The fabrics slid over his skin like a cool breath, and the faint bluish glow in the silver threads kissed his nerves with a low chill that didn’t exactly hurt, just… settled, as if the clothes were magically bonding with him.

  Once he had his Frostnerve Set on, he slung his upgraded wingcloak back over his shoulder and threw on his hood—and for a moment, he simply stared at his own reflection in the mirror.

  Black and silver. Feather and thread. Hooded wingcloak and the form-fitting clothes beneath. It was thematically cohesive in a way he hadn’t planned, and if he were to put on his mask, he was pretty sure nobody would even think he was a human instead of an owlkin from Rahka.

  ***

  Name: Dain Sorowyn

  Grade: Uncommon-1

  Cursed Title: Collector

  Title Ability: Eye of Belara

  Acquired Skills: Hollowbreath, Gravepoise, Stormreaver Swordsmanship

  Might: 14 (+6)

  Swiftness: 13 (+5)

  Resilience: 12 (+6)

  Clarity: 25 (+3)

  Mana: 100/100 (+0.1/hr)

  Relics: Windscar Prosthetic Arm (Uncommon-0), Fearlight Eye (Common-6), Firelight Oreblade Cane (Common-9), Silverplume Wingcloak (Common-9), Void Archivist’s Pouch (Uncommon-2), 2x Darkmind Key (Common-9), Silverplume Owl Construct & Mask (Common-9), Frostnerve Set (Common-9)

  ***

  He huffed a quiet laugh.

  If I had a seeker nickname, what would it be?

  Silverplume… something?

  The Owl… no, that’s too obvious. The Hooded… nah. Also too obvious.

  Do I come up with it myself, or does the Seeker’s Guild assign one to me?

  But he let the daydream die quickly, because he didn’t have time for vanity. There were only two or three hours until dusk, maybe even less, so he had to be on the early lookout for Stonewraith.

  As he stepped out of the bathroom with his owl on his shoulder, he no longer heard the Dreamer counting coins below. Right on time, then. He wasn’t eager to linger in this shop any longer than he had to. While there wasn’t much of a chance that she’d notice him wearing more relics than he went up with, there was still a chance… even if she probably wouldn’t call him out on it. This shop was likely illegal. She wouldn’t want to draw much attention to herself.

  He kept his head down as he passed the counter without stopping, eyes forward.

  “The amount’s correct, right?” he said, not waiting for an answer. “In that case, I’m gonna leave now. Thanks for lending me your bathroom—”

  “Wait.”

  He was already at the front door, fingers closing around the knob, when the Dreamer’s voice made him freeze.

  He forced himself to turn slowly with a quick, practiced smile.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  The Dreamer, still sitting behind the counter, gave him a curious grin.

  “You have quite the peculiar aura around you,” she said. “My customers are already strange if they can even find this shop to begin with, but you… your mana is strange in a way that makes even my old bones curious.” Then she leaned forward as if sharing gossip at a tavern table. “Before I came to this little hole and settled down, I wandered. Place to place. Country to country. I divined men’s fates by reading the mana in their eyes. Sometimes the future sang. Sometimes it screamed. Sometimes it sat very still and waited for me to blink first.”

  Dain’s smile thinned. “And so…”

  “Out of sheer curiosity, I would like to offer you a trade,” she said. “Let me read your eyes. In exchange, I shall give you something from my shop.”

  He studied her for a moment, weighing just how much trouble a fortune-reading could possibly be compared to how much time he had left before the parade began. He didn’t have any valuable base offerings on him anymore. Not really. With even his clothes offered, there wasn’t much point in having more magic materials in this instance… and yet curiosity was a needle, and the Sweet Dreamer knew exactly where to press it.

  They were like-minded after all.

  “... Alright.” He exhaled through his nose and let his hand fall from the doorknob. “Quickly, though. I’m in a hurry.”

  He walked back to the counter with guarded steps. The Dreamer beckoned him closer with two fingers, her grin widening, and he leaned forward awkwardly over the counter as if he were inspecting a price tag. She was short enough that he had to dip his head to look down at her, and for a moment, he didn’t understand what she was even going to do from that angle.

  Then she stood.

  It was a sharp, sudden motion. Her hands shot out and grabbed his face with both palms, fingers braced along his jaw and cheekbones, and she yanked him forward so his face slid right before the curtain of rosary beads beneath her brim.

  He flinched, surprised despite himself, for he saw her eyes for the very first time—or rather, he saw the absence of them.

  The Dreamer was blind. Empty sockets stared up at him from behind the curtain, and the sight made his stomach dip. It should have repulsed him. Instead it caught him, held him, and pinned his attention in place.

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  He couldn’t look away as her empty eye sockets bore into his.

  “I see… a man who calls his fury purpose, and names his freedom vengeance. He believes his hands are on the reins, yet I see the gears beneath his feet and the long game turning, played by gods who do not look down, and monsters that have never looked away.”

  “I see a man who dies and does not stay dead. I see him rise as a knight of a god who cannot move. He kneels only once, and spends the rest of his life paying for it.”

  “I see a man who flies beside starfaring hunters from faraway worlds. He lifts his eyes to the heavens, believing the stars to be guides that never lie, yet across the horizon I see another watching him—the devourer of constellations, who clouds the sky with instruments not meant for mortal hands. So, the man must decide whether wisdom is light, or merely another darkness waiting to swallow him whole.”

  “I see a man who steps into a forge older than all empires, yet another stands across the anvil—one who scorns the craft of gods. His golems stride where men once walked, and the instruments of the divine fall open like broken clocks in his hands. So, the man must decide whether the world belongs to its makers, or to those bold enough to unmake them.”

