The market lights had already become a smear of amber when Kael Arclight left the Hunter's Rest. He walked with the sort of economy that comes from not wanting anything to be wasted — step, breath, thought all measured. The city felt ordinary: lanterns, the distant clink of tankards, a vendor calling the last of his day's catch. Ordinary was a fragile thing; it gathered illusion like dust.
His hand brushed the smooth hilt at his hip, an absent check. The blade wasn't grand — a replacement bought that afternoon — but when Kael summoned the latent charge that rode inside him, metal remembered purpose. He kept that capacity private, partly because discretion is a useful blade, partly because fear makes people worse than they need to be.
A notification flickered in the corner of his vision — the kind of thing only he could see, a panel nobody else noticed until it wanted to be seen. Options. Rewards. Distant consequences dressed as choices. He didn't need it to know what had happened; whoever had tried to recruit him had miscalculated the wrong man.
He remembered the three options on the little panel, the stilted offers of diplomacy, the obvious bait. Stay quiet, or feed the flames. Kael had never liked being told which bed to make. He had been raised to do his own swearing-in ceremonies.
Walking home under the moon's flat smile, he thought through what staying quiet would buy him. The rewards themselves meant little next to the lever of consequence: being named in justice's ledger, or in the ledger of those who keep their own justice. He chose silence — not out of cowardice but because sometimes the best strike is the one you haven't told anyone about.
He did not make it far before the scent reached him: the metallic tang of blood, the acrid smoke of something burned beyond candlefire. Footsteps slowed. Where streets were emptying for the night, shadows moved with intent. Two things are rarely mistaken in a city like Mondstadt: a blade and an intent. The latter announced itself first.
Up ahead, five figures blocked the lane — their uniforms unmistakable: the Harlequin Enforcers of the Ragged Coalition. Even from a distance, the black and red cut signaled trouble. Kael's eyes narrowed. Recruitment at night is common. Coercion, less so. They had come prepared; their arrogance carried blades and a cold, institutional smile.
A broad-shouldered man stepped forward. "Kael Arclight," he said, as if the name were a bill for some service. "We invited you to join. A partnership."
Kael didn't bother with the niceties of surprise. He folded his jaw and let the amusement slide out as a controlled smile. "You invited me," he said. "That's cute. What do you call a friendship with handcuffs?"
The man bristled. The air leaned inward. "We offer resources. Power. A new eye, if you prove yourself."
"An artificial 'god's-eye' in exchange for loyalty." Kael's tone was soft, sarcastic — the exact kind of polite derision that tastes like steel. "And if I ask for something a little less... purchasable? Say, a Heart of the Heavens?" He let the implication hang: impossible, sacred, a thing only legends touched.
A twitch passed through the leader's face. Words meant to intimidate were ready on his tongue, but Kael cut it short by not giving him the stage. He did not need stagecraft; he had action.
Everything happened in a blink of deliberate motion. Kael's hand flexed — a simple gesture, precise and economy-driven. He drew the sword he'd bought earlier, and the air around the blade took on the charge he'd learned to channel: the destructive current that answered to his will. It wasn't a show. It was a decision.
The first sweep of the blade was clinical. It wasn't flashy; it was fatal. The nearest enforcer's throat became a line and then silence. The slice was clean, the kind of motion rehearsed until the body has no surprise left. Blood painted the cobblestones, hot and immediate. The other men breathed sharply, faces draining.
They had underestimated him in three ways: his resolve, the depth of his arsenal, and his willingness to finish.
Someone shouted, metal uttering the word "grasp him," and the lane became a blur of motion. Kael moved like a thought. He did not savor violence — he used it, efficient and final. A man lunged with twin claws; Kael leaned aside, sword kissing armor. Flesh did not argue. Another reached for a weapon; Kael redirected the force into a new arc that made the world sting.
One of the enforcers reached for something at his chest — a small gem wrapped in metal, carved with symbols that made the air sag. Kael's eyes pinched. He had seen such devices in lore meant for nightmare officers and court-executors: a cursed ocular lattice, often called an "evil eye" among the whispered names of the old world. It pulsed like a wound.
