Chapter 31: BOUNTY RUSH

Sio returned to the table where the bounty notices still glowed on the communicator. His own photograph stared back beside a number large enough to make his stomach tighten.

"I cannot go home." The conclusion came quietly, and Mira remained behind him without answering immediately.

Sio touched the edge of the display. "Somebody sees this, follows me back to Luminara and eventually figures out where you are. Vise already proved they will use you to get to me."

"They will not do that twice." Mira’s voice sounded calm enough that Sio looked back at her.

"That sounded terrifyingly optimistic."

"It was a threat." Her faint smile failed to hide how tired she still was.

Arch pulled out a chair and sat beside them. "There is another option, although I suspect neither of you will enjoy hearing it."

Sio disliked the tone immediately, and Mira noticed the same thing. "What?"

Arch gestured around the house. "You stay here."

Mira stared at him. "With your son?"

"With my wife." Arch barely finished before Mira’s expression became dangerous again.

He lifted one hand defensively. "Please postpone that argument. You already have several others waiting."

"I have more than several." Mira folded her arms, and the wrap blouse drew close around her figure again as she looked around the house with entirely new suspicion.

"Nobody knows I married," Arch continued. "Nobody within Central Nexus knows where she lives, and this place is protected by precautions that have nothing to do with the usual network surrounding my doors. Mira can remain here without sharing Sio’s route or drawing hunters toward him."

Sio felt his stomach tighten before Mira even asked the obvious question. "And Sio?"

"He comes with me." Arch did not try dressing the answer up, and the room quieted again as he continued.

"His bounty will keep moving, and mine guarantees attention anywhere I remain for too long. Together, Sio and I turn every safe house into a countdown, which means we keep travelling until I understand how aggressively the Nexus intends to pursue us."

Sio looked down at his hands. They were the same hands that had opened portals faster than his eyes could follow, and something inside his own body had taken control while he was unconscious and used his first Claim with a fluency that made his own fumbling attempts feel childish.

The memory bothered him more each time he returned to it. "I want to go."

Mira looked toward him immediately. "Sio."

"I do not mean because of the bounty." He pushed himself upright, and although his body complained, he remained standing long enough to face both of them.

"I spent thirteen years trying to Claim something, and after finally succeeding I still don’t understand what I Claimed, why it happened or what my Scar is doing." His fingers curled slowly as he looked at his own hand. "Then something inside my body took control while I was unconscious and started using my ability better than I ever have, and I don’t understand that either."

He looked toward Arch, frustration gathering beneath the exhaustion in his face. "I nearly died in Vise’s room while half the things happening to me were still mysteries. I’m done waiting until something goes wrong before I learn what my own abilities can do."

Arch listened without interrupting, and Sio continued with a steadier voice as the thought finally took shape. "I wanted to travel because I thought freedom meant getting on a train and seeing somewhere I had never been. Vise taught me how quickly somebody stronger can decide where I am allowed to go, take Mum away from me and put me inside a room I cannot leave."

Mira’s expression softened as Sio looked again at the bandages around her wrists. "I do not want to spend the rest of my life being afraid of whatever I Claimed. I want to understand it well enough that the next person who decides my life belongs to them regrets trying."

"And when understanding it gets you hurt?" Mira asked, already knowing she was unlikely to enjoy the answer.

"I complain loudly and make everyone around me miserable." Sio rubbed at his aching shoulder, and some of the tension around Mira’s mouth finally loosened.

"That part I believe." She came closer and adjusted the collar of his shirt despite there being nothing obviously wrong with it.

Her fingers lingered there because both of them understood she needed something ordinary to do with her hands, while the closeness carried the familiar warmth Sio had spent most of his life taking for granted. "I do not like this."

"I know." Sio remained still while she continued fussing with the collar.

"I especially do not like leaving you alone with him." Mira tilted her head toward Arch, who immediately looked offended.

"I am sitting right here." Mira glanced at him without moving away from Sio.

"That was intentional."

She returned her attention to her son. "But staying beside you gives everyone chasing that bounty another way to control you. They already proved they are willing to take me just to make you cooperate, and I refuse to make that easy for the next person who tries."

