The government car smelled like old coffee and the kind of cheap plastic that somehow feels hot no matter how cold the AC blasts. Inside, I was fine—bones reset, lungs shut up, nothing screaming anymore—because Absolute Regeneration had already done its smug little magic. Outside? I looked like I'd lost a fight to a woodchipper. Mara's tee was a rag. My jacket hung off one shoulder like it wanted to quit me. Dried blood flaked off every time I breathed.
Incident Lead—the same gray-suit who'd pulled me out from under a dozen phones—sat across from me with a tablet and a face that had never laughed in an elevator. She kept watching my hands like I might pull a dragon out of my sleeve.
"Ethan Cross," she said, like the car needed reminding. "F-rank. Guild ID verified."
"That's me," I said. "F stands for Fantastic Life Choices."
Nothing on her face moved. "You'll answer questions at Central."
"Do I get a juice box?"
"Water."
"Hydration is important," I said, because my mouth won't stop even when my brain writes emails asking it to.
Arcadia slid by: glass towers pretending they weren't propped on rot, buses groaning like smokers, street grills coughing meat smoke and burnt sugar in your face. A few blocks away was a couch that squeaked if you looked at it and a woman who made pancakes and told me to be boring. I touched the ruined collar of her tee with two fingers like that could fix anything.
Central Hunter Guild sat a block off the river, right across from town hall—because the government likes keeping its pets close to the leash. White ribs, smug glass, the kind of building that looks like it fines you for breathing too hard
The city sort of looped around it in rings. You had Guild Row a few blocks over—glass towers for the big names, all banners and billboards with S-rank idols smirking down at you like toothpaste ads. Flashy as hell, but Central was the one that mattered. They didn't recruit; they judged.
Mara lived not far from there, in one of those middle neighborhoods—brick apartments, old shops, streets that still remembered kids' chalk drawings. Close enough to walk to Guild Row if you were ambitious, far enough not to smell like the slums.
My place? A ten-minute limp the other way. The slums clung to the city's edge, stacked apartments with paper-thin walls and elevators that creaked like horror movie props. I rented a room with a bed that squeaked if you looked at it wrong. Dungeon quarantine zones were just past the slums—lucky me, I lived where the city dumped its gates. Rent was cheap, and so was I.
So yeah, Arcadia had its glamour, but I knew which side of the river my paycheck drowned on.
We ditched the car at the curb. The incident Lead didn't even look back to see if I was following—just cut across the plaza like gravity worked harder for her. The Central Guild tower loomed over the river, ribs of white bone and glass that hated fingerprints, like somebody had built a cathedral for paperwork. Town hall squatted next door, pretending they were equals.
She badged us past the guards at the door. I caught a couple hunters staring—bloody F-rank, shredded clothes, Mara's tee hanging off me like a war crime—and then we were inside.
The lobby swallowed sound. Too clean, too shiny, the kind of place where a sneeze would get you fined. Heels clicked sharp enough to cut glass. Runes buzzed under the floor, faint but itchy—like standing too close to one of those shitty apartment radiators that hum all winter and still don't heat the room.
They shoved me through a scanner gate that hummed against my molars, waved a wand like I was a shoplifter, then handed me a bottle of water like a sorry-you-didn't-die gift.
A healer in gray gloves drifted up, the type who could patch you up and scold you at the same time. She hovered her hands an inch off my skin. Her gloves flickered light across me like a busted flashlight… then stuttered, like even magic didn't know what to do with me.
"No active wounds," she muttered, frowning. "No fractures. No bruising. Adrenaline elevated. Mana profile…" Her gloves pulsed faint light across my ribs. She glanced at the rune-strip on her wrist, then back at me. "Zero."
"I'm saving my mana for a rainy day," I said.
She glanced at my shredded shirt. "Right."
They put me in a room that had never met a crumb. One table. Two chairs. A pretty mirror that was actually a window. Camera bubble nudging the ceiling. I sat, and the chair squeaked; I felt personally attacked. I put the water down and my hand left a blood print on the table that made me look more interesting than I felt.
Incident Lead took the other chair. Another suit came with her, leaned against the wall. Square haircut, shoulders like a fridge. Badge said EXAMINER, like that was his gamer tag and not just a job.
"State your full name and rank for the record," she said. A red dot glowed on the camera like a bored eye.
