[POV: Mike]
Second Order is not a rank people casually see handling local ceremonies.
The Tamer Circle governs nearly every official Tamer operation across the Coalition of City-States and even many of the territories beyond secured walls. They decide assignments, disputes, registrations, and deployments. In simple terms, if a monster crisis grows large enough, someone under the Circle eventually appears.
Defenders of humanity, officially.
Bureaucrats with dangerous creatures, unofficially.
Normally a contract ceremony like this would get a Third Order representative, maybe a Fourth if the city had too little influence. A Second Order means Tempest still carries enough weight that someone important bothered showing up.
Tamer ranks themselves are simple on paper.
Fifth Order at the bottom refer to newly certified, inexperienced, and often attached to patrols or supervised missions.
Fourth Order requires three contracted guardians or at least enough proven capability to justify the title, usually with one C-rank Guardian minimum.
Third Order means field authority.
Second Order means reputation that extends beyond one city.
First Order sits at the top, representing leaders, squad commanders, and names people ought to remember.
Strength matters, but not strength alone.
Results matter.
Influence matters.
What people say after you leave matters.
Dean Colt raises one hand, and an assistant passes him a sealed parchment. He holds it up for everyone to see. The material catches light strangely, pale gold fibers threaded through cream-colored layers like veins beneath skin.
"This is a contract parchment," he says. "It makes it easier to contract a monster and affix an ability."
The crowd leans in.
Even those pretending they already know all this are listening harder than they pretend.
"Essentially, this contract parchment is unnecessary to tame a monster. Ancient sages are able to do it without something so convenient. Don't waste your opportunity. So if you are uncertain with the monster you brought with you, I suggest you back out."
Hope chirps once at that, offended at the implication.
I scratch lightly behind her neck before she escalates.
"The efficacy of the contract wears out roughly a hundred and fifty percent times than the first time you used it. A proper tamer should be able to contract their third or second monster without the assistance of such a catalyst."
His voice remains level, almost bored, but no one misses a word.
"There's a reason why it's suggested for tamers to find a monster that suits them emotionally and in terms of personality, especially more significant for your first contract."
At that, my fingers tighten slightly around Hope.
Emotionally suited.
That part always sounds vague until I look at the tiny bird currently chewing a cracker crumb from my palm like she owns the world.
Then it sounds obvious.
Dean Colt lowers the parchment slightly.
"I have to warn you. If you fail to contract now, you have to wait a year later and have to let go of the creature you brought with you."
That stirs the crowd more than anything so far.
A few nervous voices rise immediately.
"When a contract fails at the ceremony, it's usually either a lack of compatibility or synergy. Now, let's begin. I will call names to the podium, distribute the parchment, and oversee the contract process."
He folds the parchment once.
"If something unfortunate occurs, trust me that I will handle it swiftly. Now, let's begin. First off… Michael… Peaceful?"
Mr. Colt's voice pauses awkwardly over the surname, the slight hesitation obvious enough that a few people in the crowd react before I even move.
The question hidden inside his tone almost makes me wince.
Yeah, I know.
The surname sounds ridiculous.
I can blame the orphanage director for that one. He had an eccentric streak and apparently thought assigning surnames should involve whatever word matched his mood that week. Some kids got practical names. Some got old family names recycled from records nobody checked carefully.
I got Peaceful.
At least it is memorable.
Unfortunately, that means every head in the plaza turns toward me at once.
Ah, shit.
I should have expected this.
Colt is reading upward from the bottom of the ranking list, which means I am exactly where my aptitude score placed me: near the floor.
For a life-changing event, I really did fumble those exams.
I could blame my part-time boss for making me late that morning, but that only covers the first half of the disaster. The rest was entirely on me: arriving breathless, panicking through the first pages, and barely finishing a little over thirty questions across two of the six sections before time was called.
It's a miracle I even qualified.
Then again, aptitude tests are not absolute rejection filters. The bare minimum is simpler, show up with a viable monster. Either something bonded from juvenile stage or a creature willing enough to cooperate peacefully during contract initiation.
Hope chirps as if reminding me she qualifies perfectly.
I step through the parted crowd and climb the stage stairs, aware of every eye following me.
The wooden platform feels louder than it should under my boots.
Dean Colt waits without expression and hands me the parchment once I reach him.
Up close, the material feels stranger than expected. It's warm and almost faintly alive, threads beneath the surface shifting when my fingers tighten around it.
