The slum-market had turned into a crucible. The air shimmered faintly with the heat of neon signs, smoke from frying stalls, and the humming buzz of grav-bikes circling above. But all of that was background noise now — drowned by the unnatural stillness that followed the Silent Ravens' first strike.
Jade did not move at first. His lashes lowered slightly, and both pairs of irises in his eyes gleamed. They reflected the faint light of burning stalls, catching every twitch, every breath, every thread of intent in the hostile crowd.
The Ravens didn't notice the subtle drop in temperature yet. They didn't see how shadows lengthened against walls where no sun or lamp shone. But Gorvoth noticed. The old man's hand, calloused and scarred, flexed near the hilt of a weapon hidden under his coat. Niamh noticed too; she had felt this pressure before — the way Jade's presence could bend the air, like a rift threatening to snap open.
"Eyes on the child," one Raven hissed into a comm-bead at his collar. His voice carried a strange modulation, like steel rubbing against steel. "Target confirmed. Level scan unreliable. Proceed with strike formation."
The ground vibrated faintly. Energy lines blinked across their suits, marking them as more than just thugs. Nexus-trained, augmented for mobility and suppression. At least C-rank talents — enough to dominate the slums on a normal day.
Today wasn't normal.
The first Raven lifted his arm. Black metal unfolded into a sleek gauntlet, plasma filaments humming between his knuckles. He slashed down — and a crescent of scarlet energy whipped through the street, splitting air and stone as though tearing paper.
Jade was no longer where he had stood.
Space folded with a soundless ripple. He reappeared behind the Raven, frost blooming outward like glass shattering in reverse. Crystalline spears erupted from the ground, jagged, spiraling upward — but threaded through them were veins of living shadow. They pulsed, hungry, like veins of ink spilled across ice.
The Raven's visor lit red with warning sigils. He twisted, trying to disengage, but his movements slowed — frost clamped over his joints, and the shadow tendrils reached into the cracks of his armor like snakes slipping through gaps.
The man screamed once. His voice was cut short when darkness sealed his throat. His body froze mid-motion, then shattered into fragments of ice and fading embers of his augments.
The others froze, processing what had just happened.
"That's no child—" one muttered, disbelief thick in his tone.
Niamh caught that word and her teeth ground together. They thought he was disguised. They thought wrong.
"He is, but—" another Raven corrected tightly, scanning. "This isn't in the registry. He's… anomaly class."
The word anomaly rippled through the gathered slum onlookers. People shuffled back, eyes wide. Whispers rose, colliding with the distant hum of grav-cars overhead.
Jade didn't answer them. He simply stood where he had reappeared, a faint halo of frost and shadow coiling around his small frame. His silvery-blue hair lifted with the unnatural current in the air, strands gleaming under flickering neon signs. His expression was calm, detached, as though this wasn't a fight but an inevitability.
The Ravens adjusted formation. Three stepped forward, blades of condensed plasma unfurling from their gauntlets. Two remained back, one with a rifle-shaped weapon that thrummed with unstable energy. The last disappeared entirely, fading into the void with a cloaking technique.
Jade's eyes flicked once. He didn't need eyes to follow them — Void Sense traced their movements in a lattice of unseen threads. He saw them not as bodies, but as distortions in the weave of existence.
He moved.
The world blinked. To the untrained, it seemed he simply vanished and reappeared at impossible angles. To the Ravens, it felt like the slums themselves betrayed them: shadows stretching where they shouldn't, ground slickening with frost, breath crystallizing too soon in their throats.
The cloaked Raven lunged from Jade's blind spot — except Jade was already there, hand lifted. Frost hardened the air into a shield. The assassin's blade screeched across ice, sparks bursting. Before he could recoil, darkness surged from Jade's palm — a flower of shadow blooming open, its petals tipped with frost-crystals sharper than blades.
The assassin's visor flickered once, then his scream echoed as the shadows consumed his armor, his breath, his light. The last thing the slum-crowd saw was the silhouette of his hand reaching out, before it too dissolved into nothingness.
Silence followed — heavy, oppressive.
"Child," Gorvoth's voice rumbled low, edged with both pride and wariness. "Don't overdo it."
But Jade didn't answer. His pupils dilated within their twin irises. Hunger whispered inside him — Belgusari's echo, the abyss pressing against its vessel. His chest rose and fell evenly, but Niamh could see it: the delicate tremor in his fingers, the faint crack in his control.
She stepped forward, voice sharp. "Jade. Enough."
Her tone snapped like a whip. For a heartbeat, Jade's frost paused. The shadow-veins shrank back, curling around him like obedient serpents.
The Ravens did not waste the moment. The rifleman fired.
A streak of green plasma cut through the market, burning the ground black. Stalls erupted in flame. Onlookers screamed, scattering.
Jade turned his head slightly. The bolt should have struck him — but the space it occupied suddenly wasn't there anymore. Reality folded, and the plasma collapsed into itself, dispersing into harmless sparks.
He stood across the square now, hand raised lazily, as though he had merely swatted away an insect.
The Raven cursed. "Impossible—"
Frost exploded beneath his feet. Spires of crystal surged upward, skewering his armor. Darkness wrapped around them, swallowing light, until his body disintegrated into nothing but a brittle shell that cracked and fell.
The last three Ravens regrouped. One shouted into his comms: "Control! Control, do you read? We've engaged a high-tier target—level unknown. Request—"
His words cut off in static. The comm-bead in his ear sparked, frozen solid in a sheath of ice.
