The air didn't just change. It curdled.

  I'd felt dangerous before, cornered wolves, dungeon collapses, that scarred Professional's killing intent. None of it compared to standing in front of this woman.

  She was tall. That was the first thing. Tall and angular, dressed in black leather that seemed to drink the light from the room. Her face was beautiful in the way a blade is beautiful: honed, polished, and designed for one purpose. Her eyes were pale gray, almost silver, and they fixed on me like I was already dead.

  "Derek Rene." Her voice was silk over steel. "I've been hunting your line for seven years."

  The faceless man, Crimson's representative, stepped forward. "The Ace of Veil. This safehouse is under Crimson protection. You know the treaties,"

  "I know." The Ace, Vera?.didn't even look at him. "I also know you've been telling this boy things he shouldn't know. That doesn't concern me. What concerns me is the Classless card in his pendant."

  My hand went to my chest instinctively. The pendant was warm against my palm, the letter from my mother still hidden inside, along with everything I'd fought for.

  "You have your mother's stubbornness," the Ace continued, tilting her head. "And her talent. The pendant, too. Interesting. Marcus should have told us about the sister."

  My blood turned to ice. "You know about Vera?"

  "I know about many things, Derek Rene." She took a step forward, and the space between us seemed to collapse. I was suddenly very aware of how far I was from the door. From anywhere. "I know you're Skilled rank with no class. I know you have four tattoo slots, two already filled. I know you killed a Core Spawn spider with a Tier 0 skill, one you've somehow managed to learn despite being a Noob-tier learner."

  She knew everything.

  "Here's what's going to happen." Another step. My legs wanted to run, but my body wouldn't obey. Some primal part of my brain recognized a predator and froze. "You're going to give me the Classless card. You're going to come quietly. And I'm going to discover why the Veil family's three-century search has led to a nobody from Grimvale."

  "And if I refuse?"

  She smiled. It was the worst thing I'd ever seen.

  "Then I take the card from your corpse. The outcome is the same. The only difference is whether you suffer."

  The faceless man moved.

  I'd never seen anyone move like that, one moment he was standing neutral between us, the next he was between me and the Ace, his hand pressed against something invisible in the air. A barrier.

  "Leave," he said. His voice was different now. Harder. "Now."

  "Vorn." The Ace's smile didn't waver. "You've gotten soft, hiding in this gutter city. Did Crimson send you to die for a nobody?"

  "Crimson sent me to protect him." The faceless man, Vorn, gritted his teeth. "The Ace of Veil doesn't understand protection. Only acquisition. But you forget: I'm not alone."

  The walls of the safehouse moved.

  Not collapsed, moved. The wooden panels slid aside, revealing hidden chambers behind them. Four figures stepped out, each wearing crimson cloaks, each radiating the kind of presence that made my stomach clench. Professional rank. At least.

  I was surrounded by people who could kill me without breaking a sweat.

  "Clever," the Ace murmured. "How many of Crimson HQ did you summon? It doesn't matter. You have four. I have,"

  She raised her hand.

  And six more figures materialized from the shadows. Not from doors. From the darkness itself, as if the shadows had birthed them. They wore the stylized spade of House Veil on their chests, and their movements were perfectly synchronized.

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  "Four versus six," the Ace said. "Add in your Champion and my Hunter squad, and the math isn't in your favor, Vorn."

  "Then add me."

  I spoke before I could think. Every eye turned to me.

  The Ace laughed, a short, surprised sound. "You? A Skilled nothing? What could you possibly,"

  "I could die here," I said. My voice was steadier than I felt. "Or I could take at least one of you with me. Maybe two. You've been hunting my family for three centuries, right? What would it say if the Ace of Veil died to a no-class nobody from Grimvale?"

  The shadows around the Veil operatives rippled. One of them, a man with scars running down his face, actually stepped back.

  The Ace's eyes narrowed.

  "You have courage," she said slowly. "Stupid courage, but courage nonetheless. Where did you learn Void Slice?"

  The question hit me like a physical blow. "How do you,"

  "I recognize the energy signature. Tier 0. Beyond any system ranking." She took a step closer, and Vorn's barrier flared. "There are only seven known Tier 0 skills in existence. Six are held by the Carfa families, your Emerald, your Sapphire, your Crimson, your Veil. The seventh was lost a century ago."

  She stopped. Stared at me.

  "The lost Tier 0 skill was called Void Slice. And you have it."

