Chapter Eight: The Watchers in Grey
Aleister had always been invisible.
Even when people noticed him, it was only to point at the empty card that hovered near his shoulder like a curse. Now, for the first time in his life, eyes followed him with intention. Not ridicule. Not pity. Recognition. Fear.
He didn't go back to his camp after the Grove. The forest itself had shifted, and so had he. He could feel it in how the roots bent away from his steps, how birds went silent in the trees above. His card pulsed like a second heartbeat beside him, slowly etching patterns that hadn't been there before. Runes not found in any of the official tomes. Marks that seemed to form and fade with his thoughts.
He was changing. He didn't know into what.
He wandered for days, not eating, barely sleeping. Dreams haunted him, visions of Irikrit chained beneath a sky of black flame. Of a tower made of bones. Of himself, wearing no face at all.
On the fourth morning, he found the note pinned to a tree with a bone needle.
We saw you enter. We saw you leave. You're not alone anymore.
The ink shimmered like oil. The tree itself bled where the needle pierced it.
Aleister pocketed the note and kept walking.
The Whispering Veil behind him. The ruins of the old Arc posts rising ahead. He was heading for a border camp near Whispersteel, a trade hub built between the jurisdictions of three nations. Neutral ground. The kind of place where questions went unanswered for the right price.
He needed to disappear, but more than that, he needed to understand.
Why was his card glowing? What had Irikrit meant by source? And what did the masked figures in the Grove mean by "before the Glove, before the Five, before the Rune Lies"?
Whispersteel's outer wall was made from the bones of landing-era ships, fused hulls, rusted steel, and panels of scorched Arcglass. The guards wore no uniform. Just patchwork armor and metal tags bearing numbers, not names.
As he approached, a voice rang out from above.
"Hold. Card, visible."
Aleister didn't hesitate. The black card floated to his side, pulsing dimly.
The guards exchanged glances. One leaned over the parapet. "That card's… wrong."
"I know," Aleister replied.
Another guard stepped forward. "No registration. No glow code. No active affiliation. Null?"
"No," the first said, squinting. "It's reading negative rune pressure. That's not a blank card. That's an anti-card."
Silence.
"Let him in," the second muttered. "But log it. Category seven."
Aleister didn't ask what that meant.
Inside, Whispersteel was a chaos of tents, old-world elevators, wooden scaffolding, and open market squares where glowing crystals hummed beside knives and fire-fruit. You could buy a second name here. Or erase a first.
He didn't stop until he reached the Inner Spires, a half-fallen tower turned tavern, where rogue morphers drank in corners and exiled college instructors sold knowledge by the breath.
There, at the end of a rusted bar, sat a woman in grey.
She wore a hood low over her face. One glove was metal, the other bone. Her drink smoked faintly. Aleister sat beside her without invitation.
"You're later than expected," she said without looking at him.
"You know who I am?"
"No," she said. "But I know what you're becoming."
Aleister studied her. "You were watching the Grove?"
"I was watching you. We've been watching for a long time. Waiting for one like you to emerge. But we didn't think the first would survive the bargain."
"Why me?" Aleister asked. "I didn't choose the card. I didn't ask for Irikrit. I didn't ask for any of this."
"You didn't ask," she said quietly. "But the world did."
She pulled a coin from her sleeve, old and cracked. It bore no nation, only a symbol: a spiral that collapsed inward.
"The first Veinborn carried no cards," she said. "No gloves. No runes. They breathed Arc. Bent it without channeling. Their bodies were veins. And when the nations rose, they were slaughtered."
Aleister said nothing.
"They built the system to contain the wild," she continued. "To tame it. But the wild never truly dies. It waits. And when the chains crack, it returns."
"What do you want from me?" Aleister asked. "Another war? A rebellion?"
"No," she said, and now her eyes glinted beneath the hood. Silver. Unnatural. "We want truth. You're the key. Because your card is not just dormant. It's recursive. It speaks in loops. It remembers things even Alcraya has forgotten."
She dropped something on the counter. A tooth, etched in script Aleister could almost understand.
"Go to the Iron Shrine," she said. "Near the Shardlands. You'll find the first record of your kind there. Before cards. Before chains."
Aleister looked down at his card. The rune had changed again. A spiral now. Flickering.
"And if I don't?"
She stood and walked away without another word.
He stayed there for a long time, watching the symbol pulse.
Not a rune.
A seed.
And he knew then that whatever he had become, it was only beginning.