He woke in the hole to the kind of dawn that doesn't bother with colors. First night in the burrow with the watch—dry earth, breath-warm wool, the small music of men trying not to snore.
"Turns out sleeping in a hole isn't that cramped," he told the dark. "A man is the same size inside himself."
He climbed to the lip and let the horizon answer for trouble. No movement, no color shift. Just wind combing scrub. He glanced back; three heads popped up with him. They all made the same quiet "okay" and started for the village.
He cut ahead, thirsty for progress. If Sabine had started last night, he might have steel and stitch in hand by sunrise. The road disagreed—two strangers stepped into it, blocking with the confidence of people who had never been hit.
"Hey, you!"
Petulant. Children shouldn't be given manuals to a world like this.
He answered like an NPC who didn't care how he was hailed. "Yes. What does your lordship desire?"
"Quest," the archer said. "We need something real. We've been stuck since spawn."
Nameless watched them without blinking. "These guys think my NPCs are as dumb as the trash VRMMORPGs they crawled out of. Friend—don't be surprised if they're sharper than you." He let the silence do the teaching, then tilted his head toward the chapel and the gatehouse, where answers had teeth.
"Plant potatoes," Nameless said. "Or sweep Father Aldric's sacristy."
They stared, wounded pride under new hair dye.
"Fine," he added, as if thinking up something more festive. "Another she-wolf, then. Or we hunt a Razorback. Better?"
Fear did the arithmetic. They weren't ready.
"Refer to Aldric or Roland," he said, almost kind. "The spiritual sword and the temporal sword. One of them will set a path fit for each of you."
They blinked, then split exactly as they should: the bow toward Aldric, the sword toward Roland.
Nameless walked on without being detained by more enthusiasm. Étienne met him before the forge door fully opened, both hands under a wrapped bundle as if it might shift and bite.
"Yours," the smith said.
[Stored: Mathis mask (1x) - Uncommon item - L7]
He unwrapped it and let the world narrow to an object.
A face preserved to frighten time. The skull was marble-pale, not by paint but by the razorback tusk veneer Étienne had burnished into a thin, flawless skin—ivory laid like lacquer, fusing seams, smoothing fractures. The features had the stillness of a mortuary mask and the geometry of a threat. Eye-sockets shadowed clean; cheekbones honed; the teeth filed into a suggestion rather than a count. Ethereal and uniform, the whole wore whiteness the way winter wears distance. It was a face built to turn stomachs and decisions—a mist of suspect possibilities caught in bone.
He turned it once, the way a judge turns a coin. "I expected parity," he thought. "Mathis's level. The Razorback's weight. Good feedstock. The grind paid." A corner of his mouth moved. "Mathis mask.Even the system can't help itself."
Étienne had another bundle ready, lighter but broader. "From Sabine," he said. "And—she said—don't worry about the black dye."
"Small town, big hell," thought Nameless. "She's already so afraid of me." He lifted the garment; it had the clean gravity of a solved problem.
[Stored: Mysterious Habit (1x) - Reinforced Pelt - Uncommon item - Medium - L7]
On one face, the work-habit's sober black—a monk's shadow. Flip it, and the purple of a cultist's road-wear. Between the layers, a razorback interlining that felt like hammered bark: high tensile bite without the weight of plate. He could feel the design hum: Aldric's side ticked +2 JP per Level Up; Mathis's side ticked +2 IP per Level Up. Both faces carried minor resistance against sacred and intellectual strikes, with an extra edge against slashing where the boar fibers ran like woven wire.
"Small town, big hell," he thought, thumbs reading the stitch. "She didn't ask; she just made it right. She's already a little afraid of me."
Étienne set the third piece down, careful of the knuckles.
[Stored: Ferocious gloves - Reinforced pelt - Uncommon item - Medium - L5]
Wolf-hide faced in black, the backs studded with set fangs that sat in leather cups and took a stitch like they meant to stay. You could feel the hazard from an arm's length, as if the hands were already moving.
