Her name was Cassia, and she smiled the way a clean blade catches light.
"Routine," she announced to the Guildmistress, loud enough that the whole common room of the Split Barrel could hear, which meant she wanted us to. "There have been readings. A surge, some nights back — the kind of resonance that only ever has one source." She let that settle, watching faces as it did. "I'm sure it's nothing. Ashlow is no one's idea of a place where legends walk." A pause, delicate as a dropped stitch. "But I do like to be thorough."
I was wedged into the darkest corner of the room, behind a mug of ale I had no intention of drinking, sweating what felt like my entire body's water reserves. Vera had briefed me on the walk in, fast and quiet and terrifying: Don't talk. Don't stand out. And whatever you feel building in your chest, you keep it there.
The pane, of course, chose that exact moment to be helpful.
[Warning: active Aura Detection in proximity.][Do not use skills. Suppress Demonic Aura.]
"And how," I whispered to it, barely moving my lips, "do I suppress something the menu itself calls uncontrolled?"
"Stop. Talking. To your interface," Vera hissed through her teeth, smiling pleasantly at the room. "You look deranged."
"I'd rather look deranged than look legendary."
Cassia was working the room, and she was good at it — a word here, a laugh there, her attention drifting like smoke, settling nowhere and missing nothing. And then, inevitably, she drifted to our table. She stopped in front of it. Her blade-smile found me, and sharpened by a degree.
"You," she said. "I don't know your face."
My heart climbed into my throat and stayed there. And in that moment of pure, undiluted panic, I felt it — the thing in my chest, the aura, stirring, wanting out, rising toward my skin like a held breath demanding release. The pane flickered a silent red at the edge of my vision. Suppress. Suppress. I had no idea how. All I could do was clamp down with my whole will and hold, teeth gritted, praying.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
"He's new," said Lila, and she slid into the space between us like sunlight through a crack, radiating a cheerfulness so absolute it functioned as a weapon. "He's my cousin! From very far away — the deep country. He's a bit simple, the poor lamb, took a spill off a hay cart when he was small and hasn't been quite right since." She reached over and patted my head, twice, with obvious relish. "Say hello to the nice lady, cousin."
I turned my head, very slowly, and gave Lila a look promising a long and detailed revenge.
"Hello," I said, with all the vacant simplicity I could summon. It came more easily than I'd have liked.
Cassia studied me. One second. Two. Three. Her eyes moved over my face, my cheap borrowed clothes, my carefully slack expression — and I felt the aura clawing at the inside of my ribs, desperate, and I held it, and held it, until my knuckles ached around the mug.
The red warning at the edge of my vision flickered — and, miraculously, held steady. The aura stayed in. Barely.
"Mm," Cassia said at last, and straightened, the moment releasing me all at once so that I nearly sagged. "A pleasure." She turned toward the door, unhurried as ever, and only when she reached it did she speak again — not to us, not to anyone, just casting the words back over her shoulder into the room like a coin tossed to see who'd flinch.
"The Church of Light believes the Demon King has returned to the world," she said. "I find myself a less superstitious woman than the Church." She set her hand on the doorframe. "But I'll tell you this, for free. If he had returned — if the oldest, worst thing this kingdom ever survived were out there right now, hiding in some forgotten town, pretending to be a simple boy off a hay cart—" a small, cold smile "—I would find him. It's only a matter of being thorough."
And she was gone.
The silence she left behind lasted until we heard her white horse clatter out through the gate and dwindle down the road. Then I let out every cubic inch of air in my lungs in one long, shaking breath.
[Threat de-escalated. Discretion: held, barely.]+10 EXP (evasion).]
"Evasion gives EXP?" I said weakly.
"Simple cousin," Bruno rumbled, deeply, sincerely impressed. "Very good acting. I believed it. For a moment I thought — is he really simple? And then I remembered. Good acting."
"He wasn't entirely acting," Vera muttered — but there was no venom in it, and when I turned to glare, I caught the corner of her mouth twitching, just barely, toward something that on a warmer person might have been a smile. Then it was gone, and she was Vera again. "She'll be back," she said, watching the door. "Women like that don't leave. They circle."