The walls of Blackridge never whispered—they screamed. Especially when blood was fresh and silence too expensive.
Crispin leaned against a cracked pillar outside the guild's tactical war room, eyes half-lidded but alert. Dust caught the gold in the evening sun. His hoodie was still damp from rain that hadn't touched him. The Echoes had returned to the shadows without a sound, but their chill lingered on his skin.
A group of Hunters passed behind him. Their laughter cut off the moment they noticed him. Whispers trailed after their boots like static.
"That's him. The Reaper of Gate 92."
"No way he's Rank F."
"You saw the way that thing begged before he ended it?"
"They're saying he doesn't use mana. He just… commands the dead."
He didn't need to hear it. He could feel it—the shift in how they looked at him. Like he was one of the monsters now.
Arlen emerged from the war room, door hissing shut behind him. He had a file in one hand and a face like a kicked dog. The kind of expression that said I want to ask if you're okay, but I'm not sure you still are.
"You're trending," Arlen muttered, flipping the file open and closed without reading it. "Online forums, hunter boards, even some of the elite guilds have started watching. And not the good kind of watching. You're being monitored, Crisp."
"Let them watch," Crispin said, picking dirt from beneath a nail. "They'll look away when I want them to."
Arlen's laugh was bitter. "That doesn't sound like the guy who couldn't afford cab fare three weeks ago."
"I'm still broke," Crispin shrugged. "I just kill expensive things now."
They walked in silence down a long corridor lined with stone reliefs of fallen Hunters—names carved beneath each face. Arlen slowed as they passed one. "My brother's up there," he said quietly. "Six years ago. Gate collapsed on him."
Crispin didn't say anything. Not because he didn't care. Because if he opened his mouth, the wrong thing might come out. He didn't know how to comfort people anymore. He barely knew how to comfort himself.
They reached the lobby. Sleek, modern, full of screens and glass. A couple of newbies were getting their first mission cards printed. A janitor was mopping up crimson—some other hunter's failed exit. Everything in Blackridge was functional, even the fear.
Then a voice sliced through the room.
"Hunter David. You're summoned."
Crispin turned slowly. A tall woman in a silver overcoat stood by the hallway arch, guild badge glittering under the lights. Her gaze was unreadable. Her voice wasn't a request.
"Summoned?" Arlen stepped forward. "By who?"
"Internal Oversight," she replied. "And the Tower Guild." She gave Crispin a small, empty smile. "Come quietly, please."
The Room With No Windows
Crispin was led to a room he didn't know existed—deep underground, beneath even the monster holding cells. It wasn't an interrogation room. No, that would be too gentle.
It was a throne room without the throne.
Seven chairs. Six occupied.
The air hummed with restrained power, the kind that felt like it had claws.
One of the seated figures leaned forward. "Crispin David," said a voice that made his name feel like a blade. "You've been causing... ripples."
"I've been surviving," Crispin said evenly.
Another spoke—older, wheezing, amused. "The video from Gate 92. You appeared from nowhere. Your mana signature blinked off the radar. Then on again. Explain."
Crispin gave them a long look. "I don't owe you that."
"You do now," said a third voice. "We could classify you. Red-tag you. You'd be hunted before sunrise."
He smirked. "Good thing I'm good at killing."
There was a silence. Then the wheezy one chuckled. "He reminds me of her."
"Don't," snapped the second. "We agreed never to speak of—"
"I know what he is," the oldest man said finally. "Or at least… I think I do. But not yet. Let him walk for now."
The woman who brought him in stepped behind him, hand near a dagger. "So we let him go?"
The oldest man studied Crispin. "For now, yes. But we watch."
Crispin stepped back slowly, then turned to leave.
And as he walked, one final voice spoke in his mind—not from any throat in the room.
"We're not the only ones watching you. The First Gate remembers."
He paused mid-step.
But when he looked back, no one had moved.
The Offer
Hours later, back in the cracked bones of his apartment, Crispin stared at the floor.
Yara was asleep in the next room. Her breathing soft. Safe, for now.
He was nursing a beer and a wound that wouldn't clot—some creature from the last Gate had left a gash across his ribs that burned with magic. It refused healing.
A knock.
Soft. Deliberate.
He opened the door without asking who it was.
A man in a black coat stood there. No visible weapon. No aura. But every inch of him said danger.
"You don't know me, but I know you," the man said, holding out a sleek card with no text.
On it was a symbol: a gate surrounded by red chains.
"We're called Umbra," he continued. "We deal in the truth behind the System. We know what you are, Echo-Binder."
Crispin didn't blink. "And what do you think I am?"
The man smiled. "A mistake the world wasn't ready for. A power the System didn't expect." He took a step forward. "We don't want to control you. We want to help you control them."
Crispin looked down at the card.
Then he looked back up—but the man was gone. No footsteps. No sound.
Only the scent of ash.
The Cracks Appear
The next day, Arlen confronted him in the training yard.
"What the hell are you doing, man?"
"Living," Crispin replied.
"Don't give me that. You're teleporting into sealed Gates, you're summoning the dead, and now there are rumors you're talking to some rogue faction? What are you trying to become?"
Crispin looked at him. "Something that doesn't die."
Arlen grabbed his arm. "You're not the only one in this fight. You have people who care. You have your sister. You have me, damn it."
Crispin's expression cracked for just a moment.
And then he whispered, almost too low to hear
"That's why I can't afford to lose."
He walked away.
Arlen stood there, watching him disappear into shadow.