The gray fog of Aetheros pressed lightly against the narrow streets, curling around the wrought-iron lamp posts and dripping silently into puddles along the cobblestones. The city seemed quieter today, but Seth Virell did not need noise to perceive its subtle pulse.
He walked slowly, letting his boots splash in the shallow water, and reflected on the conversation from the coffee shop.
Seven Thrones. Seven divine dominions. Seven rulers. Seven pillars older than history.
The names echoed in his mind: Evernight Matron, Radiant Hierophant, Chained Arbiter, Whispering Tide, Gilded Monarch, Hollow Choir, Ashen Warden.
"Power like mine… yet different. Ranks again. Nine to one."
Seth's lips curled slightly. "It's like the Closurist system," he muttered under his breath. "Ranks, hierarchy… but I won't concern myself with it now. I'll ask the figure when I meet him again."
The thought brought a faint shiver of anticipation. That figure — ever distant, ever observing — had left him with more questions than answers. Questions that carried weight he was only beginning to sense.
He passed a row of bookshops, their windows fogged with condensation, the scent of paper and ink bleeding out onto the streets. For the first time, Seth noticed the irregularities in conversation, the gaps between statements, the hints of deception in casual remarks.
A man in a brown coat was arguing with a vendor over the price of a loaf of bread. Seth paused, observing. The man's words were insistent, his tone brimming with confidence. But something was off — his eyes flicked to the side whenever he spoke, his hand twitched near his coat pocket.
He's hiding something… perhaps more than just a coin.
Seth's mind worked through the evidence. The loaf's price was already agreed upon; the vendor had no reason to resist. Yet the man's insistence implied a false narrative, a pretense of conflict. He was not truly bargaining — he was diverting attention. Seth could pinpoint the lie, though he could not yet act on it.
A thrill ran down his spine. "So this is… Closurist perception. Cipher Nine. The Loose-End Finder."
It wasn't physical power. No flames erupted from his hands, no sigils carved themselves into the air. Yet the world had changed. The threads of reality whispered to him in subtle ways: the pauses in speech, the slight hesitations, the gaps in stories. Every conversation, every casual rumor, became a tapestry to be read.
Seth walked further, past the fountains in the Central District, where water ran silver in the dim light. He could hear the faint echo of conversations from alleyways — whispers about missing merchants, about a child who had disappeared from the Gray Fog district, about a mysterious manuscript circulating among scholars. All of them incomplete, all of them dangling threads, and he could sense the loose ends.
"Why now?" he muttered to himself. "Did the manuscript last night… awaken something?"
He thought back to the experience: the overwhelming tide of ink, the shifting symbols, the madness that had clawed at the edges of his mind. And yet — clarity had emerged. A thread of understanding, delicate but unbreakable.
It was as though his mind had been pried open, and in the silence that followed, he could see the cracks others could not.
"I can perceive the incomplete… the unresolved…"
A vendor called out, "Fresh bread! Rumor has it the Evernight Matron visited the city last night!"
Seth paused. The words were ordinary enough, but his mind caught the loose thread immediately. The Matron was known to move through dreams. Any mortal claiming to see her physically was either lying or deluded.
He frowned. "That's false. Yet why propagate it? To scare, to mislead, or perhaps to test perception?"
Even the fog seemed to respond to him, shifting and curling differently depending on which alley he walked through. Perhaps it was his imagination. Perhaps not. I am noticing too much too quickly. I must learn control.
He turned down a side street, narrower and darker than the main avenues. Gas lamps flickered, and shadows leapt across the walls. A street urchin darted past him, crying out a warning about a collapsed scaffold. Seth noticed immediately — the boy exaggerated the danger. The scaffold was old but intact; the warning was a loose thread, perhaps a game to provoke fear, perhaps a test of observation.
Seth let the boy pass. I can see deception, and incomplete stories, but I am still powerless to correct them beyond understanding.
He thought about the Archivist system and the manuscripts. It all makes sense now. Creating or finding manuscripts… it trains perception. Until Cipher Six, that is the point: comprehension of stories, identification of gaps, closure. Physical power comes later. Subtlety first. Observation. Awareness.
A sudden, sharp thought struck him: the Seven Thrones themselves — even they operate in hierarchies. Subtle influence, spreading across realms. Observation, loyalty, manipulation. Ranks. Rank 9 to 1.
"So many parallels… yet mine is invisible. I feel the weight of knowledge, not the thrill of command."
He paused before a shop with a sign reading "Tarot and Divination – Gray Fog District." The smoky interior called to him. He stepped inside, curious, and was greeted by the scent of burning incense and paper. Tarot cards lay scattered across a velvet-covered table, and a woman's voice murmured softly.
"You seem… perceptive," she said, not looking up. "Not just eyes open. You see what others cannot. But beware — perception is a double-edged blade."
Seth frowned. "Are you… predicting something?"
The woman smiled faintly, revealing teeth that seemed sharper than normal. "Not prediction. Observation. Understanding. The difference is vast. One leads to power, the other to madness."
He nodded, feeling the weight of her words. "Madness… I nearly touched it last night."
Exiting the shop, Seth felt the streets differently. He noticed whispers in the corners, vague references to hidden alliances, missing coins, lost letters, and hidden debts. The city's stories — rumors, truths, half-truths, and lies — were all visible threads, if one had the skill to perceive them.
"I can see the loose ends. I know what is incomplete. I understand gaps no one else even knows exist."
He experimented silently, following a conversation of merchants haggling over cloth. One claimed a shipment had arrived; the other denied it. Seth focused, and the contradiction became clear: the shipment existed, but only partially, and half the cloth was already spoiled. A small, mundane revelation, yet illuminating.
"This is my power. Subtle. Analytical. A thread-finder. A gap-mender in thought before I can act physically."
The sky above the city darkened slightly, as if the gray fog itself thickened to mark the day's progress. Street lamps flickered, casting their pale light onto puddles, and Seth realized he could sense the missing pieces of the day as well: a carriage that hadn't returned, a letter that had been delayed, a warning unsent.
He muttered to himself, "All this… yet no strength to alter it. I must remember, it is observation first. Control later. Influence grows slowly."
Seth walked on, past a bridge spanning the river that cut through the city like a vein. He noticed a fisherman murmuring about tides and drowned rats. Something was wrong — the man claimed the river had risen overnight, but the banks bore no trace of flood. Seth smiled faintly. Another false narrative, another dangling thread.
"Every story, every whisper, every rumor… it has gaps. And I can see them."
By the time he returned to his small apartment, the city had shifted around him, subtly, as though aware that one of its hidden observers had awakened. He set his coat aside, dropped the remaining coins on the table, and allowed himself a rare moment of quiet.
"Tomorrow, I'll find the figure again. I'll ask about the Axis Realm, about the full nature of my powers, about why the manuscripts bind me. But tonight… I observe. I learn. I perceive."
Seth glanced out the window. The crimson moon hung low in the sky, its light reflecting in the puddles. Shadows stretched unnaturally. He felt a trace of unease, but beneath it, a thrill: a sense of possibility, a sense that everything incomplete in this world had a name — and I can find it.
He whispered to himself, almost reverently, "Loose ends… everywhere. And I am the finder."