David Giffle's office did not resemble a general's den, a banker's lair, or the grand walnut and oak stuffed tombs favoured by the higher-ranking Blue Blood families. It was a glass rectangle with a view of the city—an unflinching geometry of form and function, every angle optimized for work and every surface banishing clutter. Even the art—a single blown-up photograph of a northern forest in winter, bristling with green pine—looked as if it had been selected by a software bot and not by the man who sat beneath it.

  He preferred it this way. There were meetings to host, analyses to review, memos to write in triplicate for the Steering Committee, but not even the suggestion of a paperweight or a keepsake from childhood. The only sign of personality was a half-drained cup of black tea and a sprawl of spreadsheets on the three monitor array that dominated the left wall. The data was live—Banner teams, kill reports, anomalies, all streaming in through encrypted feeds—and he was up to his wrists in it when the call came.

  The phone was a relic, heavy and mechanical, routed through so many security protocols that it clicked and stuttered before the line even opened. The caller ID flashed nothing but a string of numerals: 10001. David's lips pressed to a thin line. He swivelled, squared his shoulders, and picked up.

  "Director Giffle," he said.

  The voice on the other end was gravel run through velvet, old even by Blue Blood standards. “I hope I’m not disturbing you at this hour, David.”

  "Not at all," David said, and it was almost true. The whole point of the Giffle branch's abstainer philosophy was to be available in emergencies, to stay apart from the endless posturing of the Blue Bloods. Yet somehow, the calls still felt like summons.

  The patriarch did not indulge in pleasantries. “I have a report here. From the Toronto facility. Is it accurate?”

  “It is,” David said. “I reviewed it myself.”

  There was a click as the old man exhaled, the sound like stone grinding under ice. “The Kaesor boy. The one with the root snake familiar. He’s now deployed as a Banner strike force?”

  David considered how much to explain. "Not exactly. We're leveraging him for high-risk dungeons. His, ah, particular abilities make him uniquely suited. He is also not formally attached to any Banner team. He's more of a… freelance problem-solver."

  The voice turned slightly amused. “A polite way of saying they have no leash for him.”

  David offered a low chuckle. “That is, more or less, the reality.”

  There was a long silence as the patriarch let that hang. “He rescued Victor Blackwood’s team,” he said eventually. “Noteworthy. But this business with the Thorne boy… troubling. Very troubling.”

  David’s eyes flicked to his monitor, where a live spreadsheet was tracking the active search for the missing Thorne. “There are analysts on it. If the dungeon anomaly holds, we’ll have an answer within twenty-four hours.”

  “You realize the other families are already calling this an inside job?”

  David let the words slide over him. “That doesn’t track with the facts. The Blackwood family has no motive.”

  "Of course they don't," the patriarch said, voice warm with approval. "But logic is not the issue. The issue is what people can be made to believe. The Chretien family is already pushing for a resolution to put Kaesor under constant surveillance. And I hear from our man at the Doves that the Reesemans want the boy transferred north immediately. The Blue Bloods are restless, David. There's an opportunity here, if you're clever."

  David rolled the handle of the phone between his fingers. "With respect, sir, you know the Abstainer doctrine. We stay out of Banner politics. We focus on our people and our job."

  “And yet,” the old man said, “you sit on the steering committee of the largest Banner outpost in North America. Is that not politics?”

  “Someone has to make sure the trains run on time,” David replied, unable to suppress the edge of sarcasm. “But our job is to keep the Blue Bloods from burning the whole network down every time their children bicker.”

  The patriarch made a sound that might have been a laugh or a cough. “That attitude is why I like you, David. I wish you liked yourself a bit more.”

  David ignored that. “If this is a formal request, sir, you’ll need to put it in writing. Otherwise, I have the protocols and I’ll follow them.”

  “Protocols can be rewritten,” the old man said, suddenly sharp. “Especially when there are new… variables. What’s your assessment of the Kaesor boy?”

  David leaned back, chair creaking. "He's a wild card. Stronger than his stats would lead you to believe. If we could even see them in the first place. We suspect external factors, Titles, perhaps a Bloodline even, but he's taken everything the System's thrown at him and survived. He's loyal enough, but not naive. The more they push, the more likely he is to break out from under the Banner entirely."