  “I see a man who journeys to the land where life writhes in forms not meant to exist, yet I see another foe—the thousand-armed lords of silk fear the cold embrace of death for all men beneath their web. I see the man court the princess of purity, and so the man must decide for the land whether the greatest terror is death, or the pain of living again.”

  “I see a man who sits upon the greatest stage ever raised by mortal hands, marble polished by centuries of reverence, and yet there is no one there. No applause. No sound at all. The songstress sings of eternal peace under the four winds, but he does not hear the music. So, the man must decide whether peace born from illusion is salvation, or the quietest tyranny ever sung.”

  “I see a man standing before a prodigy who was cast aside by the age of gods. Power flows through the prodigy like a river with no vessel, magic born not of the divine but of blood and will. Continents tremble as the elements answer his call, and the world remembers a time when strength came from within, not borrowed from the hands of the gods. So, the man must decide whether that future belongs to the gifted few, or to the flawed world that stands before him now.”

  “I see a man meet a knight whose armor is forged from faith and fury. The knight carries a hundred blades of the divine, yet every strike is driven by doubt that gnaws deeper than any blade. Both men have seen what priests dare do in the name of heaven, and the knight marches toward the throne of the gods themselves to demand the truth of their divinity. So, the man must decide whether the most dangerous being in the world is the one who believes, or the one who has begun to question.”

  “I see a man step into a theatre where the curtains never close. Masks turn toward him, faces are not faces, and voices echo from nowhere and everywhere at once. They dance across the stage with instruments that bend time and space, but not even the stars know what stands behind their masks. So, the man who must decide whether some enemies are meant to be understood, or only to be witnessed.”

  “The Seven Usurpers of the One-Eyed Vulture shall be your adversaries, and so, at the end of his journey, I see a man who gives up everything he loves for the single truth his enemies cannot endure.”

  “Everything.”

  “... But that man is no longer him.”

  The Dreamer released him.

  Dain reeled back a step, blinking hard, air dragging into his lungs. His hands lifted instinctively as if to wipe her touch off his face, but… he didn’t.

  He didn’t even realize he was panting until the sound embarrassed him.

  “... Gods strike me down, who the hell are you?” he demanded. “What’d you just do to me?”

  The Dreamer dropped back into her chair with a shrug so casual it felt insulting.

  “My fortune telling isn’t correct most of the time,” she said pleasantly. “Take what I said with a grain of salt.”

  His mouth tightened. “That’s your answer?”

  “That is my kindness,” she replied, and then her grin returned. “But, as compensation, here is something… fun.”

  She reached beneath the counter and produced a small bottle. Inside was a pale blue dust that flickered, blinking like a stubborn ember refusing to settle into one shape. It wasn’t glitter and it wasn’t ash. If he had to describe it, it looked like the night sky had been ground down and forced into a glass, and every few breaths, it winked as if it didn’t want to be observed.

  He frowned. He didn’t recognize this material, either, and that alone made his skin crawl.

  “What is this?”

  “Stardust,” she said, rolling the bottle between two fingers like it was a sweet she was about to offer a child. “Starlookers from the Astara-Surya Observatory call it ‘Sablewake’, which hangs in the southern sky like a soot-specked nail, and when it goes out, it leaves a little bruise on the night that makes sailors swear their charts are cursed. The peculiar thing about this star is, its light is never steady. Sablewake is known to blink and disappear, simply vanishing for a few hours every month before returning to a slightly different location as if nothing ever happened.”

  “And nobody knows why?”

  “Nobody,” she said, amused. “Some say it is a dead star that forgets it is dead. Some say it is a living star that closes its eye to sleep. Some say it is something passing in front of it, slow as a god and hungry as an abyssaloi. But,” she tapped the glass once with a fingernail, “every time Sablewake disappears and reappears, it scatters and shakes some of its dust down on this world. Most of it burns away, but a pinch… a pinch drifts into places here and there, and old women like me put it in bottles before the wind changes its mind.”

  Then she pushed the bottle forward on the counter, beckoning him to take it.

  “This is Sablewake stardust,” she finished. “Now, because this stuff is so rare, it has no known use in any offering recipe whatsoever. I’ve never been able to sell it. Not even to seekers with too much coin and too little patience.”

  Dain scowled at the bottle. Celestial materials, including stardust, meteorite stone, and other materials not of this world were all offerings for Celestial-Class relics. Of all seven classes of relics, he was least familiar with celestial materials and Celestial-Classes—same as most people, he was sure, given how rare they were—which meant he didn’t even have an inkling of an idea what relic he could possibly get from this bottle. He also didn’t have a semi-valuable base offering on hand or any money left to buy one, so he didn’t even want to try for a Celestial-Class relic right now out of fear of wasting the stardust.

  But he took the bottle anyway, because only an idiot would turn down something that came from a star.

  “Thanks,” he muttered. He turned around and left quickly, pushing out the door—but at the threshold, he couldn’t help but glance over his shoulder one more time.

  The Dreamer waved at him cheerily.

  … He could check her Tag. He even felt the instinct to do it, like an itch behind his eyes, but for some reason, he didn’t.

  His instincts told him he shouldn’t.

  He tucked the bottle of stardust deeper into his satchel and left the shop—promising himself he’d never look back—but outside, it was much darker than he expected. The sun was already setting, and the festival lights had started to glow across the streets in warm rows. Lanterns swayed from iron hooks, and shopfronts lit like they were trying to hold dusk at bay.

  “There’s no way,” he muttered, staring at the sky. There was no way that much time had passed while he’d been inside. Not unless the shop had some time-dilating relic buried in its bones, humming under the floorboards and chewing hours into crumbs.

  But he couldn’t afford to think about it now. If night was about to fall and the parade was about to begin, then he was already late to the meeting with the failure four.

  He had to find the others now.