A long time after Mira died, Veydras found someone who wasn't afraid of his hands.
He tried to kill him.
It was not an especially promising beginning to a friendship.
The man stood across from Veydras in the ruins of a city neither of them had bothered to learn the name of.
Half his coat was missing.
So was part of his left arm.
Veydras had done that.
The stranger looked at the missing flesh with considerably less concern than Veydras thought appropriate.
Veydras watched him carefully.
"You're not afraid."
The stranger glanced up. "Should I be?"
Veydras looked toward his arm.
The man followed his gaze.
"Oh. That."
He inspected the damage.
"Admittedly inconvenient."
Veydras said nothing.
The man raised what remained of his arm.
Something changed.
The missing flesh did not regenerate.
Instead, the ruined building beside them groaned.
A section of its structure disappeared.
At the same moment, the man's arm returned.
Veydras's eyes narrowed.
The stranger noticed.
"Equivalent value."
"What?"
"Your ability created a cost."
The man flexed his restored fingers.
"I changed who paid it."
Veydras looked at the missing section of building.
Then back at him.
"Who are you?"
The stranger smiled.
"Noctis Arquen."
Veydras didn't offer his hand.
Noctis didn't offer his.
That was the first thing Veydras liked about him.
They fought twice more before becoming friends.
The second fight was Noctis's fault.
The third remained disputed.
Eventually, however, Veydras discovered something considerably rarer than someone capable of surviving him.
Noctis agreed with him.
Not completely.
That would have been suspicious.
Veydras believed something was fundamentally wrong with existence itself. He had watched suffering repeat too perfectly, watched civilizations turn catastrophe into history and history into another catastrophe.
Noctis's grievance was different.
He believed reality had favorites.
Kings destroyed cities and called the dead collateral.
Gods devastated worlds, restored themselves, and continued onward.
The powerful accumulated consequences that somehow always seemed to be paid by someone else.
Noctis hated that.
"The powerful call it collateral," Noctis once told him, "because they never pay with themselves."
Veydras understood him.
That was enough.
Much later, they found themselves sitting in a stolen room.
There were two chairs.
One table.
One unreliable lamp that flickered whenever Veydras forgot to control himself.
Between them lay a stolen map and a list of beings they believed should not exist.
Noctis read the first few names.
He looked up.
"This is a terrible idea."
Veydras replied, "Which part?"
Noctis lifted the list.
"The organization."
"We don't have an organization."
"We have a headquarters."
"It's a room."
"We stole the room."
Veydras considered that.
"Fine."
Noctis placed the list back down.
"What are we calling this terrible organization?"
Veydras looked toward the shadows cast across the wall.
"The Shadow Syndicate."
Noctis stared at him.
Veydras stared back.
Noctis finally shrugged. "I've heard worse."
That was how it began.
Not with an army.
Not with gods.
Two men.
One stolen map.
And a list.