Behind the Broken Crown Inn was an alley with the scent of grain and canal water.

Not the foulest-smelling place I’d seen in Ashveil. Nor even the best. More like something smack-dab in the middle, which seemed appropriate since this would be a conversation that fell somewhere between a warning and a negotiation — assuming my Observe read on Vorn had been correct.

It was.

He was waiting for me by the time I rounded the corner. Standing with his back against the stonewall, arms hanging loosely at his sides, no weapon in sight and his dark gaze boring holes in me as soon as I entered the opening in the alleyway. Not surprised to see me; it had been him who left the message with the morning clerk at the Broken Crown — note placed at the corner table with a message only consisting of the word "behind" written in his irritatingly clear handwriting.

I stood about eight feet away from him.

He didn’t move.

"You came alone," he noted.

"I don’t really have any people I can take."

Pause. Something flickering beneath the surface in his gaze. "True enough. I suppose you don’t." That was the aspect of Vorn that the wiki page had failed to acknowledge properly. The description detailed his mechanics — his angles of attack, his patience, the rate at which he earned points in relationships. It did not reflect the feeling of occupying the same physical space as him. He wasn’t loud. Didn’t need to be. The rank A-minus hung heavy around his neck like an atmosphere.

I had Strength 12.

I knew this very well.

"You reset her," he stated. No question.

"I don’t understand what you’re implying."

"You do." He remained unruffled. "Complete reset. Contact log, corruption index, Point of No Return flag. Everything deleted. I examined her stats this morning at 6:03 AM and discovered that where ninety-two points of work were previously, there was only a blank screen."

"That’s... strange."

"It is," he admitted. "It implies that you are not a non-player character."

No response.

He appraised me as one might appraise a new gadget — not in a threatening way, but rather with interest, analyzing its capabilities. "I’ve been doing this for a while," he said. "I can recognize an organic evolution when I see one. I can recognize an actor’s script when I see one. Neither is you. You appeared in Ashveil with a stat profile identical to a throwaway NPC, and your decision-making process matches someone who already knows the area by heart." He hesitated. "You were aware of the Undercroft bounty board before Daren took you there. You knew Lyra’s stall times. You turned up at the fabric district on the first day with no context flags triggered."

The trouble with trying to lie to someone who was actually intelligent was that you had to pay extra to bluff them into believing anything.

"What do you want?" I asked.

He thought about it. As if asking was intriguing in and of itself.

"At first," he said, "I wanted you to stop."

"And now?"

"Maybe I don’t think I’ve found my most valuable discussion yet." He backed away from the wall without any aggression — simply shifting his weight, allowing himself to be thoughtful. "You nullified a corruption build ninety-two percent full. This is no small feat, something that takes six weeks of careful window management and maintaining a presence. Vanished in a single move, probably overnight. You were an unknown variable to me. This fascinates me more than frustrates me."

Interesting rather than frustrated was what Vorn used for respect and I wasn’t going to ignore that as tactical information.

"You are pivoting," I noted.

"Yes, I am."

"From caution to offer."

The corner of his mouth quirked up slightly. Not quite a smile. "You are quick."

"Not slow."

---

VORN — FLAG UPDATE

Threat category: CONFIRMED OPPOSITION

Mode: PIVOTING — caution abandoned

Secondary purpose: Opening negotiation channel

Lyra target status: SUSPENDED indefinitely

Kai assessment: Confirmed non-NPC / 91%

New flag: Alliance probe — active

---

And he moved left, three steps slow, his hands still slack at his sides. Thinking while moving, making sure I saw him think. Vorn never did anything by accident.

"The game," he said, "has a script."

"Yeah."

"You know the script."

"Most of it."

"And you’ve been breaking it." He paused, then looked at me. "Which means you know the ending in the canonical version of the game, and you chose not to let that happen. Which means—" he made another brief pause "—you had something to say about the ending."

"Isn’t that the case with everyone?"

"No NPCs." He said it without a hint of mockery. Just stating a fact. "The NPCs follow flags, and you’ve been blocking them." He stared at me for a few seconds. "So, what do you actually want?"