  “And then what?”

  David didn’t hesitate. “Then he becomes everyone’s problem, not just ours.”

  The patriarch grunted. “A prudent answer. What about the Thorne situation?”

  “Best guess: It’s an anomaly. If the abduction had been intentional, there are a hundred easier ways to kill a Banner Ranger. The Kaesor boy’s report is consistent with a high-level monster abductor. No way to prevent, no way to predict.”

  There was another long pause, and then the voice softened. “You know, your father would have wanted you on the main council by now.”

  David gritted his teeth, keeping the smile in his voice. “My father wants many things, sir. But he also wants the Abstainer legacy maintained. I intend to do so.”

  The old man sighed, tired all at once. “Very well. I won’t pressure you further, not tonight. But keep your eyes open, David. The next move may not be ours, but we must be ready.”

  “I will, sir. Good evening.”

  “Good evening.”

  David set the phone down. The office was suddenly very quiet.

  He watched the city lights for a long time, fingers drumming on the desk. The Abstainer doctrine was simple: do no harm, play no games, protect the people. In practice, it felt like walking through a minefield while a pack of half-mad dogs chased at your heels. The Blue Bloods were always angling for advantage, always ready to tear down the fence if it meant scoring a point on their rivals.

  But for the moment, at least, David Giffle would hold the line. He had to. Aiden was a powder keg that no one else seemed to understand. If pushed, the man would have no compunctions about killing anything and everything between him and the safety of his people. The thought sent shivers up David's spine. While he was certain that in the end, the Banner was a massive multinational organization with their own heavy hitters that would put Aiden down if it came to it, he was also certain Aiden could do an enormous amount of damage before that happened.

  Stolen story; please report.

  He shut off the monitor, finished his tea, and returned to the endless spreadsheet, never once glancing at the blank expanse of wall above his head.

  ——-

  The training rooms beneath the White Banner’s Toronto compound were over-engineered even by paramilitary standards. The walls were three layers of composite ceramic, reinforced with mana-absorbing lattice and inset with a grid of pressure sensors that, according to the engineer who’d briefed me, could register a punch from a twelve-year-old or a blast from a siege cannon with equal precision. The rooms were supposed to survive anything short of total meltdown.

  They were not designed for my particular brand of improvisational magic.

  I had spent the last two hours in the company of a battered beginner's grimoire and a stack of note-scribbled legal pads. The book itself—"A Practical Introduction to Systemic Magic for the Initiate"—looked like it had seen a hundred hands and only two washes, every other page dogeared or wrinkled from old sweat. The spells were all bread-and-butter: conjure a flame, focus a shield, hurl a kinetic blast at a stationary object. Each had precise instructions, a suggested mantra, and a diagram for the hands and fingers.

  I had failed at all of them. Not just failed, but botched. The grimoire would show me an example of a firebolt, and I would trace the steps—mana intake, focus, ignite—and wind up with a cough of static or a sad, candle-sized spark that died before it reached the target dummy.

  I flipped the book open again and frowned at the diagram for [Mana Flare]. The page was crumpled from repeated disappointment. I read it once more, lips pressed tight. “Draw mana from the core, channel through the palm, focus on the index and middle finger, imagine the path of the projectile, then snap forward and release.” I followed the instructions with painstaking care, visualizing each step the way a normal Ranker might.

  Nothing happened. Maybe a microsecond of warmth, but the spell fizzled out before it even cleared my wrist.

  I closed my eyes, let the frustration build until it threatened to spill out as a curse. That was the problem—I was trying to copy the method, trying to fit myself into a mould built for someone else. Every time I did that, the System just locked him out. "Think, dumbass," I muttered. "You're not normal, even the System saw that. You never have been."

  I looked up at the target dummy, which had survived this bout of failure with barely a light charring across its midsection. Then I set the book aside, laced my hands behind my neck, and stared at the wall. If the System had gone out of its way to engineer every part of him—if his bloodline, his Skills, his Class were all a custom job instead of a hack job—then why was he wasting time trying to act like any other Banner rookie?

  I unclenched my jaw, set my feet shoulder-width apart, and called up the [Fell Gaze]. The world flickered into sharp contrast, colours draining to shades of blue and black. I gathered mana—not the careful, measured intake described in the book, but the full-bodied, hungry inhalation that came so easily to me now. The energy sloshed in my veins, begging to be used.

