The crowd had thinned out, voices fading beneath the cool Arkion night. The moon hovered high, casting silver light across marble streets and glass-lit towers.
I stepped out of the auction house, hands tucked in my pockets, expression unreadable. The clamor of the hall still echoed faintly in my ears — laughter, arrogance, bids. All of it noise.
Predictable. Tedious. Empty displays of power.
I'd gotten what I wanted — a few relics for my experiments, a read on several noble circuits, and, more importantly, a glimpse into the temperament of Arkion's next generation. But after an hour, even the data had lost its taste. I wanted silence again.
I walked down a narrow street, one of the quieter ones on the city's west side. The lamps here were dim, their light refracted through glass crafted from Aetherstone — faintly humming, alive. The stones under my shoes gleamed like polished obsidian.
Then, I felt it.
A flicker in the air — not sound, not sight, but pressure.
Someone was following me.
Rei Kagetsu's energy was impossible to mistake. It moved through the air like fine ice threads, cold and refined, never rough or emotional. But the mistake her attendants made — the guards — was that they tried to mimic her control. They failed. Their presence left subtle fractures in the ambient mana.
I sighed softly.
How boringly predictable.
They'd been tailing me since I left the auction house, carefully keeping distance, perhaps assuming I wouldn't notice. And maybe anyone else wouldn't. But my circuit, Koketsu, made perception a mathematical art form. I could see the flow of Aether through every crack and shadow like lines of code on a black screen.
I didn't stop them.
Sometimes curiosity outweighed reason. I wanted to see how far she'd go.
The path curved and tightened, walls of dark stone rising on both sides. The deeper I went, the fewer lanterns remained. Ahead, the road ended abruptly — a wall of old marble, carved with runic remnants of Arkion's first founding.
A dead end.
I stopped walking.
The sound of boots crunching faintly behind me ceased a moment later. The silence that followed was almost theatrical.
I turned slowly, tilting my head slightly, pretending mild surprise. "You can come out now."
No answer.
I smiled faintly, lowering my voice, letting it carry through the narrow street. "You've been following me since the third turn. That's… what, ten minutes now?"
Still silence. Then, movement — soft, deliberate. Three figures emerged first, cloaked in white and silver — Rei's personal guards, if I remembered correctly. Their circuits flickered faintly under their garments, defensive type.
And then she appeared.
Rei Kagetsu.
Cold eyes, silver hair braided into an elegant twist, her dress now replaced with a combat variant of her family's attire — light armor, still elegant, still noble. She stepped forward slowly, like a queen descending onto a chessboard.
"I knew there was something off about you," she said, voice low, sharp as frost. "No one bids that casually, then leaves without revealing anything. Who are you?"
I chuckled softly. "That's a strange way to start a conversation. Following strangers in alleys — quite the noble pastime, Lady Kagetsu."
Her eyes narrowed. "Don't mock me."
I raised an eyebrow. "Mocking requires intent. I'm merely… curious."
She stepped closer. The temperature dropped. Thin veins of frost spread along the walls, crawling like delicate spiderwebs. Her circuit — Ice and Psychic — flared gently. A subtle warning.
The guards flanked her, poised but disciplined. I could feel their attention on me — measuring, judging, preparing.
"You've been masking your presence," she said, scanning me with that precise psychic focus of hers. "That's not something any ordinary bidder can do."
"Ordinary…" I murmured, then smiled slightly. "You're not wrong. But tell me, Rei Kagetsu — what exactly do you plan to do with this discovery?"
For the first time, her expression faltered slightly. She hadn't expected the familiarity — the calm tone, the way her name rolled off my tongue like I'd known her for years.
The frost thickened, small particles floating in the air like snowflakes frozen mid-fall. She studied me, eyes narrowing again. "You're hiding your real face."
I shrugged. "We all wear masks."
Her lips pressed into a thin line. "Remove it."
I laughed softly, head tilting. "You'll have to make me."
That did it. The guards tensed. Rei's circuit pulsed — her eyes glowed faintly, psychic energy rippling outward like invisible pressure. She didn't attack, not yet, but she wanted to test my composure.
It amused me.
"Do you know what I see when I look at you?" she said finally, voice cold. "A liar. A coward hiding behind false composure. You don't belong in Arkion. People like you — with no lineage, no standing — should know their place."
Her words were deliberate. Testing for cracks.
But cracks don't appear in steel when it's tempered correctly.
I sighed, straightening slightly. The playful tone evaporated. "You talk too much."
Her eyes widened slightly — a small, instinctive reaction to the change in my tone. The air around us thickened.
I let a fragment of my true presence slip — not my full aura, not enough to reveal anything, but enough for the pressure to hit them like a tidal wave.
The frost on the wall shattered.
The guards froze mid-step. Rei's psychic barrier flared instinctively, the edges flickering. She staggered slightly, her breath misting.
"What… what is this pressure?" she whispered, voice trembling slightly despite herself.
I met her gaze calmly, almost lazily. "If you were going to ambush someone, Lady Kagetsu… you should've chosen someone weaker."
For a few seconds, silence ruled the alley.
Then I turned away, stepping past her slowly, hands still in my pockets. "You should go home. It's not wise to chase shadows you don't understand."
As I walked past, I could feel her confusion, her psychic presence wavering. She didn't understand what I was — or how she had just been overpowered without a single move.
"Wait," she called after me.
I didn't stop.
"Who are you really?"
I smiled faintly, eyes on the end of the alley. "Someone who doesn't exist in your history books."
And then I was gone — slipping into the night, my circuit bending the perception of every passerby. To them, I was just another traveler disappearing into the veins of Arkion's endless streets.
Behind me, I knew Rei Kagetsu was standing still, trembling slightly, pride clashing with fear. Her guards whispered her name, uncertain. She finally turned away, eyes wide, voice shaking as she muttered:
"That wasn't a mask. That was… something else."
As I moved deeper into the city, I allowed myself a soft, humorless laugh.
So that's the heiress of the Kagetsu family… cold on the surface, brittle underneath. Predictable. And yet, she'll remember this.
I looked up at the moonlight slicing through the clouds. "Arkion," I whispered. "Let's see how much data you can give me before I get bored of you too."