Nexus City never slept, but tonight its heartbeat stuttered.
The grav-lanes above the markets were half-empty, sky-carts gliding in nervous clusters instead of their usual swarms. Vendors who normally hawked wares until dawn shuttered early, holo-signs dimmed to slivers. Even the drunks at the corner bars seemed quieter, muttering as if the air itself might carry their words to the wrong ears.
The Silent Ravens' probes had been noticed—not openly, never openly, but every faction with eyes had whispered about the feather-drones. And what wasn't seen was imagined ten times worse.
Niamh felt it in her bones as she stood at the shop's upstairs window, blind drawn just enough to peek. Across the street, old Mrs. Parun hadn't lit her tea lantern. At the docks, the union runners carried crates with shoulders hunched. Even the stars above Nexus seemed muted, drowned out by neon and dread.
Her hands trembled against the sill. 'I hate this city. I hate it chewing on him like a bone.'
Downstairs, Jade sat cross-legged on the floor, blindfold in place, hair spilling around him in a silvery-blue pool. Around him the air was alive—frost breathed across the floorboards in patterns too precise to be random. But between those pale sigils, shadows thickened unnaturally, coils of dark that bent the light like water. Ice and void, weaving together in careful harmony.
He was practicing. But more than that—calculating.
"System," he murmured. His voice was steady. Not the tremor of a boy under siege, but the cadence of a mind running numbers.
Name: Jade
Age: 7
Level: 57
EXP: 620/4700
STR: 82
AGI: 82
INT: 214
STA: 104
HP: 17,000
MP: 17,000
Stat Points: 7
Skill Points: 1
Talents:
Divine Soul Dual Pupils [EX]
Ice and Snow Manipulation [SS]
Bloodlines:
Yin Phoenix bloodline [ unique ]
Void Belgusari [ God Tier ]
Skills:
Glossomancy [B]
Cryokinesis
Basic Weapon Mastery
Advance Healing
Belgusari's Hunger (awakening)
Advanced Ice Manipulation
Teleportation [S]
Frozen Aura
Seed of Darkness
Void Sense
Darkness Sense
Clairvoyance [A]
Artifacts:
None
Inventory:
Quests:
1. Defeat a C-ranked monster
Duration: 1 year
Rewards: Spectra's Band [SS]
Status: Incomplete
2. Win the Tenday Tournament
Duration: 10 years
Rewards: Nyx's Kiss
Status: Incomplete
3. New Objective; The Ravens will not stop. Identify their Curator.
Duration: 29 Days.
Reward: ???
Status: incomplete
He had levelled up thrice after defeating the ravens the previous day. His status window displaying his progress in numbers.
' Not enough' , the thought.
"Too slow," Jade said, frowning faintly.
From the corner, Gorvoth leaned on a workbench, pipe stub between his teeth, unlit as always when he watched the boy train. His eyes were narrowed, not in judgment, but in thought. The old man had seen many kinds of fighters—raw strength, drilled soldiers, desperate brawlers. But Jade was different. He trained like a craftsman carving his own weapon from inside his body.
Upstairs, Niamh came down, apron bunched in her fists. "Enough," she snapped, harsher than intended. "You need rest. Food. Not—whatever this is."
Jade didn't look up. "If I stop now, they win before they move. You know that."
"You're seven," she hissed. "Seven, Jade. They're killers, guild dogs, worse. I—" Her voice broke. "I won't lose you to them. I won't."
The shadows rippled around him, curling like a living answer. He finally turned his head toward her, blindfold hiding his eyes but not the intensity behind them. "Then don't lose me," he said. "Help me."
It silenced her.
Because beneath his words was not childish arrogance, but weary certainty.
For the first time since arriving in Nexus, Jade wasn't only reacting. He was deciding.
--------------------------------------------------------
Later, as night deepened, he gathered them both in the workshop. The smell of cold iron clung to the air, Gorvoth's tools scattered in neat disorder. Niamh sat stiff, arms crossed tight. Gorvoth stood behind her, waiting.
Jade's hands rested on the table, pale fingers spread. Frost hissed softly under his palms. "The Ravens are measuring me," he said. "Each probe is a question. How fast? How sharp? How careful? They'll keep asking until they know too much."
Niamh flinched. "You make it sound like—like we're rats in their maze."
