The hum of Nexus never slept.
Even in the inner districts, where the neon veins of the city pulsed brightest, there was always movement. Grav-cars glided along elevated rails, their lights streaking through the smog. Tower spires blinked with signals in alien codes, broadcasting across trade routes that stretched from Nexarion to distant stars. And above it all, orbiting satellites cast faint ripples of light through the night sky, reminders that this city was not just a city but a node in an empire of worlds.
Jade sat cross-legged on his bedroll in the back of the shop. The shutters were drawn, the door bolted, Niamh already asleep in her room beyond the thin wall. Gorvoth had left hours earlier with little more than a grunt and a cloud of smoke. The quiet should have been comforting. But it wasn't.
His Void Sense whispered.
It began as a prickling at the base of his neck, like a cold finger tracing his spine. He stilled his breathing, letting the sensation unfold. At first, it was faint—easy to dismiss as the restless aura of the city itself. Nexus bled noise and power, after all. There were always drunken mercs staggering through alleys, always smugglers cloaking their crates with weak illusions, always gangs brimming with hostile intent.
But this was different.
This presence was not loud. It was quiet—too quiet. A silence shaped with precision. He could feel the weight of it, pressing at the edges of perception. Where other auras blared like crude engines, this one slipped between the cracks, deliberate, honed.
The Silent Ravens.
The system had warned him of a test. Now the test had come.
He didn't move. Didn't reach for a weapon. He simply tilted his head, listening to the rhythm of the city. His senses stretched outward like threads of frost over water.
On the rooftop across the narrow street, a figure crouched low, heartbeat muted, breath shallow. Their aura was wrapped so tightly that a lesser awakener would never have noticed them. Yet Jade could taste the faintest trace of mana woven into their cloak—an interstellar fabric designed to scatter scans.
To the east, two more shadows drifted along a catwalk, footsteps syncing with the thrum of the city's power lines to mask their sound. Farther still, another figure knelt on a grav-sphere, drifting silently at window height, the orb humming just low enough to blend with the drone of nearby generators.
They were everywhere, and nowhere.
Jade lowered his lashes beneath the blindfold, masking the faint glow of his dual pupils. If they were testing him, they'd see only a boy pretending at peace, a child who had not yet learned to fear shadows.
But inside, his mana coiled like stormclouds.
The shop smelled faintly of dried herbs and cold metal. Rows of tinctures glimmered in stasis jars, their colors shifting gently like captive stars. On the workbench, a half-finished salve sat waiting. To any intruder, the space might seem vulnerable. Small. Fragile.
Jade almost smiled.
Through the haze of his sense, he tasted the faintest shift—the scrape of steel against cloth, the whisper of intention sharpening. They were patient hunters, yes, but hunters nonetheless. And hunters always struck eventually.
The city outside offered no warning. Vendors still hawked glowfruit at the night market, mercenaries still laughed too loud in taverns, grav-ships still blinked as they ascended toward orbit. Life went on.
But in the cracks of that life, death crept closer.
Jade shifted his focus inward.
DING!
New Quest Objective Active: Survive the city's response.
Time Remaining: 29 days, 18 hours.
He let the numbers steady him. He wasn't afraid of death. He was afraid of exposure— of the city prying into what he was. That, more than anything, made his chest tighten.
Outside the shop, the first raven moved.
A pebble shifted on the rooftop. Barely a sound. But in the stillness of his Void Sense, it was thunder.
Jade drew in a breath and released it in a slow stream. Frost slipped from his lips, vanishing before it touched the air. His hands rested loosely on his knees. To an observer, he was meditating. To himself, he was tracing escape routes, counting mana reserves, recalling the shape of spells he had no intention of showing unless absolutely necessary.
The Silent Ravens were not the Ash Rats. They were professionals, trained in silence, patience, efficiency.
And they were coming.
...
The first to move came from the rooftop.
A shadow slipped across the gap between buildings, body gliding with inhuman grace. Their cloak flared once, catching faint neon light, then stilled. No sound, no wasted motion. A blade slid from its sheath without a hiss, edge coated with faint shimmer—an alchemical toxin, volatile under blood.
Jade felt the intent before the steel.
The figure dropped, silent as smoke, landing outside the shop's back door. A faint ripple of mana brushed the lock. Tumblers clicked. Bolts unlatched. To a passerby, nothing had changed. But to Jade, the air shifted—breath held before the plunge.
The door opened.
The Raven entered, steps padded by boots designed to mute vibration. Their aura was smothered, but even silence had weight. Jade tracked them without turning his head. Another entered through the front, cloak rippling, moving with mirrored precision.
