The building itself felt older than most of the capital.
Not ruined, not decaying, but settled. Like it had decided long ago that time could move around it instead of through it.
I was escorted upward through a series of narrow stairs that opened into a chamber so tall it made my neck ache when I looked up. The ceiling tapered into sharp angles, ribs of stone crossing like the inside of a cathedral turned inside out. Light poured down from panels of colored glass set high above, scattering across the floor in fractured hues.
But it wasn't the ceiling that caught my attention.
The walls.
I had expected shelves. Books. Scrolls. The usual.
Instead, the walls were lined with jars.
Hundreds of them.
Tall glass cylinders sealed with metal bands, each holding clusters of crystal spheres suspended in faintly glowing fluid. Some glowed blue, others amber, a few pulsed slowly like breathing things. The longer I looked, the more uncomfortable I felt, as if each one was aware of being observed.
Archives, I realized.
Not written. Stored.
"Go ahead," a voice said. "Sit."
The man standing near the central platform looked human. Older, late sixties maybe, with silver hair pulled back neatly and skin lined by age. But something about the way he stood made the number meaningless. His posture was too steady. His gaze too sharp.
Halvren, Chief Assessor of Solcarth.
I took the seat across from him.
"You don't look surprised," he said, watching me carefully.
"I've learned not to be," I replied.
That earned me a faint smirk.
"Good habit," he said. "You won't survive long here without it."
He didn't pull out a crystal. He didn't activate a device. He simply looked at me.
Really looked.
The air shifted.
Not pressure. Not force. More like the feeling of being measured by something that didn't need permission.
Halvren's expression changed slightly.
Not shock but recognition.
"…Right," he muttered. "Caelum wasn't exaggerating."
I swallowed. "You know Elder Caelum?"
"Knew him," Halvren corrected. "Long before he decided retirement suited him better than politics. He contacted me a few days ago. Told me to expect you."
That didn't make me feel better.
He waved a hand lazily. "Relax. If I planned to cause trouble, you'd already be in chains."
That was somehow worse.
Halvren leaned back, fingers tapping lightly against the armrest.
"Interesting," he said. "Your system's locked. Not sealed. Not broken. Locked. And whoever did it knew exactly what they were doing."
I didn't answer.
He glanced at me again, eyes narrowing just a fraction.
"And you've had a recent spike."
I frowned. "Spike?"
He didn't answer immediately. Instead, he focused again, gaze drifting somewhere past my shoulder. The silence stretched.
Then his eyebrows rose.
"…Hmmmm."
I felt my stomach drop. "What?"
"You killed someone…," Halvren said calmly. "…: just recently."
The words landed heavier than I expected.
"I—" I hesitated. "How can you tell?"
"Because every stat you have jumped," he said. "Ten points across the board. That doesn't happen from monsters. Doesn't happen from gods. Doesn't even happen from most divine remnants."
He leaned forward slightly.
"That happens when you kill a prime soul."
I stared at him. "Prime what?"
"Prime soul. High-intelligence beings," Halvren explained. "Humans. Near-humans. Entities with complex identity. People, basically. From any realm."
My fingers tightened against the chair.
"I didn't know that was a thing," I said quietly.
"Most don't," Halvren replied. "Until it happens."
I exhaled slowly. "So killing one person makes you stronger than killing a monster?"
"Yes," he said bluntly. "Which is exactly why it's dangerous."
I frowned. "Then why is it allowed? Wouldn't people just… start killing each other?"
Halvren's expression darkened.
"Some do," he said. "Wayfarers hunting other Wayfarers. Officials arranging quiet disappearances. Assassins being paid to make it look accidental. Aetherfall isn't clean."
He met my gaze directly.
"It's regulated, not moral."
I felt cold settle in my chest.
"So it's legal?"
"Depends," he said. "Kill inside a city, town, or designated safe zone, and the system flags it immediately. Heavy penalties. Sometimes execution. Kill outside those zones, at least ten kilometers out, and the system marks it neutral."
"That's…" I hesitated. "Messed up."
Halvren let out a short laugh. "Welcome to Aetherfall."
I looked down at my hands. "I didn't plan to kill anyone."
"I believe you," he said. "If you were the type to enjoy it, your luck wouldn't be doing what it's doing."
That made my head snap up. "You can see that?"
"I can see the outline," Halvren said. "Negative infinity is… rare. Very rare. And unstable. Prime soul kills tend to poke things like that."
I swallowed. "I won't do it again. Not unless I have no choice."
He nodded once. "That's the only acceptable answer."
Halvren straightened, businesslike now.
"I'll update your status," he said. "You're overdue anyway."
The air shifted again.
I felt it immediately.
Not pain. Not warmth. More like something snapping into place.
"Here's where you stand now," Halvren said.
Strength: 14
Vitality: 16
Agility: 14
Dexterity: 22
Intelligence: 76
Luck: Negative Infinity
He studied me afterward, expression unreadable.
"You're not helpless anymore," he said. "Against non-combatants, you're already above average. Against trained fighters? Still fragile."
That sounded fair.
"Don't get comfortable with prime soul gains," he added. "Your luck doesn't react kindly to shortcuts."
"I won't," I said.
"Good."
I stood and bowed my head slightly. "Thank you. For explaining things."
Halvren waved it off. "Thank Caelum. He vouched for you. That's the only reason I spoke so freely."
"I'm grateful," I said honestly. "It helps knowing there's at least one person in the capital I can trust."
His gaze sharpened.
"Careful," he said. "Trust is expensive here. Spend it too freely and someone will collect."
I nodded.
As I turned to leave, Halvren spoke again.
"And Theo?"
"Yes?"
