The steady scrape of pen on paper filled the office, broken only occasionally by the ‘tap, tap, tap’ of fingers on wood as Alarion struggled to remain focused. He had been at it for hours—reviewing the last of the applicants, notarizing supply requests, and approving assignments—all the mundane tasks of leadership that demanded his attention, but little thought.

  Stacks of parchment were arranged in precarious towers across his desk, divided into neat, labeled categories courtesy of Bergman and Kali. They’d learned quickly that if they wanted him to scale the mountain of paperwork, it was best to give him hills instead. He did a bit each day, signing his name so often that the elegant signature the Ordinates had drilled into him had become little more than a shooting star scrawled onto each page.

  Alarion set down the pen and rubbed at his temples. He’d slept poorly, even after Nessa had finally drifted off. She seemed to be doing better after their talk, but he remained wary of any relapse. So much so that he’d left ZEKE to keep her company. The machine couldn’t hear her, but he could ‘see’ her after a fashion with his skills, allowing a modicum of communication through body language and notes written by Kotone.

  It was a poor substitute for spending time with her himself, but there were simply not enough hours in the day. No matter how much guilt he felt.

  He knew he wasn’t responsible for her complicated existence; he’d certainly never intended to create her. But knowing the truth and believing it were two very different things—the latter much harder when faced with such despair.

  I think I want to go.

  The door opened without a knock, jolting Alarion out of his dark reverie as Bergman entered, a small satchel at his side.

  “I need to t-talk to you,” Bergman said, without preamble.

  “Good morning to you too,” Alarion replied with a wry smile.

  Bergman tilted his head in confusion, “I-It is nearly m-midday.”

  Alarion frowned, fished into his pocket, and then glared at the watch he produced as if it had done him wrong. “So it is. I need to be with Kali shortly. Can this wait?”

  “No.” Bergman wasn’t even looking at him as he spoke, his focus instead on the doorframe, or more likely the magical inscription surrounding it. Curious, Alarion dipped into his [Unraveller’s Sense] and watched as Bergman reinforced the existing wards with his own mana. The [Sympathetic Wordsmith] had rebuilt them from scratch in the weeks since their arrival, out of an abundance of caution. If he still didn’t trust them, it meant the conversation was serious.

  With nothing to do but wait, Alarion returned to his task, clearing halfway through a pile of requisitions before Bergman finally spoke. “W-we have a problem.”

  “I gathered,” said Alarion. “Is it the Ordinate?”

  Bergman shook his head, “The request went through without issue; they’ll be here by the end of the month.”

  That was a relief. Kali had held up his end of their plan—whether by bribery, threats, or blackmail, Alarion neither knew nor wanted to know. The last remaining sticking point had been the transfer request of their ‘volunteer’. But if that wasn’t the problem…

  “Did the Watch come looking for the book?” Alarion suggested.

  “T-The book?” Bergman asked, his eyes widening with realization. “W-wait, you kept one?! One of the journals from Shae-Yomag?”

  “You did not seem like the sort to lose count,” Alarion replied. “They only asked for one hundred and ninety-six, so I gave them that many.”

  The young man laughed. “I didn’t think you… why are you only telling me now?”

  “I did not want to admit to violating the Articles of War until I was sure you had not miscounted,” Alarion said, referring to the Vitrian’s labyrinthine military legal code. “When you did not ask, I started making hints.”

  Bergman wracked his brain for a few seconds before groaning, “Is that why you’ve been insisting that Nessa found a book I might like?”

  “Mm.”

  “I t-thought you meant a trashy…” Bergman buried his face in his hands, rubbing at his eyes as he let out a heavy sigh. “W-We are bad at this. We need a code w-word or something, going forward. Is it here?”

  “Kotone has it.”

  “K-Keep it stored. We can swap it to my spatial storage the next time we d-deploy.”

  Alarion nodded, then asked the question that had been simmering at the back of his mind for months, “Why did you even want it?”

  Bergman answered the question with one of his own. “D-Did you look into Shae-Yomag? Try and find what h-happened there?”

  “No,” Alarion admitted. “More the Watch’s job than ours.”

  “The Watch,” Bergman scoffed. “T-They did not ask me any questions about Shae-Yomag, only the t-tunnels where we found the Bones. When I pressed them, they claimed it was e-evacuated by the Auxilia. I went l-looking and couldn’t find a t-thing about it.”

  “Evacuation reports are not exactly public.”

  “N-No! About Shae-Yomag!” the young man corrected. “There are no mentions of it in t-the reporting about us, and it is redacted in all the after-action r-reports. It was marked on our grid maps, as those are pre-war, b-but it isn’t on a single map published since the annexation. I looked at our f-family library and came up empty, then had a r-record search done of our ledgers. We haven’t done business with them in at least the last century.”

  “It was a small village,” Alarion pointed out.

  “A-Alarion, my family does business everywhere and we keep f-fastidious records. If one of our s-staff paid to spend the night, we would have a r-record that my family auditor could have sniffed out with a spell. It is like it n-never existed. And it doesn’t anymore!”

