Jenna Lucas woke to the sound of rain against glass. She lay still for a moment, watching the grey morning light seep through the curtains, her white hair catching the draft from the window and drifting across her pillow like scattered thread.
'I should close the window.' She signed
Knock. Knock.
She smiled before the second rap finished. Only one person knocked like that—hesitant, rhythmic, patient.
Jenna pulled on her robe and opened the door. Jay stood there in oversized slippers, hands clasped behind his back, trying and failing to look casual.
"Jayyy!!" she said, stretching his name until he squirmed. "What are you doing here?"
"I miss Big Bro," he whined, dropping the act
immediately.
"Okay, okay."
He kept whining, the pitch climbing.
"Okay, stop that!" She blew her cheeks out,
mock-frowning. "We can go once we finish shopping at the market, and you need a bath! You smell like yesterday's mud." She chucked softly.
JENNA LUCAS
We left an hour later. I'd cleaned the house while Jay soaked in the tub, singing off-key songs he'd learned from the TV, we ate hot rice and pickled vegetables—nothing fancy, but enough to keep the rain from sinking into
our bones.
The streets of Alestria were wrong that morning- Not just wet, Quiet. Even the merchants who normally braved any weather had shuttered early or never opened at all. Our footsteps echoed where they should've been swallowed by cart wheels and haggling.
Jay pulled his raincoat tighter. He'd insisted on wearing it despite the house being a ten-minute walk. Looking cool, he'd say. I didn't
argue. At nine, you pick your battles.
We ducked into Hal's shop, and Jay immediately shook himself like a dog, droplets spraying the welcome mat, waving his head up and down like a rock star artist or someone filing the vibe of the music.
"Jay."
"What? It's raining. "
I left him to his performance and approached the counter.
Hal who my took care of me when I was young, he was friends with my parents when I was young. He stood behind it, sorting dried herbs into paper parcels. Seventy-two years old, though he'd insisted he was "early
seventies" for the last three years- His green eyes still held their mischief, and his blonde hair stubbornly refusing to surrender to the grey gave him a perpetual air of someone interrupted mid-joke.
But today, the joke didn't reach his face.
"Good morning, Hal."
"Ah… Jenna dear," His smile came too fast, too wide. "Good morning to you too, I do hope the weather isn't giving you any
trouble."
"Most of my customers haven't been able to reach out," he continued, tying a bundle with fingers that trembled slightly. "Due to this distance and rotten weather," He muttered something under his breath about the rain's parentage.
I glanced around. The shop was half-full—unusual for a storm day. "Looks like you've got plenty here."
"The regulars, they live close enough." He wouldn't meet my eyes. "Pay no mind to it, Hal. I'm sure you'll get more customers;
the day is still young, right?"
"Honestly," I pressed, "it's you I'm worried
about. You always work so hard."
"It's okay, Kiddo," He shrugged waving a hand. "You don't have to worry about me. You know I close the shop early and
turn in quite early as well, after taking my medications, of course."
'Kiddo, Umhh?' He only used that when he wanted distance, I studied him- The sandbags beneath his eyes, blushed purple against papery skin, the slight tremor in his left hand he'd tucked against his apron, the way he called me Kiddo —a name from my childhood, when I was leaving with him.
He'd never called me that casually. Only when he was hiding something, trying to slip back into a role where I was too young to notice adults crack.
"Sorry, Old Timer." puffing a cheek, letting my voice harden. "Your eye bags gave you away. Are you seriously trying to hide something from me?"
His fingers stilled on the twine. "Ahh... Ah, no." He turned to check another customer's goods—a woman buying salt, watching us
with open curiosity. "Oh, how's Grey doing?" deflection, obvious as a glass in sunlight.
"He's doing alright," I said, softening despite my temperament. "He'd be discharged soon."
"Umm?
that's great to hear." Hal's shoulders dropped a fraction. "Honestly, I was worried
about the boy, already working at the labyrinth."
His face shifted, something dark moving behind the green eyes, not anger but fear.
"Kids his age should be in school," he said, voice dropping. "Studying Class, Ekrin, whatever the little rascals of this day and age do. Not risking their necks for coin that can barely cover rent."
I touched his hand where it rested on the counter. "Oh well. He is his father's son."
That pulled a real laugh from him, rusty but genuine. "God help us all." Okay, I thought.
Ingredients! Focus, I grabbed a shopping cart from the corner. "Jay, stay with Grandpa Hal. Don't touch anything."
"Grandpa Hal!!"
Jay's shout came simultaneous with my instruction, the boy already halfway around the counter. Hal's face transformed—wrinkles faded as he closed his eyes and grinned, cheeks flushing red.
"Jay, my boy, you are getting cuter every day I see, Becoming a looker like yours truly. Come to Grandpa—"
The door bashed open, like something being detonated.
Wood splinters sprayed across the floor. Two figures filled the doorway, black hooded coats dripping rainwater, faces lost in shadow. Between one breath and the next, they held weapons that hadn't existed seconds before.
[Core Artifacts: Awakened][Type: Projectile]
[Name: None; rank too Low]
They looked Low-graded, as if that mattered when the barrels pointed at your chest.
"Get on the ground!"
The taller one swept left, scanning for threats, while his partner stalked toward the counter, towards Hal and Jay. Hal's grin vanished. He turned to Jay, and I watched him force his face into the old mask—eyes
squeezed shut, everything-is-fine, nothing to see here.
But Jay had seen the door explode. Jay had seen the guns appear from nothing. And Jay, even at nine, understood that Grandpa's smiles could lie.