He weighed the set. To carry medium pieces without tripping over bulk, a man needed at least STR 5; he'd paid that toll on purpose. A sage's road didn't forbid hands. When the mind ran dry, the fists could still sing—mens sana in corpore sano.
Étienne cut across the small worship building in Nameless's eyes. "Don't worry," the smith said, breaking the spell. "Sabine's at it already. She also said to tell you there's plenty of black dye. Today by night—latest, first bell two days hence."
"Tell her to keep her hand steady," Nameless answered. "Quality first. We'll call it first bell, two days."
He paused, then added, "Thank her for me."
He left with the weight that felt like advantage, thinking while he walked. "Imagine players busy surviving trying to develop crafting skills like these two. To craft at this pace, between being lunch and learning to run. Never." It was a real leap to have good relations here. "This is why I studied International Relations—yes, literally— he mocked himself amused. That's how geopolitics works: welfare grants immediate advantages in relations. Feed a village, clothe a wall, and doors open. The quiet diplomacy under the table is always the biggest jump."
He kept the new gear close and unseen. Equipping it now would read like a build-swap; "NPCs don't do that; in their stupid conception about NPCs, off course. Stay in role. Two more days," he told himself, and the mask and cloth waited in the satchel until he stepped beyond the village eye.
He fell in with the guards and a string of villagers, all of them hauling the first loads toward the mound. On the way he caught the newcomers split and properly handled—one under Aldric's calm lecture-shade, the other standing stiff while Roland issued orders you didn't mistake for suggestions. "Pay your keep and maybe you integrate," he thought, and let the line keep moving.
At the hill, he set his kit in the hollow and took the high ground with the habit of a man who liked to see trouble before it made introductions. Hard to believe a matriarch had ruled this empty reach yesterday. The two greenhorns implied a source. "Where there's smoke, there's fire—and probably more of them."
Midnight outside, by his count. Two in-world days handed to the horde. "Distance's closing."
A thin cry tugged the ear—down in the brush, a wolf pup running wrong, favoring a leg. Another shape behind it, hooded.
Perfect Sight rose, framed, and named.
Human — Level 4
Wolf Pup — Level 5
"Uhm. Level 4," he measured. "Not bad. Damage control for his climb."
"Wretched worm," the man yelled, voice too theatrical to be local. "Submit to me or die!"
The pup didn't speak Human; it spoke distance, scrambling uphill on three good legs. At first the chase read backward—lower level hounding higher—until the angle and gait told the story. A crippled leg. The same trick he'd used. A crippled wolf stops being a hunter and starts being a lesson. And this one, by tilt and temper, wore the other alignment.
Nameless, by contrast, called himself a sage only by personal alignment—choice, not accident. This one, though, read like a perverter. In Primum Devir, men who bent knowledge toward rot weren't called sages; they were called perverters. "Evil sages" and "Evil masters", so called, for the sake of those who want to be orthodox, are not styled sages in proper speech; they're branded perverters—same lot for the mechanics, but not the name. The logs of knowledge burn indifferently on the altar of good or the altar of evil; only the fire changes its color. And this man was playing the black-mage part with zeal, voice and posture both leaning hard into the role.
The hooded man lifted his right hand and showed what he held: a staff, simple and rough—but still a staff. Exactly: a would-be crozier made from wild wood. He leveled it; Doubt moved at range through the wood, and the ground under the pup forgot itself. Earth loosened into nothing; the small body pitched, skidded, and hit, the yelp cutting off clean.
After that, even a wolf can become the easy prey of a sage. Interesting, thought Nameless, and kept watching in silence.
Nameless lifted one finger to the guards—silence as an order, silence obeyed.
Down below, the man whooped and made a show of it, playing the black-robes part with gusto. While he worked his knife at the small hide, the voice slipped into confession on a breath that thought no one was listening.
"Now I just have to frighten this village and I earn another secret… Those idiots will soon know there's no greater mage than Belin!"
