Chapter 14 The Pack Moves
They came at dawn.
Five of them in a triangle formation, walking through Helgard's main gate like a knife through butter. Black uniforms without a single crease. Boots that weren't even dirty despite the muddy roads. Every movement precise — no wasted steps, no heads turning without purpose.
Sentinel.
Helgard, which never truly woke before noon, snapped to attention. Merchants at the morning market packed up their goods faster than usual. Awakeners who'd normally be lounging outside cafés suddenly had urgent business elsewhere. Like small animals catching a predator's scent before seeing it.
Ren watched from the second-floor window of the inn. Behind him, Kael and Aela were already fully dressed.
"Who's leading?" Ren asked without turning.
Aela stood beside him, eyes narrowed. "Woman at the front. Silver hair, short sword on the left hip." A pause. "Rhea Callister. Lieutenant. B-Rank."
"You know her?"
"She had dinner at our house three times." Aela's tone was flat, like reading a weather report. "My father called her 'the most dependable.' Meaning: she follows orders without question, and she always finishes the job."
Ren studied Rhea Callister as she walked down the main street. Her face wasn't the face of a cruel person — calm, actually, almost bored. And that was what made her dangerous. Cruel people made mistakes out of emotion. Calm people only made mistakes if you forced them to.
"Their official mission is probably a routine security audit," Lyra said. "But we both know the real reason."
"Void Pulse," Ren murmured. "Central detected the anomaly, and they sent a unit to track the source."
"Exactly. And if they run a full inspection — rescan every recently registered Awakener — your identity won't hold up."
Ren turned from the window. "How long before they start inspections?"
Aela answered. "Standard Sentinel protocol for border towns: day one, observation. Day two, interviews with local officials. Day three, direct inspection. We have two days."
"What if we run?" Kael asked from the corner of the room. His voice was quiet, but there was hope in it — hope that the simplest answer was the right one.
"They'd get suspicious," Aela said. "A newly registered Awakener who showed up the day before Sentinel arrived, then vanished? That invites an investigation, not avoids one."
"Sit tight and hope the scan doesn't catch anything?" Kael tried again.
"Fifty percent odds or worse," Lyra said flatly. "And I don't like gambling with numbers like that."
Ren sat on the edge of the bed. All three options spun through his head — run, stay, or—
"Option three," he said. "We make them look the other way."
The plan was simple in concept, complicated in execution.
The warehouse district on Helgard's west side — a storage area where merchants and smugglers blended together until nobody could tell which was legal and which wasn't. If a mana explosion went off there, Sentinel would assume smuggler activity. And smugglers were a far more interesting priority than a registration audit.
"I can fabricate a false mana signature," Aela said. Her hands were already moving, fingers dancing through the air like she was weaving something invisible. "An illegal Enchanter-type signature — strong enough to trip Sentinel's sensor alarms, weak enough to look like amateur work."
"You know exactly how their sensors work," Ren said.
Aela smiled bitterly. "My father's legacy. Ironic, isn't it? Using the knowledge he gave me against the system he built."
Kael added: "Ren and I can be at the Guild Hall when the blast goes off. Perfect alibi — two D-Ranks waiting for a quest, too low-level to suspect."
Ren looked at both of them. Kael building the alibi. Aela rigging the explosion. Him coordinating the timing. For the first time, they weren't three people who happened to be together — they were a team.
"Execution time: tomorrow, nine in the morning. Right when Sentinel begins their observation rounds in the eastern district. Aela, how long do you need to prep the signature?"
"Two hours to build it, one minute to trigger it remotely."
"Do it tonight."
The explosion went off at exactly 9:02.
A flash of violet light from the warehouse district — not a big blast, but enough to make every mana sensor within a kilometer radius scream. The signature said: Illegal Enchanter, high activity, probable artifact smuggling operation.
From the Guild Hall window, Ren watched four of the five Sentinel agents move west in formation. Fast, efficient, no panic. Professional.
But one stayed behind.
A Sentinel agent at the Guild Hall entrance — a young man with an expression far too alert for someone just standing at a door. His eyes scanned every Awakener going in and out.
"Not perfect," Lyra said, "but enough. One agent without a portable scanner can't run a full inspection."
Ren gave a slight nod. Beside him, Kael sat with his hands folded on the table, looking like the most boring D-Rank Healer in the world. Perfect alibi.
Then something unplanned.
From the warehouse district — the direction of the blast — a scream. Not an adult's scream. Higher, thinner.
A child.
"Ren, don't—"
But Ren was already moving. Not as Eren Valk, not as a tactician calculating risks. As someone who heard a child screaming and couldn't just sit there.
He slipped out through the Guild Hall's back door, sprinting through narrow alleyways. Near the third warehouse from the end, a boy — maybe seven or eight — was pinned beneath a wooden shelf that had collapsed from the blast's shockwave.
Ren lifted the shelf off him. Too easily, too quickly. But no one was watching.
The boy stared up at him with wet eyes. "Thank you, mister."
Ren didn't answer. He just made sure the kid could stand, then disappeared into the alley before anyone else arrived.
Back at the Guild Hall, his heart hammered — not from the exertion, but from something heavier. That explosion was his plan. That collapsed shelf was a consequence of his plan. That child who'd nearly been hurt — that was his responsibility.
"You saved him," Lyra said softly.
"I'm the one who put him in danger."
Lyra didn't argue.
That night, in the room the town provided for official guests, Rhea Callister sat behind a desk with a holographic screen open.
Warehouse district report: illegal Enchanter signature, probable small-scale smuggling operation, perpetrator not found. Standard fare for a border town.
But Rhea didn't mark the case as closed.
She wrote in her notes: "Blast timing too precise. Signature too clean for amateurs. Requires further investigation."
One more thing caught her attention. When her team had passed the Guild Hall that morning, one of her agents reported something small: the registration clerk — name, Milo — had looked nervous when Sentinel walked by. Not ordinary nervous, but the kind of nervous that belonged to someone hiding something.
Rhea added a second note: "Registration clerk — Milo. Suspicious behavior. Low priority, but flag for follow-up."
She closed the screen and gazed out the window. Helgard at night looked like a town holding too many secrets.
Rhea Callister never left a town without cracking open at least one.