Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee

I push the door and step in.

Dean stands near the telescope, one hand resting on the bronze frame while he reads something on a floating screen. The observatory looks nearly the same as last time: high ceiling, shelves filling the walls, rolled maps on side tables, and that enormous telescope aimed at the ocean sky through the opening above.

He closes the interface when he sees me.

His eyes pass over my face, drop to my chest, and stay there for a moment.

"So the rumors are true."

I shut the door behind me.

"Depends on the rumor."

"Rank C."

Dean doesn’t look impressed. He doesn’t need to fake indifference either. For someone at Rank A, my evolution still leaves me several steps below him.

I walk to the chair in front of the desk.

"Your Academy has two Rank C students now."

He circles the telescope without taking his eyes off me.

"Don’t confuse a recent evolution with the position Freya holds."

"I’m not confusing anything. I just updated the count."

The pressure comes right after.

OXI takes the room with no warning. The air feels heavier against my chest, and my body responds before I decide to do anything. The muscles harden, my breathing goes short, and the new Rank C circulation opens to resist Dean’s presence.

Five thousand OXI change a lot, but they still don’t put me anywhere near him.

Dean keeps walking, letting his own presence fill the observatory as he passes behind my chair. It’s an old tool of his. The power gap exists, so he makes a point of setting it on the table before any conversation.

I wait until he finishes the circle.

"Rahul Sharma knows I advanced today."

Dean stops.

The pressure holds, but it doesn’t climb any higher.

"And why should that interest me?"

"Because I went from sixteen to ninety-six percent after he handed me experience through the Nomine Gladiatus. Rahul wanted me close to the barrier. Today I finished the job. Donating experience is a taboo, and beyond that, it signals closeness."

Dean comes back into my field of vision.

"Are you trying to threaten me with his name?"

"I’m avoiding a misunderstanding. If I walk out of here hurt, Rahul might want to know why someone decided to break an investment he made in person."

Dean’s expression barely shifts, though the OXI over the room starts to lose pressure.

"Rahul Sharma doesn’t govern this Academy."

"I know. That’s why I’m talking to you."

He studies me for a few seconds.

That’s only one card. I have others.

"I’m also the person behind the LDP."

Dean doesn’t speak.

I continue.

"Silver Fang is the public face. Leona Hartwell runs the operation with me. We’re partners. Formula, expansion, market strategy, production—it all passes through me first."

The pressure disappears.

Dean leaves the side of the telescope and walks to the desk. He shows no surprise, but he takes a few seconds arranging the information before he pulls out the opposite chair.

"Sit, Sands."

This time it doesn’t sound like an order used to put someone in their place.

I sit.

Dean does the same.

"The LDP appeared practically out of nowhere, took space inside the Oathring, and now there are people trying to secure production before you’ve even served the first cycle of buyers. Leona Hartwell would make sense. You, not so much."

"That’s one of the advantages of working out of sight."

"Until you decide to tell me."

"Today I needed you to know who you’re negotiating with."

Dean rests his arms on the chair.

"You still haven’t said what you want."

"How much does Freya owe you?"

The silence changes its nature.

The commercial conversation left his face.

"That’s none of your business."

"You bought the Gunnulf family’s debt through third parties. Your name didn’t appear at the start of the operation. You waited for the obligations to pile up, consolidated what you could, and showed up when Freya no longer had many options."

Dean doesn’t move.

"Who told you that?"

"How much does she owe?"

"I asked a question."

"So did I."

His look hardens.

I know I’m poking a point almost no one in that Academy would have the nerve to touch. I also know Dean hates not understanding where my information comes from.

He sets his hands on the table.

"You came in here using Rahul, Leona Hartwell, and a growing company as a shield. Now you start reciting private matters from my life. If you mean to turn this into a display of intelligence, you’re choosing a bad direction."

"I didn’t come to show off intelligence. I came to buy her freedom."

Dean goes quiet.

