The warm pendant felt like a brand against Silver's skin. He forced himself not to touch it, not to look away from the acolyte's penetrating violet stare. He schooled his face into the same expression of curious apprehension worn by the other villagers, letting his gaze slide past her as if she were just another part of the unsettling scene.
"Dimensional instability?" old man Hemmel, the baker, mumbled nearby. "What in the blazes does that mean?"
"It means trouble," grumbled Garret the blacksmith, arms crossed over his barrel chest. "Inquisition trouble. Never ends well."
Guild Master Thorne dismissed the crowd with a sharp gesture, but the order to "cooperate fully" hung in the air like a threat. As people began to drift away in worried clusters, Silver turned to leave, his heart hammering against his ribs.
"You. The boy with the bi-colored hair."
The voice was not loud, but it cut through the murmur like a knife. It was the Justiciar, Arcturus. His tone was flat, devoid of curiosity or malice—pure, bureaucratic ice.
Silver froze, then slowly turned. Elara and Kael, a few steps ahead, stopped as well, tensing. Arcturus approached, his grey cloak whispering over the cobblestones. Up close, Silver could see the intricate, almost imperceptible silver thread woven into the fabric, forming more tiny scales and suns. The man's flinty eyes were ancient and tired, but missing nothing.
"Your name," Arcturus stated.
"Silver, sir. Of Maplewood."
"An unusual name. An unusual trait." The Justiciar's gaze was a physical weight on Silver's hair. "Your parents?"
"Dead, sir. Raised by my aunt, Mara." He kept his answers short, his voice respectfully neutral.
"I see." Arcturus's eyes flicked to where Mara stood at the edge of the square, her face carefully blank. "And have you, in your time in this village, witnessed any… anomalies? Unusual lights in the forest? Feelings of dread? Creatures not of the natural order?"
The spirit. The Sleeper. The shadow in my eye. The words screamed in his mind. "No, Justiciar. Just the usual dungeon vermin. Rats, glow-bats. The Guild handles it."
For a long moment, Arcturus said nothing, simply studying him. The silence stretched, taut enough to snap. Silver fought the urge to fidget, to glance at his friends, to feel the warmth of the pendant.
Then, the Justiciar gave a single, slow nod. "Very well. You may go."
Silver didn't need to be told twice. He offered a shallow bow and turned, joining Elara and Kael. They walked away, not speaking, not hurrying, until they rounded the corner of the tannery and were out of sight.
"He was sniffing you out," Elara hissed, her face pale.
"The acolyte's crystal reacted," Kael said, his mind racing. "A proximity sensor, likely tuned to divine or anti-divine energy signatures. Your pendant, or the latent energy within you, triggered it. They know something is here. They just don't know it's you specifically. Yet."
"We need to hide the dagger. And the pendant," Silver said, his voice tight.
"Hiding them might be more suspicious if they decide to search," Kael countered. "The pendant is simple jewelry. The dagger is an adventurer's tool. We maintain normalcy. But we must be meticulous. No transformations. No testing. You must be a stone."
For the next three days, Maplewood lived under a grey cloak. The Inquisitors set up a temporary office in the back of the guild hall. They interviewed people—the oldest residents, the most traveled merchants, adventurers who'd delved deep. They walked the forest edges with their crystals glowing softly. The village vibrated with a low-grade fear.
Silver did his best to be a stone. He helped Mara in her herb garden. He took a bland, official D-rank quest to clear wasp nests from the old orchard—a mindless, physical task that kept him in the open and visible. He ate at the tavern with Elara and Kael, laughing a little too loudly at jokes, trying to project the image of a normal, if somewhat distinctive, village youth.
But the eyes of Acolyte Selene were everywhere. He'd catch her watching him from across the market, her expression unreadable. Once, she passed him on the street, and the crystal at her belt gave a faint, almost silvery hum. She paused, her violet eyes meeting his for a heartbeat that felt like an eternity before she moved on.
The pressure was a constant, grinding weight. At night, the strange dreams intensified. Now they were not just sensations, but fragments. A great, obsidian throne in a hall of echoing whispers. A garden of crystalline flowers under a twin-sunned sky. And a beautiful, sorrowful face with eyes the color of his own, framed by black hair, mouthing a word he couldn't hear. Mother.
