He found the mirror by the watch-house door: a slab of old glass gone milky with years, good for checking edges, not truth. He lifted the cowl, leaned in, and let himself surface through the fog.
"Through a glass, darkly," he said, and the opaqueness agreed—by enigmas, as if by a mirror.
Half-Ratiol, first without the field-conditions of fear and running. The outline told it before the details did: height that carried its own horizon; long bones drawn tight under skin too pale to pretend warmth; a face planed down to planes—cheek and brow and a jaw that looked carved rather than grown. The pallor didn't shine; it absorbed light and returned it as cool arithmetic. The eyes were the giveaway: not looking so much as measuring, a habit born in the Tall Pale that even human blood couldn't teach away.
Human, too—enough to muddy the silhouette. Coal-black hair where the Ratiol wore ash, a shadow's color instead of frost's. A little rain-dark around the mouth, humor kept dry, not absent. The mix explained why Roland had named him at a glance last night: a Ratiol outline restrained into silence, then smudged by a mortal's dusk.
He turned his head and watched the glass negotiate with the angles. Nothing generous there. Useful, though. Faces are tools, and this one did the work.
"I'm not much for the exterior," he told the blurred man looking back. "But the brain likes oxygen."
He let that irony breathe and set his features against the men who had taken him in. Aldric: purely human, except as otherwise provided, northern-forged—flax hair scrubbed honest, pale lashes over a face weathered without vanity; parish wool made into a man. Roland: brown to the root, salt-hedge stock—jaw square as a gate-beam, eyes that finished their sums before the mouth began. Their warmth was camouflage; his would always be temperature.
Half-blood or not, the mirror had done its work. He knew what strangers would see—and what he'd prefer they never learn. Better to bury the second race when he could. Let them read "traveler" or "vagrant," not start mapping counters from a rumor of Ratiol blood. In Devir the fight starts before the first step: information throws the first punch. Hide lineage, muddle class, blur habits. Make them spend guesses instead of steel. And if it spared him the small wars of prejudice—old feuds between peoples that NPCs wore like inheritance—all the better. Silence is armor; misdirection, a blade.
He took the lane past the well and felt the village look at him. Not openly—at the edge of work, the way people watch weather. The guards had done his "flex" for him; rumor did the rest. Strength scales fast when told by men who were there.
Étienne found him before the gate—same hammer-wrist, same careful eyes. "Tomorrow," the smith said, a little breathless. "Your pieces. And—Sabine says the same. So—plural. She told me to give messages for both of us. One mouth, less noise."
"Good," Nameless said.
He marked the shape of it: stories multiplying, then traveling. Time to go soon, before the tale grew legs long enough to reach a road. This wasn't a mountain village so much as a pile of frayed lives tied together against wind—scattered survivors pretending at parish.
He let the thought widen. He couldn't hand-craft the soul of every face in Devir. He'd left frames instead: region and rite, custom and quarrel, national tempers and racial habits—with doors for exceptions so the rule wouldn't ring hollow. An IA watched him build for years and learned his hands; now it carried the weight—millions of minds deep enough to live in, slimmed by the plagues of the Interregnum but still enough to fill a country. Some would bend the knee to players; some would make players kneel.
He cut back toward the mound, the short sword in his left-hand, the satchel light.
Closer to the burrow, he slowed—because he noticed…
The screams hit first—two voices high with panic, the kind that doesn't ask for help so much as announce death. Below the mound, in the trees, a shape bigger than wolves should be tore the undergrowth into shivers.
Perfect Sight rose.
Direwolf Matriarch — Level 15.Human — Level 2.Human — Level 1.
Green hair. Pink hair. Players—obvious at a glance. Tourists. He almost laughed. He'd kept his avatar identical to real life on purpose—no sliders, no dye—only the system's half-Ratiol overlay stamped on top. They'd brought festival colors into a world that doesn't wear them, and walked straight into a funeral.
He slipped down into the burrow. Two of Roland's men were already there, crouched in the hush he'd drilled into them.
"We stopped the hauling," one whispered. "Quieter this way. They ran past, got stuck on the slope. She's got them boxed."
He tasted the situation. He'd farmed this ridge for days and never seen the mother; she must have ranged deep—until screaming drew orbit. A bell you don't pay for rings anyway.
"Stay," he said. "Arrows ready on my word."
He went up the opposite side, eyes on the scrub for anything dumb enough to be useful. Luck obliged.
Boar Piglet — Level 4.
"My scapegoat," he said, and moved.
He let the piglet turn, then put his left palm an inch above the tendon and pushed the world off its habit.
Doubt.
[Critical Hit — 65]
[Status: Crippled (Rear Leg)]
[IP: 80 → 56]
The piglet screamed—high, wet, immediate—and the brush answered with mass.
Boar — Level 7.Boar — Level 8.
