The second attack came twenty minutes later.

They had crossed into what Finn thought had once been Camberwell, though the Integration had rewritten the geography so thoroughly that street names had become suggestions rather than facts.

An entire terrace of Victorian houses had been pulled apart by Ashwood roots, their facades split open like dollhouses, wallpaper and furniture exposed to the sky.

A child’s bedroom on the second floor of one, the wall sheared away, a mobile of paper stars still turning in the breeze above an empty cot.

Finn looked away.

The monsters came from a side alley. Three of them, this time. They moved in a loose pack, low and fast, their backward-jointed limbs eating up the distance.

[Rift Stalker — lvl 4]

[Rift Stalker — lvl 6]

[Rift Stalker — lvl 5]

"Starter mobs," Finn muttered, sliding his longsword free in the same motion. "Nyx, take the two on the left. I’ve got the—"

Vesperine stopped.

She did not draw a weapon. She did not adopt a fighting stance. She turned, very slowly, and looked at the three Rift Stalkers bearing down on them with the expression of a woman who had just noticed something on the sole of her shoe.

Then she raised one hand.

The air split.

There was no incantation. No gesture beyond that single, languid motion. Her fingers opened, palm outward, and the temperature dropped so sharply that Finn’s next breath crystallised in front of his face.

Frost raced up the windows of the buildings on either side like white veins. The puddles on the road went opaque in an instant.

And from Vesperine’s palm, a lance of ice erupted.

It was as long as Finn was tall, perfectly smooth, tapered to a point so fine it seemed to vanish into geometry. It crossed the distance to the lead Stalker in the time it took Finn to blink and punched through its skull with a sound like a hammer hitting porcelain.

The Stalker’s momentum carried it forward another two steps. Then the ice expanded. Branches of frost erupted outward from the point of impact, racing through the creature’s body, splitting through its limbs, locking its joints, crystallising its blood.

In less than a second the thing was a statue, frozen mid-stride, jaws still open, one clawed foot lifted off the ground.

Then it shattered.

It came apart in a cascade of frozen shards that scattered across the road like thrown glass, tinkling against the tarmac.

[ENTITY DEFEATED: Rift Stalker — lvl 5]

[Experience Gained.]

[Experience Gained (Bond Share) - Vesperine Mor’venth]

[LEVEL UP!] - Vesperine Mor’venth

The other two Stalkers skidded to a halt. Their coal-black eyes went wide, the sideways jaws pulling open in what Finn could only describe as animal terror. One of them made a sound, a high thin whine that had nothing predatory left in it.

Vesperine looked at them.

She lowered her hand.

The frost on the road crept forward, ice blooming across the tarmac in spiralling patterns. It reached the nearest Stalker’s front paw and climbed. The creature tried to pull away. It couldn’t. The ice was already at its foreleg, its shoulder, and then—

[ENTITY DEFEATED: Rift Stalker — lvl 6]

The third one bolted.

It made it six metres.

A spear of ice rose from the road itself, erupting from the frozen surface at an angle, and caught the fleeing Stalker through the chest. The creature was lifted off its feet, pinned in the air for a single suspended moment, and then the ice did what the ice had done to the others.

[ENTITY DEFEATED: Rift Stalker — lvl 4]

Silence stretched between them..

The street glittered. Frost coated every surface within thirty feet of where Vesperine stood, catching the amber light in a way that made the whole road look like it had been dipped in crystal.

Vesperine lowered her arm. She examined her nails briefly, as though checking that the exertion hadn’t chipped one.

"Vermin," she said.

She resumed walking.

Finn stood in the middle of the frozen road with his longsword drawn and absolutely nothing to use it on. His breath still came out white. A piece of the first Stalker, a frozen segment of jaw, rolled across the pavement and bumped gently against his boot.

He stared at it.

Then he looked at Nyx.

Nyx was standing exactly where she had been when the fight started. Her daggers were half-drawn. Her crimson eyes were very, very wide.

For the first time since he had known her, she appeared to have nothing to say.

’Nyx.’

She didn’t respond.

’Nyx?’

’...A moment, Bearer. I require a moment.’

’She did.’

’And the System. The System, Bearer, dares to inform us that she was level one.’

’It does.’

’Mm. I see.’

The silence stretched between them.

’I do not, actually, see.’

They stood there for another moment, in the frost and the silence and the fading glitter of three annihilated monsters, while Vesperine’s retreating figure grew smaller down the road.

Finn sheathed his sword. There was no point in holding it. He might as well have been gripping a pool noodle for all the good it would have done in the last eight seconds.

’Her class is listed as question marks,’ Nyx said through the bond. ’Her stats are restricted. Her skills are restricted. Her titles are restricted. And she just killed three monsters without moving her feet.’

’The System said most data is inaccessible until the conditions are met.’

’Yes. Which raises a question.’

’Which is?’

’What are those conditions?’’

Finn didn’t have an answer for that.

He picked up his pace to catch up.

☼

The third attack was barely worth mentioning.

A lone Fractured Ghoul stumbled out of a pub, through what had once been the front window of a Wetherspoons, trailing a length of bar towel from one clawed hand.

Finn killed it himself. One clean strike, longsword through the throat, a downward twist to sever the spine. The whole thing took less than three seconds.

[ENTITY DEFEATED: Fractured Ghoul — lvl 8]

[Experience Gained.]

[Experience Gained (Bond Share).]

He flicked the blood off his blade and kept walking.

It felt good. Not the killing part of it, but the competence. The knowledge that the version of him who had crashed into a till counter a few days ago, bleeding out with a kitchen knife, would not recognise the person who had just done that.

’Showing off, Bearer?’

’I’m trying to be more efficient.’

’Mm. Of course. How practical of you.’

There was warmth in her voice. The old warmth, the one she wore underneath the teasing.

Vesperine glanced back. A single glance, brief enough to be dismissed as coincidence if he hadn’t been watching for it.

"You lead with the wrist," she said. "Against anything faster than a ghoul, you will lose the wrist, and a great deal else besides."

"Noted."

"I did not offer it as a note. I offered it as a correction. There is a difference."

"Is the difference that one of them comes with the expectation I say thank you?"

The faintest crack appeared in her composure. The corner of her mouth shifted by a degree, and the ember of her eyes caught a fraction more light.

Behind him, Nyx made a sound like a cat whose territory had just been complimented by an intruder. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

They continued east.