The air was heavy, pressing down on his chest. The nauseating sweetness of rotting straw, the rancid sourness of accumulated filth, a faint hint of rust—these smells mingled, frozen in the cramped stone space. Every breath was torture. Leo Keller lay on a pile of damp, moldy hay, each heartbeat awakening a dull, unknown pain. In his right field of vision, minuscule, shimmering static danced, drilling into his skull. The memory of his death was still fresh, like an icy vise gripping his nerves: the car tumbling, glass flying, and... Kiki. That face stuck in a strange progression, and that chilling warning about the "price."
"New fish?"
The voice came from the shadows, from the corner. Hoarse, like two rough stones being rubbed together. Devoid of emotion, just an indifference soaked in endless boredom.
Leo turned his head painfully. The faint light of a torch passed with great difficulty through the high, narrow grating of the window, barely illuminating a figure crouched in the corner. A woman, solidly built, even hunched over, her massive shoulders were obvious. Dark brown hair, greasy, tangled, roughly gathered back, revealing weathered skin and an old scar that plunged obliquely from her brow, tracing the pale furrow of a centipede in the gloom. She had nothing else to do but rub her fingers, one by one, with a cloth so dirty its original color was forgotten. Methodical, meticulous, as if to remove an invisible stain, or simply to keep her hands in a state of latent readiness.
"Don't look like the usual stock around here," she said without looking up, her voice drawling but each word clear, with a popular frankness. "What'd you do? Scowled at the Golden Robes in the Temple? Or pissed in the wrong place, on a Silver Knight's wall?" The corner of her lip twisted into a nasty grimace.
Leo's throat burned. Swallowing saliva was like scraping sandpaper. The sound he produced was unrecognizable.
"Hey," the woman finally stopped her strange ablutions and looked at him. That gaze, hard as tempered steel, instantly pierced through his misery. "Welcome to Aethelgard, my guy." She leaned back against the cold stone wall, seeming to become one with it. "Here, breathing too loud can cost you your head, especially when the lunatics of Luminis or the Valerium tin cans are hanging around. My name's Ada. I run the Raven's Beak. If you want to see the sun tomorrow, you'd better chew every word I say and swallow it."
"The Raven's Beak..." Leo repeated, his voice hoarse like a broken bellows.
"What? Were you expecting the Preachers of Salvation?" Ada sneered. She grabbed a flat, dented waterskin from behind her and tossed it to him. "Wet your whistle. Not too much, there's no refill here." The water had a strong taste of rusty iron and rancid leather, cold and acrid, but Leo had no choice, he gulped down a few mouthfuls greedily.
"This shit-hole is called Raven's Pass. A ruin, but it's the bolt between the Frozen Lands of the north and the fat belly of the Kingdom. Peace?" She spat, her gaze hard as stone. "That's an illumination for fools on the lords' parchments! As long as the King and the northern barbarians keep killing each other, as long as the Luminis priests brandish their torches hunting heretics, as long as the Valerium tin cans go door-to-door 'collecting taxes,' this place will never know peace!"
She spoke without haste, but each word fell like a stone into mud, heavy with meaning.
"Refugees, pillagers, con men, hired killers... all that filth washes in like a tide, and the meager tranquility of Raven's Pass is shattered to pieces each time." A flicker of fatigue, tiny, passed through Ada's eyes, like the last glint of a blade worn too thin. "We, of the Raven's Beak, are the town's last claws and its last shield. Without an iron fist, without the strength to rip meat from a starving wolf's jaws, how could we hold this rotten corner?"
"Kingdom... Temple... Knighthood..." Leo grasped the words, his scrambled mind trying to reconstruct the map of this world. Ada's icy words carved out the contours of a torn Aethelgard: fanatical faith, merciless steel, and the ant surviving in the cracks. And him, stranded on the edge of this grinding machine.
"You think we're who? The Resistance?" Ada seemed to read his thoughts. Her grey-green eyes fixed on him like a trapped prey. "We're just a bunch trying to live. The Raven's Beak, and the townsfolk who refuse to end up as torches, rags, or crushed in the mud. We don't wanna be heroes. Just carve out a place in this fucked-up world."
Leo fell silent, his stomach knotted. The stench and the pain were real. The shadow of death loomed. The stuff Kiki had stuffed into his skull... his only lifeline? He closed his eyes, concentrated all his strength, trying to touch those vague things, those "skills."
A strange vibration ran through the depths of his mind. Not a sound. Rather... a shift in perception. A pale blue light seemed to flash across his vision, while cold, inhuman words inscribed themselves in letters of fire on his optic nerves:
**> Skill Status Confirmed**
-> [Code Intuition] (Passive):
Effect: Distorted perception allowing you to discern magical traces and the internal structure of simple mechanisms like networks of bluish veins. You can see, but understanding them requires your prior knowledge. Currently, you know almost nothing.