Right.
Calm down, me.
No need to embarrass yourself before the ceremony even starts.
You read about this.
Secondhand books, half of them missing covers, all of them technically stolen from the shelf behind my boss's counter when he was too busy yelling at suppliers to notice.
Roughly eight hundred years ago, scholars proved what old Tamers already believed that souls had measurable structure, scientific basis, and observable effects.
Human bodies contain six soul anchors. One primary soul in the heart. One secondary soul in the head. Four tertiary souls distributed through the limbs.
Each anchor capable of housing one Guardian.
Six possible contracts in a lifetime, if everything goes right.
Each location influences the bonded creature differently.
The heart gives the greatest growth potential, the strongest development, and the deepest integration. It's a no-brainer. Of course Hope belongs there. I draw the knife from my belt and slice across my thumb without hesitation, creating a sharp sting.
Blood wells immediately.
I press my thumb to the parchment first, leaving a dark red print that sinks unnaturally into the surface, then pull open the collar of my shirt and smear the blood directly over my chest where my heart beats hard enough that I can feel it through my palm.
Beside me, Dean Colt visibly flinches.
That reaction catches the crowd faster than anything else.
"What's he doing?"
"He's putting it on his heart?"
"For that bird?"
Someone laughs openly.
"Imagine wasting your primary soul on trash-tier livestock."
Another voice joins in.
"A Silver Promise Dove? He's ruining his whole future."
Hope stiffens on my shoulder, feathers puffing. Her tiny claws grip my shirt.
Dean Colt's eyes narrow, evaluating.
"Are you certain about this decision?" he asks, voice low enough that the crowd has to quiet to hear. "Silver Promise Doves possess extremely limited developmental potential."
The parchment in my hand begins to pulse faintly.
He continues before I answer.
"There are numerous theses written on their species. Minimal combat growth. Poor adaptive evolution. Restricted dimensional variance. Most fail to progress meaningfully beyond baseline support classifications."
Hope chirps angrily at him.
Colt ignores her.
"You may suffer for this choice in the long run."
I look down at Hope.
White feathers.
Black eyes.
The same bird that pecked me awake this morning and stole half my lunch while glaring at richer kids like she intended to conquer them. No, I do not know those theses. But I know why I am doing this.
"There's a theory," I say, lifting my bloodied thumb slightly as the parchment warms further, "about the emotional and physical component of the soul called resonance."
The plaza quiets.
A few laughs stop.
"I read that compatibility isn't just category matching or elemental alignment. It's emotional continuity, repeated interaction, physical familiarity, memory, affection, and shared rhythm."
Hope tilts her head, listening or pretending she understands what I am talking about.
"I've known Hope since she was an egg. I held her before she hatched. Fed her when she couldn't eat alone. Stayed awake when she got sick. She bites me, steals my food, and screams when I ignore her."
A few snorts rise from the crowd.
I ignore them.
"She knows my voice. I know every sound she makes. When she's angry, when she wants food, when she wants attention, when she pretends she doesn't."
Hope chirps proudly, like proof.
"She likes sleeping in my hair even though she pecks my forehead every morning. My affection for her is real. Her affection for me is real. So if resonance means anything, this works."
The parchment pulses brighter now.
I continue, reciting from memory the line that stayed with me most from the old cracked pages.
"The author of Theory of Resonance wrote that all life shares a single enormous soul. that what we perceive as six separate souls are only six surfaces touching something indivisible."
For the first time, Dean Colt's expression shifts.
He finishes the quote before I can.
"'Six windows through which one existence chooses to recognize itself.'"
I blink.
He knows it too.
His scar pulls slightly as he nods once.
"I understand your resolve," he says.
Then he steps back half a pace.
"You may continue."
I press my thumb harder against the cut, forcing fresh blood to gather.
The sting sharpens, warm and immediate, another red bead swelling over the first smear already drying on my skin. The parchment in my hand responds almost greedily, faint lines beneath its surface brightening as if waiting for one final signal.
Hope seems to understand before I even move.
She hops from my shoulder to my wrist, then carefully lowers one tiny foot onto the blood covering my thumb.
A delicate silver-white print marks the parchment beside mine.
For half a heartbeat, nothing happens.
Then the contract ignites.
Silver flames rush across the parchment without heat, climbing through the fibers in branching patterns that look almost like veins of light. Gasps ripple through the plaza as the entire sheet burns from edge to center, not consumed but transformed, the fire folding inward until the glow wraps around both Hope and me.
