Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee

I leave the library building with the contract folded inside my inventory.

Azure Prime has already slipped into night. The avenues are still busy, but the rhythm has changed. Shops close their displays, carriages cross the central roads carrying workers to the outer districts, and the runic lights gain strength under the deep blue coming from the ocean sky.

I walk to the farthest Oathmark. I don’t want people watching me today.

The stone structures fill an open plaza between two public buildings. Divers come and go from the teleport platforms, some vanishing in columns of light while others arrive still recovering their balance. Along the sides, smaller posts handle contracts, guild registrations, and Reentry Pearl activations.

I go straight to the registration sector.

I set the document on the rune-marked surface and press my Diver Mark to the edge.

The light runs across the paper.

[Contract submitted.]

[Signatures verified.]

[Financial Obligation Transfer recognized.]

[Previous Debtor: Freya Gunnulf.]

[Current Debtor: Dryden Sands / Silver Fang.]

[Freya Gunnulf possesses no remaining contractual obligation related to the registered debt.]

I keep looking at that last line.

A hundred and twenty Plates have just walked into my life, but it’s hard to be bothered by it.

Freya is free.

There’s still Dean. There are the trenches, the Deepwarden, the enemies she doesn’t even know about, and choices I’ve already altered before she could make them. Freeing her from a contract doesn’t solve everything.

But it solves something.

In the other life, Freya reached the top carrying chains no one could see. Maybe removing one of them now changes little. Maybe it completely alters the woman who would one day be known as one of the greatest Divers of her generation.

There’s no way to know.

What I know is that when she chooses to fight at my side, I want it to be because she decided to be there.

I store the registration receipt.

One of the points I’d carried since coming back is finally settled.

For today, that’s enough.

I go back to the dormitory, eat without opening a single factory report, and ignore two notifications Richard can handle on his own. I shower, set Kraken against the bed, and spend the rest of the night doing something that’s starting to feel exotic.

Nothing.

I wake to voices in the courtyard.

The dormitory window is half open, letting in the cold morning air. I get up, stretch my left arm out of habit, and still find it strange not to feel any trace of yesterday’s injury.

Five thousand OXI move through my body in a different way now. Denser. Easier to compress.

I leave that for later as I step to the window.

The campus is starting to fill. Cadets cross the paths between dormitories, training fields, and administrative buildings. Some carry weapons. Others walk with food in their hands, incomplete uniforms, and the typical expression of someone who hasn’t quite woken up.

A girl catches my attention.

She must be about fourteen.

She stands near a fork in the path, an oversized bag hanging off her shoulder and a sheet of paper open in her hands. She turns the paper, looks at a sign, goes back to the paper, then searches for some building that clearly isn’t where she expected it to be.

Newly arrived.

I watch two people pass her without stopping.

I whistle.

The girl looks around.

I whistle again and raise a hand out the window.

She finally finds me on the third floor.

Her face takes on that polite expression of someone waiting for a stranger to explain how to reach the right dorm.

I point up.

She frowns.

I repeat the gesture.

This time she follows it as her eyes rise.

And the map slips a few centimeters between her fingers.

The ocean sky covers the whole Academy. The morning light passes through kilometers of suspended water, forming shifting bands over the towers. Great shadows swim far above, slow and distant, while clear currents cross the blue like rivers inside another ocean.

The girl stands there, looking.

I smile and step away from the window.

Everyone needs to find something beautiful in this place.

Without it, surviving starts to lose its meaning and becomes just a routine of avoiding the next death.

I grab my clothes.

The thought brings my mother almost immediately.

Then Lili.

In the middle of Safe Harbor, the Deepwarden, Alden, factories, rankings, and wars that haven’t even started, it’s easy to let the goals grow until they take up everything.

But they were never the beginning.

The beginning was a house in District 4.

My mother trying to decide which bills could wait.

Lili growing up in a world where water was something adults discussed in low voices.

I’d crossed Thirstfall in the other life for many reasons. Some noble. Some idiotic. After losing people, I kept piling up causes until I almost forgot which one existed before all the rest.

My family.

It always was.

And a Rank S Water Strand is waiting on an answer.

Rae has picked a private room on the second floor of the instructors’ building.

I knock twice.

"Come in."

He sits at a narrow table with coffee, documents, and a window open to the campus. His glasses rest lower on his nose while he reads something.

When I come in, he closes the report.

"I figured you’d come in the morning."

"I figured you’d figure that."

Rae points to the chair.

I sit.

He studies me for a few seconds.

I do the same.

It’s easy to look at that man and remember the useful parts.

Rae understands politics better than almost anyone I know. He can read people, open doors, create debts without putting anything on paper, and turn small favors into enormous positions.

He’d also betrayed me.

In the other life, I trusted him for years. I handed over information, plans, and parts of myself I gave to almost no one.

When the right moment came, he chose the side that offered more.

I won’t make the same mistake.

Rae will still be useful. I’ll pull information, influence, protection, and everything I can wring out of that relationship.

And when the moment comes for one of us to bring the other down, I won’t wait for him to move his hand.

This time, I’ll pull the rug out first.

"So," Rae says, "you’ve decided to accept my gesture of good faith."

"I’ve decided to find out what your good faith costs."

A small smile appears.

"A Rank S Water Strand, as I recall."

"That’s the price. I’m asking about the cost."

Rae leans back in his chair.

"I like talking to you more now. When you got to the Academy, you still pretended favors could exist without consequences."

"When I got to the Academy, I had fewer things you wanted."

"That too."

He doesn’t try to deny it.

Better that way.

"I want an introduction to Kaelen."

I stay quiet.

Rae continues.

