Chapter 24: Chapter 24: Forge or Die (4)
I crossed under a camera that didn’t blink. The panel’s note about visibility crawled under my skin and took a nap there. I imagined a scanner somewhere pinging softly, like a microwave that wanted to diagnose me.
I should have felt triumph. I had an A-rank blade in my bag and a domain with my thumbprint on it. Instead, the high came with a hangover made of logistics: keep the band quiet, keep the knife quieter, keep my mouth quietest.
My building’s stairwell smelled like damp dust and fried onions. Mrs. Dobrev’s door had three new stickers about paying rent and two knife emojis made out of duct tape. Aspirational decor.
Inside my place, the silence was the kind that listened.
I set the bag on the table, i grabbed Fogbite out of my inventory. The blade held a thin bloom of cold along the spine like a secret. The edge didn’t look sharp. It looked hungry and polite about it.
A pane popped up like a cat on a counter.
[Item Appraised: Fogbite (A-Rank, Dagger)]
Bound: Ethan Cross Core Trait: Fogbite (crit chill + pressure stagger; stacks up to 3; refreshed on hit) Synergy: Pairing bonus with Fangpiercer (+chain responsiveness) Maintenance: Field Repair viable (Bonded Craft)
— Temper Memory stored.
— Edge Recovery window: 17% faster under duress.
I put it next to Fangpiercer and Gloamthorn, and for a dumb second I felt like a kid lining up action figures. The table looked like a bad decision shrine. I was the priest and the sacrifice.
My hands started to ache again now that they had permission. Regen patched what it could, but the deep stuff stayed—a stubborn burn under the skin that hummed when I flexed. Guess turning the cheat off meant some damage stuck. A first for me. The cut in my palm pulled like new lace, shiny and ugly and mine.
[Absolute Regeneration: Partial restoration achieved.]
[Residual trauma retained for adaptation.]
The tongs had left ridges that would fade by morning. Not disappear—fade. A reminder that even miracles clock out sometimes. Shame. I liked the story they told.
I pictured Fogbite in pressure again. The mask’s silent finger. The Watchers dimming when I counted right. The breath that wasn’t mine pushing at my back. I pictured the blade’s edge taking a chill on a crit, the stagger, the little window that opens in a fight that knows your name and wants your blood.
Then I pictured Mikey’s hand on my sleeve, asking me to tell his mom he was brave and that he hadn’t screamed . He hadn’t screamed. He’d fought. He’d hurt. He’d lived. All those words fit him better than they fit me.
I ate two cold dumplings out of the fridge and called it victory food. They tasted like fridge and regret. I loved them anyway.
Before bed I did the thing I promised I wouldn’t do: I cracked the Status pane with the kind of dread you save for dentist chairs and debt collectors.
[Status Window]
Name: Ethan Cross Level: 20
HP: 180 / 180
MP: 0 / 0
Strength: 50
Agility: 46
Endurance: 14
Intelligence: 6
Wisdom: 5 Luck: ???
Skills:
— Absolute Regeneration (SSS-Rank)
— Lightning Step (SSS-Rank)
— Twin Fang Style (Passive)
— Smelt Sight (C-Rank, Passive)
— Bonded Craft (D-Rank, Passive)
— Forge Dominion (S, Domain) [Trial access] Equipment:
— Fangpiercer (A-Rank, Bound)
— Gloamthorn (A-Rank, Bound)
— Fogbite (A-Rank, Bound)
— Mistwoven Cloak (Rare)
— Warden’s Echo Band (Unique, Bound): EXP ×2, Physical Damage ×2
The numbers sat there like a dare. I closed it fast. I wasn’t ready to move points where someone could notice me turning into a different species overnight.
Phone buzzed.
Jax: Inspector moved to nine. Try not to look suspicious.Me: That rules out my face.Jax: lol.
Three dots. Then a longer pause.
Jax: They reclassified the gate. A-rank. Full report drops tomorrow.
Me: Yeah, called that.
Jax: Mikey’s still laid up. Lost the leg halfway out. They’ve got him on regen therapy but it’s slow. He keeps asking what really happened in there—said you moved like the fog owed you money.
