It took time for it to sink in.
We had done it.
Not perfectly. Not cleanly. But we had pulled people out of the academy alive. Summoners. Smiths. Kids who were supposed to disappear quietly into machines and contracts.
One out of five academies.
Saved.
No one said it out loud. Saying it felt dangerous, like tempting the world to correct us. But I could see it in the way people walked now—shoulders less hunched, eyes lifting to the sky instead of the ground.
My leg healed slower than I wanted, faster than I expected. Two days after the treatment ended, I could walk without help. The scar remained—thin, pale, and stubborn—but the pain faded to a dull reminder instead of a warning.
A reminder that armor didn't make you invincible.
And neither did power.
"We move next?" Ren asked one night, sitting near the fire.
"Academy Four and Five," Aira added. "Agriculture and supply. If we hit those, we break their backbone."
She was right. Food and resources kept the academies alive. Cut that, and the soldiers starved before the monsters did.
But there was a problem.
I flexed my leg, eyes on the fire.
"The knife," I said.
The mood shifted immediately.
Kazim looked up from his device. "You're still feeling it?"
"No," I replied. "That's the problem."
Everyone waited.
"That blade went through crystal armor like it wasn't there," I continued. "It was thrown. Not even powered. If that hit my spine or my chest—"
"You'd be dead," Monisha finished quietly.
I nodded.
"We can't go after the next academies without fixing that."
So we went to the smiths.
Not as leaders.
Not as saviors.
As people asking for help.
They gathered in one of the stone houses, tools laid out across rough tables. Old hands, young hands, some shaking, some steady. People who had once been forced to turn creatures into weapons—now being asked to protect instead of exploit.
I placed the damaged piece of my armor on the table.
"This didn't stop it," I said. "And next time, we won't be that lucky."
One of the older smiths ran his fingers over the cut. His brow furrowed.
"That wasn't ordinary steel," he muttered.
"Crystal alloy," another said. "Compressed. Directional edge."
"A VIP blade," someone else added. "Made to kill enhanced targets."
The words settled heavy in the room.
"So what do we do?" Ren asked.
The first smith straightened.
"We learn from it," he said. "If they can make something that cuts gods, we can make something that survives them."
Plans began forming—not loud, not rushed. Reinforced joints. Layered resonance. Energy dispersion instead of resistance. Armor that didn't just block, but redirected force.
Kazim watched closely, already sketching, already thinking three steps ahead.
"We won't just fix the armor," he said quietly. "We'll upgrade everything."
I looked around the room—at the people who'd been treated as tools, now shaping the future with their own hands.
"Good," I said.
Because next time, when we went after Academy Four and Five—
I didn't plan on bleeding at all.