Silence thickened instead of breaking. The confession hung there—rotten fruit no one wanted to touch—and Nameless pressed a palm down, calming nerves without a word. They would need to keep quiet longer.
Culum's hand? Or just some recruiter's pettiness—vengeance by template, not by heart. Hard to weigh. In the end it was a vendetta against order itself, against what the village still managed to be, even if only barely.
He measured the problem of grinding with a prowler in the scrub. He couldn't burn Image Points just to sit paranoid; he needed growth. "I can't stall for days while he decides he's 'ready' to erase a hamlet," he told himself. "If I wait on his timetable, I lose ground I can't buy back… These mobs barely tip me now unless they're big—he hit Level 4 harvesting leftovers. When he starts on the larger game—well. Little by little, the hen fills her crop."
A finger jabbed his shoulder. He almost shouted and didn't, letting the startle die behind a flat face. The guard flinched at the reaction, misreading the depth of thought he'd just knifed through.
Nameless kept the role. "Back to the village," he said, low. "Tell Roland to double his caution. I have an idea."
Cut to motion.
He took a strip of boar and went hunting for something that could clear a forest. The trees deepened, the air cooled, and a musk thick as old iron told him he'd found it. He slid Perfect Sight into place.
Wild Bear — Level 13.
Perfect.
The beast slept inside a natural cave, breath like a bellows, dreams deep. Nameless checked the cadence twice, then pressed wolf meat at the entrance and streaked a thin line of blood toward the mound—breadcrumbing a path to the hill, drop by drop, ending just shy of the brush that crowned the slope.
[Removed: Wolf Meat (x1)]
He ghosted back to the cave mouth. The bear still drowned in sleep. He stepped close, set both palms to the great head, and spoke the word that refuses.
"Doubt."
[Critical Hit — 50 Damage]
[Status: Stunned — Confused]
(IP − 91 → 56)
The skull shuddered; the giant lurched, blinking fury into sense. Nameless was already retreating, bait and scent doing the rest. At the cave mouth the bear swung, caught the blood-trail with a huff, and saw—only for a blink—a human shape, indistinguishable, indistinct.
It bellowed and went after the insult the way mountains go after gravity.
Nameless reached the mound and vanished into the cut of the earth. The bear hit the slope like a rolling oath, followed the blood beyond the brush, and learned too late it was chasing a line with no end.
It tumbled, caught itself, lifted its head to murder—and saw a second truth: a hooded man at rest, eating wolf spoils beside a fresh skin. The fallen pup lay nearby. Recognition snapped: this was the shape that had dragged him from hibernation.
The player moved first—quicker and more certain than death. He ran as if the world had only one direction, dropped everything, and chose life.
The runner didn't just flee—he threw one cast over his shoulder and bought himself breath. From above, Nameless watched the staff flare and the bear's left leg buckle. Survival, not conquest. The beast kept coming, and the player did the math a living man does: stop to fight and you're dead in a strength duel.
Nameless let the chase run long enough to learn the pattern, then wrote his own. The hood would not come back this way if the hill started speaking bear.
Mathis's old den—of course a recruiter would whisper it as a route. If a cave bear owned it now, that solved three problems at once: it pushed the prowler out of his farming lane, explained a corpse that never came home, and gave the village a louder neighbor than rumor.
Time to kill our alibi.
The bear, cheated of prey but consoled by anger, trundled back toward the trail of blood with a malice that looked like appetite. It found the last smear and the gift beside it and lowered its head to feed.
Cut, earlier, to a stall and a lesson.
The merchant had met the two newcomers with a look that did not forgive hair the color of candy. Their bargaining died on sober arithmetic; the stall's mind proved sharper than their need. When their pockets clinked faintly and their pride rattled louder, they tried to sell anything that wasn't nailed to their bones.
The stall-keeper put on a show the way old hands do. He pleaded poverty, swore the season was dead, clucked over "defects" only he could see, appealed to their better natures, mocked the make, threatened never to buy from "outlanders" again, sighed, shrugged, warned, even half-stalked toward the lane before wheeling back to "do them a kindness." In the end he spilled a meager scatter of bronze into their palms like charity and lifted their goods as if burdened by duty, not profit. Their initiation into Devir's trade came, as real initiations do, by pain.
