"When. How. What did I do that made him figure it out?"

Blandina stared into those blue eyes, unable to decide whether the right answer was to attack, run, or pretend she didn’t understand.

None of the three seemed like a good option.

"Fighting Eugen at my current level is suicide." She thought. "So I have to say something. Anything. Buy some time."

"Eugen, I..."

"You asked me how I got these injuries." He cut her off, letting go of her hand and picking up his shirt with absurd casualness, as if the word Gamer had been nothing more than a comment about the weather. "I was fighting one."

She fell silent.

"Oh."

Eugen smiled, not at her, but at himself, facing the mirror as he buttoned his shirt. "Hahaha." He thought. "I answered like that just to see how she’d react. Just to see."

That was Eugen.

A little crazy, in a way that only became visible once you stopped watching what he did and started watching why he did it.

"Yes." He said. "A Gamer."

"Gamer..." Blandina repeated, trying to steady her voice.

"Come on." Eugen gestured casually, finishing the last button. "Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of this supposed new race. The profane one."

"I’ve heard of them." She said. "But I’ve never met one. I don’t really know what they are."

Eugen’s smile was brief.

"Liar."

But he didn’t say it.

He picked up his coat, put it on, and finally turned toward her.

"You needed material on Eldrath’s foundation, right?"

"Oh, yes."

"Come on. I know where to find it."

They started walking through the library’s wide corridors, Eugen’s footsteps measured, Blandina’s trying to seem just as relaxed.

"The Gamers." Eugen began, speaking like someone giving a casual lecture while guiding a tour. "They’re not one specific race. They’re every race. Humans, elves, beastskins, orcs, dragons, dwarves... and so on. The problem isn’t on the outside."

"So how do you tell?"

"The inside is profaned." He said. "In a way we still can’t fully explain. But the signs are there... for those who know what to look for."

He stopped at a bookshelf, fingers running across old spines.

"They keep talking about ’clearing’ the world. As if everything here were a game. They call wars events. They call battles quests." He pulled out a volume and handed it to Blandina without looking. "Sometimes they talk about their own deaths as if they were just another chance to start over. They don’t belong to our world, yet they walk among us as if it belonged to them."

Blandina took the book.

Its weight felt strangely significant.

"Are you a Gamer, Blandina?"

The question came as naturally as any other sentence in the conversation.

She laughed, genuinely enough to sound genuine, and lightly punched his shoulder.

"What? Of course not."

"You’re the Gamer!" She shot back with a smile.

Eugen smiled back, the kind of smile that neither confirmed nor denied anything, one that simply existed.

"Read." He said. "I think there’s something in there you’ll find interesting."

Blandina opened the book.

She flipped through the pages: the academy’s foundation, its first years, ancient battles, enemies coming from the north, temporary alliances with lesser demons to contain greater threats, the price of every alliance, the artifacts created as payment and compensation through generations.

She stopped on one page.

"...and thus the Tokens were forged. Created during the Shadow Alliance, when Eldrath was still a fortress rather than an academy, the Token carries the simultaneous price of life and death. Whoever uses it offers a fragment of their own essence to return to existence a soul that departed before its destined time. To the Custodians, it is a forbidden relic. To the Empire, a symbol that even death has exceptions when the purpose is sufficiently great. To everyone else, it is merely a legend that no one has ever seen work."

"Token." Blandina read quietly.

"Token?" Eugen echoed, his voice neutral, his eyes reading her reaction without her realizing she was being read.

"She stopped on that exact page." He thought. "Out of the entire book, out of every story... she stopped at the Token."

"So that’s it."

"Either she wants to make sure no one in the Squad dies... or she’s planning to bring back someone who’s already dead."

"But who?..."

He thought about the Cathedral day, the battle, the Gamers arriving, the chaos. The names the system had displayed.

He didn’t finish the thought.

But he kept looking at Blandina with renewed attention.

"It’s a rare artifact." She said, carefully handing the book back. "I’ve never seen a real one."

"Very few have." Eugen confirmed.

"Have you?"

Half a second of silence.

"Yes."

The silence that followed lasted long enough to matter.

"Do you really want to see the artifact vault?" Eugen asked.

Blandina looked genuinely surprised. She couldn’t hide it completely.

He simply smiled.

...

They reached the gate to the restricted wing, two guards in white armor, faces hidden, spears crossed at the entrance.

"Authorization, grandson of the Emperor." One of them said.

Eugen didn’t answer immediately.

He looked at Blandina.

"Wait here."

He walked over to speak with the commander nearby, the conversation low and quick. Blandina couldn’t hear it all. Just fragments:

"...academy visitor..."

"...limited authorization..."

...and something that sounded like his own father’s name spoken with particular weight.

Two minutes later, the spears parted.

The room was smaller than Blandina had imagined.

Not some enormous movie vault, but a reasonably sized cold chamber, crystal display cases protecting artifacts that pulsed with ancient mana.

Some familiar from the game.

