Crack.
Kaelen looked down at the compartment below the drawer that had just opened. He reached in and his fingers brushed against the crisp edge of a folded paper. He pulled it out and unfolded the paper and caught his breath. He did not change his expression, he was being watched, he could not even train so a change in expression would alert them.
It was a list of names some crossed and some not and at the top a familiar name.
Aldric
But what shook him was that the names of the nobles that were with the original before he fell were all on the paper and all crossed out, he was not sure what the crossing meant. He secretly took out another paper and wrote some words on it then folded it in a way only he knew and placed it back into the secret compartment and hid the original in his sleeve. He did not want to know what would happen if they found a list of nobles with names crossed out in his room.
This house was a viper's nest from the outside it was immaculate but inside it was anything but simple.
Ever since his father returned and Sera and her husband stayed it was like there was something in the air.
At dinner, his father would raise a glass.
"To family," he'd say.
But no one aside from him drunk the wine.
A week ago, he felt a push and before he could react he was falling from the top of the marbled stairs Aldric had caught him and the hum had absorbed the shock leaving him unharmed but rumors soon spread that he was drinking after he promised his father to stop.
He remembered seeing a short finger on the side after being pushed.
Even kids were not trustworthy.
After that Seraphine came to his room ten years was a lot and she had changed from the girl that was in his memory. She was the only lady related to the house and had to stand with him during marriage but considering the fact that one of her kids almost took him out he did not trust them in the slightest, he had previously thought that since the house needed his marriage alliance he would be safe but clearly he was not, he had even started to avoid some food something he had never thought he would do. It was tiring.
He decided to go on a walk around the city.
The city was loud.
The memories that came with this body were hazy and filtered Caelus had done his best to forget what hurt him no matter how important so to him the city was just a place to drink, to gamble, to forget.
But Kaelen saw it differently.
He saw the tension in the crowds, the way merchants watched each other, the way guards moved in pairs, hands always near their swords.
He moved through the morning crowds with his shoulders hunched, his steps hesitant the same mask he wore at home. A gray cloak hid his features. His hands were empty, his posture unthreatening. To anyone watching, he was just another minor noble's son, too poor for an escort, too unimportant to notice.
A window flickered in his vision.
[System: Location – Capital, Central District]
[Threat Density: Elevated]
[Recommend Caution]
He did not need the system to tell him that. His instincts had been screaming since he passed through the estate gates.
The streets were too clean, and the crowds were too thin for a city as big as this. Aside from the guards walking round he could feel some eyes in the shadows. Mercenaries, he realized. From multiple houses. It was normal considering what should have been happening by this time in the novel.
The assessment was two months away.
The city was already arming itself, they could not afford a mistake during this time period.
He turned down a side street, heading toward the market district. He had come to the city for information about the betrothal candidates, about the houses circling the Verant name, about the novel's plot that was still fragmented in his memory.
The market was where information flowed.
Servants talked.
Merchants gossiped.
And information could be found.
He was three steps into the alley when the system flared.
[Warning: Significant Individual Detected]
[Analysis in progress…]
[Designation: ???]
[Status: Active]
[Threat Assessment: High]
Kaelen stopped. His heart rate did not change, but his awareness sharpened, his senses stretching, searching.
The alley was narrow, lined with crates and refuse. A dead end ahead. Behind him, the main street was already out of sight. And in the shadows of a crumbling doorway, a figure leaned against the wall, watching him.
She was young, perhaps sixteen, perhaps younger. Her clothes were plain, the worn gray of the lower districts. Her hair was dark, pulled back from a face that would have been pretty if not for the bruise blooming across her cheekbone. Her hands were calloused, her nails broken.
But her eyes…
Her eyes were wrong.
Kaelen had seen eyes like that before. In hunters who had survived things that should have killed them. In veterans who had looked into the void and seen something looking back. There was a weight in her gaze that did not belong to a girl of seventeen, a stillness that spoke of death seen and survived.
The system pulsed again.
[Designation Update: ??? → ???]
[Connection Detected: Narrative Anchor]
[Warning: This individual is central to the world's structure.]
[Title: PROTAGONIST (Unawakened)]
Kaelen's blood went cold.