Ranvir woke up to Menace’s yowling and pleading. Caterwauling filled their suite with the kitten’s abject displeasure. Sighing, stepped into the living area to see what all the fuss was about.

Menace, hackles raised like it’d been struck by lightning, had climbed onto the tallest shelf and intermittently hissed and wailed. The particular pitch falling right in the zone between incredibly annoying and wildly fascinating. In the opposite corner of the room, a huge coat rack loomed, laden with floor-length jackets. Except it was far too packed with coats for just Ranvir and two children.

He caught the glint of Vulture’s eye peaking above its feathers. It stared directly into the unnerved cat’s soul. Vasso stumbled out of his room wearing in pajamas and bare feet. Ranvir winced as he saw the red spots on his heel and toes from walking so much. He’d been keeping it down with restoratives, but Vasso was still a kid and overfeeding him medicine wasn’t a risk Ranvir was willing to take.

Ranvir plucked the kitten from the shelf with his powers and plunked him back in Frija’s bed. His daughter, carefully balancing the act of being a deep and shallow sleeper, didn’t even stir at the distraught pet’s sudden arrival.

“It’s huge,” Vasso muttered, glancing at the bird.

Vulture raised its head from between its folded wings to examine him more closely. Despite the Vulture’s much slimmer features, its skull was probably still as big as Vasso’s. ‘Unnervingly big’ was the only proper description that fit Vulture.

“I’m going to ask for baths to be drawn,” Ranvir said. “Why don’t you jump back into bed until the water’s hot?”

Vasso halfway turned to look at Ranvir, always keeping one eye on Vulture’s hulking form, and smiled. “Thanks…” he trailed off as if uncertain before nodding and heading off.

Ranvir sighed and grabbed his actual coat from his space and headed down to talk with the service people. It took him a while to understand why they’d all gone pale as he’d arrived to ask for help. Apparently, he wasn’t supposed to come to the help, they should come to him.

He simply shook his head and wondered how a society could function like this, and headed back up. On the stairs, he finally noticed it. His coat had felt slightly odd to put on, though he hadn’t been able to place it immediately. Now, as his bare feet rubbed on the clean carpeted steps, the stairway lit with little globes of candle-sized fires, a fresh breeze carrying the old scent of the overturned lake to him. The wind didn’t bite like he’d grown used to. The coat wasn’t dragging on his skin like it’d done for the past month and a half, and his feet weren’t soaking the carpet.

Ranvir smiled as he looked down at his hands. His dry hands. Testing the bond, he found it unresponsive. Some mana waited on the other side, but not much. A utilitarian amount, rather too little to fight with. Made sense why they continued the bond until the animal was subsumed.

Even now, he could sense his part responding to Vulture and emitting its own signals. Rubbing his hands together, he could feel how truly dry they’d gotten over the month. His hands had always been rough, just from sitting the forge with his mother, to training with the hammer, then onto hull cleaning.

Hull cleaning had easily been a terror to them. The sharp tools and splintery hulls already cut through his callouses with relative ease, but the constant water soaking his skin. Causing it to split and crack, weaken his toughened skin causing it to peel. Sure metal splattered onto his arms occasionally when working in the forge, and training might lead to a few unprotected hits, but the ache from the outermost layer of wrinkled skin to the innermost marrow of his bones day in and day out. No comparison.

And yet, Ranvir’s hands still felt like fresh strong callouses. His skin wasn’t splitting and though there were a few white spots of dead skin, it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as it should’ve been.

Continuing up the stairs, he rubbed his forearms until he realized what it was reminded him of. Sandstorm Rage. It was like he was pulling a low current of Ability through his body.

Now aware of what he was looking for, Ranvir found the sand mana. He was wrong. It wasn’t a low current of Rage. His spirit was constantly emitting Sandstorm Rage, focused mana. Ranvir’s body had learned to use an Ability all on its own.

“How?” he wondered, reaching their rooms. “Loce, do you know?”

The storm locust, living half in his body, half in his spirit, shuddered, an image popping into his mind. Ranvir startled, nearly stumbling over the doorsill. The pet’s image came through with far more clarity than ever before.