The line lands better than any provocation before it.

"Freya isn’t for sale."

"Good. Then we’re starting from the same principle."

His jaw sets harder; I can see the muscles moving.

"What’s between me and Freya is a contractual obligation. Not property."

"Then tell me the value."

Dean looks away for a moment, toward one of the observatory windows.

When he answers, his voice comes lower.

"One point two Core Scale."

I whistle.

He looks back at me.

"One point two Core Scales? That’s a hundred and twenty Plates," I say. "You really don’t work with small numbers."

"You find this funny?"

"I find it expensive."

"You don’t know what that debt represents."

"I know Freya won’t pay it off anytime soon."

Dean doesn’t answer.

I lean a little over the table.

"Even holding her current progression, we’re still talking about years. Five, maybe more, depending on what she spends on equipment, recovery, and evolution. And in five years there’s a good chance Freya will be well past the point where you can physically force her to do anything."

Dean takes the line without hurry.

"You assume force is the only reason she obeys me."

"No. I assume it’s the main one."

"Then you don’t understand our relationship."

Dean stands and walks back near the telescope. No OXI in the room this time. Just irritation.

"I pulled Freya out of a situation that would have destroyed her family. I gave her training, equipment, access, guidance, and a position thousands of cadets would kill for. She respects me because she knows what I did for her. Even when she passes my Rank, that doesn’t vanish."

I wait until he finishes.

"You think she lowers her head because she respects you."

Dean stops.

"Careful, Sands."

"I watched Freya face Rank C monsters without losing control. Today she went into an attack knowing that if my read was wrong, Pegasus Wrath would put her body in front of a corrupted predator. She doesn’t shake when something can kill her."

Dean turns slowly; I wait until he’s facing me to finish.

"But she shakes near you."

The change is small.

His right shoulder stiffens. His fingers close once against his side before they relax.

I continue.

"When you walk into a room, she pays attention to how she’s breathing. When you give an order, she answers before she’s even decided whether she agrees. When I asked why she was avoiding training with me, she couldn’t say your name. She just left."

"You’re confusing discipline with fear."

"Maybe you’d rather call it that."

Dean walks a few steps toward me.

"Freya sees me as family."

"You’re very used to having power over people, Rector Dean. After a while, it must get hard to tell when someone chooses to stay and when someone has only learned that leaving costs too much."

He stands in front of the desk, looking down at me.

"Did she tell you she wants to leave?"

"Not in those words."

"Then you’re building an entire negotiation on what you believe she feels."

"I’m building on what I saw."

Dean lets a short breath out through his nose and starts walking again.

"You think you know Freya after a few conversations."

"I think she’s afraid of you. That doesn’t take years of acquaintance to notice."

He runs his hand along the bronze frame of the telescope.

"Fear and respect can exist together."

"They can. Choice is something else."

This time he doesn’t answer right away.

The room goes quiet while Dean walks to a shelf, looks over the books without really searching for any, and comes back to the center. I don’t need to keep pushing. I’d already seen the point where his certainty started to crack.

I open a window in the HUD.

"I have a proposal."

Dean stops near the telescope.

"I figured you’d get to that."

I project the terms over the table, sharing the view.

"I take on the hundred and twenty Plates. Five Plates a month for twenty-four months."

His eyes drop to the numbers.

"Two years."

"Two years. Freya leaves the contract the moment we sign. The debt doesn’t pass to me. It disappears for her and becomes a commercial obligation of mine."

"You expect me to trade a secured debt for a promise of installment payments?"

"No."

I change the screen.

The data Richard sent appears.

[LDP — PROJECTED 30-DAY DEMAND][Confirmed Orders + Advanced Requests: 100,000+ Units][Current Sustainable Production: <10%]

Dean reads without comment.

"Silver Fang gets more orders than it can make. Richard believes the real number runs higher, because there are still duplicate orders and inquiries that haven’t reached the contract stage."

I expand the second part of the proposal.

