The gates of the Imperial City stood before him once again, as imposing and immovable as they had always been. Towering walls of stone rose high into the sky, their surfaces marked by years of history and authority, yet untouched by the chaos that unfolded beyond them. To the citizens within, these gates represented safety, order, and control. They were a boundary between civilization and the untamed wilderness.
But to Aether, they were no longer a symbol of protection.
They were simply a threshold.
He stepped through them without hesitation, his pace neither hurried nor slow, his expression calm and unreadable. The guards stationed at the entrance barely spared him a glance. To them, he was just another tamer returning from a routine excursion—a young individual with potential, perhaps, but nothing extraordinary.
No one stopped him.
No one questioned him.
No one noticed the shift.
Because outwardly, nothing had changed.
Yet internally, everything had.