Sio lowered his eyes toward her bandaged wrists. He hated the logic precisely because he could not find anything wrong with it.

"This is temporary." Mira nodded, although her fingers remained against his shirt for another moment.

"Temporary. You call me every day, and I mean every day rather than whenever you suddenly remember you have a mother."

"Every day." Sio knew better than to negotiate.

"When Arch tells you something obviously stupid, you ignore him." Mira raised her voice enough for Arch to hear, and the older man complained from across the room.

"That condition is unreasonable."

Mira looked toward him. "I have not forgiven you for secretly having a family."

"You have communicated that with remarkable efficiency." Arch’s son, who had remained near the far wall throughout most of the conversation, finally joined in.

"She is going to get along with Mum." Arch closed his eyes while Sio laughed before he could stop himself.

The movement hurt his ribs badly enough to turn the second half into a wince, but the sound still changed something inside the room. A little warmth remained afterward, making the house feel less like another stop on an escape route.

Sleep came quickly later that night, and the impossible city waited for him on the other side. Sio opened his eyes beneath architecture that had never learned how buildings were supposed to behave, where pale structures climbed over one another in impossible layers and bridges disappeared into walls that seemed farther away than distance should permit.

The creature remained threaded through the city as though the architecture had grown around its enormous body rather than imprisoned it. Too many eyes opened across its form when Sio appeared, each focusing independently before enough of them settled on him to make the attention feel almost physical.

It did not speak because it still could not speak any language Sio understood. Sio remained beyond the boundary that prevented the creature from reaching him and studied the entity that had crossed into his world desperate enough to tear his soul from his body.

Earlier encounters had usually begun with Sio preparing to retreat, but this time he stayed where he was and flexed fingers that carried none of the bruising his physical body had accumulated. "You know, something inside me used your ability today better than I can."

Sio watched several of the creature’s eyes narrow and found the reaction oddly satisfying. "I am choosing to believe that offended you."

A tentacle struck the invisible boundary with enough force to shake the nearby architecture, and Sio stared at the vibrating surface before nodding thoughtfully. "That definitely looked offended."

Another impact followed, but instead of retreating he raised one hand and formed a tiny black opening above his palm. The creature immediately stopped attacking and several of its eyes shifted toward the portal at once.

Sio noticed the change. He slowly altered the angle of the opening, watching the creature’s attention follow the movement with such precision that curiosity began replacing some of the instinctive unease he had always carried into this place.

He changed the angle again, and the creature watched closely while Sio studied every movement in return. Whatever relationship existed between them remained hostile, incomprehensible and probably extremely unhealthy, but Sio finally understood that learning about the Claim might not require the creature to speak.

It already understood its own power, and its reactions could become a language once Sio learned how to read them. For now, that was more progress than either of them had managed before.

Far beyond Arch’s hidden house, the bounties were already travelling farther than any of them could. Beneath a gambling hall in another kingdom, a criminal broker enlarged Sio’s photograph beside Arch’s while several Wayfarers around his table began arguing over routes and informants.

The enormous reward attached to Arch drew nervous laughter, but Sio’s younger face kept their attention considerably longer. Hundreds of kilometres away, a licensed hunter received the same notice while waiting for a train, abandoned the meal beside her and opened a regional map before the next departure was announced.

Inside a government intelligence office, Sio’s photograph appeared across several screens alongside orders to monitor transport routes and unusual spatial incidents. One analyst studied the name attached to his family record before quietly requesting every surviving file on Silas Eloran.

Somewhere outside every official Nexus registry, Fern and Caspian’s new designation reached a private channel. A woman read ROGUE HELIARCHS, smiled as though something expected had finally happened and sent them a meeting location without attaching a name.

Other notices kept moving through channels Sio did not know existed. Some recipients wanted Arch dead, others wanted the reward on Sio, while a smaller number ignored the money entirely and became interested in why Central Nexus suddenly cared so much about a nineteen-year-old nobody.

By midnight, people Sio had never met were already changing their plans because of him. He had spent years wanting to see the world, and by sunrise the world had begun looking for him first.