John of Kum arrived in Friar with the look of a man who had been praised too often and trusted too little.

He was not poor. He was not humble. He was not untrained. His upbringing had given him every advantage except the one he valued most: the right to be left alone. In Kum, talent was not admired for long. It was taken, measured, and turned to purpose. So John had learned to hide what was sharpest in him, not from fear, but from contempt.

He entered the Hearth Tavern as though it were a courtroom he had not consented to attend.

The room was warm. The voices were low. The fire at its centre burned steady, as if it were an old judge who had grown tired of drama. A keeper stood behind the bar, polishing a cup with the dull patience of a man who had heard too many promises.

“What will it be?” the keeper asked, not looking up.

“Two cups of your best wine,” John said.

The keeper poured without comment and slid the cups across the wood as if he were laying down terms. John took both.

By the hearth stood a woman in vine-woven robes, patched and repaired beyond fashion, with the posture of one who trusted neither people nor institutions. She watched the fire like it had once owed her an answer.

John approached her.

“Tell me you are not one of those stuck-up souls trying to look mysterious beside a famous fire,” he said. “You are here because you wish to take on the Reaper, I assume.”

The woman turned slowly, as though she did not care to waste motion.

“So,” she said, “we begin with insult. That is efficient.”

Her eyes travelled over him in the manner of a scholar and a hunter at once.

“You are Kum,” she added. “You wear it like a scent you think no one can smell.”

John raised one cup and offered it with a small, almost mocking courtesy.

“Drink,” he said. “Then tell me who you are.”

She took the cup as if accepting evidence rather than kindness.

“Wakaku,” she said. “Former of Waka Academy. Presently unwelcome there.”

John watched her drink. He found he respected the refusal to perform gratitude.

Across the room, a man in Friar colours stood apart from the fire. His hands were clean, his posture disciplined, and his eyes did not drift. He looked like a man who had learned to obey without becoming small.

John felt the room’s quiet watching him, felt the invisible pressure of systems and expectations. It awakened a familiar irritation. His talent stirred, eager as a knife in its sheath.

“When in doubt,” he murmured, almost to himself, “fire a Solpyra.”

Wakaku’s gaze sharpened. “Do not,” she said. Not pleading. Advising.

John did it anyway.

The fireball struck the inner wall of the Hearth Tavern and should have torn the place apart.

Instead the Hearthfire rose.

It did not flare like ordinary flame. It deepened, as if drawing the spell into a furnace inside the world. The blast collapsed. Heat rolled through the room without burning it. Cups rattled. Beams trembled. Yet no wood caught, no stone cracked. The fire returned to its steady burn as if it had merely cleared its throat.

Silence followed.

The man in Friar colours stepped forward.

“John of Kum,” he said calmly, “you have violated Guild sanctuary law and Theocracy peace.”

John turned, smiling with an impatience that was nearly honest.

“You and what army?”

He stepped close and struck the man across the face, open-handed and deliberate. It was not a brawl. It was a declaration.

The man’s jaw tightened. He did not reach for a weapon.

“My name is Ser Elric,” he said, very quietly. “I speak for Father Tai tonight.”

“And will Father Tai strike me, then?” John asked.

Ser Elric held John’s gaze. “If he does, you will have earned it.”

It was not a threat. It was worse. It was a statement of order.

Wakaku set her cup down with care. “You are not chaotic,” she said. “You are theatrical. That is different.”

John felt something in him rise against the room, against the fire, against the very idea of being judged.

Then he felt something else, colder.

The Hearthfire had spared him.

Not because it was weak, but because it had decided he was not worth burning the tavern for.

That offended him more than any punishment would have.

He set coin on the bar, took a bottle for the road, and left Friar before the gate could close behind him.

The keeper did not stop him.

“Safe roads,” the man said without emphasis, which in Friar was sometimes the closest thing to a blessing.

Outside, the night air was sharp.

And somewhere within John, a voice had begun to speak, not in words of prophecy, but in the tone of a man arguing with himself and refusing to lose.

Next Episode, Next Monday!