Raphael Veda wasn't a good man.
He was a thief first, a gambler second when his thievery developed into an art, and a racketeer when money came into his hands.
Ill gotten gains begetting ill gotten gains.
But he knew that, had made his choices, had welcomed the outcomes. Life wasn't kind to him as a child, and he had grown up accordingly – clawing, fighting, biting tooth and nail towards what would give him power. Raw, indestructible power.
Before the Great Filter had arrived on earth, he had done many jobs but had found his stride, at thirty-two, when he learned how to count cards and master sleight of hand. When his gambling jobs amassed from money to power, at age forty-four, he built his own mercenary group. Picked men from his home slum, drunkards, abusers, convicts, and fellow gamblers and created an opportunity: murder for money. Veda and his group worked for a variety of nations' militaries, mafias, and the wealthy and affluent across the world – whoever was fine, whatever was fine too – as long as the money was good. As long as the money kept growing. Because money was power, and power could grant him everything. Fill the hole in his heart that had been there since birth.
And then the System arrived with its heavy authority, and life was pretty much the same. New capabilities, new power, new people to use. The machinery just got better.
The world's nations had emergency agreements by then – negotiations of peace, contracts of cooperation, the Great Filter's monsters a more pressing concern than old territorial disputes and resource distribution. But the underbelly didn't negotiate. There were still people who wanted other people dead and were willing to pay someone to make it happen quietly.
Veda was very good at quietly.
Much easier to eliminate key figures when the monsters provided cover. Much easier to explain a body when the gates were breaking open across the city and everyone was too busy surviving to ask careful questions.
And then his blessing had arrived four years into the Great Filter.
Then, a rather well-aged fifty-six year old, he had been wiping off his dagger, pulled from a recently deceased esper's heart a la Veda, using the dead soldier's shirt to clean his weapon, when an explosive had gone off. Betrayal by his own team. Veda had missed the calculation and lost his eyesight in the process, his future countenance would be marred with webbed scars.
He was unconscious, in the black, in the dark, when something in him had tolled like a heavy bell and his heart clattered deeply in his chest and he woke up with a gasp – alone in a white hospital bed.
A god had arrived – echoed something through his ears.
Pitiful one, it called out, I shall grant you an opportunity. Redeem yourself.
And the blessing had appeared, bright and golden, across his field of vision:
< Call of the Arbiter >
A god has granted you a Blessing.
Judge or die.
Evaluations conducted: 0
He would never see again.
But he had been given something much better.
The ability to judge a soul.
Veda had used it on himself, first, alone in that hospital room. Placed his soul, an angry, dark grey orb, mana drifting off in thick waves like molasses on the left side of a golden scale. It plummeted to the floor. And then had placed something elseon the right.
The scale did not budge, did not move a singular millimeter, and Veda, had, for the first time, felt regret.
He cried.
He hadn't cried since he was eight years old. Didn't think he could – had assumed somewhere along the way that his aptitude for it had simply closed up, the way wounds closed up, leaving scar tissue where the softness used to be.
But that glimmering scale sat there in the space behind his ruined eyes and showed him what he was, and something broke open that he hadn't known was still alive.
It started small. A tightening in his chest that he didn't recognize at first. A pressure behind his eyes that had nothing to do with the blindness. And then his throat closed and his breath hitched and the first sound that came out of him was something he didn't have a name for – not quite a sob, not quite a groan, something unpracticed and stiff.
And then he was wailing.
Full, heaving, ugly sobs. The kind that took over the body entirely, that shook the shoulders and pulled at the stomach and left no room for dignity or composure. He couldn't stop it. He didn't try.
The nurses rushed in. The sound of feet and skilled concern meeting a blind middle-aged mercenary in a hospital bed weeping like a child, inconsolable, unable to explain why.
After that, Veda built Ratha.
Became a guild leader.
It was not a clean process. Nothing about him was clean. But the blessing gave him a framework he hadn't had before – a way to see what he couldn't see with his lack of vision, a way to build something that didn't depend on his own compromised judgment.
The scale became the foundation.
Every esper. Every guide. Every administrator, every support hire, every person who walked through Ratha's doors and wanted to stay. He placed them all. Quietly, privately, through one-way mirrors and briefing room windows.
Most souls landed on a mild grey. Workable. Functional. The side holding something else tipping just enough to make them useful.
Some he turned away. The scale told him clearly and he acted on it decisively and he didn't explain why. If the souls were as dark as his, well, that wasn't what he was looking for. Rejected.
And then – the ones who made Ratha what it became. Takumi Arten. Risa Agnato.
Rena Swift.
He had placed Rena's soul and watched it fluoresce nearly blindingly white – the lightest thing he'd seen since the blessing arrived, so pale it was almost luminous. A soul full of goodness. A soul that considered others. And then, the right side – where he still wasn't sure what it was exactly he was placing – the scale leaned down with a hearty weight that made him sit back slightly in his chair. He had conducted five hundred and eighty evaluations by then. He had never seen it land like that.
