The journey back to Maplewood was a silent, shell-shocked procession. They emerged from the forest into the late afternoon light blinking like moles, the ordinary world of rustling leaves and bird song feeling surreal after the cavern's visceral horrors. The sun was a comfort, but it did little to warm the cold knot of revelation lodged in Silver's chest.
He walked between Elara and Kael, the three of them moving with the stiff, careful gait of people who had stared into a void and felt it stare back. The silence was heavy, filled with unasked questions. Silver could feel their glances—Elara's wide, worried green eyes, Kael's sharp, analytical gray gaze—but he kept his own fixed on the path ahead, his mismatched hair a stark banner in the dappled light.
He had transformed in front of them. Not just fought well, but changed. His left eye had turned into something… other. And the dagger. The way it had reacted, drinking in the shadow and erupting in light. The spirit's warning had been real, the threat neutralized, but the cost was the shattering of any pretense of normalcy.
They reached the village edge as the first evening lamps were being lit in windows. The familiar sight of smoke curling from chimneys and the distant sound of children playing should have been a balm. It felt like a painted backdrop.
"We should report to Thorne," Kael said finally, his voice hoarse. It was the first thing any of them had said since leaving the ruins.
Silver shook his head. "And tell him what? That we ignored a guild ban, found three dead treasure hunters killed by a shadow-monster, and that I…" he trailed off, gesturing vaguely to his left eye.
"That you manifested a demonic ocular transformation and wielded a relic of unknown power to destroy a necrotic entity," Kael finished flatly. "Yes. That is precisely what we should report. Omission of material facts violates guild code section seven, subsection—"
"He'll lock me up, Kael!" Silver's voice was sharper than he intended. He took a breath, lowering it. "Or worse, he'll send me to some Mage's Circle for 'study.' My aunt… the letter she showed me. There are people who would seek me if they knew. I can't."
Elara placed a hand on his arm. Her touch was steady. "He's right, Kael. This isn't a guild matter anymore. It's a Silver matter. We keep this between us. For now."
Kael looked between them, his lips pressed into a thin line. The scholar in him warred with the friend. After a long moment, he sighed, the tension leaving his shoulders. "Very well. A temporary omission. But we must document everything. Privately. We need to understand what you are, Silver. For your safety and… arguably, for ours."
That, Silver could agree to.
They split up with a promise to meet at dawn at the old watchtower on the hill—a ruined stone structure far from prying ears. Silver watched them go, Elara with a last, lingering look over her shoulder, Kael already lost in thought, likely mentally drafting his notes.
He turned toward home, his steps heavy.
---
Aunt Mara took one look at him as he shuffled through the door and wordlessly put the kettle on the fire. She didn't ask about his day. She simply pushed a mug of strong, honeyed tea into his hands and sat opposite him at the kitchen table, her own hands folded, waiting.
The warmth of the mug seeped into his bones. The silence in the warm, herb-scented kitchen was a different kind than the forest silence—it was patient, knowing.
"It happened again," he said, his voice barely above a crackle of the fire. "The eye. The strength." He looked up at her. "And the dagger. It… it lit up. Like it was made to destroy the thing we found."
Mara's face remained calm, but a deep sorrow clouded her eyes. "What thing?"
He told her. The spirit, the ruins, the Sleeper and its shadow guardians, the drained bodies. He left nothing out. When he finished, the tea in his mug was cold.
"You saved people," Mara said softly. "You protected your home. That is who you are, Silver. That is the heart my sister gave you."
"But the power, Aunt Mara. It's not… human. The eye turns black. With a gold slit. Kael said it's in books about demons."
"Your father was no demon," Mara said with surprising firmness. "Your mother loved him. She wrote of a 'king in a distant realm.' Kings can be many things. Angels. Elementals. Beings of order or chaos. But a demon? No. She would have named that darkness." She reached out, turning his face gently so the firelight played across his features. "This mark of yours… it is a part of you. A tool. Like your strength, or your kindness. The question is not what it is, but who wields it."
