The Watcher dropped into the world like a falling star.
No sound. No light. No witnesses.
It stood at the edge of Greystone's outer rim — a place where even the rats prayed. Covered in a long silver mantle, face blank as glass, its form shimmered between real and unreal.
It didn't breathe. It didn't speak.
It listened.
[Target: Epochless]
Thread: Absent
Epoch Signature: Null
Deviation Level: Red]
Somewhere in the slums… he was hiding.
And the Watcher would find him.
Greystone – Sector 6
Arther stood before the cracked mirror inside the abandoned mill, staring at his own face.
Thin. Hollow-eyed. Hair wild and wet from the rain. A ghost of a boy.
It wouldn't work.
This face couldn't survive.
It wasn't about escape. Escape was easy.
What he needed… was presence.
He needed to become someone the system could see, someone fate could track — but not connect to him.
A ghost wearing a name.
He stole a ledger from a burned-out census office. Inside: hundreds of names. Dead citizens. Forgotten ones. Some born. Some buried. All erased.
He flipped through until one stood out:
"Milos Veylan — Apprentice Scribe, Church of Time. Deceased. Age 17. No surviving relatives."
Perfect.
Arther spent the next four days vanishing.
He didn't beg. Didn't steal. Didn't eat.
He observed.
Every entrance into the inner city. Every back tunnel under the noble quarters. Every secondhand shop with discarded robes. Every route used by Church initiates to carry offerings through the fog.
He mapped everything.
And then, he acted.
He walked into the candlehouse vault beneath a crumbling chapel, where records were still offered in ash.
And with a stolen scribe ring, he burned Milos Veylan's name back into existence.
But not all of it.
He altered the thread:
Class: Church Archivist
Location: Greystone Temple
Status: Assigned to Low Security Relic Records
Access Level: Tier 1B
Thread Signature: Weak. Inert. Unremarkable.
In other words: invisible.
He folded the ashes into a scrap of prayer silk, tucked it inside his coat, and left the chapel with a new shadow.
He wasn't just hiding anymore.
He was hollowing out a space within the system itself.
Let the Watcher chase nothing.
He would become someone else entirely.
Elsewhere…
The Watcher passed a boy in the street. Ragged. Limping. Face too dirty to matter.
It paused.
Scanned.
[Thread Check: Present — "Milos Veylan"]
[Epoch Signature: First Cycle]
[Thread Type: Passive | Scribe-Class | No deviation detected]
The Watcher moved on.
It didn't see the truth.
It didn't see the smile that ghosted across Arther's lips as it left.
Because Arther now had something better than invisibility.
He had a mask.
That night, Arther returned to the mill.
He lit a single candle, pulled out the system window in his mind, and opened the Mark.
[Hollow Vow – Rank 1]
Status: Stable
Deception Protocols: Online
— Masked Thread: Active
— False Epoch: First
— Observability: Minimal
He had fooled the system.
That meant he could now move within it.
Forge. Steal. Study. Climb.
He wouldn't just live in the cracks.
He would carve a path through them.
Somewhere above, in a tower of glass and steel, a second bell began to ring.
It wasn't the Watchers who noticed.
It was something older.
Something… forgotten.
And it smiled.