When the two left—lighter in stock, little heavier in coin—Nameless drifted in, all weather and no intent. "So," he asked mildly, "what did they bring that wasn't useless?"
The shopkeep's mouth tilted. His voice went almost dithyrambic, like a hymn whispered for mischief. "The cure by the tomb," he breathed. "A tomb—for your enemies." Without further liturgy he sentenced: "Poison. And strong." A small dark vial appeared on the counter where sunlight refused to argue.
Nameless counted out ten bronze. The stall-keeper let the coins vanish and, to himself, smiled the old merchant's smile: take it—at twice the price it would still be cheap.
Copper changed hands.
[Spent: Bronze Coins ×10]
[Acquired: Poison Vial (Medium) ×1]
Back on the slope, the bear ate like pain could be solved by weight. Nameless had dusted the last chunk as if seasoning it—pepper for a giant's tongue. The venom went down with the boast.
The big head jerked; four paws turned into three, then two, then claws scrabbling at earth as the body argued with itself. He stepped from the blind side, put both hands to the right leg.
"Doubt."
[Critical Hit — 50 Damage]
[Status: Right Leg — Crippled]
(IP − 56 → 32)
Breath burned; he spent what the run demanded and moved.
(Breath −15 → 23)
He gave the beast distance. It roared—a conqueror's cry wearing the conquered's last lament—then dragged itself forward on forelegs, the back end a denial that didn't hold. It followed the blood it had made, painting the path to the hill red enough for stories.
Good. Let the recruit think a new lord has taken the cave and keeps the corridor in his fist.
Halfway up the slope, the bulk sagged. Venom finished what cunning started. The head dropped; the breath left; the earth reclaimed its quiet.
[XP Gained: 100 — Kill — Wild Bear (L13)]
[Intellectual Attack Proficiency +5]
[Intellectual Attack Proficiency 36/10,000]
He watched the stillness until it learned to be true, then turned the hill back into a plan.
The bear died loudly.
Its roars rolled the trees, then frayed into a raw, ugly coughing. Cut to the fugitive in the green: the player froze, not knowing if the cave had simply been claimed by its rightful owner… or if something worse had walked into it. Terror chose for him. He ran deeper, farther, out of the line that led back to the mound.
Space bought.
Nameless went back to the only work that mattered—grind before the spy returned. He kept the post secure and took the simple kill the day offered: a lone boar nosing the brush below.
Perfect Sight. Boar — Level 8.
One clean Doubt to the rear tendon while its head was down.
[Critical Hit — Doubt: 40 Damage]
[Left Leg Crippled]
It tried anger instead of physics and lost both. The slope finished what he started.
[XP Gained: Kill — Boar (L8)]
[XP +15]
[Intellectual Attack Proficiency +3]
[Intellectual Attack Proficiency 39/10,000]
"This fool will yet be my bridge to the next level," he thought, dry. "And he doesn't even know it."
A brief ledger from the architect's mouth: PvP is the keystone in Primum Devir. This is a game "for adults." Kill something your own weight and the system pays more than the butcher. Against an equal—player or NPC who might as well be one—you take roughly 130–150% of the XP needed for a level. Think of it as the world admitting difficulty. Against your betters, the David clause: up to 200%. Against beneath-you fodder, the mercy clause: from 30% down to near-zero—enough to keep the world lethal, not enough to farm it to death.
He bled the rest of his IP into readiness and let the guards catch up; together they made for the village.
—
Roland listened while Nameless sketched the opposite perimeter. "He won't come back by the mound for a while," Nameless said. "Worry the other arcs. Put our two new ornaments on a 'mission'—watch the flanks I'm not watching."
"Names?" he added, because names make maps.
