I felt her presence before I saw her.
A clean silence, slicing through my shadow like a blade through silk.
Then she appeared.
Velin.
She stood at the edge of the alley, framed by flickering torchlight, black robes flowing like spilled ink, silver-edged boots making no sound on the broken cobblestones. Her mask gleamed—a polished mirror reflecting everything around her, including me. Every breath I took, every flicker of movement, was echoed in that mask.
And yet, it felt like she was watching me, not the other way around.
"I expected more," she said, her voice as even and dispassionate as a judge passing sentence.
She moved before I could reply.
I blinked—
She was inside my Veilspace.
> *What the—*
"Don't bother," she whispered behind me, already anticipating my reflexive phase. "I'm immune to shadow-phase. Modified system signature."
She wasn't bluffing. I tried to disengage, slipping into the shadows. Nothing happened. My feet remained grounded.
I was locked.
A system override. No one should be able to do that.
Unless...
"You're a user."
She tilted her head. "I was. Now I'm something else."
We clashed.
Not like Kael. Not like Lira during her trials.
Velin didn't fight me. She broke me down. Every strike I launched was preempted. Every Veilstep was countered. My system notifications began to blur from the rapid clash:
> **\[Veilwalk Interrupted]**
> **\[Displacement Failed: Space Lock]**
> **\[Cooldown Override Detected]**
She understood the system on a deeper level than anyone I had ever met.
Eventually, she let me land a hit—a shallow cut across her arm. It didn't bleed.
"Synthetic flesh?" I asked, panting.
"No," she said. "System shell. It's... complicated."
And just like that, she disengaged.
She sheathed her twin daggers without taking her eyes off me.
"I'm not here to kill you," she said, voice no longer cold, but still carefully measured.
"Could've fooled me," I growled, still catching my breath.
"That was a test. Had to see how far the infection's spread."
"You mean the Shadowroot?"
"That's what you call it." She paused. "We had another name for it where I came from."
"Where *did* you come from?"
She was quiet for a moment.
Then she pulled off her mask.
Dark hair, cropped short. Pale skin that shimmered faintly with system runes, as if her veins carried code instead of blood. And her eyes—silver, glassy, mechanical yet painfully human.
"I came from the first wave," she said. "Before they patched it. Before they knew what you'd become."
The air between us felt heavier.
"You think the system hates you," she continued. "It doesn't. It fears you. And it should."
I frowned. "You talk like it's alive."
She tossed me something.
A shard.
It glowed with the same eerie hue as the Unbound Sigil I had taken from the Arcanum enforcer.
"What is this?"
"A key," she replied. "To the first Gate. A place buried below the root of the system. A fragment of the original world."
I studied the shard. It pulsed gently, like a heartbeat.
"What happens if I open it?"
"You either unlock the truth, or you trigger the failsafe that wipes you from existence."
"Comforting."
She finally smiled—thin and tired.
"When it opens, everything changes. And I'll be waiting."
She turned away.
I took a step after her.
"Velin."
She paused.
"Why me?"
She didn't turn back. Just whispered:
"Because you're not broken yet."
Then she vanished.
Not with a step.
Not with magic.
She simply... phased out.
Leaving me alone with the shard.
And the question echoing in my head:
**What am I becoming?**