Night did not fall over Argentinis.
It assembled itself.
From Kael's vantage point on the rooftop, the city revealed its transformation in stages. First came the lights—district by district, floor by floor, signs igniting in sharp neon bursts or dim industrial glows. Then came the sound, a low omnipresent hum as transport rails engaged, factories shifted to night cycles, and generators compensated for the rising demand. Finally came the people, their movements slowing into patterns shaped by habit rather than urgency.
Argentinis never slept. It merely changed posture.
Kael stood at the edge of the rooftop, rain drifting lightly through the air, and watched without reaching outward. That restraint had become second nature to him now, a discipline forged through discomfort rather than training. Every instinct screamed for him to check, to confirm the threads, to reassure himself that nothing unseen lurked too close.
He ignored it.
Observation without restraint attracts attention.
Selene's words were no longer advice. They were law.
The cold seeped through his jacket, sharp but tolerable. He welcomed it. Physical sensation anchored him, reminded him that his body still obeyed simple rules. Cold was cold. Gravity was gravity. Not everything in this world needed interpretation.
Below him, the Lower Industrial Sector stretched outward, skeletal frameworks of old infrastructure illuminated by scattered lights. Somewhere down there, cleanup crews would arrive to deal with the remains of the thread-warped beast he had killed earlier that day. The guild would mark the contract complete. Payment would be transferred. Records would be updated.
And nothing else would happen.
No alarms.
No investigations.
No escalation.
That, Kael had learned, was success.
He exhaled slowly and leaned against the rooftop railing, letting his thoughts settle into order.
Four hunts.
Four confirmed kills.
Each one deliberate. Each one controlled. No excessive use of power, no dramatic displays, no unnecessary witnesses. The kind of work that disappeared quietly into the city's endless churn.
Objectively, he was improving.
Subjectively, something felt wrong.
Kael frowned faintly, eyes narrowing as he replayed the last hunt in his mind. The failed Beast Path user. The way its threads had folded inward, collapsing under their own excess. The speed, the strength, the sheer violence of it—and the inevitability of its failure.
Power without structure always ate itself.
He understood that now.
What unsettled him was how calm he'd felt while killing it.
No hesitation.
No surge of adrenaline.
No emotional spike.
Just execution.
That frightened him.
Fear, panic, even doubt—those things kept a person human. Calm bred efficiency. Efficiency bred comfort. And comfort was the first step toward complacency.
Kael closed his eyes briefly, not to look inward, but to reset himself.
You're adapting, he told himself. Don't confuse adaptation with corruption.
Rain gathered more heavily now, streaking down the edges of the rooftop. He opened his eyes again just as movement caught his attention.
Another presence.
Across the street, several buildings away, a figure stood on a neighboring rooftop.
The man didn't glow. Didn't distort the air. Didn't radiate pressure or intent. He simply stood there, hands folded behind his back, posture relaxed, gaze sweeping across the city below with unhurried precision.
Kael's muscles tightened instantly.
He did not reach for the threads.
He did not let the pendant respond.
He watched.
The man wore a dark cloak, fabric chosen less for intimidation than anonymity. Rain slid off it without resistance. For a brief moment, as he shifted slightly, a bird-shaped insignia glinted near his shoulder—etched metal, old, deliberate.
Black Crow.
Kael didn't know how he knew. He simply did.
Reputation, he was learning, carried its own gravity. Some hunters bent attention around them, warping perception simply by existing. Others left scars in the threads wherever they went.
Black Crow did neither.
The city accepted him.
That was far more dangerous.
Kael felt something brush the edges of his awareness—not pressure, not scrutiny, but alignment. As if the man wasn't observing Kael directly, but rather noting how Kael fit into the larger structure of the city.
A classification, not a confrontation.
Their gazes crossed briefly.
Not locked.
Not challenged.
Acknowledged.
Then Black Crow stepped back and vanished into the rain, leaving no trace behind.
Kael let out a slow breath.
That exchange meant more than any conversation could have.
I see you.
I know what you are.
You're not a problem. Yet.
Kael slid down until he was sitting against the railing, rain soaking into his hair and jacket.
So this was the next layer of the hunt.
Not beasts.
Not failed Path users.
But hunters evaluating hunters.
He laughed quietly under his breath, the sound swallowed by rain and distance.
The Obsidian Order would see his restraint as inefficiency, perhaps even cowardice. They valued dominance, decisive force, visible control.
The Crimson Veil would see something else entirely.
Chaos thrived on disrupting stable variables, on forcing systems to reveal their breaking points. A hunter who moved carefully, who refused spectacle, who survived without escalation—that was a problem waiting to be exploited.
And the Ivory Circle…
Kael's expression darkened.
Balance was never passive. Balance was maintained through intervention, through quiet pressure applied at precisely the right moments. He'd seen that already—locks placed on his perception, limits imposed not on his power, but on his recklessness.
The Circle didn't eliminate threats.
They adjusted them.
A faint vibration pulsed against his chest.
The pendant stirred.
Not urgently.
Not aggressively.
Responding.
Kael pressed a hand against it, grounding himself. "Not yet," he murmured.
He wasn't ready to choose.
Choice meant commitment. Commitment meant visibility. Visibility meant being pulled fully into the game that ruled Argentinis beneath its surface.
He needed more information.
More hunts.
More observation.
More understanding of how attention moved, how classification occurred, how the city decided what mattered and what didn't.
Power could wait.
Influence could not.
Kael stood and turned away from the edge, rain dripping from his sleeves. Behind him, Argentinis continued its endless motion—hunters stalking prey, organizations shifting unseen pieces, failed Path users slipping closer to collapse.
And above it all, gods—real or imagined—were feared, worshiped, or interpreted through fractured doctrines he had yet to touch.
He had survived long enough to be noticed.
Not loudly.
Not officially.
But enough.
Kael walked toward the stairwell, steps steady, posture relaxed, mind sharp.
He wasn't strong.
Not yet.
But he was learning the most dangerous skill of all:
How to exist in a world that wanted to define him—
Without letting it decide what he became.