Rumors rarely move like wind. They move like disease. Quiet at first. Dismissed. Mocked. Contained. Until one morning the city simply wakes up sicker than it was before.
This city woke up sick.
It started in the poorer districts, the places where hope doesn't usually visit without charging interest. A woman swore pain that clung to her husband for years eased overnight. A child claimed their lost dog returned, tail wagging, like the world apologized for being cruel. A worker whispered that desperation didn't crush him for once—that someone in the dark had listened when he begged not to starve. At first they called it luck. Then blessing. Then miracle.
Finally someone said it out loud.
"A wish."
The city did not believe in wishes. Magic, yes. Faith, yes. Put-in-the-work-and-suffer-for-it, absolutely. But wishes? That was fairy tale nonsense. A story for desperate children. Yet people kept talking.
And powerful people hate when the world offers something they don't control.
Government offices didn't panic. They categorized. They assessed. They filed the impossible under "unregulated supernatural influence," which is civilized language for "this threatens everything we own." Economists murmured about destabilization. Law officials spoke of public disorder. Strategists spoke quietly about acquisition.
Because if someone could grant wishes… why shouldn't that someone belong to them?
Unmarked carriages began appearing in neighborhoods, not filled with soldiers, but with men and women who wore good manners like weapons. Priests were "assigned observation duties." Academics requested emergency study permissions. None of them used the word "control." They didn't need to. It was implied in every breath.
And at the elegant top of this civic machine stood Lord Magistrate Varros Hale.
He wasn't loud power. He was the cultivated kind. Handsome, polished, intelligent, the sort of man people admired, trusted, and deeply feared without ever quite understanding why. His smile was warm. His eyes never truly were. He looked at paperwork the way some men looked at an enemy battlefield.
"Sir," a subordinate told him quietly, "we have multiple confirmed accounts. Something is… granting what people ask for."
Varros didn't laugh. He smiled, calm and genuinely delighted.
"How wonderful," he said pleasantly.
The subordinate hesitated. "Wonderful, my lord?"
"Of course. If hope is appearing in uncontrolled forms, it must be… guided. Properly. Safely." He folded his hands. "Begin a covert search. Avoid panic. Recruit quietly. Pay generously. Threaten discreetly. If this 'wish granter' exists…" He paused, as if tasting the idea like fine wine.
"…we make them ours."
Below the streets, far from elegant windows and polished tables, Aiden didn't know the man's name. But he felt it.
He paused in the undercity training chamber, cup halfway lifted, strange beautiful eyes unfocusing in a way that meant the universe had decided to redirect some of its attention toward him. The air around him didn't get colder. It got heavier. Like reality leaned closer.
"…Something changed," he murmured.
Seris looked up from the stack of analysis and notes she had been structuring. "Magic?"
He shook his head slowly.
"No. Society."
That was worse.
Liora froze, instincts tightening. "Bad?"
"Yes," Aiden said softly, voice oddly distant and terribly present all at once. "Something hungry is looking for us."
That phrasing did not comfort anyone.
Inkaris already suspected as much. Human political escalation had patterns, and he recognized them the way a veteran recognizes incoming storms. He did not sigh. He simply recalculated the pace at which they needed to become significantly more dangerous.
"We continue training," he said calmly.
Seris frowned. "Shouldn't we… do something?"
"Informed panic is still panic," Inkaris replied. "We prepare."
Above, the city's predators sharpened their teeth politely. Below, three stubborn hearts kept learning how not to break. Quiet hunters began stepping into motion. Not brutes. Professionals. Scholars. Clergy. Hidden muscle. Paid witnesses. A net woven with smiles and coin.
And at its center, Lord Magistrate Varros Hale watched the city as though it were his private theater and someone had decided to improvise without permission.
Reports confirmed movement underground. Not rumor. Not trickery. Something real. Something unclassified. Something powerful.
"Excellent," he murmured. "Unclassified things belong to whoever claims them first."
Reality had noticed Aiden. Power had noticed Aiden. And for the first time since he had arrived in this world, someone wasn't curious about him.
They were hunting him.
Not with rage.
Not with madness.
With reason.
The worst kind.
The first orders were signed. Not loudly. Quiet little strokes of ink that meant quiet, polite men would soon do terribly impolite things.
They weren't moving yet.
But they were ready.
For now, there was still time. Enough to learn. Enough to prepare. Enough to discover why wish granters scare governments.
And deep beneath the city, under dim lanterns and the beating pulse of something like coming storm, Aiden, Seris, Liora, and Inkaris continued building strength— unaware that in the world above, a smiling man had already decided they belonged to him.
When the world decides to become a problem, it doesn't always roar first.
Sometimes it knocks politely.
And brings paperwork.