Morning in the Capital looked like a painting: light filtered through the crystalline arches of the High Spires, bells chimed to signal the new training cycle, and crowds lined the marble boulevards to cheer the freshly summoned "Chosen."
It was a performance.
Ashen stood just outside the crowd, arms crossed beneath the hood of a plain cloak. His face was half-shadowed, but his eyes tracked every step Kaleid took.
The false Hero smiled at children, accepted flowers from fluttering noble ladies, and spoke with the smooth confidence of someone who had never been punished for cowardice. The System's ring on his finger glowed faint gold, pulsing in time with the cheers around him.
Ashen's gaze shifted to the girl at Kaleid's right — Serin Elthara, the Flame Archer. She looked different now. Her hair was tied into a high, polished ponytail, and her clothes had the unmistakable gleam of System-issued enhancement gear.
But her eyes—still wary.
She hadn't completely bought into it.
Not yet.
Ashen spent the rest of the day outside the Academy. It was strange, retracing steps through the city he once died defending. Vendors yelled the same prices. Palace guards wore the same armor. The same corrupt Bishop still fed pigeons at the square outside the Grand Cathedral.
But there were fractures.
The world remembered Kaleid. It remembered the other Chosen. But it did not remember Ashen Verrick.
And that meant he had space to move.
His first goal wasn't to fight.
It was to gather.
He returned to the Graylane district just after dusk. Lira was still there — though now three drunk mercenaries lay unconscious at her feet.
"Nice," Ashen said dryly, nodding to the nearest one.
"They said I didn't look like I had the coin to buy steel," she replied, not looking up. "Turns out I didn't. Took theirs."
Ashen chuckled under his breath and stepped over the nearest one.
"I want to show you something."
They traveled northwest, following an old canal path toward a forgotten graveyard just beyond the city's original wall. The place had been swallowed by urban expansion, but the System hadn't bothered to update its registry.
That was the point.
"What is this place?" Lira asked, blade at her hip.
"Where the System throws its mistakes."
He pulled aside a crumbling stone gate, revealing rows of unmarked graves. Not random corpses — heroes. Summoned from other worlds, like himself, but discarded before they could "contribute."
"They called it the 'Culling Ground.'" Ashen said. "Those who didn't meet the System's baseline stats were quietly removed from the Summoned Record. Killed by 'natural' means."
Lira went still.
"You're saying…?"
"I was here," he said softly, "when they buried the girl who healed a village of plague with no blessings at all. I watched them throw her into a ditch because she didn't meet the quota for Divine Favor."
The wind howled through the tombstones like a scream stuck in time.
"That's why I need you," Ashen said, voice steel. "Because this world doesn't need more heroes."
"It needs the forgotten to rise."
By midnight, they'd marked the graves. Lira said nothing for a long time. But when they returned to the city's edge, she asked:
"What's next?"
Ashen smiled, for real this time.
"We recruit someone who can lie to the System."
The next day, Ashen visited the Sliver District — a vertical slum carved into the remains of an ancient stone colossus. Here lived the undocumented, the unblessed, and the undead-adjacent.
Ashen climbed forty-two rusted stairwells before reaching a crooked metal door covered in spirit runes.
A sharp voice snapped from behind it.
"Either you're lost, cursed, or a necromancer."
He knocked once. "I'm not lost."
The door creaked open.
The girl who stood there looked like she'd clawed her way out of a corpse and was ready to do it again. Her hair was silver-blue, chopped unevenly. Her hands were stained with aether ink.
"Riven," Ashen said. "You remember me?"
"No," she said flatly. "And I usually remember my nightmares."
Ashen grinned.
That was a good sign.
They talked until the sun hit the horizon. Riven didn't believe him at first. But when Ashen showed her his Ghost Brand—and let her try to scan him with a spirit lens—she cursed under her breath.
"You're not registered."
"Exactly," he said. "And you can see what the System hides."
Riven crossed her arms.
"And you want what? For me to join your merry band of nobodies?"
"I want you to help me erase a god."
She stared at him.
Then laughed once.
Then stopped.
"…You're serious."
Ashen didn't blink.
"Dead serious."
That night, three people sat on a rooftop overlooking the Training Plaza where the Chosen sparred.
Ashen. Lira. Riven.
No blessings. No Hero Points. No System praise.
Just one goal.
Break the loop.