Her words were an anchor in the storm of his confusion. He leaned into her touch, the fear receding slightly. "What do I do?"
"You learn," she said simply. "You have friends who see you, not just your power. Trust them. And trust this." She tapped the silver teardrop pendant on his chest. "And the dagger. They are your inheritance. They are clues. But promise me," her grip tightened, "promise me you will not go seeking your parents' world yet. You are not ready. The letter was clear—it would mean your death."
"I promise," he whispered, and meant it. The cavern had been lesson enough.
That night, sleep was a fractious thing. Visions plagued him—not dreams, but sensations. The feeling of vast, impossible wings folding in a place without sky. The taste of nectar from a flower that bloomed only in eternal light. And beneath it, a low, resonant hum of fury, a beat like a war-drum that echoed in his very blood. Wrath. It was more than a word now; it was a presence within him, sleeping, but stirring.
He awoke at the first hint of false dawn, drenched in a cold sweat but oddly clear-headed. The fear was still there, but it was joined now by a sliver of determination. He had to understand. He dressed quietly, strapped on his sword and dagger, and slipped out into the predown gray.
The old watchtower stood on a grassy hill north of the village, a skeletal finger of stone against the lightening sky. Elara and Kael were already there. Elara was pacing, while Kael sat on a fallen block of masonry, a leather-bound journal open on his lap and a charmed quill scratching notes autonomously in the air beside him.
"You're late," Kael said without looking up. "I've begun a preliminary analysis. Based on observed parameters: transformation duration approximately ninety seconds. Physical enhancement multiplier between three and four. Sensory shift indicates perception extends into infrared or life-force spectrums. The ocular alteration is the most significant data point."
Silver managed a weak smile. "Good morning to you too."
Elara stopped pacing and threw her arms around him in a brief, fierce hug. "You idiot. Don't ever do that again." She stepped back, swiping at her eyes. "Okay. What's the plan?"
"The plan," Kael said, snapping his journal shut. The quill dutifully tucked itself behind his ear. "Is controlled experimentation and research. We have three primary vectors of inquiry." He held up a finger. "One: The artifact." He pointed to Silver's dagger. "Two: The physiological transformation. Three: The genealogical mystery."
"How do we 'experiment' without setting the barn on fire or getting him noticed?" Elara asked, crossing her arms.
"With extreme caution." Kael pulled a small, clear crystal from his pouch. "This is a mana resonance scanner. Uncle Fenrin uses it to grade magical ore. If your dagger has an enchantment, this should detect its signature without activating it." He handed it to Silver. "Hold it near the blade."
Silver drew the dark dagger. The milky moonstone in the pommel gleamed softly. He brought the scanner crystal close. Immediately, the clear crystal flared with a complex, swirling pattern of light—streaks of brilliant white intertwined with veins of deep, pulsating crimson.
Kael sucked in a breath. "Fascinating. A dual-aspect enchantment of incredible complexity. The white signature is profoundly ordered, healing, sanctified. The red is… chaotic, potent, destructive. They are bound together in perfect, opposing harmony. This is craftsmanship beyond any mortal or even standard magical smith. This is a relic of the highest order."
"My mother's," Silver murmured, sheathing it. The confirmation was both comforting and terrifying.
"Now," Kael said, his eyes gleaming with scholarly fervor. "The transformation. We need to see if you can initiate it consciously, and if so, what the limits and triggers are."
Silver balked. "It only happens when I'm in danger. Or afraid."
"Fear is a catalyst, not the fuel," Kael reasoned. "The fuel is likely an internal resource—your unique energy. We need to see if you can access it through focused emotion or will. Think of something that makes you angry. Not just annoyed. Righteously, protectively angry."
Silver closed his eyes. He thought of the spirit of Elara, warning him of the Sleeper. He thought of the three drained men, dead for greed but dead nonetheless. He thought of the shadow-scuttlers skittering toward his friends. A familiar heat began to kindle in his gut, a spark of indignation. He focused on it, fed it.
