in the quiet of the narrow street and breathed.

"I know you are still here," he said, keeping his voice low. "Your grandfather told me you went out last night for the Blossoming Grass. He has been waiting since then. I am not one of the city guards and I am not a threat."

He said that, but he still got nothing... Nothing as a response.

"He cannot see me," Roman continued. "He cannot see anyone. He has been blind since before you were born. He said you walk... attentively. That you carry a black bag. That was all he could give me."

Roman was literally trying all his best to convince her, but he clearly knew that he’s got no time.

However, he still nothing for a moment.

But then when it seems like his hope was fading away...

She suddenly came out of nowhere.

She dropped from somewhere above and to his right, dagger already moving, and the only reason it did not connect was that Roman’s Perception attribute was good enough to catch the shift in air a fraction of a second before she landed, and he turned and got his forearm up and redirected the strike, grabbed her wrist, turned it until she let go, and caught the dagger before it hit the ground.

She pulled back and stared at him.

She was young, roughly his age, with dark eyes that were doing the same assessing thing they had been doing since she first looked back at him on the main street.

Roman held her dagger out, handle first.

"You have to trust me," he said.

"Why would I trust a stranger who has been chasing me through half the city?"

"Because your grandfather does not have friends," Roman said. "You know that. Everyone in this district thinks he is strange and old and they leave him alone. There is nobody who would come looking for you on his behalf."

She looked at the dagger in his extended hand but did not take it yet.

"He sent me to find you because you had not come back," Roman said. "You went for the Blossoming Grass. You left last night. He has been sitting on that floor all morning waiting."

She suddenly went silent for a moment, processing what he had just said. That information wasn’t something that someone could suddenly come up with in any way.

It was a very strong intel that had captured her completely, and this time she had become too intrigued and interested to hear him.

"He was already blind when you were born," Roman added.

Something in her face shifted at that, and after another second she reached out and took the dagger back.

"How do you know all of that?" She asked.

"He told me," Roman said. "In exchange for finding you."

She looked at him for a long moment, then nodded once. It was small, but it was there.

"We need to be careful going back," Roman said. "Stay close and do what I do."

She nodded at once without question, and soon they had set out to get going right immediately.

They moved back through the quiet stretch together and rejoined the wider streets, and Roman kept to the edges, reading ahead, checking junctions before they committed to them.

At one point he grabbed her arm and pulled her back a step before she could walk around a corner where about four guards were standing talking to each other, and she pressed against the wall beside him and waited without being told to.

When they had passed, she looked at him.

"Why are we avoiding them?" She asked quietly.

Roman kept his eyes forward, clearing showing that he wouldn’t even give a chance to respond to that.

"You do not want to know," he said.

She looked at him for another second, seemed to decide that was a fair enough answer given the circumstances, and kept moving.

They reached the residential district without any more close calls, and Roman exhaled when the familiar street came into view and the old man’s door was right where he had left it.

He pushed it open and stepped inside, and the granddaughter came in behind him.

"Mission accomplished," Roman said, and he was smiling when he said it.

He felt so good knowing that he had done it without being caught again, and now he would get to know about the Blossoming Grass.

But then... While he was exposing his shiny teeth, he soon suddenly spotted two guards standing inside the room.

His face at darkened at once, and that moment he had realised that the best option was what...? To get the hell out!

But when he turned to face the exit door...

There happened to be more figures outside. More guards precisely.

A lot more.

Positioned and waiting, spreading across the entrance and the street on either side, enough of them that going through was not a conversation worth having.

Roman turned back to the room slowly.

The old man was still sitting in the same place on the floor, his head slightly bowed.

"I am sorry," the old man said quietly. His voice carried the specific weight of someone who had made a decision they did not feel good about and had made it anyway.

"It is the only way," he added.

Roman looked at him for a moment.

Then he looked at the guards.

Then he looked at the granddaughter beside him, who had the expression of someone who had just realised that the person she had decided to trust had walked her directly into something she would not have walked into on her own.

Roman closed his eyes for exactly one second.

After completing the mission that had almost go him back into chains, he was betrayed.

He had just been betrayed in the most very unexpected way.

And at that point, one thing was clear...

He was cooked.

.

.

.

[A/N: Apologies for the delay. Should have come earlier, but I got too chanced with school stuffs and I had to face it before things get ugly. Thanks for your understanding!]

[There would be an event on the month of June for the book, where we would be dropping extra Chapters for every 20 Golden Tickets and gifts from one reader. The higher the gift, the higher the Chapter released! 7 consecutive votes of power stones from one same reader in a week would be announced by the author on the story. That way, we can connect and have fun together. Thank you, family!]