I stood before the monitoring array, the cool glow of the rift-plates casting long, distorted shadows across the observation deck. On the shimmering display, I watched the boy. He was a mess of trembling limbs and ragged breath, kneeling over the creature he had just unmade with a terrifying, unpolished efficiency.

  “Did you really teach him—how to do THAT?”

  Cindy’s voice cut through the hum of the enchantments. She was looking at me with a sternness that bordered on accusation, her chipper "Guild Assistant" persona finally slipping to reveal the jagged edges beneath.

  “Really. I know you [Justicia Del Gula] guildies are ruthless; it is practically your mission statement, but I didn't expect you to teach that kind of brutality to a literal child.”

  I didn't turn to face her. My eyes remained fixed on the boy’s hands—the way they shook as he reached for the kill.

  “And you know full well you [Jesters] are a sort of ‘feeder’ guild for us—a sieve used to catch the debris before it reaches our halls. To answer your question—Cindy—no. I did not.”

  I deliberately emphasized the name she had given. We both knew the weight of our shared silence; she was no more a "Cindy" than I was a nameless suit of clothes. Like me, she was draped in a mask and a borrowed identity, hiding in the public eye to avoid the consequences of her true lineage.

  “Frankly—I am a bit worried that he would think to do that without any formal training. Part of this exercise is—indeed—to observe what he would do in a live combat simulation environment without the tempering of my refinement. He is a raw nerve—and raw nerves react with a frightening lack of hesitation. His use of the vertical environment was clever—climbing the wall to bypass the obvious choke point showed a sense of spatial awareness I haven't yet taught him—but that final strike? That was pure, unadulterated survival instinct.”

  Cindy nodded, her gaze drifting back to the screen where Wren was wiping blood from his face.

  “Yeah. I heard your reports; but when you said he was simply a street rat from here on Everna, I was expecting the worst. I expected him to panic. To cry. To perhaps run back through the gate. What kind of life did this child have to lead to find a move like that in the dark?”

  I let out a long, heavy sigh. It rattled against the inside of my porcelain mask, a sound of weary resignation.

  “You really—really—do not want to know. The more we dig—the more the investigators pull the rot from the gutters he called a home—the worse it becomes. His life was not a tragedy—it was a series of narrow escapes from a world that wanted him erased. I just hope his uncle never—never—finds out about his life story. The man will be livid.”

  “His uncle?” Cindy looked at me, her brow furrowing with a concern that was no longer part of her act. “Who is this kid? Why would anyone’s interest be piqued by a street urchin?”

  I turned my head just enough to catch her reflection in the glass of the monitoring plate.

  “He is the bastard child of Baron Weald,” I said, the name dropping into the room like a stone into a deep, dark well.

  The silence that followed was absolute. Cindy didn't speak; she couldn't. To be the discarded blood of the Weald line was to be a ghost waiting for a grave. I looked back at Wren, who was currently whispering to the shadows of a dead monster, and felt the weight of the secret we were keeping. He was a garden flower—perhaps—but he was growing in a graveyard.

  The silence in the monitoring room felt brittle, as if the air itself was waiting for me to take back the name I had just dropped. Cindy’s eyes were wide, the pupils blown as she processed the lineage of the boy currently shivering on the screen.

  “Baron Weald?” she whispered, the name catching in her throat like a burr. “You mean the deceased Baron Weald? The famous philanderer whose talent increased his fortune, both good and ill, based on the number of women he bedded? That Baron Weald?”

  I nodded, the movement of my mask slow and deliberate.

  “Baron Weald the Flush—as most called him—for he was as ample in his card games as he was in his bedchamber. He was a man of perpetual windfalls—finding money in both the boom and the bust—though he spent far more of his time occupied with the bustiness of the women he enjoyed.”

  Cindy shook her head, her mind clearly racing through the scandalous genealogies of the high courts.

  “So how is a dead Baron going to be upset? And you said his...” She stopped mid-sentence, her breath hitching as the realization finally clicked into place. “His uncle. If he is the bastard son of Baron Weald…then his uncle, the Baron's only living brother, is Margrave Weald.”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  She turned fully toward me now, the monitoring plates forgotten.

  “Why would Margrave Weald be upset that he suddenly has an heir? The man has been lamenting the end of his line for a decade. He’s obsessed with his legacy.”

  “Oh—he wouldn’t be upset with the boy,” I replied, my voice dropping into a deeper, more somber register. “Once the Margrave has completed his current delve in that Tier 39 rift of his—and has returned to the surface—I plan to inform him of the boy’s existence. He will be ecstatic. He will likely fawn over the child instantly—suffocating him with the wealth and attention the boy has lacked his entire life.”

  I paused, tilting my head back to stare at the ornate, enchanted ceiling of the Guild Hall. I could almost see the storm clouds gathering on the horizon of the boy’s future.

