The guild dinner takes place right after sunset.

I know this since Daren spends the whole afternoon preparing for it, with all the enthusiasm of someone who has been telling himself for the past four days that he’s not nervous and hasn’t managed to convince himself yet. He checks if his collar is neat. He asks me if the green fabric makes him look confident. And yes, I tell him it does, and then twenty minutes later I repeat it.

He leaves at six PM sharp.

The room falls silent in the particular way rooms tend to be quiet once the one who occupied them has left.

I sit on the side of the cot that he has been letting me sleep on and stare at the ceiling thinking of the wiki.

Lyra’s Unraveling. Chapter seven of the original game. The flag has been active for two days now and there is no more counter ticking down my quest objectives – only the wiki, completely accessible and open to me. I’ve read this particular entry enough times to know it like one knows a scar - not because one keeps looking at it but because there it will be, whenever one looks.

Vorn pays a visit to Lyra’s stall tonight after the market closes. This is how it begins. Not an inn nor a public place – Lyra’s stall, after the market empties, once she is taking inventory alone while Daren is attending a guild dinner she did not go to, giving the 849 to 612 distance three hours to act before they meet.

There’s no need for the wiki to go into details on the subject. It summarizes nicely. The corruption threshold was crossed. The relationship meter is critical. Point of No Return flag is unlocked.

The Point of No Return.

I stare at the ceiling for a bit more. Then I stand up.

The Ashveil Market becomes deserted quickly after sunset. The vendors take down their stalls, the crowd clears out and a city worker starts lighting the torches along the main aisle in such a practiced fashion that it seems to demand nothing from his consciousness at all.

Lyra’s stall with cloths is on the end of the second row.

I come upon her tallying goods. She has a ledger opened on the counter and is counting fabric bolts with half a heart – almost mechanically as her brain does not pay any attention to what her skillful hands are doing. Tonight she wears her amber hair loosely down and, although she is still wearing her guild uniform, she took the vest off and put it on the counter’s edge.

As usual, her stats read as following. Corrupted 91/100. Relationship 612. Contact with Vorn: fourteen occurrences recorded.

She lifts her head once she hears me.

"Kai." She is not surprised, just noting my presence. "Daren is there."

"I know. Just passed by."

A moment of looking into my eyes, considering whether she should say anything more; and then Lyra resumes her work. "You could stay if you wanted. I need about twenty more minutes to finish."

I take a stool from behind her counter and sit.

The marketplace seems rather quiet at this hour – only a couple of vendors from the opposite row packing their booths and faint sounds coming from the tavern district where it is evening already; everything is covered by the golden hue of torch lights.

"Didn’t want to attend?" I ask. "That dinner."

"Not really. Guild events are not for me."

"Daren mentioned."

"Hmm. Did he."

"He was not complaining, just mentioned."

Her pen moves across the ledger page. "It makes me uncomfortable to be in a room with people who act for each other. And guild functions are exactly that – but with better food." She pauses. "But Daren suits it perfectly. Actually performing without knowing he is doing so."

612 from a thousand, and still knowing him so thoroughly.

"I’ve known you a while," I comment.

"Three years. Before he was ranked up. When he was just unclassified, and I had the small stall, and neither of us knew what was going on."

The tone she uses – not nostalgic, but the kind of tone people use when talking about a home they left a long time ago.

I glance at her user interface unintentionally.

---

> **LYRA** — Cloth Merchant *(Independent)*

> Corruption: 91/100

> Relationship / Daren: 612/1000

> Vorn Contact: 14 interactions recorded

> **Hidden:** ⚠️ Threshold proximity — emotional distance from primary bond increasing. Susceptibility elevated.

---

Observe detected a new hidden state. Susceptibility elevated.

I gaze at the entrance to the market.

Vorn is not here yet. According to wiki he will arrive in the next thirty minutes, once all the vendors have left the row. Patient. Calculating. This he has done fourteen times before, each time moving her corruption needle closer to the threshold, and tonight it reaches that point and he knows it the way a surgeon knows exactly how much to slice.

I look at Lyra.

She has finished tallying the last section of merchandise, making quiet mental calculations, completely oblivious to the fact that tonight she stands at the threshold that she didn’t notice the wiki described. She tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear, writes some information into the ledger, and is wholly present in all of her ordinariness.

I can walk away. It is possible to do that now. Walk back to Daren’s apartment and find out later whether Vorn reached his target by reading the summary provided by the wiki the same way I learned about all of the other details about this place – as a secondary account, secondhand information, after the fact.

But I don’t.

"Do you know a guy called Vorn?" I ask.

Her hand freezes in midair, suspended over the ledger. Only for a half second, then it resumes moving.

"Independent contractor, he comes through market occasionally." Even carefully. "Why?"

"Seen him around, seems like he knows everybody."

"He’s that sort. Observant, remembers things."

I watch her face say this. Observe notes quietly:

---

> **Flag Pulse:** Vorn mention — cortisol surge, inhibited. Neutral expression sustained. Difference between overt and covert states: pronounced.

---

Pronounced.

She begins to fold the unsold fabric from the display, her motions precise and practiced. "You are inquiring about him for a reason."

"Observing things," I reply. "Professional practice."

"You have no profession. You are unclassified."

"Friendly Conversation is a skill."

Her chuckle is genuine, though brief, and comes unguarded – the sort that occurs before the decision to allow oneself the luxury. The relationship meter of our connection rises slightly in her interface, and I register it without knowing how to respond.

The final vendor in the row two rows distant finishes packing. The wheels of his cart make squeaking sounds as it moves down the alley.

The market row is deserted now except for us.

I glance toward the entrance once more.

According to the wiki, it takes thirty minutes for a market to clear. I have been here for twenty. The light of the torch near the entrance casts a long shadow on the stone paving, and the darkness of evening has set entirely around us, yet in some other part of the city, Daren sits at a table with adventurers ranked A-rank, performing well in the role of being unaware of his performance and having his relationship meter currently at 849 and dropping without his knowledge.

"Lyra," I call.

She looks up from her work.

I have the intervention sequence activated in the wiki. It is unscripted, and there is no information provided regarding possible outcomes. The conversation that activates it begins here, at this stall, before Vorn arrives, with an honest statement to someone who is still – barely, at 612 of a thousand and 91 of 100 – reachable.

There is no information about outcomes in the wiki since none of the previous iterations of Kai had gotten to this point.

I am the first.

I stare at her and consider the word exploitable displayed in Daren’s UI, susceptibility elevated in hers, the four flags active in Vorn’s, fourteen interactions recorded, and the shadow cast by the torch at the entrance to the row that is merely a shadow presently but has only ten minutes left before ceasing to be so.

"Nothing," I say. "Good tally tonight?"

She regards me for a moment longer than is necessary to answer.

"Yeah," she says. "Good tally." 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

She goes back to folding while I sit watching the entrance waiting to see what I am gonna do when the shadow stops being a shadow.