Jade shook his head. "Not rats. Bait." His tone sharpened. "If we sit and wait, they'll close the trap. But if we move first…"
He lifted one hand. Shadows rose from the table like smoke, curling into the vague outline of a feather before dissolving. "We can set the terms."
Gorvoth exhaled slow. "You mean to draw them out."
Jade nodded. "Not all. Just enough. A probe for a probe. They test me, I test them back. But on ground I choose."
"And what if they bring more than you expect?" Niamh's voice cracked.
"Then I'll learn faster than they can." He said it without bravado, only logic, like reciting an equation.
Silence fell heavy.
Finally, Gorvoth grunted. "You're too young to talk like that."
Jade tilted his head. "Too young to wait while others decide what I become."
The old smith almost smiled. Almost. "Hells. You sound like me when I was forty."
Niamh pressed trembling fingers to her lips, torn between fury and fear. But deep inside, she knew the truth—Jade had always been like this. She'd tried to shield him, to fold him into her arms and keep him seven years old forever. But the boy she'd found in the gutter had never belonged to safety.
The shop hummed with coils and silence. Outside, Nexus twitched with rumor.
Inside, for the first time, Jade leaned forward—not away.
...
Jade sat at the table, still as stone, while the city's tension pressed against the shutters. The coils hummed, the air carried rumors like dust. Gorvoth smoked in silence. Niamh's hands twisted her apron until the cloth frayed.
When Jade finally spoke, the words landed sharp.
"They think they're measuring me. Tonight, I measure them."
Gorvoth raised a brow. "Measure how?"
Jade lifted his hand. A ripple of frost swept across the tabletop, etching a delicate lattice of sigils. But from the cracks between them rose darker shapes—threads of shadow, pooling into patterns not meant for ordinary eyes. Where frost mapped precision, void hid intent.
"I'll give them bait," Jade said softly. "A whisper of power. A lure in the right alley. They'll come, thinking they've cornered a frightened child." His lips curved, faint and cold. "Instead, I'll be the one watching."
Niamh's breath hitched. "No. Absolutely not. You'll be walking into their knives."
Jade's blindfolded head tilted toward her. "They'll bring the knives whether I walk or not."
The truth cracked through the room like ice.
He went on, voice steady, not the whine of a child but the cold logic of someone tired of being hunted. "If I wait, they dictate the questions. If I move first, I choose which ones they get to ask. And which ones I answer."
Gorvoth's pipe clicked against his teeth. The old man studied the lattice of frost and shadow, eyes narrowing at the sophistication. Not the frantic scratches of a boy, but the measured map of a strategist. "You've thought this through."
"I've had to."
The frost lines shifted, sketching a crude outline of Nexus's southern docks. He tapped a point with one pale finger. "Here. The alleys choke into dead ends, but the grav-lanes above give me cover if I need to vanish. The Ravens use those docks to slip in. They'll expect me to be afraid, to stumble. I'll give them that picture—just enough. Then I see who they send."
"And if they send more than you can handle?" Gorvoth pressed.
Jade's blindfold hid the dual fire of his irises, but his voice carried it. "Then I handle more."
Niamh slammed her palms against the table. "Enough!" Her voice cracked, raw with a fear that had been festering since she first pulled him from the gutter. "You're a child, Jade. Not a soldier. Not a guild hound. I don't care what they whisper, you are my boy."
Silence fell.
Jade's shoulders softened, just for a heartbeat. "I know," he whispered. And he meant it. He would always be her boy.
But when he straightened, the softness was gone. He was something else now—quiet, dangerous, deliberate.
"I can't wait for them to decide what I am."
---
That night, plans unfurled. Gorvoth laid out coils of dampeners and rusted field-weave nets, his thick hands steady. "I'll shadow you," he said. "Keep the exits clear. If things go to hell, I'll drag you out."
"You won't have to," Jade replied, though he didn't argue.
Niamh said nothing, only brewed tea she knew none of them would drink. Her silence was brittle, but she stayed. She always stayed.
When the hour deepened and the city's lights thinned into shadow, Jade rose. Frost curled at his heels. Darkness licked across his shoulders like a cloak.
"Let's begin."
Outside, Nexus City shifted again—markets silent, alleys breathing, rumors prickling like ash.
The Silent Ravens thought they were hunting a child.
Tonight, for the first time, the child hunted back.