He hired her immediately.
Arlen Cunning – soul lighter than what he expected for his mischievous personality. Also, consistent. The right side weighted down comfortably. The scale gave him something that looked like genuine curiosity rather than ambition, which was rarer than people thought.
Rian Thern – also white, pure, innocent. He brought him in and watched them all meet. Arlen and Rena and Rian all taking to each other like ducks to water. A good team with good personalities. Strong foundation.
And then, years later, Joel Herion was young, strong, and new as well – twenty-two years old, soul still bright and forming, still finding its shape, but the right side was already present and hefty and certain in a way that had nothing to do with age. The scale showing Veda something that would only get stronger. He elevated him to Commander. Let the others wonder about the math. The scale had never guided him wrong.
He built the guild around people like these. Around how far the right side of the scale tipped down. Ratha's reputation followed. Within the nation first, then beyond it – the guild that consistently cleared gates, consistently brought people home, consistently made the right calls under pressure. He still wasn't sure what the right side was. Integrity, character, ambition – he didn't know. But he had sensed that there was something in the weight of the right side he could trust – maybe his redemption would be there, around the corner, dark side of the moon.
He had tried to judge himself once more, a decade or so after his blessing had landed – wondering if the texture of his choices now had changed the reading. Ratha, the people, the many years of trying.
The blessing didn't allow it. One soul, one look. A snapshot, not a story. He accepted that too.
The calls at Ratha weren't his. The decisions usually weren't his either. They were Rena's and Rian's and Arlen's and Joel's. Takumi's and Risa's. He just made sure the right people were in the room. That was enough. It had to be.
And then – fourteen months ago – a C-rank guide came in for a probationary interview, recommended by the government and Risa's annual poaching.
Takumi conducted the interview. Asked Sera probing questions in a professional manner. Veda watched through the one-way mirror the way he always watched.
He placed her soul on the scale.
It dropped like a hammer.
The heaviest, darkest thing he had ever placed – pitch black and dense. Not dark grey like his own. Not the common grey of someone who had made hard calls and lived with them. Black. Completely, utterly black, the color of something wrong. Evil, possibly.
He had stood in rooms with monsters. He had placed the souls of people who had done terrible things under pressure and worse things before the pressure arrived.
Nothing had ever dropped like that.
He prepared the rejection. He didn't want someone like this – marked her as a no-hire.
He placed something on the other side out of habit.
The right plate slammed down.
Not tipped – slammed. The right side hitting the bottom with a force so strong – like that of a blackhole's pull – that it fell gracelessly, loudly, and with a clanging reverberation, to the floor. Gravity snatching it down with the strength of the sun. The pitch black soul rose like a feather – almost flew off the left side. Became nothing. The darkest thing he had ever weighed made weightless by what sat on the other side.
He stood at the one-way mirror.
On the other side of the glass, the guide answered Takumi's questions with professional warmth. Small. Black hair. Polite smile. Steady red eyes that moved across the room, giving away nothing. She sat performing normalcy like all interviewees do.
Veda looked at the scale.
He had conducted seven-hundred and ninety-three evaluations by then.
He had never seen that side that heavy.
Not on Rena. Not on anyone.
The god had given him a scale and told him to judge. He had judged. For fourteen years he had judged and the judgment had been consistent and the consistency had built something worth building.
Veda thought about his own test. Dark grey soul, the right plate tipped up towards the sky – the thing that had made him cry for the first time since he was eight years old. He had spent fourteen years building around the thing he didn't have. He was now seventy and finding it in other people. Letting it hold up what he hadn't, then, held up himself.
He looked at the black soul made weightless.
He remembered what it felt like the first time he had gambled and won. Not the times he had calculated. Not the times he had cheated. It was the first honest poker he played, the bet bringing a heady rush of euphoria when he had found something in him that could, for better or worse, take a leap. Not counting cards, but maybe, something like gut. The thrill of an uncertain hand, risking it all on hope and a prayer.
Veda pushed the chips forward.
He hired Sera.
That had been fourteen months ago.
Today was the day of the raid.
The commanders had filed out at first light, closing the early morning meeting before they would enter the gate – Rena first, already moving to the next calculation before the door closed. Joel behind her. Arlen saying something to Rian at the threshold that got no response. The door clicking shut.
He would see these kids again in a week. If they came back alive.
Veda sat in the quiet.
Through the windows, the city on the horizon was still mostly dark. Below, in the front courtyard, the raid force was assembling. Fifty or so people. Entering the gate in three hours.
He reached for the carafe and poured himself a glass of water.
Watched the city wake up and then, he grabbed a deck of cards.