It had been one week since the stag fell.
Ren could lift his arm fully now. The cuts along his ribs had faded into pale lines. His shoulder only ached when he pushed too hard during drills.
He healed fast.
No one commented on it directly, but they adjusted their expectations.
The group consisted of five people.
Mara.
Jonah.
Cal.
A fourth named Elise.
And now Ren.
They did not call themselves a team.
They called themselves a table.
Everyone had a seat.
No one owned it.
Mara led by default, not declaration. She spoke less than she watched. When she decided something, it was already calculated three steps ahead.
Jonah was direct force. He preferred clean engagements and hated improvisation, which made Ren enjoy improvising around him more than he should.
Cal observed. Always still. Always recording. He mapped patterns across the city like a cartographer drawing invisible coastlines.
Elise was the quietest. She arrived late the night of the stag but had been present in earlier incidents Ren had not witnessed. She rarely trained physically. Instead she stood near walls, hands in her coat pockets, as if waiting for something only she could hear.
Ren had begun to realize something.
They were not equal in legend type.
Each of them carried something different.
And none of them said what it was.
They trained at the old boxing gym most nights.
But sometimes training meant walking the city.
That was how Ren began to understand.
The first time he saw Mara use her legend was subtle.
A fight almost broke out outside a bar. Two men shouting. One reaching for a bottle.
Mara stepped between them.
She did not raise her voice.
She did not touch either of them.
She simply spoke.
Ren felt it then.
A pressure shift.
The air thinned slightly around her words.
The aggression in both men faltered.
Not erased.
Redirected.
They stepped back.
Confused.
Cal later marked the moment in his notebook without comment.
Ren made a quiet guess.
Mara might carry something tied to command. Authority. A general. A diplomat. Something that bends momentum without force.
Jonah was easier to read.
During drills he wrapped heavy chain around his forearms. When he moved, the chain felt heavier than metal should. When he struck, impact echoed deeper than physics allowed.
Once during containment, a collapsing scaffolding beam fell toward them.
Jonah caught it.
Not alone. The structure still crashed down.
But it slowed in his grip.
As if gravity hesitated.
Ren guessed Jonah carried something tied to burden. Atlas. A laborer legend. Something built around endurance and weight.
Cal almost never displayed anything directly.
But Ren noticed that Cal always knew where manifestations would occur within a block radius.
Not guessing.
Knowing.
One night Cal redirected them three streets over minutes before a minor apparition surfaced.
He did not say how he knew.
Ren suspected something tied to foresight or pattern sight. Not prophecy. More like expanded awareness.
Elise was the hardest.
She barely moved in confrontations.
But when smaller manifestations appeared, shadow distortions or minor bleed through creatures, they faltered near her.
Lights flickered.
Sound dampened.
Space felt thick.
Ren once stepped too close and felt his thoughts slow.
Not painfully.
Just gently delayed.
He stepped back instinctively.
Elise glanced at him as if amused.
He had no guess for her yet.
As for himself.
Ren had only used Blood Bullet twice.
They did not let him fire again without necessity.
Instead they trained perception.
Pattern reading.
Commitment analysis.
Redirection.
Ren realized something during the week.
He enjoyed testing lines.
He enjoyed baiting Jonah into overcommitting during sparring.
He enjoyed stepping just far enough into risk to feel the edge of inevitability tighten.
That was new.
Before the alley, Ren avoided confrontation.
Now he leaned toward it.
Not recklessly.
Curiously.
He caught his reflection in the gym mirror one evening.
There was a faint smile resting at the corner of his mouth.
Uninvited.
"You are doing it again." Cal said from the bleachers.
"Doing what."
"Smiling before impact."
Ren frowned.
"I am not."
"You are." Cal replied calmly.
Jonah wiped sweat from his forehead.
"You have gotten annoying this week."
Ren tilted his head slightly.
"Adaptable."
"Annoying." Jonah repeated.
Mara watched from the edge of the mat.
"You move earlier now." she said.
Ren paused.
That word again.
Earlier.
Billy had always moved earlier.
Not faster.
Earlier.
As if he lived a fraction of a second ahead of the present.
Ren felt it sometimes now.
When Jonah shifted weight, Ren knew before the motion completed.
When Mara inhaled to speak, he sensed the direction of her decision.
When Cal's pen paused mid note, something was about to happen.
It was not mind reading.
It was probability reading.
The gambler instinct.
But there was something else.
A looseness.
A flicker of humor in dangerous moments.
The night they contained a minor alley manifestation, a thing made of echo and broken glass, Ren felt fear rise in his chest.
And underneath it.
Excitement.
He stepped deliberately into its distorted field just to see how it reacted.
It reacted violently.
Jonah pulled him back and slammed the thing into a dumpster.
"You are not immortal." Jonah snapped.
Ren laughed.
Actually laughed.
He stopped immediately.
The sound had not felt entirely like him.
Later that night he stood alone outside the gym.
He pressed a hand against his chest.
The heat responded faintly.
Not burning.
Just aware.
"I am not you." Ren said quietly to the empty air.
He was not possessed.
He knew that.
Billy had not left a fragment of himself behind.
But something had blended.
Billy's calm in the face of inevitability.
His mischief.
His refusal to flinch.
Ren had always studied risk.
Billy had shown him how to step into it.
That difference mattered.
Mara stepped outside and leaned against the wall beside him.
"You are changing." she said.
Ren did not deny it.
"I know."
"Does it feel wrong."
He considered.
"No."
"Does it feel controlled."
He considered that longer.
"Yes."
Mara nodded once.
"Legends imprint." she said. "Especially strong ones."
Ren looked at her.
"You know who he is."
"Yes."
"And you still let me train."
She met his gaze evenly.
"You are not him."
Ren exhaled slowly.
Across the street a streetlight flickered.
Elise stood beneath it, half in shadow, watching the empty road.
Jonah argued with Cal about mapping coordinates.
Mara listened without intervening.
Five people.
Five seats at a table.
Ren felt the faint smile return.
Not reckless.
Not unstable.
Measured.
If Billy had been chaos disguised as calm, then Ren was becoming structure disguised as mischief.
He did not know what that meant yet.
But he knew one thing clearly.
A week ago he survived.
Now he was studying the board.
And soon.
He would start moving pieces on purpose.