It was him, he recognized, though seen through a tether-sense so delicate it could sculpt out his features from how ambient mana reacted to his second-order physical matter. Space was crumbling and the pillar of stone he’d stood on was breaking apart, as space mana twisted unraveling the Orykto fold’s binding. His body flashed with sand mana, as Latresekt used Sandstorm Rage.

Ranvir sat down on the couch as he considered the implication. More than just storm mana had run rampant through his body after that. If his understanding of the situation was correct, he shouldn’t have survived the fold’s destruction. But he had. He’d been feeding on thólos mushrooms every day, heavily. Their main alchemical function was binding mana into a subject. It had bound the storm mana into him, though he hadn’t been able to control it. The thólos required insane amounts of power to do it, but had managed it. In that same moment, Sandstorm Rage had been flashed into his spiritual form.

The ability was weak. Barely worth mentioning. He might not get injured as easily or be a little stronger, but the effect was so weak no one had even noticed it.

For now, Ranvir thought. Unnoticed for now.

“Daddy,” Frija asked. Ranvir startled to find her with her hair soaked a deep red and in fresh clothes. Menace was clutched in her arms. Even he looked to have had a bath. “It’s your turn.”

Ranvir smiled. “Thanks, Firehearth,” he kissed her on the forehead as he got up.

The trip home was challenging. Making a space big enough to fit all three of them wasn’t a problem. Even adding Menace wasn’t an issue, but Vulture took up nearly as much space as the rest put together, and its spiritual weight was such that it he’d nearly been forced to make two trips.

Arriving back at his home, Ranvir realized he’d only the one beacon on Korfyi, the one in his basement. I should probably remedy that at some point, he thought as shepherded all of them out in front of his house.

Frija smiled and eagerly ran inside their shabby home. Vulture cried out a few times, its tether-sense questing out intently. Ranvir couldn’t tell if Amanaris was petitioning it, but the bird took off. Three powerful wing beats and it cleared the trees.

Ranvir listened as Frija jumped on her bed and got under the sheets, lifting them to play cavern with Menace. The roof was crooked. Many of the boards cut poorly. The material was fine, but the workmanship was less than stellar. Mortar squished out between bricks, and the house heavily favored Frija’s side, leaving little to him. There wasn’t a floor, just dirt on either side of the threshold.

He’d never thought of it as poor, but after seeing the houses of Belnavir, especially the inns they’d been treated to for the last two weeks, ‘it wasn’t much’ didn’t really seem to cut it. It was bad. Poor construction and poor living conditions.

Ranvir’d been coasting on the money he’d earned from the Tier 15 katapetra and the keys he’d gained from his previous contracts. If he truly took up Urityon contracts and got to work, then he could swiftly pay off Ione and get an actual house built.

This wasn’t the conditions he wanted to raise his daughter in, especially not when this world could provide so much better.

He looked down at Vasso, who was avoiding his gaze. And there wasn’t room for any expansion of the family, either.

Ranvir opened his mouth to speak, but caught himself. He’d been about to ask Vasso if he wanted to join them, but the kid might not respond well to that. ‘Learn to speak his language,’ the Elpir’s word resonated in his mind.

“Do you want to go to Elpir’s and grab your stuff? You can sleep on my bed tonight and we’ll go to the city tomorrow and get started on more permanent solutions?”

Vasso pursed his lips and looked up at Ranvir. Was that hope in his eyes, or did his mood sour at seeing Ranvir’s house? Vasso looked back down at the soil again and nodded. “Yes.”

“I’m probably never going to be ‘dad’,” Ranvir said, crouching next to him. “We’re too close in age. But if you want to, if you’ll let me, let us,” he gestured in Frija’s direction. “We’ll be your family. Names or no.”

The speech, small as it was, filled Ranvir with oddly shapes structures of yellow and purple, bumbling into each other and not quite fitting with the rest of his soul. He forced his face to be neutral as he waited for Vasso’s response.

“I…” Vasso’s voice was rough and breathy, barely audible if not for Ranvir’s Perception. “I’d like that.”

Ranvir nodded and smiled, relief flooding in like fresh, clean blue water, washing away the bumbling shapes within. “Hug?”

Vasso nodded silently and spread his arms. Ranvir swept him into the biggest beariest dad hug he could manage.