📍 A.M.O. Guild Hall — Quest Board | Morning
Kiyoshi saw it from across the room.
Thirty gold coins. The number sat at the top of the quest listing like it was daring someone to read the rest.
"Sakura." He pointed. "That one."
She read it. "It's a long journey."
"That's why it pays thirty. A D-rank quest caps at five coins. This one is six times that." He was already moving toward the desk. "We're going."
She looked at him for a moment — the particular look she had developed over the past two months for when he was right about something and she wasn't going to say so directly.
"Fine," she said. "Let's talk to Kelly."
Kelly was the kind of AMO staff member who delivered quest briefings the way a doctor delivers a diagnosis — thorough, unhurried, watching your face for the moment you understood what you'd agreed to.
"There's a witch in the old town," she said. "Goes by Galfi. She needs a letter delivered to the Elfior noble family mansion — specifically to Garion, head of the Leaf family." She set the route map on the desk. "Twenty-day journey. The letter is sealed. Do not let anyone see the contents. She was very specific about that."
Kiyoshi looked at the map. Then at the thirty gold coins listed at the top.
Twenty days. A sealed letter to a noble family. A witch who apparently cannot deliver it herself.
He filed the questions away for later. "We'll take it."
📍 The Old Town | Morning
The old town had a specific quality of age that the rest of the city didn't — not just old buildings, but buildings that seemed to have opinions about still standing. The streets narrowed, the stonework darkened, the shop signs were carved rather than painted. It smelled of dried herbs and something burnt and something older than both.
"I've heard the magic and weapon shops here are incredible," Sakura said, looking at the storefronts as they passed. "People come from other cities."
"Later," Kiyoshi said. "Quest first."
The shop called Galfigic sat between two buildings that leaned toward each other overhead like they were sharing a secret. The door creaked when Kiyoshi pushed it open. Dust moved in the lamplight. Shelves crowded every wall — jars, bundles, things wrapped in cloth, things that shifted when he looked at them from the corner of his eye.
"Hello?" he called. "Anyone here?"
Something moved in the shadows at the back.
The witch was short, ancient, toothless, and carrying a lamp that threw her face into sharp relief from below. She moved toward them slowly, lips moving in something that might have been a greeting or might have been an incantation. Her wand traced small patterns in the air as she looked them over.
"We're here for the quest," Kiyoshi said. "The letter delivery."
She studied him for a moment longer than felt comfortable.
Then she produced a sealed envelope and a folded map from somewhere in her layers of clothing.
"You'll find Garion at the Elfior mansion," she said. Her voice was dry and unhurried, like wind through old wood. "Tell him it comes from Galfi. The seal does not leave intact if anyone else opens it — he will know." She pressed both into Kiyoshi's hands. "Safe journey. And do not let anyone see what's inside."
"Understood," Kiyoshi said. "Thank you for the work."
She was already turning away.
They stepped back out into the street. Behind them, the door clicked shut. Then, faintly, the sound of something — a broom handle scraping stone — and when Kiyoshi looked back, the small dark shape of the witch was rising above the roofline, silhouetted against the morning sky, and gone.
He stared at the empty air above the shop.
"Why," he said, "does she need us to deliver a letter if she can just fly there on that?"
"There's a sea crossing on the route," Sakura said. She wasn't looking at him — she was looking at the map. "Flying over open water drains MP constantly, no rest. She'd need well over three thousand MP just to cross. Continuous magic use at that scale — she'd faint halfway and fall into the sea."
Kiyoshi absorbed this.
Then he looked at the broom propped against the wall outside the neighbouring shop.
"I have All type," he said, thoughtfully.
Sakura looked up from the map. "Don't."
"I'm just saying — if it works for her—"
"Kiyoshi."
He was already picking up the broom.
"What's the incantation?" he asked. "For flying."
She stared at him with the expression of someone watching a person make a decision they cannot be stopped from making. Then she exhaled.
"Imagine it lifting. Then say — the wind sprite who rules over the sky lent me the art of flying."
"That's very specific."
"Magic usually is."
He sat on the broom. Closed his eyes. Felt genuinely ridiculous. Imagined the broom rising — held the feeling clearly, the way the skill activations worked, intention first —
The wind sprite who rules over the sky lent me the art of flying.
The broom lurched upward.
Then it went.
He shot above the rooftops with the sudden violence of something that had been waiting for permission, punching through the level of the chimneys and into the open sky above the old town, climbing fast, clouds below him suddenly and then beside him and then — the sun, brilliant and immediate, and nothing under him but air and the distant rooftops shrinking.
Oh no, he thought.
He pulled at the broom with everything he had, imagining it slowing, descending, stopping — the broom ignored all of it with complete indifference. It had a speed now. It was committed to the speed.
The ground was very far below.
Getting closer.
He was going to crash.
"SAKURAAAA—"
"GALO MOVI!"
Her voice from somewhere below, sharp and clear.
The broom shuddered. Slowed. Not enough — the angle was wrong, the ground still coming, he was seconds from—
He jumped.
Eyes shut. The air, the fall, the certainty of impact—
He opened his eyes.
He was not on the ground.
He was in Sakura's arms. She was standing in the middle of the street with his full weight and looking at him with an expression that had not yet decided between relief and fury.
[ Skill: Lightning Speed — Active ]
She set him down with more care than her expression suggested he deserved.
"What," she said, very quietly, "were you thinking."
"I knew you'd catch me," he said.
She hit the back of his head with an open palm. Not hard. Hard enough.
"Next time," she said, "you're on your own."
He rubbed his head. Looked up at the sky where the broom was still drifting in a slow arc over the old town, unoccupied, entirely unbothered.
She's pretty incredible, he thought. He would not be saying that out loud.
"Let's go get ready," he said instead. "Twenty days is a long trip."
📍 City Streets — Toward Noki Port | Noon
They set off when the sun was directly overhead — packs on, quest documents sealed, the map folded in Kiyoshi's inner pocket alongside the letter he was absolutely not going to open.
The port was half a day's walk south.
After that, the sea.
✦ CODEX — Chapter Eight ✦
World Archive: Entries Relevant to Chapter Eight
ENTRY 035 — ON THE ELFIOR FAMILY
Noble house Elfior. Elven bloodline. Garion is the current head, referred to as the Leaf family within the house — a title denoting the ruling branch.
Their mansion is located twenty days' travel from Varenhal by land and sea. The nature of their connection to Galfi the witch is unknown at time of this entry.