The market crowd parted like water around a stone as I pushed through. Whispers followed me.Classless, Core Spawn killer, Veil's target.each word a tiny cut. I'd hoped the Crimson Safehouse would be a sanctuary. Instead, it had become a target painted on my back.

  Three blocks east, the city gates. That was the plan. Lose myself in the wilderness between Grimvale and Qora, then.

  "Dere!"

  Lena's voice. I turned, and she sprinted toward me, face flushed, a hand pressed to her side where blood seeped through her fingers.

  "Vorn sent me," she gasped. "The Iron Wolves, they know you're leaving. They've locked down the east gate. Ace is," She swallowed hard. "Ace is already between you and the road north."

  "North?" My mind raced. "What about the western,"

  "Watching every exit." Lena's eyes were wild. "They've got twelve men in the market alone. This isn't a hunt anymore. It's an execution."

  I scanned the streets. Shapes moving in doorways. Eyes tracking me from rooftop vantage points. The Iron Wolves had mobilized their entire Grimvale contingent.

  "How long do I have?"

  "A minute. Maybe less." She grabbed my arm. "There's a sewer entrance behind the tanner's shop. It's,"

  A blade whistled through the air.

  I threw myself sideways, dragging Lena with me. The attack carved a groove in the cobblestones where I'd stood, a vertical strike clean enough to split a hair.

  Standing at the alley's mouth was a woman in crimson-trimmed black leather, her face half-hidden by a hood that matched the Iron Wolves' colors. But it wasn't her face I noticed. It was the tattoo on her exposed forearm: three diamonds, each containing a number.

  Professional tier. At least.

  "The guildmaster sent her regards," the woman said, rolling her shoulders. "She wants the Classless card. Painlessly, ideally. But she'll take it however she can get it."

  "I'm starting to think," I said slowly, "that everyone in this city wants something from me."

  The woman smiled without warmth. "You're not wrong."

  She moved.

  The first strike nearly took my head off.

  I ducked, barely, and her blade sang past my ear, close enough to feel the wind of it. Professional-tier speed. Professional-tier precision. She was five levels above me at minimum, maybe more, and the gap was showing in ways that had nothing to do with numbers.

  My body simply couldn't keep up.

  I stumbled back, and her follow-up slash opened a furrow across my ribs, hot blood immediately soaking my shirt. The pain was a white flare, but I'd learned something in the dungeon. Pain was information. Pain meant I was still alive.

  Think. Adapt. Survive.

  "Shadow Step!"

  I vanished into the darkness between two market stalls, my body slipping between shadows like water through fingers. The skill was damaged, its full potential locked behind repair I couldn't afford, but it still worked.

  For one heartbeat, I was free.

  The woman's head snapped toward my position. "Clever," she acknowledged. "But I've hunted shadow-users for twelve years."

  She lunged, not toward where I'd been, but toward where I'd appear. Her blade caught my shoulder as I materialized, the edge biting deep before I could fully escape.

  I rolled across the cobblestones, blood dripping from two separate wounds. My left arm was going numb. Her grin was visible now, predatory and patient.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  "One more chance," she offered. "Give me the card. I'll make it quick."

  "I don't think," I wheezed, "that 'quick' is in your vocabulary."

  Her smile died.

  She came at me like a storm.

  The fight dissolved into a blur of pain and desperate evasion.

  Every exchange cost me blood. Her blade was everywhere, thigh, shoulder, cheek, ribs, opening wounds that screamed for attention. My vision swam. My body begged me to stop, to lie down, to let the darkness take me.

  Forty-three FIT, my mind supplied through the haze. Twenty-two unallocated points.

  I couldn't use them. Not now, not in the middle of combat. The stat upgrades would take time to integrate, time I didn't have.

  Multiskill, I thought desperately. You're supposed to be a cheat. Do something.

  She pressed her advantage, driving me back toward a dead-end alley. Her next strike would end it. I could see it in the set of her shoulders, the perfect alignment of her blade.

  I had one card left. One use.

  Recall All.

  For a single instant, I felt every card I'd ever touched flood back into my consciousness, Shadow Step, Recall All, Teleportation Anchor, the memory of Veil Assassin's Card, the echo of the Wild Card's power. All of them, accessible for one devastating moment.

  But what could I do? What did I have that could close a five-level gap?