The second robber reached the counter with his mouth open, showing too many teeth. He smelled like wet wool and something metallic.
Meanwhile, the tall one found his problem.
A man near the spice rack on the other side of the store hadn't dropped, a hunter, his posture screamed—balanced and ready. His own Core Artifact materialized: shield and sword, standard issue, reliable.
"I won't let you harm these people!"
"Fool!" The tall robber didn't even look annoyed, resigned, almost. "You are the one going to get them killed!"
The civilians moved, scattering around like they had seen a ghost— in practiced desperate. They knew the math. Unranked caught between awakened didn't become casualties. They became mist.
The hunter charged sword high and shield forward, textbook, predictable- The robber vanished.
He side stepped- Almost leaving after image, blitzing around the hunter's guard using his momentum against him. The hunter's shield caught empty air as something hard slammed into his spine, I couldn't really tell what they were doing.
"You are to blame for what comes next!" The robber laughed, Ekrin blasts crackling from his fingertips, tearing holes in the floor, the walls, the shelves of dried herbs.
"Heyy! Heyy! Heyyy!!" The second robber's head whipped toward the chaos. "What's going on there? What the hell are you doing,
dammit?!!"
His partner was locked in it now, a dance of light and violence that wouldn't end cleanly or quickly. The robber at the counter cursed, spittle flying, and turned back to Hal.
"Crap! Crap!! Empty the counter, old man!"
Hal didn't move fast enough. The robber grabbed his apron, yanking him forward until they were eye-level, until Hal's feet barely touched the floor.
"Move it! We don't have all day! Don't make me hit you!!"
I was already moving. "Please—he's unwell, go easy on him, please—"
The robber's free arm swung. I saw it in fragments: the elbow bending. Then I was on the floor, shoulder screaming, the world tilted wrong.
I could barely hear him grumbling "Argh, I don't care. Why are things going this way? Shit, shit!"
I reached for Jay. Found him still standing by the counter, one small hand gripping the wall's edge, knuckles turning red.
Move! Run!! I tried to tell him. But my breath wasn't right, it was shaken.
JAY LUCAS
Mom hit the floor hard. I heard the air leave her, that whiff sound people make when something breaks inside.
I didn't look at her long. I couldn't. My eyes kept returning to Grandpa Hal, dangling from the robber's fist like a sack of grain, his
glasses askew, his green eyes open now and scared.
"Move it, old man!"
The words didn't matter. I'd heard worse from noble kids in the alleys behind the school, their fancy boots too clean for the mud they shoved my face into. Cold-eyed weakling, they'd called me, spineless, bluffer. I'd learned to stare back. To go still inside, to let my face go empty until they flinched first, until they found easier prey,
Big Bro taught me that, before he left for the labyrinth. Calm is a weapon, Jay!! Even when you're screaming inside.
So I went calm now. I watched the Ekrin blasts light up the shop's corners. I watched the hunter bleed. I watched Grandpa Hal's feet kick, searching for ground that wasn't there and I waited for the fear to work.
It always worked before, the mask, the emptiness. It made the noble kids nervous, made them wonder what I knew that they didn't, made them back away.
But the robber didn't back away, he turned, saw me watching.
"What are you staring at, kid?"
Mom's voice, thin and shaking: "I'm sorry; he didn't mean to stare—"
He threw her, Again. She slid into a display of ceramic jars, something breaking, and
something sharp.
I didn't blink.
My hands weren't shaking. I checked, abstractly, the way Big Bro taught me to inventory my body before a fight. Fingers steady. Breathe even. Heartbeat... fast, but hidden. Good. I'm calm. I'm fine. This is working. Then something wet touched my upper lip. I reached up, touched my face, Tears?
My fingers came back wet. I stared at them, confused, because my hands weren't shaking and my breath was even and I was calm, I'm fine, I'm…
Another tear fell, then another, they rolled down my cheeks, hot and traitorous, while my face stayed empty, while my eyes stayed cold, while I stood there like a statue that wept…
Pathetic!!
The word came from somewhere deep; somewhere the noble kids had carved out with their boots and their laughter.
Utterly… pathetic, Grandpa Hal made a sound, not words, just... a sound. The robber shook him, cursing, demanding numbers I knew he didn't have. Mom pushed herself up, blood on her forehead, and started crawling toward me.
No. Stop. Mom, hurry, Gramps, bi... Big Bro's—
But Big Bro wasn't here. Big Bro was in the hospital, somewhere that wasn't this shop with its smell of rain carrying the metallic scent of blood and terror.
And I was crying.
I was nine years old and I was crying while a man hurt my family, and my calmness was a lie, a bluff that nobody believed anymore, a costume that fit too well because I'd worn it so long I'd forgotten what was underneath.
My hand still gripped the wall. I loosened my fingers, felt the plaster crumble under my nails.
This can't continue.
The thought didn't feel heroic. It felt tired. The tiredness of waking up scared and going to bed scared and pretending in between that the fear was a choice.
I have to change.
Not because I was brave. Not because I was special, because I'd endured enough. Because Mom was bleeding and Grandpa Hal was turning blue and the hunter who was struggling with the other robber, because somewhere under the mask, under the cold eyes and the empty face, there had to be something that wasn't pathetic, something that could do more than watch and wait and bluff.
I looked at my hands, small, trembling now, finally, the lie cracking open.
It's about time this wolf learned to bite.
I'm not talking of growing fangs in an instant. Not yet, I wouldn't give myself that much credit, I wasn't so foolish to think tears made
me strong, or that wanting change meant deserving it.
But I was done being a statue that wept. I took a step forward.