"The Academy comes in as a priority client. LDP in the internal convenience stores, with a monthly quota reserved ahead of ordinary commercial orders. You don’t go to the back of the line."

Dean lifts his eyes.

"Exclusivity?"

"No."

"So you want me to accept an installment debt and, in exchange, buy your product."

"I want to offer priority on a product that already has more than a hundred thousand units ordered for next month. You can call it buying if you prefer."

He goes back to the numbers.

Dean knows how to do math. Anyone with any vision would understand what that projection means. An Academy full of cadets, instructors, and field teams burns OXI every day. Putting a potion with rising demand inside its own stores creates revenue, gives students preferential access, and puts the institution ahead of other academies that start competing for contracts.

"What would the Academy’s margin be?"

"We negotiate that with Leona once you accept the general structure."

"So she hasn’t agreed yet."

"I’m not going to pretend I can sign a condition that affects my partner on my own. What I can guarantee right now is negotiating priority and reserved production. The commercial details go through both of us."

It’s a lie, but I need to sell that lie.

Dean walks around the telescope.

The movement reminds me of the start of the conversation, but the intent has changed. He’s no longer trying to remind me of his Rank. He’s calculating.

"A hundred thousand units in thirty days," he says. "And you can’t produce ten thousand."

"Yet."

"To get anywhere near that demand, you’ll have to multiply facilities, hire alchemists, secure Lunaria, glass, and transport. Maybe several factories."

"Richard reached the same conclusion."

"And you mean to finance all of that while paying me five Plates a month?"

"I mean to finance it precisely because there are people waiting on the other side to buy."

Dean passes the side of the desk and returns to the projection.

"If I open space inside the Academy for Silver Fang, I’m not just offering shelves. I’m putting the institution’s name beside the product."

"And you get priority for doing it."

"I could demand a stake."

"You could try."

He gives me a long look.

I let him think.

That’s the real point of the conversation. Dean started by trying to decide how much I was allowed to say inside his room. Now he’s discussing terms.

Rank C helps. The public ranking helps. Rahul and Leona change the cost of any aggressive move. The LDP does the rest.

Dean can go on being stronger than me.

Strength doesn’t solve a hundred thousand orders.

"Does Freya know you’re here?" he asks.

"No."

"And you’re offering a hundred and twenty Plates without even knowing whether she’ll accept your help?"

"I already told her I’ll keep my promise to free her from you, no matter what she thinks of me."

He rests a hand on the telescope.

"You’re very confident for someone who just reached Rank C."

"I nearly lost an arm for her today. Five Plates a month doesn’t sound like the scary part."

Dean stands looking at me for a few seconds.

This time there’s no clear anger on his face. The line seems to find some place he’d rather not show.

He goes back to the desk and reads the terms again.

"If I accepted this structure, there would be conditions. The Academy can’t depend on a company that’s still learning to produce at scale, and I won’t remove a contract that’s existed for years on a commercial projection alone."

"Then put reasonable guarantees on paper."

Dean folds his hands behind his back and starts walking again, circling the great telescope while he thinks. He asks about expansion timelines, stock capacity, the possibility of a minimum reserve for cadets, and what would happen if production failed for two consecutive months. I answer what I can and make it clear when something would have to go through Richard or Leona.

The conversation takes a few minutes.

When Dean comes back in front of the desk, the initial resistance has shifted. He still doesn’t like the proposal, but he’s already trying to shape it.

"All right. If I accept, the first condition would be—"

The door opens.

Dean stops mid-sentence.

Rae enters the observatory without knocking, holding some documents in one hand while adjusting his glasses with the other. He takes two steps before he realizes Dean isn’t alone.

His eyes pass over me, over the projection of a hundred thousand LDPs open on the table, and over the rector’s face.

Rae stops.

Dean doesn’t say anything either.

For a few seconds, neither of them seems willing to decide which one is more bothered by the other’s presence.

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