The sensation hits immediately.
A piece of something inside me tears loose.
Not pain exactly, but a pressure so intimate and strange that my breath catches halfway in my chest. It feels like a thread buried somewhere deep behind my heartbeat pulls free and stretches outward, slipping through my blood, through the light, through the tiny creature standing in my palm.
Into Hope.
The connection forms in an instant. It is magical in the purest sense of the word too strange for anything else. I close my eyes because the feeling becomes easier to understand in darkness. Every tamed creature grants one inherited ability.
That much everyone knows.
Silver Promise Doves possess two recorded abilities: Dynamic Vision and Float.
Dynamic Vision sharpens aerial awareness, adjusts perception in motion, tracks subtle shifts with abnormal clarity.
Float reduces weight and grants delicate control over movement in air.
Both abilities exist to support flight, giving the species far more dexterity than their fragile bodies suggest. As creatures evolve in rank, inherited abilities strengthen. Additional Guardians deepen those effects further depending on soul compatibility.
The ability inherited is usually random.
Warmth spreads through me, then Hope's chirping changes.
"Mike, behold," Hope declares inside my mind in a tiny childish voice overflowing with absurd arrogance, "I am now the strongest being in all existence."
A laugh almost escapes me.
"No," I answer instinctively through the same connection, surprised at how natural it feels, "that is definitely not the case."
I can feel her immediate offense. It is startlingly distinct, like emotional ripples traveling through water directly into thought. The contract makes her mind readable in fragments: simple, bright, impulsive, and unmistakably childlike.
Hope thinks in very direct lines from pride, hunger, affection, annoyance, to curiosity.
There is no complexity yet, only vivid sincerity.
For something so small, she contains a ridiculous amount of confidence.
I open my eyes, and nearly fall.
The ground is no longer touching me.
I am floating roughly an inch above the wooden stage.
My stomach lurches at the delayed realization, legs kicking awkwardly as instinct searches for friction that is no longer there.
"What the hell?! This feels weird!"
My feet paddle uselessly. For one humiliating second. I look less like a newly contracted Tamer and more like someone forgetting how gravity works.
Dean Colt catches my arm before I tip sideways.
"Calm your breathing," he says evenly, grip firm enough to steady me without effort. "Focus inward and withdraw your power. Think of the ability returning to stillness rather than pushing outward."
I force myself to inhale slowly.
The warmth in my chest is obvious now, gathered around the place where Hope's contract settled. I imagine pulling that sensation inward, tightening it instead of letting it spread.
The floating weakens.
My boots touch the stage again.
Solid wood never felt so reassuring.
Dean Colt releases my arm once he is sure I am stable.
"Congratulations," he says. "Successful contract."
The words land heavier than I expected.
Hope chirps triumphantly from my shoulder, clearly accepting the praise as mostly hers. I step off the stage feeling everything at once. Confused, excited, lightheaded, and aware that my chest still feels subtly different, like some internal shape shifted and has not finished settling.
"Focus," Hope scolds directly into my thoughts, "you are walking like a hatchling."
That warning arrives half a second too late because my own foot catches awkwardly against the stone edge near the stairs.
I pitch forward.
Rena catches my arm before I hit the ground.
"Oh no, champ," she says, laughing openly now. "That's just embarrassing. Anyway, how did you do that?"
I straighten, still trying not to wobble.
"I honestly don't know," I admit with a laugh. "It just happened."
Hope chirps smugly as if she personally planned the entire thing.
Rena eyes her, then me, then the stage again where the next candidate is already being called.
The ceremony continues.
Now that one visible ability has appeared, nearly everyone afterward tries to force some dramatic display the moment their contract completes.
Some succeed.
A girl contracts a small ember-scaled lizard and immediately ignites sparks along her fingertips, nearly burning her own sleeve while grinning like she won a war.
A broad-shouldered boy contracts a stone-backed mole and manages to crack the podium edge by accident when his fist hardens mid-flex.
Another candidate gains heightened hearing and immediately flinches because the crowd suddenly becomes too loud for him.
A few displays are genuinely impressive.
Then one goes wrong.
The failed contract happens fast.
A lean boy near my age finishes his blood mark with a Shadow Spider Monkey perched on his shoulder, a black-furred creature with long limbs, too many sharp fingers, and eyes that already looked too alert before the parchment activated.
The contract flashes, and then snaps.