Scar’s head wasn’t right and hadn’t been since that morning. Before work, he’d met Purple’s mother, Margaret, and she’d come with no room for him to refuse.

Apology after apology, one running into the next, all of it for the trouble her daughter had caused him. She’d nearly dropped to her knees before he stopped her. That image alone had been following him around all day.

But the exhaustion of it wasn’t what sat with him. Something else did.

Margaret had looked worn out, with fatigued eyes, a posture that had given up holding itself straight, and deep dark circles. Like she hadn’t slept in a long time and had stopped expecting to.

It didn’t add up. Purple’s mother, of all people, wearing that kind of exhaustion? Scar wasn’t the type to let things like that slide past him, not when it came to mothers. He’d cared too much about his own.

The Vey family had risen. They had power and everything that was supposed to make life easier. So what was still grinding that poor woman down?

Asking Purple wasn’t an option, he knew better than that. Which left him with no clean way in, and his own troubles weren’t helping.

They were crowding in, tangling with his concern for Margaret in a way that made everything harder to think through.

’Ah! What can I do? Better come up with another plan.’

He’d been working through the books Emma gave him and hadn’t gotten past the first. Not because it was difficult, but because something about it felt off. It read like a story parents told their children at bedtime.

He was currently on Eternal Rot and Hunger. From the title alone, horror and tragedy were expected, and in the depths of it, that’s what it delivered. But on the surface, it read like both and yet somehow still felt average. Unless there was a plot twist waiting at the end, he wasn’t sure this would be easy to get through.

Tsk.

’Why do I keep pretending I have a choice?’

His thoughts were already heading somewhere else when Amber’s words cut through and brought him back.

"Hey, Scar, look. He’s back again. We really should’ve banned him."

Scar frowned.

He was in his office on the second floor of the casino, resting on the couch. A massive pane of one-way glass dominated the wall; from here, he could see everything happening below without obstruction.

Most people on the floor knew they were being watched. That knowledge didn’t stop much. And none of them could see through from their side regardless.

Yesterday’s problem had been with a man with grievances and no information to back them up. Convinced he’d been scammed, and loud enough about it to cause havoc, threatening the authorities like that meant something here. He hadn’t met Scar in person.

Didn’t know his name. He had no idea he was dealing with a Rover.

Gambling had schemes. Gamblers had schemes. That was the whole point. Coming in to blame the casino for playing the game better was beyond outrageous.

The idiocy wasn’t the point, and it wasn’t why Scar had held off on banning him.

He’d had people run a background check first. What came back made the man considerably more interesting than his tantrum had suggested.

What Scar needed right now was the Chosen One, an ancient tablet that had made itself deliberately difficult to find.

Information on it was nearly nonexistent, and the number of people who knew anything worth knowing about it was small enough to count.

What made the man interesting had nothing to do with his tantrum. He was a marketing manager at a newspaper company, and not just any newspaper. One of the oldest publications still running.

He’d been a regular gambler, never this bothersome, until recently. His daughter had died during V’s attack. His wife left him a few days after that.

The man’s past didn’t particularly interest Scar. Everyone had something to cry over. What interested him was how to use that sorrowful past to his advantage.

Scar wore a creepy smile.

"Leave him be. See that smile? He probably thinks he’ll win today, but he’s going to lose. Once Crook has him under his thumb, it’s all over."

He’d already set it in motion. One of his subordinates, Crook, had been put on the man. Enough wins to keep him coming back. Enough losses to leave him hungry. Between the two, Crook would squeeze out everything the man knew about the Chosen One tablet.

Amber frowned.

"Are you certain we can trust him? He looks drunk, and it probably won’t take long before he starts causing trouble."

Scar turned toward Amber, who stood behind him, and gave her a lazy look. He had no idea why she wouldn’t just sit down. He’d asked countless times. She never seemed comfortable doing it.

Hmph.

"I expected that. I’ve already asked Bend and Herd to research it, and I’ve summoned Purple and Marvel as well. I believe they’ll be of assistance." 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

Amber nodded in understanding.

"Even if we know its location, claiming it won’t be easy. We’ll need their support to assemble a group of trusted allies."

That had already crossed his mind. The tablet was either somewhere deliberately hard to reach, or it was sitting in plain sight in a museum.

If it were sitting in a museum, the path would be straightforward: visit, read, leave. No complications worth naming.

But if that wasn’t the case, if the tablet was guarded somewhere else entirely, then this was going to take something out of him. A toll he hadn’t fully accounted for yet.

If Purple got on the case, he knew it would be over in a shift.

The problem was that thinking about Purple alone was enough to bring back the condition he’d seen her mother in, and if he met her in person right now, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep his mouth shut.

Still. She was a force to reckon with, and with her help, they might retrieve the tablet without any complications at all.

Scar and Amber exchanged a few words about it, but his mind was elsewhere. He’d been training with Amber in swordsmanship, fought the Gate God in the simulation room, and topped it off with meditation, trying to reconnect with his inner world.

There was progress, and he could see it, especially in his meditation and swordsmanship. But not enough to speak of yet.

He needed to speed things up. If the tablet was going to be hard to retrieve, he needed strength to match it. He wasn’t going to leave everything to Amber. That wasn’t what he was aiming for.

After a while, a soft smile tugged on his lips.

"Hey, Amber. After we’re done talking with Purple and Marvel, could we stop by somewhere before going home?"