"Sweetheart, I need you to—"
He went completely limp—something he'd seen Styx do when she didn't want a bath. Dead weight. His hand slipped from hers.
The moment he was free, he ran.
At that exact moment, the shop door chimed. A large woman entered with three children in tow, immediately filling the space with noise and movement.
"Excuse me, miss, do you have—"
Xylia glanced up at the interruption, instinctively stepping aside.
That half-second was all Piers needed.
He darted between the newcomers, slipped through the still-open door, and vanished into the street outside.
By the time Xylia looked back down, her hand was empty.
"Piers?" She spun around. Fabric racks. Other customers. No small blonde child.
Panic hit like ice water.
"PIERS?!"
[NULL SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
[ELEVATED HEART RATE DETECTED]
[ADRENALINE RESPONSE: ACTIVE]
[UNUSUAL STIMULUS: FORBIDDEN ACTION]
[ANALYZING...]
Piers dodged around a dwarf carrying a crate, slipped between two arguing merchants, and stumbled over uneven cobblestones but caught himself without falling.
The bookstore was across the street—opposite side, further down near the corner.
He darted across, narrowly avoiding a cart.
Twenty meters.
Ten.
Five.
He grabbed the door handle—too high for him to reach comfortably, but he jumped and caught it, using his weight to pull it down—and tumbled inside.
[VOID CORRUPTION LEVEL: 47% → 47.5%]
[ANALYSIS: ELEVATED STIMULUS REDUCES CORRUPTION]
[RECOMMENDATION: INVESTIGATING FURTHER]
Piers barely registered the notification. He was too focused on his surroundings.
The bookstore was...
Perfect.
That was the only word for it, even in his emotionally dead state. The shop was larger than it looked from outside, with shelves stretching from floor to ceiling on all sides. Books of every size and color crowded together—leather-bound tomes, slim pamphlets, scrolls tied with ribbon, even a few that seemed to glow faintly with internal light.
The air smelled of old paper and ink and something else. Something heavy. Almost alive.
Piers felt it immediately—a weight in the atmosphere, like standing near something powerful but invisible.
Magic, probably. Or something close to it.
He didn't care what it was.
He wanted the books.
Without hesitation, he spotted a wooden chair near the shelves and dragged it closer. He climbed up, using the height advantage to reach books that would normally be far beyond a three-year-old's grasp.
One. Two. Five. Eight.
He didn't read the titles. Didn't check what they contained. Just grabbed whatever looked substantial—thick volumes, leather-bound tomes, anything within reach—and dropped them onto the floor below.
More.
He moved the chair to the next shelf. Climbed again. A large red tome. A thin book bound in what looked like snakeskin. Something written in a language he didn't recognize.
When the pile on the floor had grown satisfyingly large, he climbed down and surveyed his collection.
Then he began the transport operation.
He dragged the chair toward the counter, positioned it carefully, and started loading books onto the seat—stacking them as high as he could manage without toppling the pile.
Once the chair was loaded with books, he used it as a stepping stool. Climbed from chair to counter in one careful motion.
He settled cross-legged on the counter itself, books piled in his lap and stacked around him like a fortress.
And waited.
The shopkeeper—an elderly man with half-moon spectacles and ink-stained fingers—looked up from his ledger and blinked in surprise.
"Well. Hello there, young man."
Piers dumped the entire stack of books on the counter with a heavy thud.
Then he looked up at the shopkeeper.
And deployed his secret weapon.
The stare.
Not a normal stare. The flat stare. The one that made adults uncomfortable because it contained absolutely no readable emotion. Just gray eyes, perfectly still, looking directly into the shopkeeper's soul with the intensity of someone who had stopped caring about social conventions.
The shopkeeper shifted uncomfortably.
"Ah. Are these... for you?"
Piers continued staring.
"Do you have... money?"
Stare.
"Perhaps a parent nearby who can—"
Piers tilted his head slightly. The movement was small, mechanical, somehow making the stare even more unsettling.
The shopkeeper cleared his throat. "Listen little one, I, ah... I understand you want these books, but I run a business here, you see, and I can't just—"
Piers blinked once. Slowly.
"—I mean, technically speaking, the shop rules are quite clear about payment and—"
The stare intensified somehow. Piers didn't know how he was doing it, but the shopkeeper was sweating now.
"—but I suppose exceptions could be made in certain circumstances—"
The door opened.
Heavy footsteps. The clink of metal on metal.
"Excuse me," a woman's voice said, cool and professional. "Is everything alright here?"
Piers didn't turn around. Didn't break eye contact with the shopkeeper.
But he heard the newcomer step closer. Felt a presence—tall, armored, radiating... the kind of controlled strength that came with combat training.
"This child," the shopkeeper said, sounding relieved at the interruption, "seems to want these books, but—"
"I see."
The woman walked around to stand beside Piers, and he finally turned to look at her.
She was tall. Nearly six feet, with broad shoulders and the bearing of someone who'd spent years in armor. She wore practical traveling clothes now—dark trousers, sturdy boots, a vest over a white shirt—but Piers could see the calluses on her hands, the way she moved with unconscious awareness of her own body's capabilities.
A knight, his mind catalogued automatically. Or former knight. Combat specialist.
She had silver-white hair, sharp blue eyes, and a face that was probably attractive by conventional standards but held too much sternness to seem approachable.
Until she looked down at Piers.