Cael stood at the alley entrance with both hands at his sides and that same face. Still. Like whatever he'd come to say had been sitting with him for a while and he'd already made his peace with the weight of it.
He was alone.
Arthur straightened up from the wall. "What is it."
'CAEL.' Vexis materialized between them, arms wide, voice cracking slightly at the top. 'Cael this is not me! This is an impostor! We grew up together, you have to know this isn't me! Look at me! LOOK AT ME—'
Cael looked directly through him.
Vexis's arms dropped.
'He can't see me,' Vexis said. Quieter. 'He can't see me at all.'
Arthur said nothing.
Cael stepped further into the alley. His voice dropped. "The operation. Someone tipped us off."
Arthur kept his face still.
Operation. Right. The underprivileged student labor ring. Vak's network. The thing Vexis had been building in the background of the novel that the author never bothered to mention.
"Who," Arthur said.
"Anonymous. But it went straight to the Allright council." Cael's eyes stayed forward. "Vak is under active investigation for forced labor involving underage academy students. They moved fast. I came to find you before you heard it somewhere else."
'That's impossible,' Vexis said. His voice had gone strange. Not loud. Just tight. 'We were careful. Nobody outside the circle knew the structure. Nobody who would go to the council. Nobody who—'
Vexis. Shut up.
'This is my life you absolute—'
Whether you like it or not I'm the one in the body. So either help me or be quiet because right now I need to think.
Vexis went silent.
Arthur looked at Cael.
Someone knew. Someone with enough detail to make an anonymous tip credible to a council that didn't move without evidence. Not a random student. Someone close. Someone who had been watching long enough to know what to report and how.
Motive. Information. Proximity.
His chest felt strange.
This is it. This is the thread.
"Has Vak said anything," Arthur said.
"Not yet. He's contained for now." Cael's jaw shifted slightly. "I'd recommend cutting ties immediately. If they start pulling at the structure your name is going to come up."
Arthur's mouth opened before he finished the thought.
"You tell Vak and anyone near him that if my name leaves his mouth I will personally make sure he regrets it. The Lestilaut name stays out of this entirely."
Cael lowered his head once. Smooth. Practiced. "I'll deliver that."
He turned to leave. Then stopped.
"Expect contact from Vak soon." His voice was flat. Not warning, not sympathy. Just information. "He's going to want your help getting out from under this."
He walked out of the alley and the entrance swallowed him back into the street and he was gone.
Arthur stood still for a moment.
Roz was on the table behind him. He hadn't spoken since Cael appeared. He was watching Arthur now with those red eyes and saying nothing, which from Roz meant something.
"You got some shady history, brat," Roz said finally.
"As I've said." Arthur looked at the alley entrance. "This body is a piece of work."
He thought about Vak eating grapes on a red sofa.
And now someone had reported him.
Someone who knew enough to go to a council. Someone who wanted the operation gone. Someone who, when Vexis didn't come through and help clean up the mess,Vak would had a reason to make sure Vexis couldn't be a liability anymore.
The theory wasn't complicated.
Vak was scared. Vak was cornered. And cornered people with resources didn't wait around to see what happened next.
Top of the list. Right now.
Arthur picked up Roz from the table, settled him onto his shoulder, left money on the table for the food, and walked out of the tavern.
"Where are we going brat?" Roz asked
"Home."
-----
The estate was quiet in the specific way large empty houses are quiet. Not peaceful. Just absent.
Maids stood at intervals in the entrance hall. Butlers near the doors. All of them ready. None of them with anything to do.
Arthur walked through without stopping and climbed to Vexis's room.
It was large. Of course it was. Red crystal embedded into the frame of the chair near the window. Gold edging. The afternoon light came through the window and landed across the floor in a long warm strip.
He sat down.
Roz hopped from his shoulder to the armrest and folded his paws and looked at nothing in particular.
Vexis was somewhere behind him. He hadn't spoken since the alley.
Arthur looked at his hands in the afternoon light.
Three suspects. Havier. Vak. Whoever tipped off the council which might be the same person or might not.
Arthur thought about the notification still waiting.
The Eyes.
He'd been putting off thinking about it since the notification.
He let the thought finish and the red square appeared, quiet and immediate, at eye level.
[The Eyes: Available]
[A view of the future that would unfold]
[Cost: 50 RP per use]
[Current balance: 73 RP]
Arthur read it.
Then read it again.
Then sat back in the chair and pressed both hands over his face.
Okay. Okay okay okay.
A direct view of what happens next. He'd been stumbling through this story with half-remembered plot points and a suspect list built on guesswork and body memories that showed up whenever they felt like it. Running out of time. No confirmed killer. No real plan.
And this whole time the system had been sitting on this.
He dropped his hands and looked at the notification again.
For the first time since he woke up in a cafeteria with someone else's blood on his knuckles he actually felt like the odds might be slightly less completely against him.
He read the description one more time.
A view of the future that would unfold.
Not every outcome. Not every possibility. The one that was coming if nothing changed.
Which meant if he changed something the view changed with it.
That was the leverage. That was actually the whole thing.
He needed to see it.
Use the Eyes. Show me Vexis Lestilaut's future.
The room dissolved.
Not gradually. It was just gone. The chair, the window, the afternoon light, Roz, all of it gone between one breath and the next.
Black. Vast and flat and cold in a way that didn't come from temperature. The silence had weight.
[What do you want to see, reader?]
Arthur stared at the word.
Reader.
Not user. Not subject. Reader.
The system knew exactly what he was.
He filed that away. Later.
Vexis Lestilaut's future.
The black shifted.
Pixels. The same glitching texture as the notification light but bigger, spreading outward from the center until it filled everything, and then the scene settled and he was watching it like a screen.
The academy entrance. Day. Bright afternoon light. Students moving in and out.
Vexis walking. Pink bellus on his shoulder. That would be Roz.
Nothing wrong. Nothing out of place.
He watched.
Vexis turned at the corner near the lower gate. The alley to the left of the main road, narrow, stone walls, the kind of shortcut that existed in every part of every city because some paths just wore themselves into the ground over time.
A gloved hand came from the shadow of the wall.
Fast. Practiced.
It caught Vexis by the collar and yanked him sideways into the alley and Vexis was off balance before he could react, stumbling.
The hooded figure was already moving.
No wasted motion. No words. Just the glint of something metal catching the light for half a second and then Vexis was against the wall with the blade at his throat.
Arthur watched Vexis's eyes.
Not fear. Not yet. Something slower. The expression of someone who knew something had caught up with them and hadn't finished understanding what it was.
Then the blade moved.
Vexis slid down the wall. The pink bellus on his shoulder was gone, scattered by the motion, somewhere he couldn't see. Blood on the stones. Vexis's hand going up once, slowly, and then not.
The figure was gone before Vexis hit the ground.
Arthur stood in the black space and looked at what was left on the screen.
The alley. The stones. The specific quiet that comes after something sudden.
SYSTEM! What date?
[Year 1047 Grinlaust Period]
[January 23rd]
Arthur stared at it.
January 23rd.
He had been counting from January 20th. Two weeks. The start of the novel. Standard timeline. The death that the original story had buried in the background without a name or a date.
January 23rd was tomorrow.
The black space held him there and said nothing else and he stood in it with that date and the image of Vexis's hand going up once slowly and then stopping and he did not move for a long time.
Tomorrow.