"Ethan Cross. F-rank," I said. "Still F. Nobody sent the promotion cake yet."
She didn't blink. "You entered Gate D-112 at 10:14. Alone. At 10:17 the gate reclassified from E to A. Monitors show a Core Guardian manifested. At 14:42 you exited. Alone." She leveled the tablet at me the way some people level knives. "Who was inside with you?"
"Just me," I said. "I went in alone. I came out alone."
"You expect us to believe that an F-rank cleared an A-rank environment solo," the Examiner said, rolling solo like it had gravel in it.
"I expect almost nothing," I said. "It's how I keep being pleasantly surprised."
He looked at my ruined clothes, at the dried blood, at the way my hands didn't shake even though they remembered how. "What is your ability?"
"Great genes," I said. "Milk. Push-ups. Protein shakes. Also a multivitamin if I'm feeling dangerous."
The window ate my reflection; nobody laughed.
"Artifact surrender," Incident Lead said, moving right along. "Weapons, relics, loot, cores. Central will catalog and return any legal items after evaluation."
"Sure," I said, and put Fangpiercer on the table.
The dagger looked obscene in here—runed blade catching the light in a way that made the room feel cheaper, hilt fitting my palm like it had my measurements. Examiner Guy slid a glove on and picked it up like it might decide to bite him. He shoved it under one of those rune-hoops every guild office has—the kind they use to beep ID cards and check if your gear's stolen. The band flickered, then pulsed like it couldn't decide if it hated the knife or respected it.
"Rank pings A," he said. "Binding signature… present." His eyes ticked at me.
"Great. Knife's more committed than any girl I've dated."
He turned to a steel tray by the door. The dagger left his hand.
It did not reach the tray.
A blink and it was back in my hand, like gravity had misfired. Warm. Humming that smug little hum that said I belonged to it more than it belonged to me.
"Uh," I said.
All the air got very quiet. The Examiner checked under the tray, because maybe it had learned to crouch? Incident Lead looked at my fingers, then at the empty tray, then at my fingers again like repetition would rewrite reality.
A tiny line blinked at the edge of my eye like a polite cough I wasn't going to admit out loud:
[Bind Confirmed: Fangpiercer (A). Transfer denied. Owner: Ethan Cross.]
I absolutely didn't say that. I did my innocent face; it has never worked.
"Undeclared bound artifact," Incident Lead said. If a stapler could talk, it would sound like that. "That is a violation of—"
"Lots of policies," I said. "I'm learning so much today."
"Empty your other holdings," the Examiner said. "Packs. Pouches. Storage devices. Rings. If you pulled cores, you declare now."
"My pack fell in the cave-in." True, in a way. "I brought what I could carry." I patted my shredded pockets. "Which is a wallet with eight dollars and a bus pass."
He stared. I stared back. He had trained for this. I had trained to look like an idiot, which I am naturally gifted at.
"You walked out of an A-rank collapse without a scratch. That doesn't happen without artifacts. More than one. Declare them."
I blinked. "Declare them? What am I, at customs now? Want me to tick the box for 'souvenirs and trauma'?"
He didn't laugh. Suits never laugh.
"You're alive. That means you had help, or items, or both."
"Oh sure," I said. "My items were… optimism, sarcasm, and a total lack of self-preservation. Rare drops, all of them."
Incident Lead didn't sigh, but a sigh happened a few inches behind her face. She tapped the tablet. "We'll verify. Examiner Vale, move Mr. Cross to Resonance."
"Is Resonance the part where you keep calling me mister and then I die?" I asked, standing because I could. The reflective blanket they'd draped over me back at Lot C slid to the floor like a dead fish. I picked it up—not because I needed it, but because having one small thing in my hands that wasn't a weapon made me feel less like a problem.
"Measure what?"
"How much of what you're telling is a lie."
"Great. I've been lying to myself for years, so I should ace this."
We walked halls that felt like a hospital built by someone with too much cash. Everything was white, polished, humming like it wanted to remind you I couldn't afford to be there. Staff in gray glanced at me, then away, like they didn't want to catch whatever disease I had. The hunters in armor did that slow turn, the kind that says "I'm cataloging you for later." Joke's on them, I've been cataloged as trash my whole life. Still, when the suits whisper "Resonance," you start to wonder if the next catalog is under "lab rat."