A red flare spat from the gem. Then the world changed.
Ribbons of black flame stitched themselves through air that had been warm and clean. They shouted of rot and cold — not the warm orange of campfires but a black blaze that ate at breath and hope. Chains of fire whipped like living things, reaching for him with hungry intent. The smell was sulfur and old graves.
This was not mere pyrotechnics. This was a weapon born of something older, something crafted to break more than skin.
Kael didn't flinch. He did not have the luxury. He raised his blade and poured into it the destructive current again — the nimble violence that had been honed from necessity. The sword sang and the first chain struck, sparks and smoke fountaining where iron met impossible flame. The metal endured, singing its own defiance.
Still, the black fire bit. It found seams and seams hurt. Kael felt the burn, tasted heat inside his bones, and for a sliver of breath he tasted the world as if through a sieve. Pain is honest. It marks you as alive.
And then something else happened that neither he nor his enemies expected.
From somewhere deep, as if a voice answered in muscle and marrow, a passive warding unfurled — not summoned by him, but triggered. It moved like a hand, invisible and sure, wiping away the black flame as if unwrapping a scourge. Darkness recoiled. The pain vanished before it had a full chance to root.
The enforcers gaped. The man with the gem staggered, disbelief cracking his composure. "My — how—" He had never seen his chains undone.
Kael didn't smile. He was thoughtful, the quiet kind of surprise that adds math to emotion. He felt the echo inside him: a protector's cadence. The name swam up unbidden — Clara's blessing. The "Family" branch. Thirty-five percent chance. Lucky, perhaps, to have been chosen in that moment; terrifying because that meant the shield would not always come.
He did not test Providence twice. He redoubled his effort. The blade moved like a rule of physics. Where the enforcers tried to cluster, he shredded their formation until coherence broke. One by one they fell, their arrogance turning into disarray.
When the last man dropped and the gem clinked free on the stones, Kael picked it up. Objects like that have uses beyond boasting. He turned it over in his hand, the cube of metal cold and thrust with intent. Possessing it did not make him safer, but it gave him answers.
A low notification blinked in the corner: the same options panel. The world insisted on packaging consequence like a menu.
Option A — Grovel. Offer contrition to the wandering band he had just cut down in their arrogance. A gesture. A stage prop. Reward: a brittle, odd trophy named "bucket's dignity" that promised defensive utility but no honor.
Option B — Do nothing. Let the waves negotiate themselves. Reward: a salvaged gauntlet, blessed by protective power and practicality.
Option C — Play the rumor game. Send false whispers to opposing networks and watch the chaos bloom. Reward: an uncanny building material that supernaturally hardens with air.
Kael made choices for cause, not for the glitter. He read the field: the Ragged Coalition's leaders would notice a loss of their men. Silence invites investigation. Giving them peace in exchange for a laughable token felt like surrender. Stirring their enemies into infighting could buy time. Or he could do nothing and let them come to him.
He pocketed the gem. He selected none of the trinkets yet. Decisions are not tokens to be collected in haste.
He stepped away from the lane, the city swallowing his silhouette. The night had teeth now — not because of what he had done, but because what he had revealed. A man who could down enforcers and withstand black flame would become a name whispered in certain rooms where men decide the cost of loyalty.
He had no hunger for fame, only leverage. The gem was leverage.
From a rooftop, a single figure watched the aftermath with a slow, knowing grin. A sentinel of a different order, eyes like a cusp in winter. He would find Kael soon enough; the city keeps its own accounts.
Kael tightened his cloak and walked toward the river. Some decisions are best digested beside water. He thought of Clara's blessing again, of its imperfect mercy. Forty percent? Thirty-five? Chance was a fickle ally. Better to practice so that the odds were less relevant.
Night settled fully. Lanterns burned, stories rewove themselves into the city's long fabric. Kael moved through the stitches and smiled once to himself—not the grin of a man who feared nothing, but the measured curve of someone who'd been given a tool and intended to learn how to use it.