They did not wear insignia.
That was the first thing Vale noticed.
In the morning mist beyond the settlement, five figures moved through the broken terrain with deliberate spacing, never clustering, never leaving blind angles. Their clothing was muted—dust-gray, ash-brown, tones that refused identity. No clan marks. No Covenant sigils.
They were not administrators.
They were not soldiers.
They were hunters.
Vale sensed them before he saw them—not through wind, not through sound, but through absence. Where they passed, pressure flattened unnaturally. Footsteps did not echo. Air failed to remember them.
Anti-magic specialists.
Hunters Without Names.
The Covenant's quiet answer to things it did not want acknowledged.
Vale continued walking.
Stopping would confirm suspicion. Accelerating would invite pursuit. So he walked as if unaware, posture relaxed, presence unasserted.
Behind him, one hunter raised two fingers.
The formation shifted.
They did not rush.
Hunters learned early that anything worth hunting punished impatience.
"Target shows no mana fluctuation," one of them murmured through a bone-thin relay charm. "No elemental trace."
Another replied, "Confirmed. Environmental deviation persists."
That deviation was subtle.
Grass bending a fraction late.
Dust settling inconsistently.
Distance misjudging itself.
Nothing dramatic.
Everything wrong.
Vale crossed a shallow ravine where the ground dipped briefly out of sight. As he emerged on the other side, one hunter frowned.
"Count again."
They did.
Five hunters.
One target.
Still five.
Still one.
That was correct.
And yet—
The ravine felt longer than it should have been.
Vale stepped onto the road ahead, then stopped—not because he had sensed them closing in, but because the road itself had become undecided.
He turned slowly.
The hunters froze.
For the first time since taking the assignment, uncertainty rippled through their formation.
Vale's gaze passed over them—not searching, not hostile.
Evaluating.
"You're early," he said calmly.
No name. No accusation.
Just observation.
One hunter recovered first. "You're aware of Covenant jurisdiction."
Vale nodded. "You're aware this isn't it."
Silence followed.
Their void anchors hummed faintly, suppressing everything they understood as power. Spells collapsed. Enhancements dulled.
Vale felt nothing change.
That frightened them more than resistance would have.
"Submit for verification," the lead hunter said. His voice was steady, practiced. "This is a non-lethal apprehension."
Vale looked at the space between them.
It felt… crowded. Artificially so.
"No," he replied. "That would teach the wrong lesson."
Before the hunter could respond, the distance between them subtly disagreed with itself.
Not stretched.
Not compressed.
Reconsidered.
The hunters stepped forward—
And did not arrive.
Their momentum bled sideways, redirected into harmless angles. A net thrown wide landed gently on empty ground. A suppressor pulse dissolved into irrelevance before reaching Vale.
He had not attacked.
He had declined.
One hunter stumbled, catching himself, breathing hard. "He's not using magic."
"I know," another whispered. "That's the problem."
Vale stepped past the space where their perimeter should have been.
None of them could stop him.
By the time they turned, he was already farther down the road than physics allowed.
The lead hunter activated the recall sigil.
"Report," came the distant voice.
The hunter swallowed. "Target declined capture."
A pause.
"Clarify."
"…The world complied."
The channel went silent.
Vale did not look back.
Behind him, the Hunters Without Names stood amid tools that no longer understood their purpose.
And for the first time since their creation, a question surfaced among them—quiet, dangerous, and impossible to suppress.
If this was not power—
Then what, exactly, were they meant to hunt?