Roland grimaced. "Each gave me two. First one said 'Jorge Gameplays'—" Nameless, inwardly: Spaniards, probably. "—then shortened to Jorge. The other said 'Caracono' or something like that, then 'Juan.' I don't know why they have two names."
NaMELESs didn't either. Nick and real, two masks on one face. Fine. "Did they say from where?"
"Jorge claimed a place called Cantabria. Juan said a country named Basque." Roland shrugged. "Never heard of either."
A cousin of Iker, then, Nameless thought, amused at the lore tugging its own threads.
They found the pair under the eave. Roland laid out the watch order. Jorge—the sword—cut in, voice fast: they knew Balin. He'd been with them at spawn. He'd used them as bait for the matriarch while he farmed wolf pups to climb.
"He's half-sylvie," Juan added. "Forest loves him. Crafted a staff on day one."
Nameless thought: the sylvie temperament runs hot—capable of holy good and unholy bad. Passion, both directions. He picked the right race for his excess.
He kept the role, and now that he had their names, he offered the courtesy mask. "Meles," he said, as a proper village man would, not an outsider. An NPC would never be rude —how convenient. He set the tone with a slab of borrowed lore: "Take heart. By writ of Emperor Domine IV, I'm here to end those who prey on this parish before I return to the Empire."
Roland almost laughed out loud. Domine IV—had there even been a Domine III? He swallowed it and let the theater stand.
The two looked relieved. A big-hearted NPC, on their side, promising "tips" after the villain fell—if they stayed useful. They nodded, hungry for a quest.
"They must imagine there's really a mission system," Nameless thought, amused. "Good. Let them."
They thought NPCs moved on rails—closed dialogue, canned routes. Good. That ignorance was a lever.
Between dusk and the edge of dawn he took four more—boars and wolves in the same chalk-written way. Each one a clean slide from bait to fall.
[XP +15] ×4
[XP +60]
[Intellectual Attack Proficiency +3] ×4
[Intellectual Attack Proficiency 51/10,000]
Morning broke; he kept the corridor humming. Eight more, same hill, same gravity, time braided with Breath and IP recovery so the trap never outran the engine.
[XP +15] ×8
[XP +120]
[Intellectual Attacks +3] ×8
[Intellectual Attack Proficiency 75/10,000]
The guards skinned while he watched the horizon.
[Stored: Wolf Pelts +9]
[Stored: Wolf Fangs +18]
[Stored: Wolf Claws +18]
[Stored: Boar Hide (Medium) +6]
[Stored: Boar Tusks +12]
[Stored: Boar Bristle Bundle +4]
Confidence had a reason. He didn't even need IP beither Breath to finish Balin if he came hunting. The boy would be doing exactly this—filling bars to buy a village's death. Level 5 was the obvious ambition.
—
It was nearly first bell when the shouting found the square. The cultist's megalomania came first; the scene followed it. Guards sprinted past him toward the gate. At their heels, a player dangled from an invisible fist, feet kicking. Jorge. A red crescent burned along his chest—Doubt had found him first.
Nameless didn't run with them. He took a different alley, slower. He stopped by the chapel, lifted a broom, and began to push dust. Balin, impatient and loud, wanted an audience.
"Let's start this event," the sylvie barked. "I need to finish this mission. Move, idiots!"
Nameless pushed the broom into another seam of grit. NPCs were supposed to stand until spoken to; fine. Let him see what a village broom could ignore.
Perfect Sight skimmed the numbers.
Balin — Level 5
Jorge Gameplays — Level 2
Carocono — Level 1
Roland and Aldric arrived with weapons bared, wearing fear like a costume. They gave the boy his stage. The dithyramb swelled—the "Great Mage Balin," end of all things, doom of this parish.
He let a small, private amusement settle. "He doesn't know—Roland stands two levels above him." A pause the crowd couldn't hear. "That's what comes of practicing spectacle instead of prudence." He filed the verdict where only the few could listen. "It's no use climbing in this world if you don't know how not to fall."
Balin dropped Jorge to the stones and turned to the priest first—kill the healer before the shield. Sensible, for his kind.