Others she’d never seen before.

And in one particular corner, inside a display case separate from the others, taller than the rest, with three golden runes etched into the glass and two sealing marks she recognized as touch alarms...

The Token.

Small.

It could have been anything.

A white crystal no larger than a thumb, irregularly shaped like a river-polished stone, completely unadorned.

But it pulsed.

Softly.

With a rhythm she recognized because she had seen it before while playing.

"I’m going to get a supplementary document." Eugen suddenly said. "Won’t be long."

And he left.

Blandina was alone.

She looked at the display case holding the Token.

"I can take it."

"I can resurrect Kaelthar."

"No one’s watching."

She took one step toward the case.

Stopped.

She looked more carefully.

What seemed to be ordinary glass was actually a specialized crystal, the kind that recorded unauthorized mana vibrations.

The runes weren’t decorative.

They were active, pulsing in the same rhythm as the Token, creating a field that would react to any unauthorized approach.

And the seals on the glass.

Two of them.

Positioned so that touching the glass from any angle would trigger at least one.

She traced the perimeter with her eyes without moving.

The exit.

The guards’ positions outside, though she couldn’t fully determine their field of view.

The lighting pattern, changing every thirty seconds.

"Acting on impulse now is suicide."

"Not today."

She remained exactly where she was.

From the opposite corner of the room, partially hidden behind a large display case, Eugen watched.

He had never gone to get any document.

He had stayed.

Invisible enough not to be noticed by someone who wasn’t looking, visible enough to catch every microexpression she made.

"She saw the Token." He thought. "She recognized it."

"She calculated... and stopped."

It wasn’t cowardice.

He knew cowardice.

He knew exactly what cowardice looked like in someone’s body.

This wasn’t it.

It was intelligence choosing a long-term decision over a short-term impulse.

"So that’s what you wanted." He thought, watching the Token pulse behind the glass. "And you’re smart enough not to take it today."

...

They left together, Blandina carrying the book Eugen had told her she could keep, slightly frustrated in a way she hoped wasn’t showing on her face but probably was.

"Was it useful?" Eugen asked in the hallway.

"Very." She said. "Thank you."

"Anything else you need." He replied, his voice completely neutral, with no apparent ulterior motive.

She looked at him.

He looked back.

"Did he suspect I wanted the Token?" She wondered. "But he still brought me there."

"Why?"

She didn’t ask.

This wasn’t the time.

She bowed.

He bowed.

Blandina walked down the corridor, the book tucked under her arm, her mind full of floor plans, layouts, runes, seals, guard patterns...

Everything she’d need for a theft that wouldn’t happen today.

She lost the battle.

But she gained the map.

Eugen returned.

This time no one tried to stop him, as if the earlier scene, the questions, the limited authorization, had all been a rehearsal that existed only because of her.

He stood before the display case.

The Token pulsed with the calm rhythm of an object that had waited a very long time and wasn’t in any hurry.

"So that’s what you wanted." He repeated, this time aloud, quietly, only to himself.

He watched it for another moment.

Then he heard it.

The sound of the palace gates opening.

Heavy machinery.

A distant noise that still carried clearly through the stone walls.

An imperial carriage.

He recognized the rhythm of its wheels.

...

The man stepped out alone.

Young.

Eighteen years old.

Deep ebony skin with a lighter undertone.

Long white dreadlocks, white not from age but from something older, something more specific.

Eyes so serious they seemed permanently evaluating everything.

An effortlessly upright bearing, as though his body had learned to maintain perfect posture regardless of his will.

Customized Imperial armor, not standard issue, tailored to a specific body and fighting style.

A sword at his left side.

An Imperial cassock worn over the armor, the kind that said, "I’m on duty... but I’m more than a soldier."

The butler was waiting.

He led him without a word.

The man removed his armor in the assigned room.

He changed into simple clothes: dark pants, a white shirt open at the collar, the sort anyone could wear but that somehow looked different on him for reasons difficult to explain.

He went straight to the balcony, looking over the academy.

The familiar architecture, yet carrying a different energy.

The noble house banners.

"Haru Mizuki... is the one I’m supposed to hunt in this academy..."

"You would have loved seeing this place."

A knock at the door.

"Come in." He said without looking.

The door opened.

"Arthur Aethron."

The voice was familiar before it even finished speaking.

Arthur turned quickly.

Faster than his reflexes normally allowed with any other visitor.

Eugen stood in the doorway.

Lighter, but carrying that same presence Arthur had known since childhood, the one that made the air itself feel slightly different wherever he stood.

"My younger brother." Eugen finished.

Arthur stood still for half a second.

Then crossed the room in four strides and embraced him tightly.

Eugen hugged him back just as firmly, without ceremony, without the distance the two of them maintained in public ever since titles had begun to matter more than childhood.

They stayed like that for a moment.

Two brothers.

In a simple room.

No court.

No titles.

No weight of who each of them was becoming.

Just for a moment.