Chapter 75

  Raime hovered in front of Elia, close enough that the young man’s breath hitched in his throat. The world around them was silent—the river bubbling faintly behind, the cooling bodies of the salamanders hissing softly as steam lifted from charred scales, the barricade creaking under the weight of frozen onlookers.

  No one moved.

  The air felt tight, stretched thin.

  Raime’s eyes glowed like twin furnaces.

  “Why did you shoot me?” he asked, voice steady, far too steady.

  Elia tried to speak—tried—but only a strangled, terrified whimper came out. His legs trembled violently, and the two men holding him looked ready to bolt if Raime so much as twitched.

  Rinaldi forced himself forward.

  His boots scraped against stone as he stepped in front of the terrified kid—but not completely between them. Just close enough that Raime had to look at him.

  The old man’s jaw was locked, but he kept his tone level.

  “Stand down, son,” Rinaldi said. “The boy panicked.”

  Raime didn’t look away from Elia.

  “He shot at my head. With an incredible degree of accuracy I will add, I am surprised.”

  “He missed,” Rinaldi countered. “And I disarmed him.”

  “He didn’t, I just deflected the bullet with a barrier.”

  A faint pulse of light rippled behind Raime, like the afterglow of a dying star.

  “And that’s not the point anyway.”

  “No,” Rinaldi said, steady as a stone wall. “It isn’t.”

  Around them, all the people held their breath at once.

  Rinaldi exhaled slowly and raised his chin.

  “You agreed to take responsibility if your actions brought danger to my people,” he said, voice carrying across the barricade. “So listen well—because I’m holding you to it.”

  Raime’s gaze finally shifted to him.

  Not softened.

  Just shifted.

  “You came here,” Rinaldi continued, “and wiped out a threat none of us could have handled. You saved lives. Fine. Good. I’m grateful.”

  He gestured around at the people behind him.

  “But you also walked in alone, without a plan we could rely on, and forced our hand. You put pressure on everyone here. Fear and pressure make men do stupid things.”

  Raime’s expression hardened, jaw tightening.

  “And that excuses him shooting at me?”

  “No,” Rinaldi said. “It doesn’t.”

  The old man stepped closer—close enough that Raime could have snapped his neck with a thought, close enough that several people gasped.

  “But I’ll be damned,” Rinaldi said, “if I let you kill him for it.”

  Something flickered behind Raime’s eyes.

  Anger. Hurt. Something else darker, sharper.

  “I never killed any person in my life, and I don’t want to start now.”

  He slowly turned his full attention on Elia.

  “Why?” Raime asked him again, voice low. “Why did you pull that trigger?”

  Elia swallowed. Once. Twice. His lips cracked when he tried to speak.

  “I—I thought… you were…” He forced the words out. “You’re too strong. Too strong to be safe. You killed them like—like animals. Like it was nothing. Like you were enjoying it.”

  A murmur rippled through the crowd.

  Raime’s face stilled.

  “You think I enjoyed this?”

  “I… I don’t know!” Elia shouted, voice cracking. “But you aren’t human anymore! No one should do what you just did! Nobody!”

  Raime’s expression tightened—not with rage, but something colder.

  Something heavier.

  Elia flinched.

  Raime looked past him—toward the bodies, the portal, the devastation.

  “I killed them because I had to,” he said. “And I did it while improving my control on my powers, because these monsters, these weak pathetic walking salamanders are the least of our problem. Much worse expect us in the near future.”

  Silence.

  The kind that pressed on the lungs.

  Raime lifted his head again, eye burning brighter—not in fury, but conviction.

  “And I did it so none of you had to die here today.”

  The people looked around themselves, while Rinaldi’s gaze softened. Just a fraction.

  Raime scanned the group, meeting the eyes of every man and woman staring back at him—fearful, awestruck, conflicted.

  “I won’t apologize for protecting my town,” he said. “Or my family.”

  His voice dropped lower.

  “But if anyone shoots at me again… I will not hold back next time, and trust me I can do worse than just kill you.”

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  A shiver passed through the entire barricade.

  Rinaldi stepped forward, planting himself firmly between Raime and the others.

  “Then hear this too,” he said. “As long as you fight for this town, you’re under my protection. And under my rules.”

  Raime tilted his head. “Rules?”

