The blade stopped a finger from my throat. “Smile for me, trash,” Garren whispered. His sword smelled like copper and the last adventurer who’d pissed him off. “Or I’ll carve one into your face.” Behind him, the dungeon beast’s corpse still steamed. Behind _me_, there was only stone. No backup. No escape. Just three nobles watching to see if I’d cry. I didn’t. Pack mules don’t get to cry. I’m Kalean. F-Rank. The Divine Kingdom’s favorite joke. Five years ago the Oracle called me “child of fate.” Then the crystal dimmed and 10,000 people laughed until they choked. Fate has a sense of humor. Mine? I make things disappear. Garren pressed the blade closer. A bead of blood slid down my neck. “You’re shaking, pack mule. Scared?” Toren snorted. “She should be. F-Ranks don’t survive mistakes.” Lydia just smiled. That fake, noble smile that meant _I’m enjoying this_. I wasn’t shaking from fear. I was shaking from rage. Because for five years I’d carried their loot, their food, their corpses. I’d bled in dungeons so they could buy silk in the upper terraces. I’d been their joke, their dog, their _nothing_. And I was done. My hand twitched. Not toward a weapon — I didn’t have one. Toward _him_. My ability flared. Air warped. Garren’s ancestral sword — the one worth more than my mother’s life — vanished. One second it was at my throat. The next? Gone. Sucked into my pocket dimension where nobody but me could touch it. Silence. The kind before executions. Garren stared at his empty hand. Then at me. His face went white, then red, then something ugly that nobles aren’t supposed to look. “You _bitch_,” he hissed. “Where is it?” I finally smiled. First real one in five years. It felt like breaking bone. “In a place you’ll never reach, _trash_.” The dungeon trembled. Not from my power. From the sound of 100 claws on stone. The beast we killed? It had friends. A lot of them. And they were between us and the exit. Toren went for his shield. Lydia raised her staff. Garren? Garren looked at me. Really looked. Like he was seeing a person instead of a pack mule for the first time. “Give. It. Back.” I stepped back. Toward the darkness. Toward the growls. “Come and take it,” I said. ---