And there was the question. What did I want? Here was the man who was going to be the victor, and all I could think about was that I came into this world to watch some NTR and ended up falling for the protagonist, saving his girlfriend from a corruption level of ninety-two, grinding up my strength to rank D with STR twelve, and then meeting the main character here.

Great life choices all around.

"Because I don’t want Daren to end up wrecked," I replied. "That’s my shorthand version."

Vorn took this calmly. "What about Lyra?"

"Including her. She hasn’t opted into the script either, in case that wasn’t clear."

"She’s a game piece."

"So am I, actually."

He made note of this with a slight inclination of the head. "Still, here we are." He was silent for a few moments, and when he next spoke his tone had changed — not necessarily softened, but certainly gained more focus. The performance aspect slipped slightly. "I am going to be open with you because I believe you can read through anything else and this would be pointless. I currently have four active markers in Ashveil. Lyra was the initial. You have shut down that route, although at personal expense, judging by the cheat code activity I have managed to determine." His eyes turned to mine. "However, I have other routes."

"Daren."

"One of several, yes."

There it was. The underlying teeth of this negotiation.

I had run the wiki. Vorn’s four markers, including Lyra, Daren marked active and the two other flags never fully listed — one redacted, one still being generated.

"So what’s the deal," I asked.

"Cooperation," he repeated. "No alliance. No partnership. Just cooperation — clearly delineated parameters, mutual advantage, limited scope." He stared into my eyes. "You need Daren to remain whole. I need productive engagement within this city’s framework of corruption without any interference by the unknown quantity that is you. We carve out our own lanes and stay there."

"And your lane doesn’t extend to include Daren and Lyra."

"I never said that."

"Then this isn’t an offer."

He studied me for several moments.

---

VORN — FLAG UPDATE

Negotiation channel: OPEN

Resistance ceiling: REACHED — Kai cannot be coerced

Assessment modification: Flag reclassified — ACTUAL OPPOSITION

Strategy shift: NEEDED

Flagged parameter [REDACTED]: condition uncertain

---

"You’re not going to make this easy on yourself," he told me. There was no anger in his tone. On the contrary, he seemed relieved. As if he had finally gotten confirmation on something.

"No."

"Then we are going to have a problem."

"Probably," I agreed. "But I’ve been fixing problems with STR 12, so I know how to cope with faulty machinery."

For once he smiled. Small, genuine, lasting two seconds before vanishing completely. "You really are odd," he said. "I don’t think I have ever seen anything quite like you around here in my entire life."

"You’re flattering me."

"I am not flattering you." The end of conversation mode. "I will no longer be moving against Lyra — her window is completely shut. She’s worthless without the progress, so I see no need in wasting my energy." Again, not maliciously said; rather as simple math. "Daren’s connection to me stands at one-twenty-eight, and counting. That’s natural growth, nothing I had to force; he was the one who contacted me first."

I knew. I’d seen it all unfold before my eyes.

"And that," Vorn continued, "you cannot fix because it is not corrupt. Just two individuals getting along." He made the point clear. "Ponder the implications."

He started moving toward the alley.

"Vorn."

He paused.

"What’s the redacted flag."

A long moment of silence passed.

"This is something new," he said. "This is not in the wiki." He looked back one last time. "Get stronger, Kai. Much faster than you think you have time to get. You are going to need it."

Then he walked away.

I remained standing in the alley at the back of the Broken Crown Inn, breathing in the smells of the canal water and considering the fact that Vorn had essentially told me something is coming that the wiki doesn’t cover.

---

CURRENT STATS

STR: 12

AGI: 17

INT: 20

Skills: Friendly Conversation / Moral Support / Observe / Evasion I / Throwing I / Fast Learner / Precision Shot II / Enemy Analysis I / Pattern Recognition II

EXP: 523/1000

Rank: D

VORN — FLAG UPDATE

Direct engagement: COMPLETE

Lyra target: SUSPENDED — permanent

Daren contact: ONGOING — organic, non-flag

Kai classification: CONFIRMED OPPOSITION

Hidden flag [REDACTED]: PENDING

---

I retrieved my shortbow, made sure the string tension was still good, and began walking towards the Undercroft.

I had four hundred and seventy-seven EXP remaining before reaching the next milestone, which apparently included an entire wiki void.

Great.