I Just Wanted a Peaceful Life… So Why Do Heroes Worship Me?

The skies cleared for the first time in days.

Not the usual pale blue of midseason calm, but a sharper, brighter stretch of air that felt scrubbed clean.

The clouds no longer clung to the hills, and the wind no longer whispered warnings. Everything stood too still, too light, like the world had taken a breath and wasn't sure if it wanted to exhale.

Rei watched it all from the threshold of the shop, a fresh cup of mint-twig tea in hand and Fluff curled beneath his stool. He wasn't looking for signs. Not exactly. But he'd grown used to watching for the world's twitching—the little flickers that hinted at change before it arrived.

Now, there was nothing. And that unsettled him more than any knock on the door.

Behind him, the sanctuary continued its slow, unspoken routine. Ellyn was rearranging the potion shelf by tincture viscosity again, muttering something about "emotional resonance alignment." Auron was testing how many ink colors he could make from dried beast petals. Kreg was baking quietly, no performance, no flair, just flour-dusted silence.

And Rei… Rei was waiting for a signal that didn't come.

Not from the Hollow Accord. Not from the Untethered. Not from any realm or faction or force.

Only stillness.

Which meant something had either ended or begun.

He wasn't sure which he preferred.

The day unfolded without interruption. No new beasts. No odd travelers. Not even a delivery from the mountain courier hawks. The soot-fox napped the entire afternoon in a sunbeam like nothing in the world had ever gone wrong. Even the moss-hounds didn't argue over fence territory.

It was a perfect day.

Rei hated it.

That night, as lanterns glowed faintly beneath the eaves and the air thickened with the scent of baked root pie, Rei found himself pacing along the outer ward lines. Not checking them—he knew they were fine—but walking them. Listening to the silence between trees, the breaths of the garden, the way the wind refused to cross the main gate's threshold.

He stopped beside the stone well, which hadn't drawn water in years. It wasn't dry. It simply didn't give water to anyone who didn't need it.

Tonight, it hummed.

Rei didn't look down into it. He simply placed his palm on the lip of the stone and waited.

The hum didn't increase.

Didn't shift.

It simply acknowledged him.

And that was enough to confirm what he'd been dreading.

He was the new center of something.

And he didn't know what.

The next morning, the first real disruption arrived.

A small beast—barely the size of a satchel—with silky ears and silvery fur walked through the open front gate like it belonged. It didn't speak. But it carried a folded piece of fabric in its mouth, which it dropped at Rei's feet before curling up near the fire without asking permission.

The cloth was smooth, matte black, and woven with shifting embroidery that never quite held still. When unfolded, it revealed a circular crest he didn't recognize: a flame inside a box, surrounded by script in a language he could almost—but not quite—understand.

Fluff sniffed it. Then walked away.

Rei folded the cloth again and placed it in the back cupboard beneath the old scroll cases.

He didn't mention it to anyone.

Not yet.

That afternoon, a visitor arrived.

Not from above.

Not from the spirit paths.

From below.

The ground did not rumble. The earth did not shake.

It simply… opened.

Just slightly.

Enough to allow a hand—pale, gloved, with fingers too jointed to be human—to rest gently on the front step.

Rei saw it from across the room. He did not panic. He did not speak.

He walked to the doorway, crouched, and met the hand with a folded towel.

"Not inside," he said calmly.

The hand withdrew.

The earth resealed.

No one else in the sanctuary had seen it.

Or pretended not to.

That night, Ellyn confronted him.

"You're not telling us everything," she said, not accusingly, but with the quiet weight of someone who'd already decided to help regardless.

"There's nothing to tell yet."

"You're lying badly."

Rei smiled faintly. "I'm tired."

"So are we. But we want to be tired together. If something's watching you—or using you—we should know."

He sat down on the step beside her and didn't speak for a long while.

Eventually, he said, "I think I'm not being used. I think I'm being… held in reserve."

"By who?"

"I'm starting to think even they don't know."

Auron eavesdropped shamelessly from the window. Kreg brought tea without asking.

Fluff didn't appear that night.

And in the stillness, something in Rei began to settle—not into peace, but into readiness.

The kind of readiness that came not from expecting battle, but from knowing one's presence alone had become part of the terrain others had to cross.

He didn't want it.

But he understood it.

And understanding made it bearable.

The next morning, a single leaf fell onto the tea tray before he'd even opened the door.

Black. Spiral-shaped. Embossed with an emblem of a flame inside a box.

Not a message.

An invitation.

He poured a second cup.

And left it steaming. Unclaimed. But waiting.