  Tier 0 powers are only obtained by learning the corresponding cards, the system's rules whispered in my mind. You merely gain the ability to learn them.

  But I'd touched the Wild Card. I'd felt it change me.

  And somewhere in that transformation, something had stayed.

  "Void Slice."

  The word left my mouth without conscious thought. My hand carved an arc through the air, not with a weapon, but with something that existed between intent and matter. She had been closing in for the killing blow.

  She stopped.

  Looking down, she saw the wound: a diagonal gash across her torso, so precise it might have been measured with a ruler. Blood pumped from it in rhythmic pulses, each one weaker than the last.

  "How," she breathed. "That's not... you're just Skilled..."

  I stared at my own hand. The wound in my shoulder had stopped bleeding. Not just stopped.reversed, as if time itself was rewinding the damage.

  [SYSTEM]

  Void Slice upgraded to Lv.3

  FIT increased to 45 (+2 from combat adaptation)

  Shadow Lunge upgraded to Lv.2

  New Skill Learned: [Absolute Null] (Beyond Tier 0, Incomplete)

  Absolute Null: Nullifies one attack completely. Requires 10 seconds to recharge after use.

  "I don't know what I am," I said quietly. "But I don't think I'm just Skilled anymore."

  Her face twisted, with fear or fury, I couldn't tell. She clutched her wound, trying to stem the flow, but something was wrong. The edges of the cut weren't healing. Weren't clotting.

  Void Slice doesn't just cut, I realized. It keeps cutting. It void-ifies the wound.

  "You'll regret this," she spat. "The guildmaster is Professional tier. When she learns what you,"

  "I think," I interrupted, "you should focus on not dying."

  I walked toward the gate. No one stopped me. The Iron Wolves who'd been tracking me had seen enough. Whatever reports they made back to their guildmaster, I knew one thing for certain:

  The game had changed.

  And for the first time, I was the one holding the winning hand.

  The forest swallowed Grimvale's walls within an hour of walking. I moved through the undergrowth with a silence that surprised me, my body adapting to the wilderness as if it had been born to it.

  The wounds from the fight had closed by the time I'd left the city. Not scars. Not even marks. Just smooth skin where lethal cuts had been.

  FIT 45, I thought, testing the number. It feels different now.

  The merged stat wasn't just STR + AGI + VIT anymore. It was something new. Something that didn't have a name in any rulebook I'd ever read. My body moved faster, hit harder, and recovered quicker, all at once, all the time.

  A rustle in the bushes.

  I froze, hand rising instinctively.

  "Easy, brother."

  Vera stepped out of the treeline, her silver armor catching the afternoon light. Behind her, six riders waited in the shadows. Each bore the spade symbol of House Veil.

  But not the black spade of the hunters.

  These were red. Crimson. A shade I'd only seen once before, in the hidden chamber beneath the Crimson Safehouse.

  "You're hurt," Vera said, eyes scanning the blood on my clothes. "I can smell it."

  "I'm fine." My voice was flat. "Why are you here?"

  "To make you an offer." She smiled, and for a moment, I could see our mother in her face, the same curve of the lips, the same dangerous glint in the eye. "The Ace of Veil is hunting you. Father.Marcus.wants you dead. But there's another path."

  "What path?"

  "The Veil family has two faces." Vera dismounted, walking toward me with her hands raised in peace. "The black spades serve the current regime. They hunt Classless users, hoard power, crush anyone who might threaten their control."

  "And the red?"

  "Red was what our mother chose." Vera stopped an arm's length away. "Red remembers what the Veil truly is. Not hunters. Guardians. Protectors of the Cardforge's original purpose."

  My jaw tightened. "You're asking me to join House Veil."

  "I'm asking you to join our house. The one our mother built in secret. The one that's watched over you since you were born." She reached into her saddlebag and produced a card, black as midnight, edged in silver.

  The Wild Card.

  Or a copy of it.

  "Before the Ace kills you," Vera said softly, "come with us. Let us teach you what you really are. What the Classless card was always meant to become."

  Behind her, one of the riders shifted. Metal glinted in the shadows.

  I looked at the card. At my sister. At the six warriors who could cut me down before I took three steps.

  And somewhere in my chest, I felt the Wild Card stir.

  As if it was waiting for my answer.

  [SYSTEM]

  New Quest Available: [House of Veil - Choose Your Allegiance]

  Reward: Unknown

  Failure: Death

  Time Limit: None