The Iron Vanguard's representative found them on a Thursday, outside the gate to the District's newly opened E-rank dungeon.
He was a man named Zhao Wei — mid-twenties, broad-shouldered, the practiced manner of someone who was used to being the most impressive person in a room and had built an entire personality around it. He wore the guild's insignia on his jacket and had two guild members flanking him at the exact distance that said muscle without saying it out loud.
He walked up to Su Ming with the confident ease of a man delivering an offer he expected to be accepted.
"Su Ming," he said. "I'm Zhao Wei, deputy head of Iron Vanguard. We've been watching your numbers. You're talented."
Su Ming looked at him pleasantly. "Thanks."
"We want to offer you a position in the guild. Associate rank to start, with a path to full member after a sixty-day trial period. You'd have access to our dungeon resources, our equipment fund, our—"
"I appreciate the offer," Su Ming said, with the specific tone of a man who has written the rest of this sentence in advance. "I'm not interested."
Zhao Wei paused. He had not, apparently, written that sentence in his advance planning. "You haven't heard the full terms—"
"I don't need to." Su Ming's smile was unchanged. Easy. Friendly. Thoroughly immovable. "I'm working solo for now. If that changes, I'll reach out."
Zhao Wei looked at him for a moment. Then his gaze moved sideways, to Su Xuan, who was standing half a step back, arms loose, watching Zhao Wei with the expression of someone reading a document and finding it less interesting than expected.
"Your partner?" Zhao Wei asked.
"My brother," Su Ming said.
Zhao Wei looked at Su Xuan more carefully. "What class?"
"Nothing notable," Su Xuan said.
"The Board has him listed as unclassed," one of the flanking guild members said, with the tone of someone reporting information they thought was embarrassing. "No class registered. Could be a glitch or—"
"Or it could be none of your business," Su Xuan said.
The tone was the same. Still quiet. No edge in it that you could point to and name. But the flanking member stopped talking immediately, and Zhao Wei's two flankers shifted in the small unconscious way of people whose bodies have registered something their minds haven't caught up with yet.
Zhao Wei looked at Su Xuan. "You're Level—" he started, then stopped. He had clearly checked the public ranking board. "You're not on the board."
"No," Su Xuan said.
"Everyone above Level 1 is on the board."
"Interesting observation."
Zhao Wei was silent for a moment. He was, Su Xuan observed, not unintelligent — he was simply accustomed to a world where the information he had was the information that mattered, and Su Xuan was a gap in that world. A blank space. It bothered him in the way that blank spaces always bother people who depend on maps.
"I'd like to extend the offer to you as well," Zhao Wei said finally. He had recalculated. "Double associate rank, joint—"
"No," Su Xuan said.
Zhao Wei looked at him.
"We're going into the dungeon now," Su Xuan said. "Was there anything else?"
There was a silence.
Zhao Wei was a man with authority and the physical presence to back it up and a guild of forty-seven members, and the person standing in front of him was an unranked, unclassed nineteen-year-old who was looking at him the way you look at mild weather — not hostile, not challenging, just entirely indifferent to what it does.
"We'll talk again," Zhao Wei said. He said it the way people say things when they want to leave with the last word.
"If you want," Su Xuan said agreeably, and turned toward the dungeon gate.
Behind him, he heard Su Ming fall into step.
"You were cold," Su Ming said quietly.
"I was accurate," Su Xuan said. "There's a difference."
"Mm." A pause. "He's going to be a problem."
"Yes," Su Xuan agreed. "In about two weeks."
"How do you know two weeks?"
"I don't." He did. "Estimate."
Su Ming looked at him sideways. Said nothing. Went back to watching where he was walking.
Behind them, Kael materialized from Su Xuan's shadow, three meters tall and silent as old ice, and followed its master into the dungeon.
The Iron Vanguard members watched it go and did not say a word.