Kade froze. His eyes snapped to the dark slit where the thin wink of light had been. The fire painted the rocks in orange; beyond that, the world folded into black.
Duskveil pulsed at his shoulder — not a warning so much as appetite. The rhythm matched his heartbeat and something older beneath it. He felt it as pressure along his spine, a breath at the back of his neck.
A soft line blinked at the edge of his vision.
[SYSTEM: TARGET BEARING — PREDATOR ≈ 200m (SOUTHWEST)]
The dark rippled. A silhouette eased through: tall, poised, every movement deliberate, as if someone had slowed a clock. The shadows kept their distance, like servants ashamed to touch him.
What stepped into the firelight was absence in a man's shape. He carried a blade that drank the torchlight. Around him the air thinned; sparks died before they rose near his boots. Kade felt, absurdly, the temperature drop in his mouth.
A sliver on the system bar blinked — an involuntary note as his stamina shifted.
[SYSTEM: STAMINA — 49% → 46%]
"Ah," the stranger said, voice low and lacquered. "So you wear it. The bearer." He pronounced the title like a verdict.
Duskveil tightened. Heat prickled at Kade's collar, then a cold lace ran down his neck.
"Who—" Kade began.
"You bargain with old things you do not name," the man said. "Night's Cord still hums under thread and skin."
The name landed like a stone. Duskveil answered with a harder throb that seemed to echo from somewhere under the ground.
He moved with measured probes rather than a rush. A black mote shot like a hairline spear; Kade blocked, felt the air sing. The hit hollowed at his ribs; the readout on the edge of his sight dipped.
[SYSTEM: STAMINA — 46% → 40%]
"You have an upgrade. You do not understand its toll," the stranger observed.
Another strike — a whip of shadow at the throat. Kade met it; his muscles burned. Each parry felt heavier, as if the margin for breath had been trimmed. The system counted down in blunt, small increments.
[SYSTEM: STAMINA — 40% → 34%]
"You bleed better than most," the man added. "But you bleed nonetheless."
Kade's jaw tightened. He struck; his blade passed through the sleeve as through mist. The testing continued: small, surgical attacks to measure reach, timing, and how quickly the mantle answered.
On the third exchange, something in Duskveil's seam woke.
[DUSKVEIL: SHADOWFIBER DEPLOYED — EFFECT: TRAJECTIVE PULL]
A thin, almost invisible strand uncoiled from the hem and snapped for the man's wrist — a black filament that burned like cold wire. It twined around the blade and tugged, just enough to alter the arc of the next strike. For a heartbeat his balance shifted.
The system whispered what Kade did not want to read.
He felt a brief, strange aftertaste — not a lost memory, but a cold echo, as if the night itself had sharpened and left the air thinner. The world seemed a fraction more distant; he felt smaller under the sky.
The man dropped to one knee and regarded the filament with something like reverence. "Night's Cord," he said, softer now. "Bound and borrowed. The old toll for guiding feet. You wear it and do not know its hymn."
A shadow moved across his face; the decision settled there. He rose with slow certainty.
"You will pay," he said. "Not now. Not yet."
He made no move to kill. Instead, before he stepped back into the black, he let something fall at Kade's boot — a sliver of metal, flat and blackened, etched with a sigil Kade did not know. It hummed not with the mantle but with a metallic chill that pricked his palm when he picked it up.
[PREDATOR: MARK_PLANTED — TARGET: KADE — TYPE: CLAIM/TERRITORIAL]
[PREDATOR: CLAIM_EFFECT — TRACKER_DEPLOYED — RANGE: 3km]
[PREDATOR: RITUAL_FLAG — TARGET_REQUIRED: ALIVE — SCHEDULE: PENDING]
[SYSTEM: ITEM ACQUIRED — FRAGMENT (UNKNOWN SIGIL)] [SYSTEM: ENCOUNTER LOGGED — CLASS: PREDATOR (NOBLE)]
[SYSTEM: ENCOUNTER OUTCOME — UNRESOLVED]
Then he was simply gone — no sprint, no shadow-splash, only the sense that the night had swallowed a presence whole. The rocks where he had stood seemed bleached of warmth.
Kade slid down onto a rock, chest pounding. Duskveil's pulse slowed but did not stop; it hummed low, like a heart that had fed.
He looked west. The hem twitched once more and pulled — insistent, patient.
From the dark came a soft, distant sound — a throat clearing, a promise. Before the sound faded the man's voice cut through it, clear and cold:
"I need you alive."
Kade curled his fingers around the black fragment and listened as the night folded in. Then, almost by habit, he opened the Duskveil description.
[SYSTEM INFO]
EPIC RELIC — {DUSKVEIL}
EFFECT: Increases perception by +2 and reduces detectability, especially at night.
NEW ABILITY UNLOCKED: SHADOWFIBER
— A fiber of shadow fires automatically in danger. Can be used manually too.
SPECIAL ABILITY: [LOCKED]
So that was it. Duskveil — what are you really? The mantle gave a slight pulse, as if it had its own pulse of thought. And what did it mean to be marked? What, exactly, were predators? The questions crowded at him, loud and useless in the dark.
He decided to sleep on it.
Morning came grey and thin. The first thing he saw was the system greeting, a small, unobtrusive line at the edge of his vision.
[Good morning.]
"So you can actually do this now?" Kade asked aloud, more to himself than to the garment. "Can I restore the older version after all?"
[Action not possible. Try something else.]
He snorted. "Still dumb, huh?" He packed up, ate a little from the provisions — stale bread, a smear of cured meat — and shouldered his sack. The fragment lay cold in his palm until he tucked it into a pocket.
They walked for a while. Kade kept an idle eye on the hem; Duskveil pulsed now and then, slow as a tide. Then the mantle shifted. The edge of the fabric tugged, subtle and insistent, and its pull had a new direction.
They were near.
The shift was quiet, like the world easing its breath. Ash thickened on the paths, clinging until it turned to tacky mud under his boots. The wind sharpened, smelling of ozone and rot. Clouds pressed low; dusk thinned, swallowed. Even before the ridge, the air tasted metallic and wet—like breath forced through a blocked pipe.
Duskveil tugged harder now, more guide than suggestion. Kade went low, the cloak flattening him to the ground. Stunted trees appeared, roots probing the muck, leaves dulled to grey.
Voices drifted up—rough, clipped. Plunderers, ragged and undisciplined, hauling baskets near breathing fissures in the slope. Weak prey, but not why Duskveil had pulled him here.
He slipped deeper into the hollow. Mud sucked at his soles, swallowing some prints, sloshing in black rivulets at others. The whisper of ash gave way to the swamp's wet protests.
No artifact silhouette yet—only the yawning cave, leaking a pale, heartbeat glow. Black vines looped between stones, beaded with brown-yellow droplets. Each exhalation from the cave rolled out steam; on the third, the mist peeled back a curtain of shapes.
Bodies emerged: stilted limbs, ribcages swaying in slow arcs, half-translucent skin veined in blue, pinprick eyes of cold light. The swamp clung to them; their joints trailed threads in the muck.
Kade froze. Duskveil pressed against his back, making him small. Knife in hand, ready but low. The plunderers didn't notice.
One creature lifted its head, deliberate, tasting the air. Its eyes fixed on him, curious, then intent.
The mantle nudged him toward the cave. He obeyed—one step, then another. The creature straightened; the swamp gurgled like a working throat.
A wet, gluck-like hiss rose from below.
The earth exploded. Mud tore open. Something slick and tooth-rimmed shot up, spinning like a corkscrew to fling itself at him.
He snapped the dagger up. Instinct took over. Duskveil pulled—
—and the world snapped into motion.