Two inside. Three still outside. One above, one on the catwalk, one hovering on the grav-sphere. A net tightening.
Jade's lips parted just slightly. Frost curled from his breath, fading into the stale air of the shop.
The Raven by the back door paused. Only for an instant. Perhaps they felt it—the wrongness in the air, the faint bite of unnatural cold. But training overrode instinct. They stepped forward.
The shelves whispered as the intruder brushed past them. Bottles rattled faintly, liquid catching glimmers of faint neon leaking through shutters. Their eyes swept the room, lenses overlaid with faint blue light—scanners, analyzing temperature shifts, sound resonance, the faint glow of mana.
Jade did not move.
He waited.
The second Raven approached from the front, boots barely creaking against the old wood. Their blade remained sheathed, but their hand hovered close. Patient. Searching.
Void Sense stretched outward. He could feel their nerves sparking, muscle fibers tensing, the rhythm of their hearts—slowed deliberately to conserve oxygen. Professionals indeed.
But not invisible. Not to him.
His frost responded before his hand. Thin crystals crept along the edge of his workbench, vanishing before they reached sight. The room grew colder, subtle enough to blame on poor insulation. But the Ravens did not miss it.
The one at the back shifted stance. A silent signal.
Attack.
They moved as one.
The back Raven lunged first, blade flashing with muted violet sheen. The front one followed, cloak whipping aside as their dagger curved in low. No warning, no shout—only the clean efficiency of killers.
Jade's blindfolded eyes snapped open.
For an instant, his dual pupils gleamed in the dark, Frost burst outward, invisible at first, then manifesting as air crystallized in lines too precise to be natural.
The back Raven's blade halted mid-swing. Ice laced along its edge, locking steel in place before it touched cloth. They twisted, trying to wrench free, but the frost crawled up their arm like living chains.
The front Raven was faster, breaking momentum with a burst of mana that propelled them sideways, blade carving through a shelf instead. Bottles shattered. Alchemical light flared as herbs dissolved into smoke.
Jade rose to his feet without hurry. His bare toes pressed into the wooden floor, frost blossoming beneath them.
The air rang with silence so sharp it felt like a blade itself.
Then the windows exploded.
The Raven from the grav-sphere crashed through, shards raining, cloak twisting midair. They struck without hesitation, blade descending for Jade's head.
For the first time, Jade moved quickly.
His body blurred, teleportation sparking in pale light. One instant he stood by the bench. The next, he was at the far wall, frost trailing behind him like ribbons. The Raven's strike cleaved only air, ice forming where their blade struck the ground.
From the ceiling beams, the rooftop Raven dropped, dual daggers spinning. Their aura spiked—not loud, but sharp as a razor.
Jade lifted a hand.
"Freeze."
The word was breath, not command. But the air obeyed.
A wave of frost surged upward, catching the descending figure mid-leap. For a heartbeat, they hung suspended, cloak frozen mid-snap, blades halted inches from flesh. Then the ice cracked as the Raven's mana surged. Shards burst outward, glittering like fractured stars.
They landed, knees bending, cloak smoldering faintly where mana burned frost away. Silent, efficient, relentless.
The Ravens were not here to kill. Not yet. They were here to measure. To press. To see what the boy could do.
And Jade, blindfold shifting with the rise of his breath, gave them their answer.
Frost spread wider, coating shelves, tables, the floor. Herbs turned brittle, glass clouded white. The temperature plummeted until breath fogged. The Silent Ravens did not flinch. Their cloaks shimmered faintly, adjusting, regulating heat.
Professional. Interstellar-grade.
But still, intruders in his den.
The clash had only begun.
------------------------------------------
The air inside the shop was no longer air.
It was a battlefield of frost and silence.
Jade stood still, blindfolded eyes glowing faintly through the fabric, pupils overlapping like twin stars. Around him, frost coiled in threads and sheets, shaping itself to his intent. Every breath he took sharpened the cold, until the floor itself sang with tension.
The Silent Ravens did not retreat.
The one by the back door snapped their frozen blade free with a twist of mana, shards spiraling outward in glittering arcs. They advanced again, movements calm, detached, as though the frost itself was nothing but weather. Their partner by the front mirrored the motion, stepping with the same cadence.
Two blades. Two shadows. No words.
From above, the rooftop Raven struck again, daggers flashing in overlapping arcs. The one from the grav-sphere circled, cloak dispersing into a dozen flickers of light that mimicked motion—illusions layered with tech. To an untrained eye, there were suddenly five Ravens advancing at once.
But Jade's Void Sense saw through it.
He stepped forward, the world slowing in the stretch of his perception. He felt the pulse of each heart, the strain of each muscle. Four illusions bled static. Only one carried weight.