  [SYSTEM]

  Quest Updated: [Escape the Ace]

  Objective: Survive the encounter with House Veil's Ace

  Difficulty: EXTREME

  New Information: Void Slice is one of only seven known Tier 0 skills. House Veil has been searching for the missing seventh skill for over a century.

  Reward: Unknown (upgraded)

  Failure: Capture by House Veil

  Silence fell over the room.

  The Crimson operatives looked at me with something new in their eyes. The Veil soldiers shifted uneasily. And the Ace, Vera, the Ace of Veil, the highest rank in the family that had been hunting mine for three centuries, looked at me like I was a puzzle she'd just solved.

  "That's why," she whispered. "That's why you have the Classless card. That's why the pendant chose you. You're not just a descendant of Marcus Rene. You're the return of the Seventh Skill."

  "What are you talking about?" I demanded. "I don't understand,"

  "Of course you don't." She laughed again, but there was no humor in it now. "You're a child of Grimvale. You think this world works on dungeon cards and guild rankings. You don't know about the Old Wars. The Founders. What the cards really are."

  Vorn's barrier flickered. "Don't listen to her. She's trying to manipulate you,"

  "The Founders weren't explorers." The Ace's voice dropped. "They weren't gods. They were people like you, players who discovered the truth. That the cards aren't gifts. They're invasions. And the Classless card isn't a skill. It's a key."

  The room seemed to tilt. I grabbed the nearest wall for support.

  "A key to what?"

  The Ace smiled, that terrible, beautiful smile.

  "To the source. To the entity that sends the cards. To whatever's been waiting, for a thousand years, for someone like you to unlock the door."

  She raised her hand, and this time, the shadows didn't just move, they reached. Tentacles of darkness snaked toward me from every direction.

  "The Classless card stays with House Veil. And so do you."

  I had perhaps a second to act.

  Vorn's barrier shattered, the Ace wasn't playing anymore. The Crimson operatives engaged the Veil soldiers in a blur of motion. And I, I did the only thing I could.

  I activated Shadow Step.

  The world inverted. Light became dark, dark became light, and I reappeared directly behind the Ace, close enough to feel the heat of her shadows.

  She spun, reaching for me, but I was already moving. I grabbed a handful of void energy and let it loose, not a full Void Slice, just the raw burst at its edges. A pocket of nothing, screaming outward. Half the Veil operatives stumbled. The Crimson guards used the gap instantly.

  "NOW!" one of them shouted.

  A section of the rear wall blew inward, the Crimson operatives had rigged it, or the Veil soldiers had blasted it by accident in the scuffle. Either way, there was a gap. Night air rushed through it.

  I ran.

  "Stop him!" The Ace's voice, fury cracking through the silk.

  I hit the gap at full sprint, ducking through splintered wood into the alley behind the safehouse. Cobblestones. Cold air. Grimvale.

  I ran hard, two blocks, three, until my legs burned and the shouts behind me faded into the general noise of the city. I ducked into a doorway, pressed flat against the stone, heart slamming in my chest.

  Then I found the back hatch.

  It was half-buried under debris, a trapdoor the Crimson operatives had probably used for deliveries, set into the ground just behind the safehouse foundation. It was open. Someone had come through it recently.

  I dropped into it before I could think better of it.

  I landed in the basement. Gasping. The pendant in my fist.

  And as I crouched there in the dark, catching my breath, I felt something wrong.

  The pendant was cracked.

  Not broken, the metal had split down the middle, a thin fracture running the length of it, revealing something inside. A compartment. And inside the compartment, a card.

  A card that hadn't been there before.

  It was black. Completely black, without suit or number, without any marking at all. And when I touched it, the [SYSTEM] interface exploded across my vision.

  [SYSTEM]

  Hidden Card Discovered: [???]

  Tier: UNKNOWN

  Rarity: UNKNOWN

  Effect: UNKNOWN

  Cannot be learned through normal means.

  New Quest Triggered: [The Black Card]

  Objective: Discover the nature of the mysterious black card

  Reward: ???

  Warning: This card may attract entities beyond House Veil

  I stared at the card in my hand.

  The cracked pendant. The hidden compartment. My mother's letter, warning me about House Veil, but not about this. She'd known. She'd hidden this. A card that even the system couldn't identify.

  And from somewhere above me, from the safehouse, from the street, from the sky itself, a voice boomed across every surface. Not just heard, but felt, vibrating in my bones:

  "THE KEY HAS TURNED. THE SEVENTH CHILD AWAKENS. WE COME."

  I couldn't move. Couldn't breathe.

  The black card pulsed in my hand.

  And the world, waited.