Joel did not wait until he was fully healed.
He waited until he could sit upright without the world tilting, until the tremor in his hands was something he could hide by folding them together, and until the taste of blood was no longer constant at the back of his throat. That, for him, was enough.
The request for council came quietly. Just a runner to the governing hall with a simple message: Joel can speak now.
Talia arrived first, followed closely by Dav, Evan, Cael, and Auntie Junia. A few others filtered in—sentinel captains, a pair of record keepers, Collie already seated near the wall with a slate balanced on her knee. No one rushed him. No one filled the silence with reassurance.
Joel sat at the table instead of a bed, shoulders wrapped in a thick cloak despite the warmth of the hall. His colour was still wrong—too pale, edges still drawn tight—but his eyes were clear.
Dale sat beside him constantly monitoring his signs.
Joel waited until everyone was seated.
"I'm alive," he said, voice rough with pain but steady. "That's the important part. I'll start there so no one feels the need to interrupt me."
A faint, strained huff of breath passed around the table. Not laughter, relief with nowhere to go.
Dav leaned back slightly, arms crossed. "You have the floor."
Joel nodded once, then closed his eyes—not in weakness, but in recall.
"It wasn't a hunt gone wrong," he said. "It was a hunt that stayed wrong."
He described the D-rank beast first. Its size, its patience. The way it tested the edges of their formation instead of charging. How it learned their rhythm too quickly.
"It wasn't enraged," Joel said. "It was… methodical. Like it expected to win eventually."
Cael's jaw tightened. "That's not typical for that rank. That's 'Leader' behaviour"
"Yeah," Joel agreed. "Which is why I sent the others back when I did. It wasn't about bravery. It was information that the Clan needed."
Talia's fingers curled once against the tabletop. She didn't interrupt.
Joel continued, he described the battle of attrition that followed, the constant testing and finally, recounting the moment his strength gradually failed him. The way his wounds accumulated until he couldn't defend and his legs had refused to answer and the cold clarity that came with knowing he could no longer outrun what was coming.
"I remember thinking," he said quietly, "that if it ended there, at least it would end with purpose."
He opened his eyes.
"Then the shadow passed over me."
Silence settled deeper.
"It wasn't like a beast arriving," Joel said. "No roar or pressure wave. Just… an overwhelming presence. Wings—white and clean. The D-Rank beast didn't even register the attack before it was dead."
He swallowed.
"One strike. Maybe two. It was controlled and efficient. No wasted movement or frenzy."
Dav exhaled slowly through his nose. "High-rank."
"Yes," Joel said. "And aware. He looked at me after, not like prey but not like an equal either. Like… a manager checking on a worker."
Cael frowned. "Did he speak?"
"No. But he nodded." Joel's mouth twitched faintly. "Like I'd passed some test I didn't know I was taking."
Evan leaned forward, elbows on the table. "Did you feel hostility?"
Joel shook his head. "No. If anything… restraint. He didn't stay and he only took the beast with him, that's how I knew he was beastfolk. He had a space pocket or ability."
A beat passed.
Then Dav spoke, voice measured. "That rules out territorial aggression."
One of the sentinel captains shifted. "Could be winter stocking. Clearing dangerous fauna near claimed routes."
"Or scouting," Cael added.
A murmur rippled—speculation rising, adrenaline searching for direction.
"We should meet him," someone said. "Formally. Ask for—"
"No." Talia's voice cut through the room, calm and absolute.
The table stilled.
"No requests," she said. "No gratitude framed as obligation. No assistance asked."
The speaker bristled. "He saved one of ours."
"And in doing so," Dav said quietly, "he created space, not debt."
He glanced at Talia, then back to the table. "Moss-Badger sentinels warned us about this. Help given can become a ledger. Once you ask again, you owe."
Talia nodded. "Debts in Vaelterra don't expire. They compound."
Evan rubbed his jaw. "On Earth, asking for help was survival. Here, it's leverage."
Junia spoke softly then. "Gratitude can be felt without being spoken."
The room absorbed that.
Talia turned to Collie. "Your scouts."
Collie straightened. "I expanded patrols immediately after the incident. No movement detected from Beastkin forces. No return passes through our borders and there have been no secondary scouting teams."
She hesitated, then added, "Also no sign of the D-rank beast before it crossed the line. That's on us."
Talia felt the weight of that settle in her chest.
"I missed two breaches," she said quietly. "One by a beast and one by a… presence."
Cael glanced at her. "You're still learning."
