That deep, melodic voice—completely out of step with the bizarre thing that just happened—catches me with my guard down. The fact that he’s calling me master doesn’t help.

"Okay... uh. Who are you?"

The weird man stays still, looking at me, no idea what to say. The blank pause tells me how wrong things are. From my memory, it’s clear this person isn’t Sebastian Conor. But it isn’t necromancy either. It isn’t shadow magic.

’So what the hell is this?’

I check my OXI and watch it draining faster than it should be.

2,447...

2,443...

2,438...

2,433...

[OXI: 2,427/2,500]

I just topped off the tank testing the OXI drop variants, and more than seventy points are already gone in less than five minutes.

’That’s insane.’

"If you don’t tell me quickly who you are and what all of this is, things are going to get complicated." I take a breath. "Either you’re going to disappear, or I’m going to drop dead."

He looks at me. Tilts his head.

"Vel’kor... ith morai sehn."

The HUD translates almost instantly.

"I don’t remember."

’Great. An elven soldier with amnesia. Exactly what I needed today.’

"And why did you call me master?"

From this point on, the system starts translating in real time, as if it needs a moment to acclimate to his dialect.

"Your eyes told me you’re the master."

"How? Why?"

He simply doesn’t have the answer and repeats himself.

"I don’t... remember."

I think through what I have. [Consume] is a skill from my class—a class the Codex of Hope gave me. Maybe if I touch him, the system spits out information. Maybe the Codex itself nudges me with a hint.

Worth a try. I telegraph it first.

"Hold out your hand. Let’s greet each other. Touch palms."

"Hands...?"

He looks at his own as if discovering a new word. Then slowly extends them toward me.

I reach out and meet him.

The contact lands like ice pressed against burned skin. A cold that burns. Not pain, exactly—closer to the dead-numb of a limb you’ve slept on too long. The fire around him doesn’t sting. It freezes the nerve before the nerve can register heat. I feel my fingers go pins-and-needles inside the contact, then drift past sensation into something quieter. The opposite of warmth. An echo of an old wound aching when the weather changes.

A notice finally appears on my HUD.

[Ancestor Duvilin]

[Class: Scout-Sniper]

[Rank: ???]

[WARNING: Insufficient Hadal Notoriety to control.]

That last line catches me. It comes through in a different color. An alert, not a piece of information.

Hadal Notoriety. The system’s hidden currency. The reason high-rank Divers from the trenches stay in the trenches—too much Notoriety and you start drawing eyes from places you don’t want eyes coming from. I burned a lot of it on the wrong things in another life. This time I was supposed to grow it carefully. Slowly. With consent.

Apparently the Codex didn’t get that memo.

I let go of his hands.

"It looks like your name is Duvilin. Does that ring anything?"

"It sounds familiar... but the truth is I don’t remember."

This man repeating he doesn’t remember is starting to wear thin. I’m not going to get anywhere this way.

"My name is Dryden. Dryden Sands."

He’s a summon. Something the system handed me. I might as well go straight to the point.

"I’m the bearer of the Codex of Hope. I hope you can help me on my journey."

Duvilin doesn’t say anything. He just narrows his eyes, gives a small bow, and turns to leave—as if what I said held no weight at all and he’d rather go explore the new world unfolding in front of him. His curiosity about everything around him is bigger than his curiosity about me.

His OXI consumption on me hasn’t slowed. I check the bar again.

[OXI: 2,398/2,500]

He’s still draining me. Whatever he is, whatever the system did when it pulled him out of that fragment, he runs on my fuel. If he walks out that door and decides to stroll around Azure Prime exploring the architecture, I’ll be unconscious inside an hour or even minutes.

’Damn it. How do I dismiss him?’

He’s almost at the door. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

"Wait!"

Out of pure desperation, I draw Eventide and ignite it. The black blade releases enough aura to send a gust of wind through the room. Loose papers from the desk fly up.

Duvilin turns. Looks at Eventide. A small smile lifts one corner of his mouth.

[Hadal Notoriety +35]

’Thirty-five points of Notoriety just for that?’

If this keeps up, I’m going to climb the system notoriety rankings before I’m ready, and being famous on the wrong list is a problem I cannot afford.

"What does Master Dryden desire?"

His voice still mixes that strange language with the system’s auto-translation layered over it. The translation works fine for Earth languages. I understand Russian and Mandarin without this kind of glitch. Something about Duvilin’s dialect is being rejected by the system at some level.

That detail bothers me more than it should. The Ocean’s Law translates everything. Every Diver from every district arrives in Thirstfall and starts hearing in their own native tongue without thinking about it. If the system is having to struggle to translate him, it means whatever language he’s speaking shouldn’t exist in the database at all.

He shouldn’t exist at all.

"I challenge you to a duel. Tomorrow. If I win, you do exactly what I tell you. If you win... do whatever you want, I guess."

Duvilin nods. Still admiring everything around him. He drifts to a corner of the room, picks up small items, examines them, traces every curve with care. Boundlessly curious.

I look out the window. The sky is already light. Morning announcing itself in earnest now.

"So now, please... could you, I don’t know, disappear?"

Two sudden knocks at the door.

Duvilin and I both turn toward the sound.

"Sands, are you—"

Veric pushes the door open. He steps in a single second before Duvilin simply vanishes from the floor in front of him.

"What the fuck was that, Sands?"