The broom moved. Alley to alley, bored and obedient, until he stood behind the speech.
Left hand. Sinister.
The short sword came free without ceremony and wrote the whole verdict in one stroke.
Steel through throat, up through palate. The head left the shoulders like a wrong answer leaving a page.
For a breath's span, the body refused consent. He clutched at his own head as it fell, knees buckling, the weight of disbelief dragging him down. Blood streamed over the purple hood, threading inside it, soaking the undershirt beneath. A scene of raw carnage, where even the cloth drank deep of his undoing.
[XP Gained: 321 — Kill: Balin (L5)]
[Level Up]
Emperor — Level 8.
[Short Sword Proficiency +7]
[Short Sword Proficiency 22/10,000]
Like a noon gun in a border town. First bell. The West always drags death in its shadow.
He played judge, jury, and executioner.
Roland stared, mouth dry. "Your… custom seems to be taking heads."
Nameless wiped the edge on the cloak's hem. "Civil law is a poor fit for certain problems," he said, voice even. "I keep my own code. I've done the good I could and the harm I must. Not all justice lives in forgiveness." The thought finished itself where no one could hear it: If he paid the respawn fee, he'd be back. Let him take the lesson first. He only hoped the fool would not return too soon, burning for revenge. Death, for him, was just another hit — a strike tallied. The regret would come later, when the game exacted its price.
He put the head in his bag because hunters don't waste a kill.
[Stored (Misc): Balin's Head ×1]
Under the cultist's robe was a silk undershirt, ruined and bright. Sylvie blood had dyed it a color no wash would undo.
He took it and pulled it on.
[Equipped: Balin's Crimson Undershirt — Silk and Sylvie Blood — Uncommon — L5]
[Effect: +2 IP per level | +15% Intellectual Attack Damage | +15% Resistance vs. Intellectual Attacks]
He looked down at the cooling body and let the thought seat itself. "He was leveling off scraps," he measured. "I haven't taken a point of damage from anything I've killed. That's the lesson baked into this place: near the starting fields the beasts are stronger than the men, mismatched on purpose, so you learn early what divides hunters from prey—the key to victory -The fire of Prometheus." The rest came flat, almost kind. "It would make no sense to set the cradle on a meadow of pillows. Expecting a pregnant woman to deliver a dinosaur instead of a child is the sort of mercy that turns to poison—an illusion bitterer than the disease it pretends to cure. Better they know from the first what the world is. No careful breaks of expectation. It isn't healthy for anyone to live inside a lie."
No illusions. No nursery slopes. Expectation breaks worse than bone.
As he meditated, Balin's staff lay abandoned on the ground, blood running out across the soil to meet its wood. Nameless's eyes settled on it: wild timber melding with the red stream, as if the two had been made for each other. His own hands still trembled faintly with the shimmer of power—the residue of Balin's spell cut short a heartbeat before release. He crouched without ceremony and seized it.
[Stored: Vein of Sylvie — L5 — Very Rare]
[Effect: +15% to all Elemental Attacks | +15% to all Occultist Attacks | Sylvie-Nature (Special)]
He studied. "Death is the final audit: a man leaves behind all that he possessed, and takes only what he was." Balin had lived briefly and died louder still, and in that abrupt departure his power spilled without restraint, poured itself into the ground, into the blood, into the staff. All fused, all pressed together, until the remnants hardened into one strange inheritance.
At length the staff stilled. Where once it had been no more than a sylvie trick—common wood coaxed from tree to hand—it now bore veins of crystallised blood, running ruby through its length like petrified arteries. They pulsed faintly, as if breath still lingered in them, and at times they gave off a whisper of sound—half sigh, half inhalation. Around its shaft hung a crown of minute sparks, the appearance of static lightning, silent yet exalting.
Seeing the blood gather in pools across the stone, he knew it was time to leave. The first bell had already rung. The water was lapping, and the flood of players was already pouring into this place, restless. The hour had come to bid farewell to the evil he knew—only to greet the evil he did not. Nameless recoiled at the very scent of man, a stench that sickened him more than blood ever could.