  This time, instead of trying to force it through my palms, I focused on his eyes. I could feel the mana pulse upward, a heat behind the orbits, pressure building until it nearly hurt. I looked at the target and let it out with a wordless exhalation.

  A pulse of blue light scythed through the air and hit the dummy square in the chest. It wasn’t pretty—more a blunt hammer of force than the clean lance depicted in the grimoire—but it had the desired effect. The dummy staggered, back arched, then collapsed in a heap.

  I blinked rapidly. The afterimage swam across my vision, and for a moment, I was almost giddy. "That's more like it," I said, rubbing the bridge of my nose. I picked up the next spell in the sequence, [Mana Dart], and ignored the hand gestures entirely. I focused on the intent, on the shape of the effect, and let the magic move as it wanted to.

  The dart this time was a compressed slug, almost invisible, but it splintered the dummy’s left arm right at the socket.

  I cycled through the next three spells, adapting each to the delivery system that was [Fell Gaze]. The [Shield] spell didn’t work at all, but I wasn’t discouraged in the slightest. The [Sonic Burst] didn’t echo from my throat, but detonated from my glare, a cone of pressure that shattered two test tiles stacked in the corner.

  “Why am I like this? Can’t ever be simple.” I muttered, picking up the grimoire and flipping through it with fresh contempt. “Not a single line in here about alternative vectors, or—” I stopped. That was the point, wasn’t it? For the normal Rankers, the System was a set of stairs; for me, it was a jungle gym with some of the rungs missing. One that reached higher than most on the staircase path could dream of reaching.

  I started laughing, unable to help it. The sound bounced off the ruined ceramic and sounded almost manic. I realized, dimly, that I must look insane to anyone watching on the security camera—shirt already streaked with sweat, hands scorched in a half dozen places, eyes crackling with enough blue to blind a casual observer.

  But I’d done it. I’d made progress. Not the way the System wanted, maybe, but on my own terms.

  I turned back to the dummy, now missing both arms and part of its chest, and allowed myself a smirk. “You know what they say about madness, right?” he asked the corpse. “It’s just figuring out the one trick everyone else refuses to try.”

  ——-

  The conference room had once been a Cold War panic bunker, so the story went, and if you looked past the layers of fiberboard and brushed steel, you could almost see it: the windowless cube of reinforced concrete, the faint aftertaste of paranoia soaked into the cheap acoustic foam. Even the modern amenities—slick projectors, real-time telepresence, coffee pods with more exotic origins than the people in the room—couldn’t quite drown out the sense that everyone present was waiting for the bomb to drop.

  It was not, in David’s experience, the worst place to host a Banner steering committee. The best places—the ones with light and fresh air—encouraged the participants to believe, foolishly, that something good might come from the meeting. The bunker, on the other hand, reminded them of the stakes.

  He took his seat along the back wall, a deliberate choice. The chairs at the main table were reserved for the National Director (absent, as always), the four regional heads, and the “floating” council reps from the Blue Blood families. The Abstainers, by tradition and by preference, sat behind, backs to the wall and eyes on the exits.

  There were eight at the table today, and the air was already sour with tension. Haversham, the Knight's favourite, was built like a squashed bulldog and wore his scars like parade medals; Chretien, of the Serpent faction, looked as if he'd been poured into his suit just this morning, not a wrinkle to be found. Rouquell, of the Doves, scrolled on her tablet with surgical indifference, while Godfrey—a Knight, through and through—tapped at a stack of hand-annotated dossiers as if they might explode at any moment.

  The agenda, as always, was “collaboration and crisis response.” The real topic: who would get to claim the newest anomaly, and by extension, the rising star that was Aiden Kaesor.

  Haversham wasted no time. “The Toronto situation is stable. Blackwood’s team is in recovery. But the incident with the Thorne boy—”

  “It’s an opportunity,” Chretien interrupted, smiling like a man with a knife hidden in his palm. “If we deploy now, we can get ahead of the other factions. Claim the prize before the Russians or the Germans even wake up. Or worse, the Unseen.”