Jade's lips parted slightly. His voice was soft, distant, like someone speaking from another world.
"Don't call for help."
The crowd shivered. Not just from his words, but from the weight of them — the way frost etched into steel beams overhead, the way shadows bent unnaturally closer, like the city itself was listening.
The three Ravens hesitated. They were trained, augmented, dangerous — but in that moment, they looked like prey.
And Jade… he was the hunter.
The quill's ash still swirled in the shop's ruined air when the next wave came. Not subtle this time, not whispers or shadows. It was force.
A black grav-sled tore across the avenue, its hum dampened to a low predatory thrum. Three figures stood aboard, cloaked and masked, their insignia muted yet unmistakable: Silent Ravens. Their boots thudded onto the cobblestones like punctuation.
Niamh froze mid-motion, kettle still warm in her hands. Gorvoth set his shoulders, pipe clenched tight enough to crack. But Jade — Jade's eyes gleamed, turning in each socket like a clock measuring more than time.
He exhaled. Frost rode the breath. Shadows curled around his ankles. The duality of his nature answered the threat: cold silence and bottomless dark.
The lead Raven raised a hand. Mana flared red, forming a serrated whip that cracked once, splitting the air. "The boy," the voice grated through a modulator. "Yield him, or bleed out for him."
Niamh made a strangled noise, stepping forward instinctively — but Gorvoth's heavy hand pressed her back. "Not yours to answer," the smith said, gaze flicking to Jade.
Jade tilted his head, childlike calm wrapped around a core of lethal intent. "You've tested enough," he said softly. "Now you'll learn."
The street temperature dropped a dozen degrees in a heartbeat. Frost crawled up stone walls, curling ivy into brittle lace. Darkness thickened between the flickering lamps until it felt almost tactile, bending sound, swallowing motion.
The Ravens moved.
One blurred sideways, dagger flashing with toxin-runed edges. Another vaulted high, gauntlet crackling with concussive charge. The leader surged forward, whip lashing with surgical precision.
Jade did not step back. He vanished.
Teleportation snapped — not with light, but with absence, like reality itself hiccupped. The dagger passed through air where Jade had been, striking sparks from cobblestone. Then Jade reappeared behind the attacker, palm brushing their shoulder. Frost bloomed instantly, racing across armor like crystalline fire. The Raven convulsed, breath crystallizing in their throat, until ice sealed their mask shut.
The whip cracked toward him — but the shadow under Jade's feet stretched unnaturally, unfurling like liquid night. It rose as a wall, swallowing the whip's strike whole. The energy fizzled, absorbed into the void, leaving only silence.
The high-vaulting Raven descended, fist glowing. Jade lifted his gaze — and the frost halo at his feet erupted into spears. Dozens of ice shards fired upward in a lethal blossom. The Raven twisted midair, dodging most, but three cut deep, blood spraying against the moonlit air. He crashed down hard, gauntlet dimming.
The leader snarled, switching tactics. Sigils flared across their chest plate, summoning a dome of fiery warding meant to burn through frost. "You don't understand what you've provoked, child—"
Jade interrupted with a whisper. Not words, not breath, but the void itself.
Darkness pulsed outward from him, a wave of crushing silence. The Raven's flame guttered like a candle in a storm. The dome collapsed, sucked inward, smothered. And then came the cold.
Snow fell where no clouds hung. Not flakes, but razors, each shard honed with killing intent. They swirled around Jade like a crown, guided by his dual gaze, then shot forward in a storm.
The leader raised both arms, bracing. Armor screamed as shards pierced through. One embedded in the Raven's throat. They fell to their knees, choking, mask frosting over. The whip went slack.
Silence reigned.
Jade stood amid frost and shadow, a boy small in stature yet terrible in aura. Each breath he took fogged the air; each step pressed silence deeper into the street. Niamh's eyes shone wet — terrified, proud, and heartbroken all at once. Gorvoth watched with the grim acknowledgment of an old wolf seeing a cub's fangs bared.
The last Raven still lived, wounded but crawling toward a hidden blade. Jade didn't move to stop him. Instead, the shadow under the assassin's body rose like hands, fingers of void curling around limbs. The Raven froze, helpless, as the darkness tightened.
Jade stepped close. He looked down, eyes shimmering with both hues, twin irises rotating like a divine judgment. "Tell them," he said softly. "Tell your masters I'm not prey."
The shadows obeyed, hurling the Raven back onto the sled, broken but breathing. The craft's engine stuttered awake as if compelled, dragging the survivor into retreat. It screeched away into the night, leaving frost-rimmed blood trails in its wake.
The street was still again. Only the ruined shop, the cracked cobblestones, and the faint glitter of unnatural snow bore witness.
Niamh clutched Jade's arm, trembling. "My baby…" she whispered, voice breaking. "You… you can't…" She couldn't even finish.
Jade's expression softened briefly, but his eyes never lost their depth. "They would never have stopped," he murmured. "Now they'll hesitate."
From the shadows of an alley, unseen eyes retreated — watchers, informants, data-collectors. By dawn, Nexus City would know. Guilds would tally numbers, the Spire would adjust ledgers, factions would shift strategies.
The boy who had been hidden as a beta was no longer invisible.
And in a tower high above, the Raven Curator leaned back, reading a silent report. A thin smile touched the mask. "So," the voice whispered. "The game begins in earnest."