"Survive," he said. "You're already interesting. Don't become useful to the wrong people."
I left the chamber with my pulse steady and my thoughts anything but.
~~~
[Third POV: General]
Astrae entered the Solcarth palace without hesitation.
Not because she underestimated it, but because she trusted herself.
The palace was impressive, yes, but it was still a mortal structure. Stone, enchantments, systems layered by careful hands that believed repetition and vigilance could replace true authority. Astrae had walked through places shaped by gods who no longer existed. This was not unfamiliar ground.
She did not force her way in.
She did not sneak.
She simply belonged.
Her appearance was deliberately forgettable. A young local girl in clean but unremarkable clothing, moving with purpose but no urgency. Someone who could be a junior aide, a runner for one of the lesser offices, or an assistant assigned to errands no one else wanted. The sort of person whose presence registered just enough to be accepted and immediately ignored.
Her power stayed folded deep, wrapped so tightly around itself that even she barely felt it. There was no pressure to suppress, no strain. This was not concealment done out of fear.
It was habit.
Gods who survived learned early that hiding was not weakness. It was efficiency.
Astrae passed the first ward.
Then the second, then the third.
Each enchantment brushed over her presence, found nothing worth noting, and moved on. Her status registered as mortal. Her age registered as young. Her significance registered as negligible.
As it should.
She crossed an inner courtyard where officials moved between chambers, scrolls tucked under arms, quiet conversations carried on in clipped tones. She slowed slightly, not because she needed to, but because this was where careless speed became visible.
Her eyes drifted, cataloging architecture more out of idle interest than caution. Solcarth's palace was built with layered redundancies. Defensive magic woven into load-bearing structures rather than surface designs. This was not a palace meant to impress visiting dignitaries.
It was meant to endure.
Astrae approved.
She turned down a side corridor leading toward administrative wings that handled records, logistics, and long-term storage. Places where people assumed nothing interesting ever happened. The kinds of halls gods were never meant to walk.
Which made them useful.
She adjusted her path once, avoiding a guard rotation without conscious thought. It was a simple calculation. Timing, distance and angle.
Effortless.
She did not notice the moment her steps aligned too perfectly with the environment.
High above, Caedryn observed.
Not directly.
The chamber he occupied was quiet, almost austere. No banners. No religious symbols. Just a long stone table and a faint lattice of light suspended above it, threads intersecting and separating in slow, deliberate motion.
Information rendered abstract.
One of the threads shifted.
Caedryn leaned forward slightly.
"She entered through the eastern administrative wing," said the aide beside him. "No ward response."
Caedryn nodded, eyes fixed on the lattice.
"Expected," he replied calmly. "If she triggered anything, she wouldn't be worth watching."
Another thread moved.
Below, Astrae passed a group of clerks without slowing. She stepped around them with just enough space to avoid contact, her movements smooth, precise.
Too precise.
Caedryn's finger tapped the table once.
"Again," he murmured.
The lattice responded, adjusting a fraction.
Nothing changed in the corridor.
No alarms sounded. No wards flared. No pressure pressed against Astrae's senses.
She continued walking, unaware that the palace had been made slightly imperfect around her.
A minor enchantment that corrected movement irregularities was allowed to lag for a breath. A tiny discrepancy in spatial feedback. Something mortals never noticed because they adapted unconsciously.
Astrae did not adapt.
She compensated.
Her foot adjusted before the flaw fully manifested. Her balance shifted smoothly, efficiently, correcting an error that should not have registered yet.
She did not think about it.
She did not question it.
Why would she?
To her, the world simply behaved as it always did.
Caedryn exhaled slowly.
"There," he said.
The aide frowned. "I didn't see anything."
"Exactly," Caedryn replied.
He gestured, and the lattice rewove itself, restoring the correction enchantment perfectly. No trace left behind.
Astrae moved on, utterly unaware that she had just stepped through a question and answered it wrong.
She reached a junction overlooking one of the palace's interior gardens and paused, resting a hand lightly against the stone railing. Below, officials crossed paths amid carefully maintained greenery. The scene was mundane, almost dull.
She felt nothing amiss.
No danger nor pressure.
No reason to hurry.
She stayed another minute, then turned and left the way she came, satisfied.
Above, Caedryn straightened.
"She didn't hesitate," the aide said. "No sign of suspicion."
"Good," Caedryn replied.
He studied the lattice, watching how the threads now aligned with one another more cleanly than before.
"She's not hunting," he continued. "She's scouting. And she believes herself unseen."
The aide swallowed. "So she really is…"
"Not proven," Caedryn interrupted. "But confirmed enough."
He folded his hands behind his back.
"A trained Wayfarer could have compensated," he went on. "But they would have hesitated first. Checked their footing. Looked for cause."
His eyes sharpened.
"She corrected before the world finished being wrong."
Silence stretched.
"And she never noticed the test," the aide said quietly.
Caedryn allowed himself a thin smile.
"That's the danger of gods," he said. "They forget that mortals build traps out of absence, that we learn and adjust, not force."
He turned away from the lattice.
"Do nothing," he ordered. "No pursuit. No reports. No changes to security."
"Just… watch?"
"Yes," Caedryn said. "Watch her attach herself to something."
The lattice shifted again, one thread drifting toward another.
Theo Finley.
"She came with an archivist," Caedryn added softly. "An anomaly. Recently reassessed. Recently involved with sealed remnants."
His gaze hardened.
"That is not coincidence."
Below, Astrae exited the palace grounds with the same unremarkable ease she had entered.
She never looked back.
She never felt the eyes.
And because of that, she never realized that the Solcarth Dominion had just confirmed her existence without her ever knowing she had been seen.