He crossed to the two players and kept the mask tight. "By command of Domine IV, I have inspected this parish. Now I return to the Empire. Stay here until Level 10. Help this village. When you are fit to travel, the Emperor will reward service."
The thought pressed in, dry and measured: "By the way these two move, at least Roland will not be left alone — and I am nearly granting them an eternal employment. I take it as a warning of mercy. If they step beyond this place, they will surely die. They have not even reached Level 3."
Foreshadowing wears a smile if you know you'll be the one handing out the coin.
Nameless had set his course for Sabine's, the tailor's stall already in sight before he quit the village. But Étienne, the smith who had stood through the whole commotion, intercepted him with arms full of leather bundles.
"As agreed," Étienne said, voice steady. "Confusion or not—neither early nor late. You do make a storm look like a fair bargain."
"What's agreed is never expensive," Nameless answered, and took the weight as though it were certainty itself.
The boarwork lay on top. The system's quiet arithmetic had balanced it well—beast level weighed, dissolutions accounted for, the craft of the hand factored in. Remarkably well, in fact, for the work of a housewife.
[Stored: Boarhide Greaves — L4 — Common]
[Stored: Boarhide Trousers — L4 — Common]
Then the wolves. His first set with a single intent.
[Stored: Cloak of the Widow Wolf — L8 — Uncommon]
[Stored: Twin Maw Pauldrons — L5 — Uncommon]
Rude to take delivery from an "extra" and not even see the maker's shadow. But after the business with heads, Sabine was right to let a runner speak. Good. Let my enemies learn the same caution.
Roland moved to block his way. "Why so fast? You'd leave your post?"
Nameless's voice held no hesitation. "Though I might even wish to remain here—call it naturalisation if you want—the road won't wait. By chance I came, by chance I go. Those two you've seen… they look willing. With training, they'll be of use. Teach them your techniques. Ask Aldric to do the same."
The thought he did not voice: I fed them a fable of guardianship long enough to keep them breathing. They believe it still. Good. Better that than graves too early dug.
Roland drew in a slow breath. "More arms, yes—their arms. But fewer heads. Yours was the one that thought for all of us, and it's walking out. Still… with what you've left, the hill plan will move forward."
Nameless inclined his head in his austere manner and stepped past. The village shrank behind him; the road remained, indifferent as always.
When he was about to leave, a light emerged from his head: "Before I forget to finish my homework—it's better to step out of the dark before taking the first road ahead. Where am I, after all?"
He turned back and asked what he should have asked days ago. "This village—its name?"
Before Roland, a strange woman near the well answered, voice thin but steady. "Once they called it Flammisca. We're what's left."
The word put a cold along his spine. He made for the gate faster than pride would like. "Even I didn't guess the Interregnum bit this deep. The city of Domine…"
Behind him, the NPCs watched the two players as men watch weather. In Devir, players should come as messiahs—gods or demons by turns—to people wandering deserts with their mouths full of hunger. Whether salvation or storm follows them is another story.
He left them a quiet square and a louder rumor.
Already outside, he laid Balin beside Mathis, the earth yielding in the same shallow way, one trench against the other, as if the soil itself cared little for names. What weight has a life of flesh, and what weight has a virtual life, when both are lowered to the same ground? In the end the fall is the same—the tree falls where it leans. He turned his gaze to the mask and thought: it was meant to signify the haze of possibilities, yet, like all things that breathe, every possibility bends toward its burial in death.
The ground took their weight and their blood together, as if the soil were being seeded. Mathis and Balin: two brief stalks cut, yet their spilling fecundated the earth, thickening it, preparing the seedbed for children yet unborn. Every death is a sowing; every grave, a preparation for what Devir will call its own.
He looked once at the pale mask in his kit. A fog of possibilities—every path ending in the same quiet. Fitting.
"Another cultist's head," he thought. "First an NPC. Now a player. They're recruiting."