Noem leaned against the stone at the one unblocked exit from the tunnel. The smoke coiled around him like an old friend, but he couldn’t feel the apex’s attention on him. It was focused on Mona, just as he’d hoped. Within the hour, explosions would rock the quarry and mark the start of Mona’s career as a bonded cultivator.

Or they would herald her first great failure.

He shook his head and forced away the mixture of self-pity from being overlooked by the apex and a strange amount of worry for Mona’s well being. She wasn’t his sister. Yet she was so bubbly and bright that he couldn’t find it in him to hate her.

“Makes no fucking sense.” Noem ran his fingernails over the wall as he stared up at the smoke. “Why does she get to be important? And why can’t I hate her? It would make things so much easier.”

{Warning: proximity detectors activated. House breach detected.}

Panic blossomed in Noem’s chest, and without even thinking, he grabbed at his inventory and pulled as hard as he could. There was no time to worry about things breaking; anything he left in that house was as good as gone.

A veritable mountain of electronics, valuables, and weapons spilled out onto the path. He took a step back and shook out his hands.

“Good thing I’m paranoid as hell.” He chuckled as sweat beaded on his forehead. He’d lose his carefully crafted interface and a few screens, but that was more than acceptable.

{Warning: all connections lost to hardwired devices in the house. All processes paused until a sufficient power supply is acquired. No data pertaining to possible whereabouts remain within the house.}

Noem sighed in relief after the moment of blatant panic. “Display the final moments of the security footage.”

Images appeared over Noem’s connected contact lenses. They were blurry, and more than a little stilted from how quickly he’d yanked the power from the cameras, but one look was enough to prove his worries right.

He didn’t see a single person from the university in his house. All of them wore anonymity clothes and body-projecting suits, so there was absolutely nothing unique he could gather on any one individual. Though that itself was a hint. Regular thieves weren’t that thorough, and if they were another branch of the university, they wouldn’t bother hiding themselves to that degree.

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“Ajiana finally made her move, huh.” Noem sighed and looked down at everything he owned. When it was all spread out on the ground, it was pitifully lacking. Weapons, electronics, and things he could sell or barter if he needed credits. “This pile of shit could belong to anyone.”

Except for the oversized backpack he’d sewn miniature stasis fields and resilience matrixes into. That very much belonged to Mona. She’s personalized it with pins and patches she’d made herself in the short time she’d been awake, and in that one thing, there was more proof of her existence than Noem’s.

For four years, his entire existence had been for her. No matter how much he repeated it to himself, it just didn’t sink in that she didn’t need him any more. She was as much a prodigy as he was with how quickly she learned skills and how easily she manipulated Qi, and she didn’t have the handicap of being bondless. Mona was, quite simply, a better version of him.

He should’ve been proud. Or frustrated. Or angry, or sad, or even happy for Mona. But the more he thought about it, the less he felt. This was the first chapter in her new story. He was the introductory character that got sidelined when the real cast was introduced. Or even the first villain that Mona had to defeat.

The goddess had called him a monster, after all. Maybe Mona was a much better liar than he thought, and all this was one complex manipulation to get what she wanted. People didn’t get chosen for no reason, after all.

Noem closed his stinging eyes to keep the smoke out. That was the real question, wasn’t it? Why was Mona chosen, and not someone from Terret? Why did she have to be pulled away from ‘Earth’ to be Terret’s hero? Was there something so wrong with everyone native to the world that an outsider was needed?

He laughed weakly and pushed the thought out of his mind. “Who am I to ponder the whims of gods?” He whispered to the smoky winds with false grandioseness. “The goddess could’ve been full of shit for all I know, and Mona’s getting played for all she’s worth. Or she’s actually telling the truth, and there’s some much bigger problem that only Mona can solve for some reason.”

Alone with his thoughts, Noem found he didn’t have much to say. His duty was done, leaving a hole of purpose. And he had nothing to fill it with. So he waited for the echoing blast of his explosives.

Minutes passed. The smoke coiled tighter around him, but it couldn’t press through the thin layer of Qi he always had around him. It wasn’t a skill, either; just a small amount of Qi leaking out of his body that he kept close.

Pain exploded up his arm. Blood trickled down his clothes, stoppered a little by his Qi, and a chunk of razor-sharp Qi shattered on the rocks.

Noem snapped to attention and whirled to focus on where the projectile had come from. A trail through the smoke told him that it had come from the surface above. He grit his teeth and activated Resilient and Focus, bent down to grab his knife and bow, then took the accompanying quiver and broke a foam orb over the rest.

It set in seconds, covering and protecting everything from the smoke and attackers. He wrapped his quiver around his waist and strapped his knife to his thigh, then nocked an arrow infused with a Heavy Blow and trailed his focus through the smoke above. As if on cue, more sharpened off-white projectiles burst through the smoke and rained down on his reinforced shell of Qi.

They impacted uselessly on him and burst in a shower of ice that melted long before it hit the ground. Someone with an ice or water bond. That didn’t fit the one person’s bond Noem knew about from the university, but that didn’t mean they weren’t the attackers. Of course, it was much more likely that the same people in anonymity suits had sent half their group after him while the other half ransacked his home.

Noem squinted and pulled back the arrow. The holes in the smoke had mostly closed, but with the aid of Focus, he caught a glimpse of Qi shining through the pinprick. He planted his feet and activated Steady for a split second, then let the arrow fly.