Three days of mandatory rest felt like three weeks.
Jak stayed in his room with Mira. Recovering. Thinking.
His wounds had closed completely. Scars remained but no pain. Void regeneration had done its work.
Every time he looked at the scars, he felt void energy in them. Woven through the tissue. Part of him now.
Permanent change. His body wasn't fully human anymore.
That should have bothered him. It didn't.
"Your eyes look different," Mira said on the second day.
"Different how?"
"More amber. Less brown." She studied his face. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine. Just tired."
"You're lying."
She was eight. But perceptive.
"I'm changing," Jak admitted. "The bond with Shade is doing something. Making me different."
"Different bad or different good?"
"Don't know yet."
Mira was quiet for a moment. "As long as you come back. That's what matters."
Jak hugged her. "I'll always come back."
He meant it. Whatever he was becoming, whatever the cost, he'd make sure Mira was safe.
That was the point of all this. The reason he kept pushing. Kept cultivating.
Power meant security. Meant Mira never had to worry about medicine. About food. About safety.
Everything else was secondary.
♢♢♢♢
On the third day, Jak returned to the guild. Cleared for light duty.
The contract board had changed while he was gone. More rift-related work. Pattern analysis. Investigation. Monitoring.
Rift activity was increasing across the kingdom. Not just in the city. Everywhere.
Something was happening. Rifts opening more frequently. Spawns appearing in higher numbers.
The guild was scrambling to respond. Assigning more people to specialist work. But there weren't enough specialists.
Most adventurers avoided rift work. Dangerous. Unpredictable. Low pay.
Only Jak volunteered consistently.
That made him valuable. But also suspicious.
He found Vera at a corner table. The serpent tamer. Reading reports.
"You survived," Vera said when she saw him. "Heard you fought a Greater Spawn alone."
"I did."
"That was stupid."
"It attacked me. I didn't have a choice."
"You had the choice to retreat. To call for backup." Vera set down her reports. "But you didn't. You fought. Almost died. Why?"
"Because running felt worse than fighting."
Vera studied him. "You're different from other new tamers."
"How?"
"They're cautious. Careful. They understand their limitations." Vera gestured to Jak. "You don't seem to have limitations. Or you don't acknowledge them."
"I know my limits."
"Do you? Because from where I'm sitting, you keep pushing past them. Keep surviving things that should kill you." Vera leaned forward. "I've been C-rank for five years. I know exactly what I can handle. What I can't. You've been C-rank for one month. And you're already doing things I wouldn't attempt."
Jak said nothing.
"I'm not criticizing," Vera continued. "I'm observing. You're growing. Still. Most tamers stop growing after the first few months. Bond stabilizes. Plateau hits. But you're not plateauing."
"How do you know?"
"Because I've been watching you. Your combat efficiency improves every week. Your void sense is sharper than mine. And you just survived a fight that should have killed you through regeneration that shouldn't be possible." Vera's expression was serious. "You're not normal. Your bond isn't normal."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying be careful. The guild notices patterns. And you're a very obvious pattern." Vera stood. "They're going to investigate. Soon. When they do, you'll need answers they'll accept."
She left before Jak could respond.
Jak sat alone. Thinking about her warning.
She was right. The guild was noticing. His growth rate was too fast. Too obvious.
He needed to slow down. Be more careful about what he showed in public.
Or he needed to accelerate. Get to B-rank before they could interfere.
The latter felt more achievable.
♢♢♢♢
That evening, Jak went to the training yard. Watched other adventurers practice.
Warriors drilling. Mages casting. Rogues sparring.
All C-rank. Same rank as Jak officially.
But Jak could see the difference now. They were static. Repeating the same movements. The same techniques.
Not growing. Just maintaining.
He'd been like that with his tracking hound. Six months of the same capability. No improvement. Just consistency.
Now, with Shade, every day was different. Every fight taught him something. Every rift encounter made him stronger.
Permanent. Stacking. Accumulating.
That was mirrored growth. What the ancient journal had described. Beast and tamer evolving together. Synchronized.
It wasn't just Shade growing. It was both of them. Through the bond. Through void cultivation.
The guild didn't have framework for this. Their ranking system measured static capability. Not growth rate. Not potential.
They saw Jak as C-rank. Assumed he'd stay C-rank for years like everyone else.
They didn't understand he was on exponential curve. Not linear.
That was blind spot. Exploitable.
If Jak was careful.
If he controlled how much he revealed.
Through the bond, Shade's presence. The fox understood. They needed to be subtle.
Show enough to maintain access. Hide enough to avoid investigation.
Walk the line between too weak and too obvious.
For now, that was possible. Jak was still within C-rank parameters. Just at the upper end.
But soon he'd cross threshold. Hit B-rank baseline.
When that happened, everything would change.
The guild would notice. Would have to acknowledge. Would assign new rank.
That was maybe two months away. According to the journal, thresholds happened when beast and tamer achieved synchronized breakthrough. When both hit new capability level simultaneously.
Jak could feel it approaching. The pressure building. Like something inside him was compressing. Getting ready to transform.
Shade felt it too. The fox was changing. Getting larger. More solid. Eyes brighter.
They were approaching threshold together.
When it hit, there'd be no hiding it.
Jak would become B-rank. Officially. Verified.
And all the attention that came with that.
He just needed to survive until then. Keep cultivating. Keep growing. Keep walking the path.
The ancient journal had warned. "The guild fears this path. They'll try to stop you."
Jak believed it now. Understood the danger.
But he was committed. No turning back.
Whatever came next, he'd face it.
With Shade. Together. Mirrored.
The way it was always meant to be.