Title - The Bastard

  The smoke had started to settle, drifting zily along the smooth stone floor like mist after a cold rain. The man stepped forward, the crunch of his boots echoing softly through the now-silent chamber.

  What y ahead drew his attention—an enormous sb of metal embedded into the far wall. It wasn’t a door in the traditional sense. No hinges, no handle. Just a massive circle, yered and reinforced, like the front of a vault or the sacred door of some ancient treasury. It gleamed silver-blue under the artificial lights, with small symbols and numbered grooves spiraling inward toward the center.

  To Kyle, watching through foreign eyes, it resembled a massive, well-sealed tomb, like the kind used to protect the remains of kings. The way the light bounced off its smooth surface, how the grooves intersected like paths of some intricate ritual circle, it looked nothing short of arcane.

  The man reached into a pouch on his belt and pulled out a circur device roughly the size of his palm. It looked simple but was heavier than it appeared. It was made of coppery bck alloy with faint etchings running across its surface. He pced it gently against the center of the door, right into one of the grooves. It tched onto the surface with a solid clink.

  He touched the middle of the device with one finger.

  A faint white light traced the circle's rim, blinking in a steady rhythm like a beating heart.

  “It’s activated, prof,” he said, stepping back.

  A second ter, the voice returned in his ear. “I’m on it,” the professor replied, followed by the faint clicking of keys and static noises in the background.

  The vault door started to emit soft ticking sounds, like tiny gears turning somewhere deep inside, as though some hidden creature had just been awoken.

  “I’ve done this so many times,” the man muttered, hands on his hips, watching the blinking device. “Yet I have no idea how you pull this magic off.”

  The professor wheezed a chuckle. “It’s not magic, really. Just… electromagnets.”

  He continued, his voice a blend of pride and technical fascination. “Inside the Unlocker, there are at least a hundred thousand loops of a fine custom alloy I made. When I pass current through them from my side, it creates magnetic fields powerful enough to interact with the locking mechanisms. The more loops, the stronger the magnetic flux.”

  The man raised a brow. “That’s why it sounds like the whole door’s breathing.”

  “Exactly,” the prof said. “I manipute the fields remotely, tuning them like strings on a harp until the frequency syncs with the lock’s internal pattern. Once aligned—”

  A loud noise interrupted him.

  The circur door split open down the middle with a hiss and began to slide away, vanishing into the wall.

  “—the door opens,” the professor finished smugly.

  The man grinned. “You’re damn good, Prof.”

  “I know,” he replied smugly.

  The thief stepped inside.

  Only to halt, his boots suddenly refusing to move any farther.

  The room was vast, vaulted like a temple hall, but completely empty. There were no gold bars. No money. No secret artifacts. Just cold, empty silence.

  Except…

  One thing.

  At the very center of the chamber, perfectly pced on the ground, was a single card.

  The man approached slowly, warily, as if expecting some trick. He bent down and picked it up.

  It was a pying card. Standard size. Worn at the corners.

  And on it, in a looping, almost zy scrawl:

  [I was here first. Sorry.]

  At the bottom, a name signed in ink so dark it had bled slightly into the paper:

  [—Kaito Karma]

  The man stared at it for a long moment.

  Then, softly, he said, “Well shit.”

  And then the Vision came to an end as the darkness took over once again.***

  The night was quiet but heavy, the kind of stillness that seemed to press down on everything like a weight. It had been a while since the Vision concluded. Kyle was at the dining table, flipping through a worn book on the medicinal properties of herbs, the flickering mp light casting shadows that danced across the pages. His mind was focused, but the fatigue of the day tugged at his concentration.

  The sound shattered the silence, a cacophony of hooves pounding against the dirt, muffled voices barking commands, and, worst of all, the chilling cries and moans of despair. Kyle’s hand froze mid-turn of a page. His body tensed as his ears confirmed what he had feared.

  The Sve Caravan had arrived.

  Cragmere’s location on the kingdom’s main route to the border meant it often served as a rest stop for the capital's caravans, and this one was no exception. The cries outside were unmistakable: the desperate voices of those shackled and broken, dragged toward a life of servitude, or worse.

  Kyle gnced toward his mother as she stepped out of the bathroom, her long gown flowing gracefully as she adjusted her damp hair. She paused at the sound, her expression remaining stoic, but her eyes betrayed a shadow of sadness that Kyle didn’t miss.

