They didn't arrive with a bang. They arrived with a correction.
There was no fanfare, no tear in reality. The Hunters simply… were. One moment, the main square of Frostfall was empty, the evacuated city holding its breath. The next, three figures stood in its center, as if the memory of their arrival had been edited out.
No armor. No weapons. No aura. They wore simple, severe garments—a white mask devoid of features, a hood of absolute black, robes of woven silver thread that hurt the eyes to follow. They were anomalies in the negative space; their presence didn't add pressure, it subtracted the possibility of anything else mattering.
Inside the guild hall, Sai Ji's hand went to the warm weight of Sol around his neck. The dragon hatchling, usually a sleepy ember, had gone still and hard, like a sun waiting to nova.
"They're here," he said, his voice flat.
Sal Vera's mental presence coiled tight. "They are not hunters of flesh. They are hunters of concept. Of errors in the code."
"What's their concept today?" Sai Ji thought, already moving toward the balcony.
"You."
The guild doors did not burst open. They dissolved from the middle outward, the solid oak turning to grey dust that fell in a silent heap. The three Hunters stepped through the newly-made entrance.
The faceless one in white spoke first. Its voice was clean, sterile, and echoed slightly, as if played through an old recording device. "Sai Ji. World Anomaly designation. Primordial-bonded. Sovereign-signature confirmed."
Aeliana flinched at the sound of his name. Not a guess. A recitation. As if read from a file.
Fern's spear was in his hand, black-gold energy bleeding into the air with a sound like tearing canvas. Lura stood beside him, her form blurring at the edges, nine phantom tails lashing silently. Nyx was simply gone, a void in the shape of a man.
The silver-robed Hunter lifted a scroll that wasn't there a moment before. As it unfurled, glowing script burned itself into the air for all to see.
[SYSTEM MANDATE – PRIORITY ALPHA]
Entity: 'Sai Ji' – Classification: World Anomaly.
Containment Protocol: Authorized.
Force Authorization: Unrestricted.
Objective: Secure target for system reconciliation or neutralization.
The faceless Hunter took a single, measured step forward. "You will come with us. The process will be painless. You will not be harmed."
Sai Ji stared, a hysterical laugh dying in his throat. They sounded like customer service agents for the end of the world. "And if I say no?"
"Then we will apply force until compliance is achieved," the black-hooded Hunter replied, its voice a soft whisper that seemed to come from inside their own skulls. "This settlement is non-essential. Collateral damage is permitted."
The air in the guild hall grew thick and cold. Fern's knuckles were white on his spear. "You will not lay a hand on him."
The faceless mask turned toward Fern. "Guardian-class entity. Database entry: 'Fern.' Noted. You are listed as a secondary anomaly. You will be pacified."
The Hunter moved.
There was no blur, no teleportation. It was a failure of sequential time. The Hunter was in front of Fern, its hand extended in a placid, grasping motion, before Fern's combat instincts could even fire.
But Fern was not bound by mere instinct. He was bound by oath. His body reacted before his mind, the spear shaft slamming up in a brutal parry that met the Hunter's wrist.
The sound was wrong. Not metal on flesh, but the screech of a hard drive failing, of data conflicting. A shockwave of distorted light and static exploded from the point of contact, throwing both of them back. Fern skidded across the stone floor, his boots carving grooves. The Hunter merely staggered a step, its white mask now sporting a single, hairline crack.
It looked down at the crack, then up at Fern. "Interesting. Local physics are… adhering to you. A persistent bug."
The silver-robed Hunter raised a hand. Symbols flared around its fingers—not magic circles, but command-line prompts, written in the air in a language of stark geometry.
[SYSTEM COMMAND: LOCAL LAW OVERWRITE]
> Mana Flow: RESTRICTED.
> Kinetic Energy: CAPPED.
> Sovereign Authority Protocols: SUSPENDED.