  “The Margrave will not be angry with the child—Cindy. He will be livid with the mother. He will be absolutely murderous toward the woman who took a Weald heir and threw him into the gutters like a piece of spoiled fruit.”

  I looked back at the screen. Wren was still there, a tiny figure in a dark cave, unaware that he was a prince of the mud.

  “The Margrave does not forgive debts—and he certainly does not forgive those who lose his family's treasures in the trash.”

  ***

  I sat there in the silence of the cave, the only sound the rhythmic plip of the water and my own ragged, whistling breath. The first kill had felt dirty; a frantic, messy collision of weight and steel. But the second? The second had been terrifying.

  I hadn't even pulled my knife out of the creature’s jaw yet. I just sat on the cold, damp earth, staring at my hands. They were stained a dark, tacky crimson that looked black under the dim glow of the mushrooms. It had been so easy. My mind tried to hide behind the facts I’d read in the packet: these were just Rift monsters. They weren't "people." They were simulacrum of life at best, mana and essence constructs at worst, designed by the Rift to protect its core.

  But the blood on my skin felt real. The heat of the essence that had flooded into me the moment they died felt real. As the bodies began to dissolve into shimmering particles of gray light, leaving only my blade clattering against the stone where the kobold's head had been. I wanted to believe it had all been a dream. Yet the exhaustion in my marrow and the copper tang in the air remained. This wasn't a training simulation in a room with pads. This was the truth of the world.

  I reached out and retrieved my knife, wiping the blade on my trouser leg before pulling it into a tight icepick grip against my chest. My heart was still a frantic bird, but the Manager’s voice nudged at the back of my mind. The exercise, Wren. Focus on the tool.

  I closed my eyes and reached inward, searching for that strange, cold spark I’d felt during the morning drills. I activated the skill.

  [Summon].

  The mana inside me didn't just flow; it surged, a violent drain that felt like someone had opened a tap in the center of my chest. I gasped, my vision blurring as my reserves bottomed out. I could feel the vacuum where my energy used to be, leaving me with only a tiny, flickering fraction of power. The rest was being held, reserved, by the thing manifesting in front of me.

  A translucent, smoky copy of the kobold shimmered into existence. It was the color of a winter's breath, a ghostly charcoal-grey that mirrored every ridge of the creature I had just slain.

  What shocked me wasn't its appearance, but the connection. I didn't need to shout orders. I didn't even need to speak. It seemed to "breathe" with my own intent. Stay close. It drifted toward me, its clawed feet making no sound on the gravel. Scan the shadows. It turned its head, its milky, pupilless eyes surveying the dark corners of the chamber.

  It followed my raw instructions, but once the command was set, it relied on its own base instincts to protect its "Rift" which, in this case, was me. It was a silent, loyal shadow made of my own spent energy.

  I leaned back against the cave wall, watching the smoky construct pace the perimeter of the room. A small, tired smile touched the corners of my mouth despite the blood and the bruises.

  Note to self, I thought, my eyelids growing heavy. Find a Rift with monsters I actually want to keep. This is awesome.

  I felt my eyelids growing heavy, a dragging weight that threatened to pull me into the damp earth. I fumbled for my canteen, my fingers still slick with a mixture of cave grime and the cooling essence of the kobold. I took three large, greedy gulps, the water hitting my throat with a bracing chill.

  I hadn't mentioned this to the Manager, though they probably already knew. I had mixed a generous amount of sugar into the water before we left. It was partly a pick-me-up to keep the exhaustion from the mana-drain at bay, and partly because I just liked the taste. Sugar was a rare luxury in the gutters, something you only found in the half-eaten pastries thrown out by the bakeries, and the sweet, lingering aftertaste felt like a small defiance against the rot of the cave.

  I screwed the cap back on, the metallic click echoing too loudly in the sudden stillness. I looked around, my hyper-observant gaze scanning the bioluminescent mushrooms and the jagged ceiling. The fork in the road was behind me now. Ahead, the two paths converged into a single, narrowing throat of dark stone.

  It seemed my days of choosing the high ground were over. Where before I could use ambush and the verticality of the walls as my allies, the geography of the Rift was beginning to tighten. There was only one way forward, a straight, unforgiving tunnel that smelled of old musk and something much larger than a kobold.

  I stood up, my knees popping, and adjusted the straps of my overcoat. My smoky shadow mimicked the movement, its translucent head tilting toward the dark. I could hear the rhythm of the cave changing again. The water was being drowned out by a heavier sound, a wet, huffing breath that vibrated through the floorboards of the world.

  I knew from the heavy, rhythmic thuds echoing from the darkness that the next stretch wouldn't be about clever tricks or hidden ledges. It was going to be a path of blood, sweat, and the kind of fears that didn't stay in the shadows.

  I gripped my knife, the weight of the sugar-high kicking in just enough to steady my hands.

  "Let's go," I whispered to the ghost at my side.