  Godfrey grunted. “You want to send Kaesor north. Into the wild, with half the world’s scavengers watching. Brilliant.”

  Chretien’s eyes glittered. “Brilliant is exactly the word. We’ve spent a decade letting every anomaly slip through our fingers. This one is different. He’s not just an edge case—he’s the System’s answer to a century of mediocrity. Don’t pretend you haven’t run the numbers.”

  Haversham set his jaw. “And what happens if the boy doesn’t come back?”

  Chretien shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “Then we have his data. And the north is cleaner by one unstable element.”

  Godfrey flicked the top file in his stack. “I’ve read the psych evals. He’s not unstable. If anything, he’s the first Ranker in years to grow so fast, who doesn’t want to burn the Banner down for fun or defect to another charter.”

  "He's a bloodline mutant," Chretien said, voice honeyed and sharp at once. "Give it a year and you'll be reading about his exploits in the New York Times, right next to another body count."

  Rouquell looked up, her tone as dry as the air. “You assume the north is the real prize.”

  Chretien arched a brow. “Isn’t it?”

  "Maybe," she said. "Or maybe the real opportunity is here, managing the story. Managing Kaesor." Her smile was not reassuring. "Our job is not only to create heroes. It's to contain them."

  There was a silence, sharp as a snapped wire. David watched the interplay with a practiced eye. The Serpent faction was hungry, itching for a chance to prove themselves on the world stage; they craved legitimacy. The Knights wanted to keep Kaesor close, safe, uncorrupted by intrigue. The Doves, as always, were betting on the long game: subtle, flexible, and ruthlessly practical. He admired it, in a way. Yet so far, each of the factions had made a critical mistake in how they wanted to approach the Kaesor situation. They'd forgotten that he was not one of them. Yes, he did work for them, but he owed the Banner no fealty nor loyalty.

  Haversham shook his head. “The last time we let a kid like that out of the pen, he came back with a black badge and a body full of scars.”

  “That’s exactly what we need,” Chretien countered. “Someone who isn’t afraid of a few scars.”

  The debate circled for another half hour, looping through all the old arguments. No one wanted to admit it, but the choice had already been made: Kaesor was too valuable to bench, too dangerous to send unescorted, too unpredictable to leave in the hands of another Banner faction. Or worse, it was well known by this point that he had at least one viable connection to the Unseen. Defection was a valid possibility. One that no one at the table wanted to consider too deeply.

  They just needed a pretext. The “northern disturbance” was as good as any.

  When the meeting ended, no one shook hands. Haversham glared at Chretien. Godfrey thumbed his dossiers into a slim folio and left without a backward glance. Rouquell was gone before the projector had time to power down, the benefits of a personal teleportation Skill.

  David lingered until the room was empty, then called up a secure line and waited for the connection to encrypt.

  The voice on the other end was gravelly, but younger than the patriarch’s. “Wolf,” he said, because Uncle Wolf had never cared for titles.

  “It’s Giffle,” David replied.

  A low laugh. “You survived the meeting, I take it.”

  “Barely,” David said. “Listen. The factions are circling the Kaesor boy. They’re going to use the north as an excuse to move him out of Toronto, or at least try to keep him on a short leash.”

  “They want him dead?”

  “No. They want him useful. But there are enough wildcards in play that it could go either way.”

  The line was quiet for a moment. “What do you want me to do?”

  "Keep him away from the Banner's politics," David said, soft but firm. "And as far from most of our other teams as you can manage. If they force a deployment, try to get him a slot that lets him run independently."

  “And if I can’t?”

  David didn’t answer right away. “Then make sure he knows the score. And that someone’s in his corner, even if it doesn’t always look like it.”

  Carl Wolf grunted. “That’s what I’d planned to do anyway.”

  “I figured.” David hesitated. “And Wolf? Tell him not to trust the Serpent faction. Not even a little.”

  “Of course, they’re power hungry and desperate for something to give them a new move on the board.”

  “As always.”

  The line went dead.

  David Giffle sat for a long time, hands folded in his lap, staring at the scarred tabletop. The war was always cold at first, but it had a way of heating up when you least expected it.

  He made a note—just a single word, "Watch," in the secure log—then stood, straightened his collar, rose from his seat, and walked out of the bunker, never once looking back.