Me: We got lucky.
Jax: Lucky doesn’t move like that. You sure you’re—
Me: Don’t please.
Jax: ...Alright. You don’t want me talking, I don’t talk. Guild can write it down as teamwork and divine timing. We’re good.
Me: Thanks.
Another bubble of typing.
Jax: When Mikey’s back on two feet, me and Hana are thinking about registering proper. Want you in.
Me: I’ll think about it.
Jax: Don’t take too long. Guys like us don’t get this kind of win twice.
The dots vanished. Screen went black.
I sat there a minute, thumb hovering over the send bar, guilt humming quiet under my ribs. The gate had gone A-rank. Mikey had gone under. I’d walked out with three blades and all my limbs. Math like that doesn’t feel fair, even when you win.
I set the phone face-down. The city hummed through the walls like a tired engine. I killed the light and lay down, because pretending to sleep is step one of sleeping.
The room cooled. The band gave one last discreet thrum. Fogbite settled in its wrap like a cat that had decided I was furniture.
The last pane slid under the door of my brain like junk mail:
[System Note]
— Path anchor established. Forge Dominion memory seated.
— Next resonant encounter predicted ≤ 72h.
— Visibility mitigation: low. — Recommendation: Limit public demonstrations. Prepare cover craft (Field Repair).
A cover craft. Fix something in public so the scanners have a story when they gossip about my shape. A small lie to protect a bigger one. Even the system understood Arcadia. That was either comforting or terrifying.
I drifted out for what felt like five minutes and might’ve been two hours—long enough for the band’s hum to fade and the pain to get bored.
The nap hit hard and shallow. I dreamed of the Watchers. Not their hoods or their stone hands—just their rhythm. Hammer, lift, turn. A cadence with teeth that bit the air and left grooves. The band on my wrist listened too, counting with me, like a metronome that wanted to be a map.
When I woke my hand throbbed polite reminders. The cut in my webbing had pulled itself mostly neat—a pink seam that would fade by afternoon. I missed it already.
I washed my face. The guy in it looked like he needed another nap and a better plan, in that order. I gave him neither.
Fogbite vanished into Inventory with a pulse of white light—safer in there than in my idiot hands. Fangpiercer and Gloamthorn stayed where they always did, sheathed against my hips like judgmental pets. Cloak next, boots on, jacket zipped. The new sheath sat hidden under canvas; I’d promised not to bleed on it day one. Ambitious.
I locked up and stepped into a morning that smelled like rain that hadn’t decided to fall yet.
On the stairs, Mrs. Dobrev cracked her door and squinted at me through a curl of cigarette smoke. "You look taller," she said—suspicious, like height was a crime.
"Bad posture debt paid," I said. "I’ll be back before your show."
She grunted, looked at my hands, looked at my face, and decided not to ask questions she didn’t want the answers to. Mercy comes in many sizes. Sometimes it’s not asking.
Outside, Arcadia pretended to be gentle. Wet sheen on asphalt. Vendors setting up with the resigned energy of people who know the day will be stupid and love it anyway. A scanner truck two streets over, noses up, sniffing for the wrong kind of noise. I walked like I had somewhere boring to be and a life that didn’t glow when people pointed devices at it.
Street level had a new poster half torn on a pole: GUILD FAIRNESS NOW. Someone had sharpied PAY YOUR GRUNTS across it. Someone else had sharpied DIE SLOW over that. Democracy in three pen strokes.
By the time I hit the tram, I’d counted beats through three crosswalks and a coffee line. It helped. Counting makes fear smaller until it doesn’t. Today, it helped.
A small boy on the platform looked at my knives the way small boys look at fire trucks. His mother gave me the do-not-encourage-my-goblin glare. I gave the universal chin dip of I, too, respect goblins and stared at the floor like a model citizen.
When the tram doors shut, a woman in a charcoal jacket glanced up from a slate and let her gaze drag over the car like a net. Not a uniform. Not a bored commuter. Inspector-adjacent. I went very boring very fast.
The band on my wrist purred once, then went studiously asleep. Fogbite kept its cold to itself. We all practiced being furniture for four stops and got off before anyone asked us to explain what we were.