  Alarion frowned. “What do you mean it doesn’t anymore?”

  Bergman blushed and looked away, realizing that he might have said too much.

  “Ivor.”

  “I c-couldn’t let it go. I bribed my way back into the e-exclusion zone,” he winced as he caught the sharp look on Alarion’s face. Conspiracy to falsify an appraisal or withholding evidence in a military investigation were both criminal offenses; punishable by fines, extension of service, or imprisonment. Violating an exclusion zone during martial law was punishable by death. “It is g-gone.”

  “The Auxilia razed the village?”

  “N-No. It is gone. As if it were never there. No tunnels, no buildings. They grew out new trees, then poisoned the whole area with blight.”

  Alarion sat with the words for a while, thumb brushing the rough edge of early afternoon stubble on the bottom of his chin. There was only one reasonable conclusion, only one they in Bergman’s telling, but Alarion was loath to voice it. “The Vitrians knew?”

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “More than that,” Bergman’s voice was low, as if afraid speaking the words brought them to life. “I think they helped. Some of them, at least. Maybe even just one House. The attack led to a new Governor and a new Imperator; they certainly aren’t above u-using us to play politics.”

  For the Empire… probably not. For the House of Hunger? Uncertainty is opportunity.

  Elena’s words rang in Alarion’s mind. She’d said them the night she died, already scheming on how best to use the information gleaned from his True Prophecy for her own ends rather than the Vitrians as a whole. The Imperator had killed her household and blamed the Ashadi; surely, other factions would be willing to conspire with the Ashadi to gain advantage. Especially if the cost was paid in provincial lives.

  Alarion’s next words were carefully measured and brimming with anger, “Do we think Williams is involved?”

  “I d-don’t think so. He didn’t send us to Shae-Yomag, and it was d-dumb luck that we managed to piece the scheme t-together when we did.”

  The young man relaxed as he nodded along with Bergman’s words. It was one thing to be angry at the nebulous evil of the Vitrians, but it was quite another to have an embodiment of that evil within arm’s reach. Dismembering the new Governor would not have gone well for him.

  “I am n-not even sure I’m right,” Bergman admitted. “There could be other-“

  “Stop,” Alarion scolded. Bergman had a few bad habits, but chief among them was his tendency to second-guess himself. “The question is who is behind it, not if. Though…” he frowned slightly. “This is not even why you are here, is it?”

  Bergman winced as he realized just how far afield they’d gone. Rather than answer, he reached into the satchel at his side and produced a newspaper, which he promptly handed to Alarion. “Bottom left column.”

  Alarion scanned the copy of The Ashad Herald briefly, then frowned. “Lower than expected economic growth?”

  “W-what? No. Bottom left.”

  “Could you just point to the-“ The words caught in Alarion’s throat as he spotted the headline.

  A Second Gifted Ashadi

  Eastern Military District, Ashad Province — The embattled township of Arenfel erupted in chaos last week when a provincial girl, believed to be no older than nine, was assessed with an Aptitude of 209.

  Though the crowd—composed mainly of refugees fleeing the tainted areas of eastern Ashad—was initially jubilant at the news of another Ashadi talent, the mood soured quickly when local forces took the girl into custody. A riot erupted and remains ongoing as of this writing, resulting in at least thirty-nine dead and hundreds wounded, including three Vitrians.

  Newly appointed Governor Williams, of the House of Longing, released the following statement:

  “The ongoing disturbance in Arenfel is unacceptable, especially in these trying times. Every Vitrian guardsman tasked with maintaining civic order is a guardsman taken away from the frontlines of the subjugation.

  I understand the concerns of local officials, but I will remind them that the child is not even eligible for induction, as per the standard set in Two-Thirty-Eight V. The House of Decay. Local forces took the family into custody not for induction, but for their own protection.”

  Official records obtained from the Vitrian Institute for System Information and Technology (VISIT) indicate that this assessment marks only the third Awakening of a Gifted Ashadi. Notably, however, it is the second such Awakening in as many years, sparking excitement in the province and concern from Vitrian officials.

  Dr. Ellion Marr, VISIT’s senior continental researcher, expressed both:

  “Obviously, it is always exciting for me to see another high Aptitude individual born under imperial rule, especially in the provinces. Culture, ideology, and even language all serve to shape the System. When dealing with extreme outliers, these differences compound, giving us a potential glimpse into the System’s inner workings, to say nothing of the boon such a citizen could be to the Empire.

  At the same time, caution may be warranted. My team has been steadily monitoring the information coming out from Ashad since the incident, and while we remain skeptical of this supposed Grand Awakening-“ [Continued on A6]

  “I am not sure what I am supposed to be seeing here,” Alarion said after reading it through a second time. “Riots are nothing new. Not even bloody ones.”

  “H-Have you heard of the ‘Grand Awakening’?”

  Alarion felt his stomach twist at the words, but shook his head.

  “Neither had I, but I had a guess of what it might be, from c-context. I asked Lilith over d-dinner and she looked at me like I was an idiot.”