Note: "Seeing lines doesn't make you a conductor, noob." — Kiki
-> [Tactical Order] (Active):
Effect: You can focus your will on an ally, instilling a clear action intent (Hold / Flank Charge / Retreat). This slightly improves their determination and efficiency for that action.
The cost: your attention is completely captured, your own movements become clumsy and slow.
Range: direct line of sight. This ability requires a recovery time.
Note: "Focusing on one point makes you blind to the rest." — Kiki
-> [Anchor Echo] (Core / Anchor: This pile of straw):
Status: Ready (not activated)Warning: Each activation will cause the permanent and random destruction of one sensory function (sight/hearing/touch/taste/smell). After five destructions, consciousness will be downgraded to "World Background Process" (Irreversible).
Note: "Rewinding time is tearing the fabric of reality. And reality takes revenge." — Kiki
"Magic... Mechanisms... Command..."
An almost fanatical shiver ran down his spine! Despite the chilling warning of [Anchor Echo], the first two! This was a beacon in the darkness! Code Intuition! The tricks of the priests, the creations of the knights... would they reveal their flaws before him? And [Tactical Order]... Even though the "clumsiness" limitation made him curse mentally, being able to influence the battle, even just a little, was a huge advantage! Ada and her men were a ready-made testing ground! A crazy idea sprouted: maybe he could, with this, move this fucking world!
He instinctively ignored the mentions "requires knowledge" and "knows almost nothing." The thirst for survival and the intoxication of newly acquired power smothered his anxiety.
"Hey! You lost?" Ada's impatient voice brought him back to reality. Her furrowed brows deepened the scar, making it more sinister. "Listen, whatever you were before. Right now, you're meat on the slab. My guys are coming. If you want to live, use all your smarts and stay out of my way! The guards here aren't mannequins. And worse: the Luminis 'Purifiers' and the Valerium 'Silent Knights' sometimes drag their feet around here. If you run into one..." Her gaze became deep and dark like an icy well. "...dying would be good luck."
"Purifiers? Silent Knights?" Leo felt his heart tighten.
"The Temple's hunting dogs and the Knighthood's makers of the walking dead," Ada's voice lowered further, laden with disgust. "The ones burn out your reason with their bright light, forcing you to kill yourself in madness. The others suck out your voice and your past with their machines, leaving you an empty shell. If you fall into their hands..." She didn't finish, but the already thin air in the cell seemed to freeze solid.
Just then, heavy, regular footsteps echoed outside. The pounding of metal soles on stone grew closer, rhythmic, oppressive. The metallic clatter of a key ring screeched, getting closer and closer.
Ada moved. Unarmed, but her attitude transformed instantly, like a bow brutally drawn. She pressed herself against the wall, melted into the shadow, all presence erased, leaving only absolute concentration and cold killing intent. Her grey-green eyes locked onto the door. "They're coming." Two words, like shattering ice. "Hide. Silence. If you don't want to end up mad or mute, mind your own business."
The pressure became unbearable. Behind the iron bars, the torchlight danced wildly, projecting onto the filthy wall the distorted, stretched, and clawed shadows of the guards.
Leo's heart pounded wildly, blood beating at his temples. Fear and a sickly excitement intertwined. The opportunity was here! He crushed himself into the deepest corner, holding his breath, but forcing his eyes wide open, trying to trigger this nascent [Code Intuition]. He concentrated all his will. The scene before him seemed to change: the streaks of the stone wall, the cold reflection of the bars, the flickering light of the corridor... Faint, elusive golden filaments appeared. Like dust motes in a sunbeam, or the traces of a dying firefly, they shimmered and undulated at the edge of his vision.
"Energy? Magic?" His breath almost hitched. Though he understood nothing, this phenomenon itself was a powerful stimulant.
Clunk! Screech!
The metallic grating of a key being forced in, the click of the bolt yielding, tore the silence.
Then — BOOM!
The heavy cell door was violently shoved open! Two guards clad in studded leather, halberds in hand, blocked the entrance. The brutal light of the torches flooded in, forcing Leo to squint.
"Number seventeen! Ten..." the lead guard's roar choked off.
His gaze had met Ada's, pressed against the wall, almost merged with the darkness.
Above all, he had seen the smile she wore. Devoid of warmth, devoid of life. The smile of a predator finally rewarded for its infinite patience, seeing its prey finally trapped in the kill zone.
Time seemed to freeze for a second. The ferocity on the guard's face was instantly replaced by stupefaction and a hint of raw, sudden fear.
"NOW!!!"
Ada's cry split the stagnant air! She shot out like a black arrow loosed, aiming not at the guards themselves, but at the dagger clearly visible on one of their belts! Her movement became nothing but a blurry shadow! The real fight, in the narrowness of this stone cage, began in an eruption of primal and bloody violence: the struggle for a weapon.