The world flinched. Sai Ji gasped as the connection to Sol dimmed, as if a thick blanket had been thrown over their bond. Fern grunted, the brilliant energy around his spear guttering like a dying flame. Aeliana's gathered light snuffed out. It was as if the universe itself had been put on administrative lockdown.
The black-hooded Hunter walked forward, unimpeded, toward Sai Ji.
Sai Ji tried to step back. His limbs were heavy, moving through syrup. Panic, cold and sharp, lanced through him. This wasn't a fight. It was a foreclosure.
No.
The thought was not his. It was deeper. It came from the hollow where his forgotten throne sat, from the bond with the tiny sun at his neck. It was a foundational, sovereign NO.
A pulse, silver and weak but undeniable, pushed out from him. It didn't attack. It rejected.
The overwritten local laws… stuttered. The heavy air rippled. The black-hooded Hunter, inches from grabbing Sai Ji's arm, was gently, firmly pushed back a full meter, as if an invisible, perfectly smooth wall had manifested.
The Hunter stopped. All three Hunters went perfectly still.
The faceless one tilted its head. The crack in its mask seemed to deepen. "Sovereign Domain. Fragmentary. Unauthorized generation." Its sterile voice held the barest hint of… recalculation. "Anomaly threat assessment… updating. Target is not 'Minor.' Adjusting classification to 'Persistent.'"
The silver-robed Hunter lowered its hand. The oppressive system commands dissolved. "Containment at this location is no longer optimal. Civilian architecture is unsuitable for higher-tier pacification."
They weren't afraid. They were recalculating cost-benefit analysis.
The faceless Hunter looked at Sai Ji one last time. "You have been marked for reconciliation. The Hunt is active. We will return with appropriate permissions and environmental controls."
It wasn't a threat. It was a schedule.
With the same non-arrival with which they came, they were gone. Not vanishing. They were un-rendered. The space they occupied simply reverted to empty air.
The guild hall was silent, save for the ragged breathing of its occupants. The dissolved door remained a pile of dust.
Fern slowly straightened, his spear's light returning to a low, angry hum. "Appropriate permissions," he repeated, the words foul in his mouth.
Lura let out a tense breath. "They talked about us like… corrupted files."
Aeliana rushed to Sai Ji's side. "Your authority… you pushed back their system lock."
Sai Ji looked at his hands, still feeling the echo of that silver pulse. It hadn't been power. It had been privilege. A user refusing an admin's command. "It's not enough. They were just… probing. Testing my access level."
Nyx materialized from the shadows, his expression grim. "They have confirmed you have some. The next ones will not ask politely. They will bring the tools to revoke it."
Sal Vera's voice was a thin wire of tension. "They have your name, my King. Not a title. Your name. In their lexicon, that is your process ID. They are not hunting a monster. They are queuing a system repair."
Sol, who had been a tense, warm stone throughout, finally relaxed, nuzzling against Sai Ji's jaw with a soft, worried chirp.
Peep?
Sai Ji looked out through the missing doorway at the unnaturally still city. The fear was a living thing in the air. The Hunters hadn't come to destroy Frostfall. They'd come to extract a problematic asset, and the city was merely inconvenient scenery they were prepared to delete.
He felt no triumph. Only a cold, clarifying certainty. The time for hiding, for pretending to be a normal adventurer, was irretrievably over. The "game" had just sent its system administrators.
He turned to his team, their faces etched with worry, resolve, and the shared understanding of what they now faced.
"They want to take me somewhere quiet to be 'reconciled'," Sai Ji said, his voice low but clear in the hollow hall. "So we don't let them. We don't fight where they choose. We don't play by their rules." He glanced at the system-mandate still fading from the air. "If I'm an anomaly… then I'll be an unpredictable one."
He wasn't smiling. The gravity was too immense for that. But in his eyes, the flicker of weary resignation had been replaced by the first spark of a defiant strategy.
The polite apocalypse had knocked on their door. And Sai Ji had just decided to make it very, very difficult to serve the papers.