A tingle started behind his left eye. The world through his closed lids took on a darker hue. He could hear Elara's heartbeat, a quick flutter like a bird's, and Kael's, steady and slow. He could smell the dew on the grass, the ink on Kael's quill, the faint iron scent of old blood deep within the watchtower stone.
He opened his eyes.
Elara gasped. Kael leaned forward, his analytical gaze missing nothing.
Silver looked at his reflection in the polished surface of Kael's scanner crystal. His left eye was again pitch black, the vertical golden slit stark and bright. The heat suffused his limbs, a banked fire ready to be stoked. But there was no panic, no battle-frenzy. Just a cold, clear potency.
"Can you speak?" Kael asked quietly.
"Yes," Silver said. His voice was the same, but it felt like it resonated from a deeper place in his chest.
"How do you feel?"
"Strong. Sharp. Like… like I could see the weakness in anything." He looked at the watchtower wall, and his gaze seemed to penetrate the surface, seeing not the stone, but the points of erosion, the hairline cracks where a strike would split it.
"Fascinating. Cognitive functions intact, sensory perception enhanced, apparent tactical analysis upgrade." Kael's quill was scribbling furiously in the air. "Now, try to release it. Gently."
Silver willed the heat to recede, to bank the fire. For a moment, it resisted, clinging to his senses. He focused on the memory of Mara's kitchen, the smell of tea, the sound of her voice. The warmth faded, the world brightened back to normal color, and the strange auditory and olfactory overload ceased. He blinked, and his eye was blue once more.
A wave of light-headedness washed over him, and he swayed. Elara was at his side in an instant, steadying him.
"Energy depletion," Kael noted clinically, though concern flickered in his eyes. "A cost for the enhancement. Likely proportional to duration and intensity of use. We'll need to quantify that."
"So I can call it," Silver said, breathing slowly to clear the dizziness. "But it tires me. And it's… connected to my anger. My protectiveness."
"The Sin of Wrath," Kael said softly, and the words hung in the morning air. "Not as blind rage, but as focused, righteous fury. A weaponized sense of justice. It fits the mythological profile disturbingly well."
Before they could dissect that further, a new sound cut through the quiet dawn—the deep, resonant tolling of the village alarm bell. Once. Twice. Thrice. It wasn't the rapid clang of a monster attack, but the steady, dire toll used for announcements from the regional capital.
They exchanged a look of pure dread, then took off at a run down the hill toward Maplewood.
The village square was already filling with confused, sleepy-eyed people. Guild Master Thorne stood on the steps of the guild hall, his face like carved granite. Beside him were two figures who were very clearly not from Maplewood.
A man and a woman, both dressed in traveler's cloaks of exceptionally fine, grey material that seemed to drink the light. The man was tall and stern, with silver hair cropped close to his scalp and eyes the color of flint. He stood with a soldier's posture. The woman was younger, her features sharp and elegant, her hair a cascade of pale gold. Her eyes, a piercing violet, swept over the crowd with detached interest.
But it was the insignia emblazoned on their cloaks that froze Silver's blood: a balanced scale superimposed over a radiant sun.
The emblem of the Celestial Inquisition. The militant arm of the faith dedicated to the Supreme Deity. Hunters of heretics, abominations, and unnatural things.
Thorne's voice boomed across the square, grim and formal. "People of Maplewood. These are Justiciar Arcturus and Acolyte Selene of the Celestial Inquisition. They are conducting a survey of the region for… dimensional instability. They will be questioning some of you. You will cooperate fully."
Justiciar Arcturus's flinty eyes swept the crowd. They passed over Silver, paused for a microsecond on his mismatched hair, and moved on. But Acolyte Selene's violet gaze locked onto him. A faint, almost imperceptible frown touched her lips. Her hand went to a smooth, milky crystal hanging at her belt. It gave a single, faint pulse of light.
Silver's own silver teardrop pendant grew warm against his chest.
The Inquisition wasn't here for dimensional instability.
They were hunting.
And they had just found a scent.