At street level again, the building the guild borrowed for talks waited with its best imitation of civic charm. Glass that had been cleaned recently. A lobby plant not yet dead. A receptionist with a smile that said I can smell lies and I don’t get paid enough at the same time.
"Name?" she said.
"Ethan Cross."
She glanced at a screen. "Inspector Kim will see you in ten. Please don’t bleed on the chairs again."
"Ambitious," I said. "But I’ll try."
Hana waited by a window with a paper cup and the exact amount of patience she budgets for mornings. Jax leaned against the wall like it owed him money, which it probably did. Mikey wasn’t there. Good. Rest where it counts.
Jax gave me a look that started as a grin and ended as a question. I shook my head later and he let it be later. Mercy, the sequel.
When they called us in, the inspector had the decency to be smaller than my fear. Clean shirt. Tired eyes. A device on the table that didn’t hum and therefore hummed in my skull. She asked questions with the careful fingers of someone defusing civilian lies.
We told the truth by thirds. Jax told his third with the confidence of a man who has never failed to kick a door. Hana told hers like a ledger. I told mine like a student who had studied the wrong Chapter but could improvise diagrams.
When she asked about all the loot, my hand found the wrap without being told. "We salvaged all the materials," I said, as if the word salvage wasn’t a synonym for sin in some offices. "I used them. For field work. Keeps costs down."
"May we see the piece?" the inspector said, polite as a guillotine.
I didn’t reach for my bag. I just flicked my wrist, thought Inventory, and the air shimmered like it swallowed a secret. Fogbite blinked into existence in my hand, cold and quiet as a threat.
The inspector’s eyebrow twitched. "Storage tech?"
I held up the band on my wrist. "Item-box bracelet," I said. "Black market knockoff. Lag’s like crazy, but it beats carrying."
Half-truth. Half-lie. All survival.
Fogbite gleamed without bragging. Cold held to the spine and minded its manners. The edge looked like it could decide careers.
The inspector leaned in. "A-class work?"
"Judge said so," I said, and hoped she didn’t hear the capital J in my throat.
"Trait?" she said.
"Fogbite," I said, because lying about names never ends well.
Her mouth twitched like she’d bitten a lemon socially. "There’s... a resonance," she said carefully. "Odd harmonics. Where did you learn to keep this stable?"
"Online tutorial," I said. "Ten easy steps. Don’t forget to like and subscribe."
Hana didn’t kick me. Character growth.
Jax coughed into his fist and bit a smile in half.
The inspector watched me like a kettle. When it didn’t whistle, she poured. "We’d appreciate it if you avoided demonstrations this in public settings. The alarms aren’t tuned for... artisanal outcomes."
"Copy," I said. "I specialize in boring."
Her eyebrow moved that half millimeter that means no you don’t across three languages.
We left with our skulls attached and a list of things not to do in public that overlapped 90% with things I do all the time. I called it progress. Hana called it my funeral and didn’t say it out loud.
Outside, the air felt cleaner or I just needed it to.
We split at the corner like a cell dividing. I took the long way home, counted beats across three crosswalks and two shadows that might have been people or plans, and decided I didn’t care which.
Back in my place, the quiet listened again. I set Fogbite next to its new siblings and let the three of them radiate choices into the room like a space heater. The band purred and went still.
The last pane of the arc came gentle as a lullaby:
[Job Quest — Resolution]
Initiation Instance: Clear
— Output: A-Rank (High)
— Trait: Fogbite (bound)
— Title: The One Who Held On (Hidden) Path State:
— Forge Protocols L1–L2 Online
— Dominion Memory seeded (trial access)
— Echo Engraving (tease) queued System Forecast:
— Resonant encounter ≤ 72h (probability ↑)
— Visibility → High (urban sweep density) Advice (unsolicited):
I closed the pane and let the room be just a room. The knives breathed their quiet metal breaths. The band did its cat-thing on my pulse.
Rent was still due. The world was louder. My hand hurt like a confession that had chosen me back.
Be boring, the fog had said.
I was trying.
Sexy optional.