  “Yeah.” Rinaldi squared his shoulders. “No killing my people unless they strike to kill you first. No acting alone when it endangers the town. And if you want to help us, really help us—we work together. No lone-wolf shit that leaves us scrambling behind you.”

  He paused.

  “Can you agree to that?”

  Raime looked at him.

  It wasn’t anger stopping him—it was the weight of what those words meant. Cooperation. Limitation. Accountability. Trust.

  The pause stretched—thin, fragile, like the instant before a wire snaps.

  Then:

  “No.”

  The word dropped like a stone in water, sending ripples through everyone present.

  Rinaldi frowned. “No?”

  “I don’t agree,” Raime said, tone calm… but edged. “I’ll protect this city. I’ll protect my family. I’ll do everything I can to keep people alive. But I’m not putting myself under the orders of someone who can’t even control his own men.”

  A ripple of shock moved through the barricade.

  “Raffaele—” Rinaldi began.

  “No,” Raime said again, sharper. “It’s time everyone here understands something. This world isn’t ruled by your laws anymore. Or your old structures. Or whatever chain of command you’ve dragged out from before Integration.”

  His gaze swept over the group—cold, unblinking, unshaken.

  “Now? Power makes the rules. Capability makes the rules. And right now, none of you are in any position to enforce anything on me.”

  Murmurs burst out at once—fear, anger, disbelief.

  Rinaldi’s jaw set, his eyes narrowing. “Careful, boy. That sounds real close to dictatorship.”

  “Dictators want obedience,” Raime replied. “Kings want subjects. I want neither.”

  He pointed toward the river—toward the steaming field of corpses, ash, and butchered salamanders stretching like a burnt carpet.

  “I did that so none of you died today. I’ll keep doing things like that when I have to. But I won’t be tied down by people who still think this world works the way it did last month.”

  Silence followed—heavy, choking.

  No one seemed sure whether to agree, recoil, or brace for something worse.

  Raime then turned his gaze back to Elia—who let out a shaky breath when Raime’s eyes met his.

  “And speaking of accountability,” Raime said, “he tried to kill me.”

  Elia’s knees buckled. One of the men holding him tightened their grip instinctively.

  “Whatever reason he had,” Raime continued, “he aimed and fired at another human. That’s attempted murder. You don’t get to hide behind ‘pressure’ for that.”

  Rinaldi exhaled slowly. “And what exactly do you think his punishment should be?”

  “Simple,” Raime said. “He works.”

  Elia blinked, confused and pale.

  “He goes in custody at night,” Raime said. “A cell, a locked room, whatever you have. And during the day he works on building the city’s defenses. Every day. No rifles. No weapons. He’s a Marksman class right? So giving him a gun again is out of the question.”

  A wave of whispers surged—surprise, outrage, reluctant agreement.

  “For how long?” Rinaldi asked quietly.

  Raime didn’t even hesitate.

  “Until I say so.”

  Rinaldi’s eyes tightened with warning.

  “How long, Raime?”

  Raime looked Elia in the eyes again—measuring, judging the trembling young man who had nearly killed him.

  “Five years.”

  The reaction was instant.

  “What?!”

  “That’s insane!”

  “Five—five years?!”

  “He’s just a kid!”

  “It was a mistake!”

  “He panicked!”

  “That’s too much—”

  A few others didn’t argue.

  “He tried to shoot him.”

  “That’s attempted murder.”

  “If he didn’t block—”

  Another finished. “He’d be dead.”

  Rinaldi clenched his jaw hard enough that the muscles twitched beneath his skin.

  He didn’t shout—he didn’t need to. His glare alone silenced half the noise.

  “Five years,” he repeated slowly, turning it over, tasting the weight of it. “That’s a long damn time.”

  “It’s less than he’d get before all this,” Raime said. “And during Integration, it’s worse. Five years of lost growth, lost chances, lost strength. It’s a punishment that matters.”

  A few of the older fighters actually nodded—grimly, reluctantly. People who had lived long enough to know the difference between justice and permissiveness.

  The younger ones looked horrified.

  Elia looked like he might faint.

  Rinaldi breathed in once, deeply.

  Then again.

  The wind carried the smell of burnt flesh from the river.

  The silence of the dead lay behind Raime like a shadow stretching across the water.

