(3rd Person POV)
Lykan had been turning it over carefully, the answer nearly on his lips —
"Dad, I'm back!"
The voice came loud from the entrance. Leonard walked in with a bag slung over his shoulder, and his face brightened the moment he saw the familiar faces of the troupe.
He greeted them each in turn before crossing straight to his father and pulling him into a firm embrace. "I have much more time on my hands now, dad. I can be here properly — help you run things, help with the theatre."
Rather than brightening, Lykan's expression fell. He pulled back and studied his son's face with quiet unease. "Leo. Why are you back so early? What of your party?"
Leonard held his father's gaze for a long moment, something struggling behind his eyes. Then he said it. "It is... a long story, dad. Earlier today, I was removed from the party."
Lykan's breath left him. Around the room, the actors went still.
"What?" Lykan's voice came out barely above a whisper.
The troupe exchanged glances, their disbelief plain. The Six of Diamonds was one of the most renowned S-Rank parties in the city — celebrated, spoken of with genuine admiration. That their master's own son had been cast out of such a group was almost too strange to absorb. They could only imagine what that felt like.
"Let us not speak of it." Leonard's jaw was tight, the embarrassment plain despite his effort to hold it in.
"Are you alright?" Lykan pressed gently.
"I am fine. Better than fine, truly. I would not have wished to remain with them regardless."
Lykan said nothing to that. He simply stood, his expression carrying a quiet sadness he made no effort to conceal.
Leonard glanced past his father then and noticed Arthur standing nearby. "Ah. A visitor. Who might you be, sir?"
Arthur smiled. "Arthur. I arrived not long ago with something to offer your father."
"What manner of offer?" Leonard asked.
Lykan shifted. "He... he wishes to purchase this theatre from me."
The warmth left Leonard's face at once. He looked Arthur over with a wariness that had sharpened into something close to hostility. "Are you sent by the Western Theatre? We have already made our answer clear — this establishment is not for sale to Master Delly or any man who serves him."
Arthur's brows rose. The Western Theatre. Reiner had mentioned it — a newer house built some ten years past on the city's western side, well-funded and well-attended, a fixture among nobles and common folk alike.
"I serve no one by that name," Arthur said. "I am a newly registered merchant in this city. This theatre suits what I intend to build here."
Leonard's eyes narrowed. "Do not feign ignorance—"
"How much is your offer?" Lykan asked.
Leonard turned to his father, struck silent for a moment. He could not believe his ears. His father was considering this. Was he... was this because of what happened with the party? Had the news of his dismissal shaken his father so badly that he was now willing to let the theatre go?
"Dad." His voice was firm. "Whatever has happened with the party, I can still earn. I will manage without them."
Lykan shook his head gently. "This is not about that, son. This man put forward a proposal unlike any I have heard before. Party or no party, I find myself tempted." He looked at Leonard steadily. "I would hear his price."
Leonard blinked, confused. He turned, and the young actress who had played the servant stepped quietly to his side and murmured the full arrangement into his ear — the purchase terms, the restoration pledge, the return clause, the City Council contract.
When she stepped back, Leonard looked at Arthur with an expression he couldn't quite name.
"Seventy gold," Arthur said, after a moment's thought.
"That much—?" Lykan's eyes widened faintly. To risk seventy gold on a failing house, under terms that protected Lykan entirely if things went wrong, was not the behaviour of an ordinary merchant.
The troupe stirred behind them.
"Seven platinum coins, that is—"
"He is truly willing to part with such a sum?"
"For this place, of all places?"
"He must be a man of considerable means."
Even Leonard's composure slipped a fraction.
Ten gold a month had been his earnings running with the Six of Diamonds — and that was the figure on a good month, when the party felt generous. Most months it was considerably less. Fifty gold, if they were feeling truly gracious — which, as it turned out, had not been often. He had not complained. He had his reasons for staying, chief among them the long-held ambition of one day standing before the Demon King with that party at his side.
Now, of course, that was nothing but a bitter joke.
"What do you think of the offer?" Arthur asked, his confidence unhurried.
Truthfully, the seventy gold was not yet in his possession. But he had no real concern about that. Reiner or Saza would extend it without much resistance — knowing who and what he was, neither of them would refuse a loan of that size.
Lykan was quiet for a moment, turning something over behind his eyes. Then he let out a breath. "L-let us... proceed."
Arthur smiled. "Good. We shall work out the proper terms of the contract now."
"I can assist with that." Leonard stepped forward.
Arthur glanced at him. "Oh?"
"During my time in the party, there were occasions where we required formal documentation — permissions from the council to hunt S-Rank beasts in restricted grounds, that manner of thing. I handled most of the paperwork myself." He said it plainly, without particular pride.
Arthur considered him for a moment, then nodded. "Very well."
The two of them moved aside to begin working through the terms, and behind them, the troupe quietly fell to pieces.
"What becomes of us now? We are about to have a new master!"
"I have a talent for flattery — I shall make certain the new master takes a liking to me straight away."
"What if he has no use for us? What if we are turned out?"
The anxiety was genuine and ran deep. A new owner meant an unknown set of expectations, and unknown expectations meant the possibility of dismissal — which, for most of them, was not a problem they could simply recover from.
Hazel kept her worry to herself, though it sat no lighter for being unspoken.
She had no magic. Not even a flicker of it.
Neither did most of the troupe.
That was the quiet truth of how they had all ended up here, in a dusty theatre that barely filled a third of its seats on a good day.
In a world where even the humblest commoner carried some faint trace of mana, the complete absence of it placed a person below a certain invisible line — one that most people never thought about because they had never been forced to.
Most work required magic in some form, even the menial kind. Without it, the options narrowed quickly and cruelly.
The slum district within the city existed precisely because of people like her. Commoners scraped by on faint mana they could barely shape. Below them lived those with nothing at all — serfs, the landless poor, families in the slums who could not afford a loaf of bread by the end of the week.
The city was comfortable and well-ordered on its surface. Underneath, the line between managing and suffering was very thin, and very real.
Hazel had been part of this troupe since she was young. It was the only place that had ever made room for her.
She pressed her hands together quietly and closed her eyes.
'Oh, Goddess of Art — grant me your grace. Let me find a way through this.'
Her deity was a long-forgotten goddess, silent for as long as Hazel had been praying. No signs, no answers, no warmth she could point to and say with certainty that something had heard her.
But she prayed anyway, because she always had.
---
Across the city, Firfel was moving through the market streets with Apollonia and Sylwen on either side of her when she stopped.
Something had reached her. Faint, barely there — like catching a single word from a conversation happening in another room.
"Did either of you hear something just now?" She looked between them with a puzzled expression.
Apollonia and Sylwen exchanged a glance and shook their heads.
Firfel stood there a moment longer, uncertain, then let it go and walked on.
She had no way of knowing what it meant. No way of knowing that something in her was quietly, without her awareness, beginning to take shape around an authority she had never claimed.
The Goddess of Art.
It had found her before she had found it.