  Without a word, she turned and disappeared into her room.

  She felt bad for the sves, but this reaction didn’t come because of their misery, and Kyle knew this.

  He sighed heavily, pushing his chair back and grabbing his coat. The book y forgotten on the table as he stepped out into the cold night air.

  Torches bobbed in the distance, their light creating flickering shadows against the houses of the vilge. As Kyle approached, the source of the commotion became clear. A long line of people shuffled through the main road, their wrists bound with heavy iron chains, linking them together in a grim procession.

  The sves.

  Kyle’s jaw tightened as he moved closer, standing in the shadows just outside the square. The sight was familiar. Yet, it never got easier to see.

  At the front of the caravan rode a man on a tall bck stallion. Rowan.

  Even from a distance, Kyle recognized the towering figure cloaked in a heavy fur mantle, his sharp features illuminated by the torchlight. Rowan was infamous in these parts, a man whose name was synonymous with cruelty. He surveyed the chained line with cold indifference, as though the people before him were nothing more than livestock.

  Kyle gnced around. The vilgers were watching, too, most from the safety of their homes. Some peered through cracked doors; others stood in small clusters, whispering amongst themselves. It was an unspoken rule in Cragmere, stay out of the caravan’s way.

  Kyle knitted his eyebrows as he went back to his home.

  The night air seemed colder as Kyle approached the door to his home. He tried to push the thoughts swirling in his head aside, but they clung to him like a shadow. Just as his hand brushed the doorknob, a voice cut through the din of the distant caravan.

  "Kid."

  Kyle clicked his tongue, his jaw tightening as he turned to see Rowan dismounting his horse. The man sauntered toward him, a cocky grin pstered across his face, the torches from the caravan casting his shadow long and imposing.

  “Long time no see, huh?” Rowan said, his tone as casual as if they were old friends.

  Kyle forced a tight smile. “Yeah, I can’t believe it’s already been a month.”

  “How’s your mother?” Rowan asked, his grin widening in a way that made Kyle’s stomach twist.

  “She’s fine,” Kyle replied, his voice clipped.

  “Good,” Rowan said, his tone almost mockingly pleasant. “Then let’s go meet her, shall we? My Eclipsing is getting bad.”

  Kyle swallowed the sharp retort rising in his throat and nodded. He turned and headed for the door, frustration burning in his chest as Rowan followed close behind. There was nothing he could say or do. Rowan wasn’t just any man; he was a retainer of the Barony. Challenging him would bring ruin to both Kyle and his mother.

  Opening the door, Kyle’s eyes nded on his mother, seated calmly in the wooden chair by the hearth. She was dressed in a short, revealing dress, different from the one she had worn earlier. She met his gaze briefly before gncing past him to Rowan, who stepped in with his ever-present smirk.

  “Kyle,” his mother said softly, her voice carrying a hint of resignation, “I think you should take a walk outside.”

  Clenching his fists at his sides, Kyle didn’t argue. He nodded stiffly, his eyes flicking between Rowan’s smug face and his mother’s calm, unreadable expression.

  He bit the inside of his cheek, his frustration bubbling just under the surface as he stepped out into the chilly night air. The door creaked shut behind him, the muffled sound of Rowan’s voice following as the man made himself comfortable inside their home.

  The cool wind nipped at Kyle’s face as he trudged down the dirt path, the faint glow of the Sve Caravan’s torches still visible from the main road. The distant clinking of chains and occasional shouts from the guards grated on his nerves, mixing with the boiling anger he couldn’t shake.

  'Why does she tolerate this?' he thought bitterly. 'Why do I?'

  Kyle found himself wandering toward the edge of the vilge, his steps aimless. He stopped near the old well, leaning against the stone rim as he stared out into the dark expanse of the forest. His hand instinctively found the hilt of his dagger, the cool metal grounding him.

  The image of Rowan’s smug smirk pyed in his mind, stoking his anger further. The man had no respect, no decency. But he was a retainer of the Barony, untouchable to people like Kyle and his mother. Any action against him would bring consequences they couldn’t afford.

  With no direction in his mind, he instinctively ended up near Alex’s house, and what he saw there made him freeze.

  Alex and the scarred Adventurer from earlier were standing in front of each other, with their swords equipped.

  They were about to fight?