"Good," he breathed, and ran.
They hit the lip at speed, physics argued, and gravity took the case. Two boars tumbled past him in a thundering sentence and crashed through the matriarch's spine of attention. She didn't die, but the ground taught her humility. The piglet, by some mercy of angles, skidded into the burrow with him.
"Help me lift," Nameless snapped. They caught the little boar by three legs—the fourth bent wrong—and heaved.
"Her mouth," he said. "If we can feed confusion, we can live in it."
They shoved the squealing bundle into the howl. The wolf choked once, took the impact across tooth and tongue—more damage for being insulted—and then bit down on instinct. The bigger boars planted in front of her as a wall, heads low, hatred honest.
He slid down the opposite flank so the wolf would fix on the ridge—not on him. Then, to the two guards, low and crisp:
"On my mark: two volleys. Mouth if you can, shoulders if you can't. As you loose, shout to those two idiots below—tell them to climb toward your voices. First arrows announce you; that's the point."
"Second—once they're moving, you break contact. Link up with those idiots and run for the village. Leave the rest to me. Find Roland, put the yard on alert, ring the bell."
They nodded, knuckles white on the strings.
"Mark."
The first arrows fell—wood and will—and the shouts rolled down the slope. Nameless ghosted along the treeline, letting cover eat his outline while Breath came back in the counting of heartbeats. The plan was in motion.
"Fletch," Nameless told the guards. "Mouth if you can. Over their backs."
The first arrows fell, a confusion of wood and will. He slipped off along the treeline and let the cover do its work. Breath came back in the counting of heartbeats.
[Breath: 31 → 35]
He circled behind the wolf, close enough to see hide twitch with calculation, and set his palm over the cable of her ham.
Doubt.
[Critical Hit — 40]
[Status: Crippled (Rear Right)]
[IP: 56 → 32]
She dropped and came up savage, raking the boars bloody. The guards kept loosing. Above, the green and the pink finally got the lesson, climbed, and hauled themselves to the ridge on shaking legs.
"Run to the village," the guard sergeant bellowed down. "Tell Captain Roland—bell up, company coming!"
Good. Noise where he wanted it.
He slid to another tree and let time work for him.
[IP Regeneration: +12 → 44]
Right—same trick twice won't bite. A magician who repeats a card gets caught. Change the angle, change the tale.
Rock in hand, he threw a clean lie—stone cracking earth on the far side of her. Sensitive ears, borrowed attention. The boars took the gift and drove in; the matriarch whipped, seized the Level 7 by the shoulder, and began to end him.
Nameless went at the opposite angle, low and mean, and pressed refusal into the other rear limb.
Doubt.
[Critical Hit — 40]
[Status: Crippled (Rear Left)]
[IP: 44 → 20]
She collapsed to a knee and the wounded boar's head smashed her muzzle almost by accident. The mate hit her again, brave and insufficient. The piglet tried to help and died for it.
[XP Gained: 10 — Assist (Boar L4)]
[Intellectual Attack Proficiency +1
[Intellectual Attack Proficiency 24/10,000]
He let the breath come back in the lee of a trunk, then ghosted uphill on the far side—hands on stone, knees to grit—until he found a shelf of rock just above the fight. Brown pelts against brown lichen; back to the wall; he became a patch of hill no one bothered to see.
[Breath: 35 → 33] (movement)
[IP Regeneration: +8 → 28]
Below, the Level 7 boar spent the last of itself and fell. The Level 8 had her claws buried to the lugs and was going with her when she tore free. She kept glancing over her shoulder now—the idea of a third enemy had finally landed and was paying rent —paranoid now, but not patient.
He waited for the look away. When it came, he stepped into gravity.
Boot to spine, knee to withers, thighs cinched at the throat; he rode the hate like a thrown saddle and crawled hand over hand up the neck. Her roar went vertical. He locked his legs, found the crown with both palms, and pressed.
"Doubt," he whispered to the bone that held what mattered.
[Critical Hit — 50]
[Status: Fatal]
[IP: 28 → 4]
The matriarch went quiet in a single, dignified shudder.
[XP Gained: 120 — Kill — Direwolf Matriarch (L15)]
Level Up.
Emperor - Level 7.
[Intellectual Attack Proficiency +7]
[Intellectual Attack Proficiency 31/10,000]
The Level 8 boar blinked, shock beating instinct by a breath. He didn't let the second breath happen. Left hand, clean motion, short sword down through neck.
[XP Gained: 15 — Kill — Boar (L8)]
[Short Sword Proficiency +3]
[Short Sword Proficiency 15/10,000]
He slid off the carcass and let the woods go silent around the wreckage.
"Good thing I sent them up the hill," he thought, bone-dry. "Leave them onstage and the system hands them assist XP for clapping. Clear the stage before the trick. Heh."