He raised his hand.
Frost spiraled from his palm like a serpent, striking the real Raven mid-step. Cloak shattered under the impact, frost crystallizing along the intruder's ribs. They staggered, silent even in pain, before dissolving into mist with a mana pulse. A clone.
Not a kill. A test.
The other illusions popped like soap bubbles, leaving only the faint hum of the grav-sphere outside the window.
They weren't careless. They were probing. Measuring his response.
A blade whistled past his ear.
Jade twisted, frost blooming in a fan that caught the back Raven mid-swing. Ice coated their arm again, climbing faster this time, crawling across shoulder and chest. They slammed their palm into the floor, mana erupting in a shockwave that shattered the frost with brute force.
Jade's hair whipped in the backlash, silvery-blue strands scattering light. His blindfold shifted slightly, almost revealing the full radiance of his dual irises.
He exhaled. Frost spread wider, fogging the room.
The Silent Ravens adapted.
The front Raven drew a slender cylinder from their cloak—an interstellar device humming with faint violet light. With a twist, the cylinder erupted into a grid of energy, scattering the frost that hung in the air. The temperature stabilized slightly, though the floor remained slick with ice.
Jade's lips curved faintly. So they had brought tools to counter him. Expected.
But not enough.
Mana surged in his veins. He raised his hand again, this time not for chains or mist, but for a blade. Ice coalesced into a crystalline weapon, jagged and gleaming, runes flickering faintly across its edge—an echo of his Belgusari bloodline, surfacing unbidden.
The rooftop Raven lunged, daggers spinning. Jade met them head-on.
Steel and ice clashed, sparks scattering where mana scraped against mana. The Raven moved with surgical precision, every strike angled to test, to force Jade into showing more. Jade parried, redirected, his small frame flowing like water around heavier strikes.
Then he blurred.
Teleportation sparked again—he vanished from one side of the shop and reappeared at the other, blade of ice already mid-swing. The back Raven caught it with their poisoned weapon, the clash ringing like glass on stone. Frost crept along the edge, hissing as it met the toxin.
The clash drew the others in. Suddenly, the shop was a storm of motion. Cloaks whipping, blades flashing, frost bursting with every strike. Shelves toppled. Bottles shattered. Alchemical fumes mixed with the cold, filling the air with shimmering haze.
Through it all, Jade's expression remained calm. Detached. A boy in body, but something older in his eyes.
And yet—beneath his calm, tension coiled.
This was no gang brawl. These were assassins honed across worlds, their silence sharper than any blade. They struck not to kill, but to peel back layers of his strength, to force him to reveal more than he wished. Every clash, every probe, was a question.
What are you, boy?
Jade felt Niamh stir in the next room, her aura flaring sharp with protective instinct. He did not want her to see this. Not yet.
So he moved faster.
Mana surged, his Frozen Aura bursting fully for the first time. The temperature plummeted so violently that frost crawled along the walls in veins, cracking wood, clouding glass. The Ravens froze mid-motion, cloaks stiffening as ice seized the air itself.
For an instant, the world was still.
Then Jade struck.
His blade swept in a wide arc, frost exploding outward. The rooftop Raven was hurled back, slamming against a beam with a muffled grunt. The front Raven staggered, their grid-device flickering, frost crawling up their arm despite the countermeasure. The back Raven managed to hold ground, but their cloak cracked with ice.
Even the grav-sphere outside stuttered, its hum choking under the sudden cold.
Jade's blindfold glowed faintly with the light of his eyes beneath. His voice was quiet, but it carried.
"Enough."
The Ravens stilled. Not defeated, but halted. Their blades remained drawn, but none pressed forward. The silence stretched, heavy with unspoken calculation.
Then, as one, they withdrew.
The rooftop Raven vaulted back through the shattered window, cloak dissolving into shadow. The front Raven stepped away, blade sheathing itself soundlessly. The back Raven melted into the corner, their aura fading until Void Sense barely caught them. The grav-sphere rose, humming faintly as it lifted into the night.
Jade did not chase.
He stood among the frost and ruin of his shop, chest rising and falling with quiet control.
The test was over. For now.
But as the silence returned, his system pulsed.
[Quest Update]
Objective Complete: Survive first strike of the Silent Ravens.
New Objective: Prepare for escalation.
Time Remaining: 29 days, 11 hours.
Reward Pending…
And in the distance, across the city, a sealed message was delivered into the hands of a figure cloaked in deeper shadow.
"He's stronger than expected," a Raven's voice murmured through comms.
The figure read the message once, then burned it to ash.
"Then we escalate."