  “Dinner?” Alarion raised an eyebrow.

  “T-They have been censoring it,” Bergman continued, as though Alarion had not said a word. “But the mention I showed you s-slipped through, since it was reprinted from a Vitrian paper.”

  Four more papers hit Alarion’s desk, though this time he had no trouble finding the relevant passages.

  They were all headline news.

  Abnormal Awakenings Surge Among Refugees in Ashad-Vitri

  Assessors Baffled by Third Straight Week by Low Aptitude Awakenings

  The Grand Awakening: What Can Be Done?

  Alarion pressed his face into his hands and muttered a few quiet obscenities.

  “My t-thoughs exactly.”

  “How sure are you?”

  “P-Pretty sure. It started two weeks after you took t-the skill,” Bergman answered, effortlessly dashing Alarion’s remaining hopes. “Or that is w-when they noticed it, I should say.”

  It seemed that [Shared Burden] was slightly more powerful than expected.

  “This is absurd,” Alarion protested, pulling up the skill’s description:

  “U-Unique skills usually are,” Bergman noted before Alarion read it aloud.

  “This skill bolsters the Aptitude of allies with whom the user shares a positive sympathetic bond. The amount bolstered will increase along with the strength of the sympathetic bond. The amount bolstered will decrease with distance. The amount bolstered increases with levels in this skill. The amount bolstered is inversely proportional to the ally’s existing Aptitude, and their total bolstered Aptitude will never exceed that of the user. The user may actively sever the bolstering effect for any individual or group.”

  “It c-could stand to be a little more specific,” Bergman conceded.

  “We are over a hundred miles from the city!” Alarion complained. “And I do not have a bond with-“

  “T-They worship you,” Bergman cut him off. “Some even literally. And you were willing to die to protect them. T-The bond is strong.”

  Alarion met his friend’s eyes. “You knew this would happen.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  “I s-suspected it might.” He lifted his hands in contrition as Alarion sat forward in his seat, quickly adding, “B-But not to this extent! I expected a few Aptitude points, at most. Just a small benefit for our people.”

  “And how strong is it actually?”

  “H-Hard to tell. VISIT or the Assessors will be able to narrow it down, but they aren’t telling the public.” Alarion clearly wasn’t satisfied with the answer, leading Bergman to add, “I have been keeping track of the sergeant’s level-ups from training you. His Aptitude is 136, but his attribute gains track closer to 180. Mine have been closer to 190, from a base of 150.”

  “So, it could be a hundred points or more for someone with low Aptitude.”

  “R-Reduced for distance,” Ivor reminded him.

  “Do you want me to hit you?” asked Alarion, with a heavy sigh. “At least now I know why the skill has been growing so steadily these last few weeks.”

  More Awakened Ashadi seemed like a good thing, perhaps it even was, but it came with all manner of pitfalls. It pushed more innocents toward the Auxilia, stripping them of temporary freedom in exchange for that power. Worse, it frightened the Vitrians, which would no doubt inflame the already tense occupation, while at the same time emboldening rebellious groups, such as the Bones.

  Ashad was already a powder keg, and here he was throwing matches at it.

  And of course, there were the very personal concerns.

  “Do they have any idea it is us?”

  “You,” Bergman corrected with a joking smile. “N-No, they would be here if they did. The Awakenings are centered in Ashad-Vitri, probably among those who saw your speech or spread the message, but so are the refugees. It will be hard to put two and two together, especially with the Bones taking credit.”

  “They did what?”

  “That is where the name comes from. They have been preaching of a ‘Great Ashadi Awakening’ from the very moment the rumors started to spread.”

  Alarion scowled, but couldn’t deny the savviness of the move. The Vitrians were censoring all information on the topic, effectively denying that it was even happening. By positioning themselves as the cause, the Bones of Ashad took credit in a way that the Vitrians could not even refute. “Smart.”

  “O-Opportunistic. But a lucky break for keeping us hidden,” Bergman hesitated before asking. “Are you going to sever the effect?”

  It was a question he’d been pondering well before Bergman asked it. Truth told, that had been his immediate impulse; one driven by fear. But so much of the damage had already been done. The Vitrians would remain wary, even if the ‘Grand Awakening’ stopped overnight. If anything, it would give them a narrower pool of subjects to trace back to him. Meanwhile, the Bones would find some new way to capitalize on the absence, no doubt a claim that Vitrians had somehow interfered.

  And then there were the Ashadi themselves. Induction would place many of them at risk, as would war or rebellion. But the unawakened were hardly safe. He’d have been dead several times over if he were mundane. He’d have died or worse to the thing Eloim if his mother had lacked the power.

  Whatever risks or burdens came with it, the System carried agency in its arms. It felt wrong, immoral, to strip that from so many.

  “No,” Alarion said, keeping his motivations to himself. He wasn’t sure if Bergman would agree with him or try to talk him out of it. He wanted neither. “I would not call the break quite so lucky for you, though.”

  “Hmm?”

  “If this Ordinate isn’t an idiot, they are going to want to renegotiate.”