The night passed in a state of fragile truce. Zane slept the deep, dreamless sleep of one for whom the world's chaos was merely background noise.
Elara, however, found no such peace. She lay awake for hours, staring at the ceiling, her mind a battlefield where loyalty warred with doubt. The polished certainty of her world had been tarnished, and the reflection she now saw was unfamiliar and unsettling.
Morning arrived with a gray, drizzling rain that turned the streets of Havencrest into a muddy soup.
They checked out of the inn, the silence between them less hostile now, more contemplative.
As they stepped onto the main thoroughfare, a figure emerged from the morning mist, moving with a purpose that stood out against the aimless shuffle of the townsfolk.
He was a young man, perhaps a few years older than Zane appeared to be. He was handsome in a clean, sharp way, with warm, intelligent eyes and a smile that seemed perpetually ready to bloom.
He wore the fine, practical gear of a high-ranking hunter—dark, reinforced leather armor that bore the subtle insignia of a famous guild from the capital.
But it was the scent that Zane noticed first. A faint, almost imperceptible smell beneath the rain and wet earth: the scent of sterilized iron, like a surgeon's tools, and old ink.
The man's eyes scanned the street before landing on their small party of two. His friendly smile widened.
"Elara! Fancy meeting you all the way out here."
Elara's head snapped up, her weary defensiveness momentarily replaced by genuine surprise. "Rylan? What in the world are you doing in a place like this?"
Rylan chuckled, a pleasant, easy sound. "Chasing a bounty on a particularly nasty Rift-Stalker. It led me on a merry chase across half the kingdom."
He stepped closer, his gaze flicking to Zane for a brief, dismissive moment before returning to Elara. It was the natural, unconscious assessment of an elite sizing up a nobody. "And who is your... companion?"
AURA's voice was a sliver of ice in Zane's mind.
[Subject Identified: Rylan of Guild 'Azure Blade'. Rank: A. Known associate from your past life. Primary Betrayer. Probability of this encounter being a coincidence: 0.003%. He is hunting you.]
Zane kept his face a perfect mask of blank neutrality.
*So, the game was starting sooner than he'd thought.*
The shadow from his past had finally caught up.
"This is Zane," Elara introduced, a slight hesitation in her voice. "My assigned partner for a local mission."
"A pleasure," Rylan said, though he didn't offer a hand. His smile didn't waver, but his eyes held a new, analytical light as he properly looked at Zane.
"Any partner of Elara's is a friend of mine. Though," he added, his tone shifting to one of friendly concern for Elara, "the Guild standards must be slipping if they're pairing you with... well, forgive me, Zane, but you don't exactly scream 'front-line material'."
It was a masterful little jab. On the surface, a light-hearted joke. Underneath, it was a test, a probe. He was sizing up Zane's reaction, trying to gauge his spirit, his rank, his threat level.
Zane simply shrugged. "I carry the bags."
The answer was so bland, so perfectly in character for a downtrodden F-rank, that Rylan's probing gaze softened into disinterest. He had his answer: this man was nothing. A piece of the scenery.
Rylan turned his full, charismatic attention back to Elara.
"Listen, since we're all here, why don't we team up? My hunt for the Rift-Stalker has led me to the Ironfang Mountains, just east of here. The tracks are fresh. With your holy arts and my spatial blades, we could take it down in half the time. The bounty is substantial—more than enough to split three ways."
He presented the offer as a kindness, a generous invitation from a powerful A-ranker to his old friend.
Elara, still reeling from her crisis of faith and seeing a familiar, trustworthy face from home, was visibly tempted. It was a return to normalcy, to the world of clear objectives and powerful allies she understood.
But Zane saw the trap. The Ironfang Mountains were a desolate, sparsely populated region. A perfect place for an 'accident' to happen to a bothersome F-rank.
Rylan wasn't hunting a Rift-Stalker. He was hunting him. Or, more accurately, he was investigating the anomaly that had survived the Ashen Crypt.
The Concordance, with their obsession for control, must have flagged the mission's unusual outcome. And who better to send for a quiet, unofficial look than a 'trusted friend' of Elara's?
That scent of iron and ink... it was the signature of a Concordance 'Cleaner'.
"I don't know, Rylan..." Elara began, looking at Zane, a flicker of unexpected protectiveness in her eyes. "Our mandate..."
"Nonsense," Rylan interrupted smoothly. "This is a perfect opportunity. A Rank-B Rift-Stalker is excellent field experience for your partner."
He clapped a hand on Zane's shoulder. The grip was friendly, but the pressure was like steel. A subtle physical warning.
"What do you say, Zane? Ready for a real hunt?"
This was it. The first move in a chess game that had been paused for years.
Zane had two choices. Refuse, and raise Rylan's suspicions to critical levels. Or accept, and walk willingly into a predator's den.
Zane looked at Rylan's smiling face, at the warmth in his eyes that didn't quite reach the cold, calculating depths.
He remembered that same smile from a lifetime ago, just before the world burned.
He gave a small, nervous-looking nod.
"Okay," Zane said, his voice barely a mumble. "As long as I don't have to get too close."
Rylan's smile widened. He had taken the bait.
"Excellent," Rylan said, releasing Zane's shoulder. "Let's gear up. It's going to be a glorious hunt."
AURA's voice was flat, stating a fact.
[Warning: You have willingly entered a scenario with a 72% probability of a direct assassination attempt.]
Zane's only reply was a quiet, internal thought, a cold promise to the ghost in his memory.