Chapter 9: Rumors Don't Need Names
Rumors never traveled alone.
They carried fear with them—fear shaped into whispers, half-truths sharpened by imagination. By the time dawn broke across the borderlands, the story had already split into a dozen versions, each one worse than the last.
Lucien Veyr did not hear them.
But he felt their weight.
Luck pulsed low and steady in his chest as he moved deeper into the forbidden zone, each step taking him farther from roads, maps, and anything that resembled safety. The land warped subtly around him, not violently—more like a living thing adjusting to an intruder it hadn't decided whether to reject or tolerate.
Lucien welcomed that uncertainty.
Certainty was what killed people like him.
Somewhere Beyond the Border
The tavern was loud in the way desperation often was.
Tankards slammed against tables. Voices overlapped. Smoke from cheap pipeleaf clung to the rafters like a second ceiling. Travelers packed the room shoulder to shoulder, all of them avoiding the same roads, all of them pretending not to be afraid.
A hunter slammed a folded parchment onto the table.
"I'm telling you, it's real."
The man across from him snorted. "You expect me to believe a Church inquisitor missed?"
"I expect you to believe five squads didn't just disappear for fun," the hunter shot back.
The parchment was a bounty notice.
🟣 PURPLE NOTICE
Target: Lucien Veyr
Status: Alive Preferred
Reward: 3 Arc Crowns
Someone had scribbled beneath it in charcoal.
Black coming soon.
The table fell quiet.
A woman near the bar leaned in. "My cousin was with a trade caravan. He says the land itself blocked pursuit. Hunters wouldn't follow."
"That's nonsense," someone muttered.
"…Is it?" another replied.
Silence stretched.
Then someone laughed nervously.
"Doesn't matter," a mercenary said. "Nobody fights the Church and walks away."
No one answered.
Lucien felt the shift long before night fell.
The forbidden zone deepened.
The trees grew thinner but taller, their branches stretching upward like skeletal fingers. The ground turned brittle beneath his boots, cracked stone layered with veins of faintly glowing mana that pulsed irregularly.
Reality here was tired.
Lucien slowed his pace.
He was being watched again.
Not by people.
By something aware.
Luck stirred—but did not interfere.
That was new.
Lucien stopped beside a fractured obelisk half-buried in the ground. Its surface was etched with symbols he didn't recognize, though they felt… familiar.
"…You're not hostile," he murmured.
The air responded with a low hum.
Lucien exhaled slowly.
"Good."
He sat.
Not because he was exhausted—though he was—but because sometimes the fastest way forward was to stop resisting the flow of things.
Minutes passed.
Then—
A figure emerged from the distortion ahead.
Not summoned.
Not forced.
Walking.
Lucien's hand went to his sword instantly.
The figure was humanoid, tall and slender, its outline blurred slightly as if reality refused to fully commit to it. Its skin shimmered with a muted silver-blue hue, eyes glowing softly like distant stars.
Not a monster.
Not human.
"…Vailborn," Lucien whispered.
The figure tilted its head.
"So the name still exists," it said, voice echoing strangely, layered with itself. "Interesting."
Lucien stood slowly.
"Are you going to kill me?"
The Vailborn regarded him for a long moment.
"No," it said finally. "If I wanted you dead, probability would have already complied."
Lucien huffed softly. "Fair."
The being stepped closer, studying him with unsettling intensity.
"You bend the flow," it said. "Not with force. With refusal."
Lucien didn't deny it.
"I don't want attention," he replied.
"That," the Vailborn said, "is why you have it."
Luck pulsed—sharp agreement.
Lucien grimaced. "You're enjoying this."
"Observation," the Vailborn corrected. "We were erased for less."
Lucien's gaze hardened. "Who erased you?"
The Vailborn smiled faintly.
"The same structures now hunting you."
Silence followed.
Then Lucien nodded once.
"…Figures."
The Vailborn stepped back, its form beginning to blur.
"Go deeper," it said. "The Church will not follow you there. Not yet."
"Why tell me this?" Lucien asked.
The being paused.
"Because if you survive," it replied, "the world will be forced to remember what it chose to forget."
And then it was gone.
Lucien stood alone again, heart pounding not with fear—but anticipation.
Elsewhere — The Church Adjusts
A sealed chamber beneath the cathedral.
Candles burned without flicker.
A new ledger lay open.
🔴 BLACK NOTICE — ACTIVE
The cardinal traced Lucien's name with one finger.
"He has entered forbidden depth," a priest reported. "No pursuit successful."
The cardinal nodded slowly.
"Good," he said. "Then the variable believes himself beyond reach."
He closed the ledger.
"Prepare the next method."
Lucien moved again before dawn.
He followed no path—only intuition sharpened by luck. The land resisted less the deeper he went, as if recognizing something in him it had not sensed in centuries.
By sunrise, he reached the edge of a vast chasm.
Mist churned below, thick with distorted mana currents that bent light and sound into nonsense. Ancient structures jutted from the cliffside, broken bridges leading nowhere.
Lucien stared down into the abyss.
"This is it," he murmured.
Behind him, the world he knew waited with hunters, bounties, and faith sharpened into weapons.
Ahead lay uncertainty.
Lucien stepped forward without hesitation.
Luck surged—not as warning.
As welcome.