On the fourth day, the tension broke in the worst way possible.
Silver was returning from the orchard, a sack of destroyed wasp-comb over his shoulder, when he saw the crowd gathered near the mill. His blood ran cold. Pushing through, he saw Old Man Miller, his face ashen, standing before Justiciar Arcturus. And between them, on the ground, were three objects: a tarnished silver locket, a broken geode, and a small, wooden figurine of a forest spirit.
"...found them buried near the east field stone, Justiciar," Miller was saying, wringing his hat in his hands. "After what happened in my cellar with them rats… I thought it might be… unholy. A curse."
Arcturus knelt, not touching the objects. Acolyte Selene hovered beside him, her crystal held over the items. Over the locket and geode, it remained dull. Over the little wooden figurine, it emitted a soft, persistent golden glow.
"Residual animistic sanctification," Selene said, her voice cool and clear. "A minor nature blessing. Common in these rustic regions. Not a sign of instability."
Arcturus stood, looking disappointed. But as his eyes swept the crowd of onlookers, they landed on Silver. "You. Boy. You cleared the rats from this man's cellar."
A statement, not a question. Silver nodded. "Yes, Justiciar."
"Did you sense anything unusual during that task? Any presence?"
The memory of his first transformation, the black eye, the surge of power, flashed before him. He pushed it down. "Just big, angry rats, sir."
A faint, skeptical line appeared between Arcturus's brows. He gestured to the figurine. "This 'blessing' is old magic. The kind that can sometimes mask… other things. You live with the herbalist, correct? Mara?"
"Yes."
"Her sister—your mother—was known for a certain… affinity with growing things, was she not?"
The air left Silver's lungs. How did he know that? The letter. Mara's stories. They'd been careful.
"I wouldn't know, sir," Silver said, his mouth dry. "She died when I was very young."
"Of course." Arcturus's gaze was a trap, slowly closing. "We will speak with your aunt. To understand the local… magical ecology."
This was a disaster. Mara was a terrible liar under pressure. She would try to protect him, but her fear would be obvious. They would dig. They would find the letter. They would take him.
As Arcturus and Selene turned to head toward his home, a plan—desperate and stupid—formed in Silver's mind. It was the only card he had to play.
"Justiciar," he called out, stepping forward.
Arcturus paused.
Silver took a deep breath, tapping into the well of frustration, the righteous anger at these outsiders threatening his home, his family. He didn't summon the full transformation, but he let a spark of that inner heat touch his voice, lending it a harder edge. "You're looking for a big anomaly, right? Not just old blessings."
The Justiciar turned fully, interest finally sparking in his stony eyes. "Go on."
"The old Sunken Temple. East of the river bend. It's been off-limits for years. But a few days before you arrived… I was hunting near there. I felt something. A cold dread. And I saw a… a patch of darkness in the middle of the day, near the entrance. It looked like it was swallowing the light." He was describing the Sleeper's influence without naming it. "I ran. I didn't tell the Guild. I was scared they'd think I was making it up."
Selene's crystal immediately glowed brighter. She and Arcturus exchanged a look. This was the kind of lead they wanted—fresh, visceral, and pointing away from the village.
"You will show us," Arcturus commanded.
"Silver, no," Elara whispered from the crowd, but he couldn't look at her.
"Of course, Justiciar."
The diversion was set. He would lead them to the ruins, to the evidence of the battle. The dead treasure hunters, the shattered cavern. It would prove an "anomaly" had been there, and that it was now gone. They would investigate, waste days, and hopefully leave satisfied that the "instability" had been a one-time event, now resolved.
It was risky. They might find traces of his power, of the dagger's light. But it was better than them interrogating Mara and uncovering everything.
As they set out—Silver leading, the two Inquisitors a silent, imposing presence behind him—he felt the weight of his secret heavier than ever. He was walking a knife's edge between two abysses: the truth of his birth, and the justice of the gods who saw things like him as abominations to be purged.
The forest swallowed them, and with every step toward the ruins, Silver prayed his desperate gamble wouldn't be the thing that finally unmasked him.