"You’re in a curious position. Rank C in a few weeks, the Hadal Notoriety Ranking, a direct relationship with Rahul Sharma, a partnership with Leona Hartwell, and responsible for a product half of Azure Prime has started looking for. Yesterday, you even negotiated distribution inside the Academy with Dean."

"Rae, if you wanted to compliment my résumé, you could have sent a letter."

"I’m explaining why your opinion has started to carry institutional weight."

He pulls a document to one side.

"Kaelen watches results. Dean has formal authority, years of service, and a consolidated structure around him. I have other qualities, but the Director doesn’t hand out influence based on potential."

"You want me to help turn your potential into results."

"I want my name to come up in the conversation when Kaelen asks how Silver Fang found space inside the Academy."

I tilt my head.

"You didn’t find that space."

"I didn’t say I want credit for the contract."

"Then be specific."

Rae folds his hands on the table.

"I want you to tell the right truth. That I was useful to your staying here. That I smoothed contacts, reduced conflicts when I could, and that my involvement made a more productive relationship possible between you and the institution."

I let out a short laugh.

"’Reduced conflicts.’"

"In some cases."

"You nearly started a war inside the observatory because you thought irritating Dean was funny."

"The result was positive."

"For you."

"The best results usually are."

That’s Rae.

I let the provocation pass.

"You want me to lie to Kaelen."

"No. I want you to select which truths deserve emphasis."

I spend a few seconds looking at him.

The phrasing is exactly the kind of thing that makes Rae dangerous. He almost never has to fabricate a whole lie. He just arranges real facts until they produce the conclusion he wants.

"One meeting," I say. "When Kaelen calls about the LDP, I can mention your part in my staying and in the political stability around my projects."

Rae stays quiet, waiting for the rest.

"I won’t attack Dean for you. I won’t invent facts. I won’t accept any bond of loyalty, and this doesn’t become future credit you can call in whenever you want."

"For someone receiving a gift, you’ve brought a lot of conditions."

"We stopped calling it a gift when you explained what you wanted."

He smiles.

"Fair."

"And the Strand goes to the inbox I gave you yesterday."

"It’s already being prepared for delivery."

That makes me narrow my eyes.

"You were sure I’d accept?"

"I was sure you’d think about your family before you thought about me."

I don’t answer.

Rae had hit the mark.

And I hate it when he gets things like that right.

"There’s another part," he says.

"Of course there is."

"When I secure a formal meeting with Kaelen about some projects I’m structuring, I want you to go in with me."

I cross my arms.

"As a mascot?"

"As proof."

"Of what?"

"That relevant people choose to work with me."

The answer comes with no shame at all.

Rae stands and goes to the window.

"Institutional politics doesn’t run on titles alone, Sands. Kaelen can look at Dean and see decades of results. He can look at me and see a competent instructor with ambition. If I walk into that room with someone who became a Ranker, built a company, and brought outside relationships into the Academy, the reading changes."

"You want to use my reputation."

"I want to associate my name with results that already exist."

"That sounds like the more elegant definition for using my reputation."

Rae laughs quietly.

"And you want a Rank S Water Strand you couldn’t buy in a shop even if you dumped Scales all over the counter."

He goes back to the chair.

"We’re using each other. I think it’s healthy to admit it."

On that, I agree.

I think of my mother again.

Of the dry sky on Earth.

Of the chance for Lili to spend part of her childhood without hearing anyone calculating water.

Plates I can manage.

The factory will make more.

The LDP will make even more.

A Rank S Strand depends on access.

Rae is selling access.

"One meeting," I answer. "I go in with you. I don’t lie for you, I don’t take on your war with Dean, and I don’t promise to repeat the favor."

"For now, that works."

"Don’t turn ’for now’ into an expectation."

He raises his hands in a theatrical surrender that convinces no one.

"No expectations."

Liar.

But at least he’s a predictable liar when he believes he’s winning.

The interface appears between us.

[Private Commercial Agreement proposed.]

I read every line before accepting.

Nothing about loyalty.

Nothing about ongoing support.

A Rank S Water Strand in exchange for participation in a future institutional meeting and limited recognition of Rae’s political contribution.

I accept.

[Agreement registered.]

Rae closes the interface.

"You really do read everything."

"I learned from bad people."

"You should thank them."

"Some of them got my thanks."

He notices there’s something behind the answer, but he doesn’t ask.

A runic clock on the wall marks the change of the hour.

Rae looks at it.

"Perfect."

"What?"

"My next guest arrived early."

I didn’t know there was another guest.

Footsteps approach down the corridor.

Rae adjusts his glasses and pulls a third chair up to the table.

The knock comes right after.

"Come in."

The door opens.

The man who steps through the entrance wears a dark coat with discreet Deepwarden detailing. Clean appearance, administrative posture, no effort to look dangerous. I recognize him before Rae even stands to greet him.

Joseph.

My body stays still, but something old tightens in my chest.

In the other life, Joseph would rise far.

He’d become Valerius’s right hand.

Before that, he’d kill Garen.

And years later, Rae would kill Joseph and take exactly the place he’d earned beside the most powerful man in the Deepwarden.

Joseph doesn’t know that yet.

He enters the room, greets Rae easily, and then looks at me, curious about the presence of a cadet in a meeting he probably takes for political.

Rae offers a polite smile.

While the two of them shake hands, I finally understand something else about that morning.

I’m not just negotiating with the man who would one day betray me.

I’m sitting across from two rungs of the same ladder.

Joseph will still step on Garen to climb. Rae, later, will step on Joseph.

And now the two of them are in front of me, alive, cordial, and convinced the future still belongs to them.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!