  When Rinaldi finally spoke, his voice was low, heavy, older than a moment ago:

  “…People aren’t going to like this.”

  Raime’s reply came without hesitation.

  “I’m not here to be liked, I’m here to prevent our world from becoming another one of those portals you see around.”

  The crowd swallowed as one.

  He wasn’t shouting.

  He wasn’t threatening.

  He wasn’t posturing.

  He simply said it like it was a fact of nature. Like gravity.

  Rinaldi studied him—really studied him. The boy he thought he knew. The man standing in front of him now.

  Finally, he let out a breath that sounded halfway between a curse and surrender.

  “Fine,” he said. “He serves the sentence.”

  Elia made a broken noise.

  Some people shouted.

  Some stared.

  Some backed away from Raime like he was wildfire in human shape.

  But Rinaldi lifted a hand, and they all fell silent.

  His gaze met Raime’s.

  “I hope to God you stay on our side.”

  “I’m on the side of the people I care about,” he said. “If the town is part of that, good. If not—don’t get in my way.”

  The crowd felt the meaning like a punch to the ribs.

  For a moment, no one breathed.

  Then Raime turned away—away from the portal’s glow, toward the clearing he had turned into a graveyard.

  Leaving the barricade behind him buzzing with fear, anger, and the dawning realization of a truth none of them wanted to admit:

  Power had changed hands today.

  And they hadn’t even noticed until he spoke.

  He launched himself into the air, leaving the ruined quarter behind. The cold wind hissed around him, tugging at the edges of his cloak. He didn’t care. His mind was still taut with anger.

  Accountable. For saving their lives. For stepping in when nobody else could.

  The words echoed all the way back to the street where his family lived. By the time he landed in front of his home, the anger had burned down into something tighter, heavier—reflection.

  The house was empty.

  Lights off. Doors locked. The faint psychic impression of his family lingered in the walls—recent, but not immediate. They were probably out in the city helping, checking on neighbors, doing what they could.

  Raime exhaled, shoulders easing. Good. They were safe enough for now.

  He stepped inside, shutting the door behind him with a faint push of telekinesis. The weight of his morning settled on him as he crossed into the kitchen. His core pulsed faintly at the edge of his awareness—thin, depleted, a bare twenty percent left after the salamanders and the reckless drain from his experiments.

  He had learned things though.

  His core responded faster now, more fluidly. He’d hammered out several inefficiencies in how he cycled energy. His physical body—despite the missing arm, and the eye—had worked well enough.

  Maybe that was why the anger had faded so quickly. Today had been ugly—but productive.

  He dropped the scavenged supplies onto the counter. All the food and snack went into the pantry, sorted by habit more than thought. Tools and miscellaneous items followed into the cabinets his family prepared.

  Only after everything was put away did the hunger finally claw up again, sharp and insistent.

  Right. His body was repairing itself. It needed fuel.

  Raime cooked without thinking—meat seared in the pan, eggs, leftover rice, whatever he could stack into something dense and filling. The scent filled the house in minutes, and he ate as if he was in a rush, expression distant as the meal vanished piece by piece. The hunger eased, but the tiredness didn’t.

  His core was still a dim, aching ember inside his chest.

  He sat cross-legged in the living room, one hand resting on his knee, the other side of his body balanced by an invisible push of telekinetic force. He closed his eyes and eased his mind downward, inward, toward the rhythm of his core.

  Part of him slipped into meditation, guiding the slow regeneration as Neimar taught him, encouraging the cellular repairs along his scars, bones, and torn muscle. The hum of energy currents filled his senses in steady waves.

  But another part of his mind reached for one of the stone tablets left in its spatial ring.

  The first lines lit in faint blue as he fed it a trickle of energy.

  Theory of Channel Foundation — Primer.

  Raime’s lips curled faintly in satisfaction.

  If the System wouldn’t build channels for him… he would build them himself. Piece by piece. One by one.

  He flipped to the first diagram, a web of interlocking lines and nodes representing proto-channels branching from a core.

  Yes, he thought, his mind settling into that cool, hungry clarity he’d grown to rely on. This… I can work with this.

  Meditation and study merged—one half of him rebuilding, the other half unraveling the secrets of the core’s architecture.

  He will study and heal until his family returned, they’ll have to know what happened today, and they’ll have to plan for the future.