"I am," Talia agreed. "Which means I need to rely on instinct more than reports."
Junia's gaze unfocused briefly, her attention slipping somewhere deeper.
"Gaia feels no hostility from him," she said after a moment. "There's… a blessing residue. Weak. Not dominant, almost… entreating."
Evan frowned. "Entreating how?"
"Like someone knocking once," Junia replied. "And then leaving."
That did not comfort anyone.
Talia straightened. "Orders, then."
She spoke clearly, decisively.
"Deepwatch splits focus across four fronts. Forest Boar Clan to the south—observe only. The winged Lionkin—note its presence, no pursuit. The unidentified scout party—log sightings, no engagement. And full regional mapping of nearby Clans."
Dav nodded. "Rules of engagement?"
"No pursuit once spotted," Talia said. "No signal fires, use runners. If a presence crosses the border with intent, Auntie Junia and I will feel it—if we're listening."
Junia inclined her head in agreement.
The meeting adjourned with Joel beginning to fade and Dale pushed him back in a recently crafted wheelchair.
News spread through the clan the old way—runners, murmured explanations, careful phrasing and the reactions were… varied.
The stories changed as they travelled.
At first, the details were clipped and careful. A Beastkin intervened. A D-rank fell. Joel lived. But as the runners passed from district to district, the truth began to settle into people's bones, and the words grew heavier.
In the training yard, two sentinels stood staring at the gouged earth where a practice post had snapped earlier that morning.
"A D-Rank took on Joel and four others," one muttered.
"Together," the other replied.
A pause.
"And the beastkin killed it alone?"
Nearby, a younger hunter gripped her spear too tightly, knuckles white. "Did it us powers?" she asked no one in particular.
"No," came the answer from an older woman tying snares. "That's what scares me."
In the craft hall, a man stopped mid-stitch, needle trembling between his fingers. "So there are things out there," he said slowly, "that make our worst fights look like training drills."
His partner didn't look up. "There always were. We just hadn't met one yet."
Children listened wide-eyed at the edges of conversations, half-understanding but fully absorbing the weight of adult voices. One boy whispered, reverent, "Did it have wings?"
"Yes," someone answered.
"Was it angry?"
"No."
That answer unsettled them more than anything else.
A pair of elders argued quietly near the water channels.
"It saved one of ours," one said.
"It chose to," the other corrected.
A ripple of awe moved alongside fear. Gratitude too — whispered, private, directed skyward or pressed silently into palms. And beneath it all, something sharper stirred.
Excitement.
The dangerous kind.
The kind born when people realised the world was larger, stronger, and far less bound by familiar rules than they had believed — and that they were still standing inside it.
Talia watched it all from a distance, feeling the tension coil tighter the longer nothing happened.
No scouts returned with sightings. There were no tracks or signs and no disturbances rippled the territory borders.
Silence stretched.
It began to feel intentional.
The days that followed only tightened the coil.
Nothing happened.
No new tracks disturbed the forest floor. No distant cries carried on the wind. Patrol reports returned clean, uneventful, frustratingly empty. The borders held steady, the land quiet beneath her awareness.
Too quiet.
Talia began to notice how often people looked up now — at the canopy, at the cliff edges, at empty sky. Conversations trailed off when she passed. Laughter still existed, but it came softer, checked instinctively, as if sound itself might draw attention.
At night, she stood longer on the walkways, listening.
The territory breathed beneath her feet, steady and alive, but threaded with a tension she couldn't quite place. Not danger. Anticipation.
Waiting, her instincts whispered.
She reviewed patrol routes twice. Then a third time. She asked Collie for the same reports she'd already read, searching for inconsistencies that weren't there. Junia felt nothing new — no pressure, no warning ripple — and that absence gnawed at Talia more than any alarm.
Silence stretched.
And slowly, uncomfortably, it began to feel deliberate.
As if something out there had seen enough.
As if it had stepped back — not retreating, not leaving — but choosing to watch what they did next.
Dav found her near the outer walkway as dusk settled, stone walls holding the last warmth of the day.
"You're pacing," he observed.
"I know," Talia replied. "I don't like it."
Dav leaned on the railing, gaze scanning the valley. "Fear wants shape. When it doesn't get one, it invents."
She didn't answer.
After a long moment, Dav spoke again.
"If he wanted us gone," he said calmly, "we wouldn't be here."
Talia exhaled slowly, resting her head on Dav's shoulder, relaxing taunt muscles letting her mind unclenching.
The silence still remained, but now it felt… watched, no longer threatening.