The man was going to draw his blade in four seconds.
Cael knew because he'd been watching him for the past ten minutes. The way his thumb kept brushing the hilt. The slight shift of weight to his left foot. The way he stopped blinking when he looked at the merchant's lockbox.
Three seconds.
Cael didn't move. He sat slouched against the market pillar, hood up, a half-eaten skewer balanced between two fingers like he had nowhere to be and nothing to care about. Around him, Duskwall Market churned — vendors shouting, children weaving between legs, the smell of roasted grain and old iron hanging in the air.
Two seconds.
The merchant laughed at something his customer said. Loud. Unaware.
One.
The blade came out.
Cael was already moving — not toward the thief, but sideways, into the path of a broad-shouldered cargo hauler crossing behind the merchant's stall. He bumped him hard. The hauler stumbled forward, crashing into the merchant's display table. Wood cracked. Jars shattered. The merchant spun around shouting.
The thief froze.
In the chaos, three market guards snapped their heads toward the noise.
The thief looked at the guards. Looked at his drawn blade. Looked at the crowd now watching.
He put the blade away and walked.
Cael straightened his hood and kept moving in the opposite direction, finishing his skewer.
He didn't do it for the merchant. He'd never spoken to the man in his life. He did it because the thief worked for Gorra's crew, and Gorra's crew operated on this block, and if that merchant got robbed then Gorra would expand his route, and if Gorra expanded his route he'd eventually reach the eastern alley where Cael kept his things.
Simple.
Everything was simple if you watched long enough.
---
He was three streets from home when they found him.
Two men. Clean boots, which meant they weren't from this district. The taller one had the posture of someone used to being obeyed. The shorter one kept his hands loose at his sides — a fighter's habit.
Cael clocked all of it in the time it took them to close the gap.
"Cael of no house." The tall one said it like he was reading off a list. "Null registration. Age seventeen. Currently residing in Duskwall's eastern quarter."
"You have the wrong person," Cael said.
"We have the right file."
"Then your file's wrong."
The tall man almost smiled. "The Ironward Order is recruiting. We have a quota to fill by sundown. You've been selected."
Cael looked at him. Then at the fighter beside him. Then back.
"Selected," he repeated.
"Chosen. Picked. However you'd like to hear it."
"I'd like to hear why a Knight Order is recruiting Nulls from a slum market."
Silence. The tall man's expression didn't change, but something shifted behind his eyes. A small recalculation.
"The Order accepts all candidates," he said. "Regardless of Sequence status."
That was a lie. Every order required Sequence registration. It was law. The fact that they were here, talking to him specifically, meant one of two things — either the quota was so badly underfilled that they'd scraped down to Nulls, or this particular mission needed bodies that nobody would miss.
Cael was fairly certain it was the second one.
He considered walking away. It would have been the smarter move.
But they'd come to him specifically. They had a file on him. Someone, somewhere, had looked at a Null registered kid from Duskwall and written his name down on a list. That didn't happen by accident.
He wanted to know why.
"When do we leave?" Cael asked.
---
The Ironward staging hall smelled like boot oil and anxiety.
Twelve recruits stood in uneven rows when Cael arrived. He took his place at the back and spent the next seven minutes cataloguing them.
Four were clearly fighters — wide stance, callused knuckles, the kind of stillness that came from training. Three were young, probably sixteen, probably here because someone in their family owed a debt. Two were watching everyone else the same way Cael was watching them, which made them interesting. One was shaking.
And one — a lean, sharp-eyed young man near the front — had the faint sequence-mark of the Ashwalker line barely visible at his collar. Seventh rank. The lowest. But still a registered Sequence.
So not all Nulls. Interesting.
The tall man from the market walked in followed by a woman in grey officer's armor. She had a scar that ran from her left ear to her jaw and the expression of someone who had stopped being impressed by anything a long time ago.
"I'm Commander Vess," she said. "You've been selected for a forward survey mission into the Greyveil Ruins. You'll enter, locate and retrieve a marked container, and return. Three days. Standard hazard rations provided."
Someone near the front raised a hand. "What's in the container?"
"Above your clearance."
"What are the ruins?"
"Old. Abandoned. Partially mapped."
"What kind of partial—"
"The kind," Vess said, "where the last three survey teams didn't come back."
The hall went quiet.
Cael looked at the twelve faces around him. Watched the fear move through them like a wave.
He was already counting.
Twelve recruits. Three failed teams before them. A commander who volunteered no information and expected no questions. A mission with no stated reward.
Somebody needed something retrieved badly enough to keep sending people. But not badly enough to send anyone valuable.
He looked at the shaking recruit. Then at the three who were probably here for family debt.
Four of them wouldn't make it back. Maybe five.
He was fairly sure he wasn't one of them.
Fairly.
The thing in the back of his mind — the thing that had lived there since he was nine years old, the thing with no name — stirred faintly. Like something turning over in dark water.
*Interesting,* it said. It said very little. But when it spoke, Cael listened.
He looked at Commander Vess.
She was watching him back.
Not the way she watched the others. Something more deliberate. Like she already knew exactly where he'd be standing.
Cael kept his face empty.
*Three failed teams,* he thought. *And they came to me specifically.*
He'd been wrong. This wasn't just a mission that needed bodies.
This was a mission that needed *him.*
He just had to figure out why before it killed him.