Victory was a gilded cage.
We had won the Guild War. We held the charter to the Whispering Caves. We had, in the eyes of the law, silenced our critics and established our legitimacy. But the reality was a cold, hard shackle. We were pariahs, the untouchables of the Guild Alliance. The victory had not earned us respect; it had earned us fear. And in the halls of power, fear was a more dangerous enemy than contempt.
The days following the tournament were a quiet, suffocating siege. We were confined to the West Wing, an island of opulent isolation in a city that now looked at us with wary, frightened eyes. The Duke, ever the master of propaganda, had worked his dark magic on the narrative. I was no longer the heroic Stone Bulwark who had saved the city; I was the Uncontrolled Monster who had nearly destroyed the arena. The story of my mercy toward Sir Gareth was twisted into a tale of a beast momentarily brought to heel, a rabid dog that could snap at any moment.
My internal landscape was no less of a battleground. The ghost of Marcus haunted me, and the power I had absorbed from him was a cancer in my soul. The 'Berserker's Rage' skill sat in my status menu, a throbbing, crimson icon that seemed to whisper promises of power at a terrible cost. I spent hours in meditation, trying to wall it off, to contain the hateful, screaming code within my own consciousness.
[You cannot simply delete the skill,] ARIA's voice explained during one of these sessions. Her presence was a constant, cool stream of logic that kept me from drowning in the emotional mire. [The tainted data has been integrated into your soul's core architecture. Attempting a hard delete would be like trying to remove a single, dyed thread from a woven tapestry. You would unravel everything. Your only option is containment.]
"So I build a firewall," I murmured, my eyes closed as I focused inward.
[Precisely,] she confirmed. [A psychic firewall. A wall of will. You must treat the rage as a separate entity. A hostile program. You must learn its triggers, its syntax, and build defenses against them. It will be a constant, draining battle. The rage will always be there, in the background, waiting for a moment of weakness to execute.]
This was my new reality. A constant, internal war against a demon of my own making.
While I fought my inner battles, my pack fought the outer ones. Elizabeth, with a grim, relentless efficiency, managed our political isolation. She sent and received missives, her quill pen a fencer's blade, parrying the subtle threats of the noble houses and trying to keep the tentative lines of communication with the Traditionalists from snapping completely. Lyra, chafing under the confinement, turned the West Wing's training yard into her personal kingdom, drilling our handful of recruits with a ferocity that was both terrifying and inspiring. She was forging them into a pack.
And Luna… Luna was my ghost. She moved through the palace like a whisper, her 'Shared Senses' a direct, encrypted line to my mind. Her network of servants, cooks, and stable boys had become the most effective intelligence agency in the city.
It was on the fifth day of our gilded imprisonment that her network brought us the first tremor of the coming earthquake.
"My lord," her thought was a sharp, sudden alarm while I was trying to eat my breakfast. "Something is wrong. In the adventurer's district. A friend of mine, a barmaid at The Glancing Beholder, she is… afraid."
"Afraid of what?" I asked Elizabeth out loud, putting down my fork.
She looked up from the financial ledger she was dissecting. "Luna?"
I nodded. "Her network is reporting fear in the adventurer's district."
"It's the Watch, my lord," Luna continued, her mental voice tight with worry. "But they are not alone. They are with… Inquisitors from the Mage's Guild. And Iron Gryphon veterans. They are moving in squads. They are raiding taverns, questioning guild members. They are… hunting."
A cold knot formed in my stomach. "Hunting for what? Or who?"
The answer came two hours later, in the form of a terrified, weeping barmaid who Luna snuck into the West Wing through the servant's passages.
"It was Joric," the young woman sobbed, collapsing into a chair in our study. "He was a sellsword, a good man. Quiet. Kept to himself. But last week, during a brawl, he got cornered. And he… he did something. A man swung a chair at him, and Joric just… held up his hand. The chair stopped in mid-air. Like your 'Kinetic' power they talk about, my lord."
My blood ran cold. Another System User.
"The Watch came for him this morning," the barmaid continued, her voice choked with tears. "Not the usual city patrols. These were hard men, with a Mage Inquisitor. They cornered him in his room. He… he panicked. He tried to defend himself. They said he died 'resisting arrest.' They dragged his body away like a piece of meat."
The first victim. The purge had begun.
"This is the Duke's work," Elizabeth said, her voice a low, dangerous whisper. "It has to be. He is using the 'Anomaly Containment Act' he pushed through the Emergency Council. He has given the major guilds—the knights, the mages, the merchants—legal authority to 'detain' anyone with unregistered abilities. He's turned them into his personal witch-finders."
"He's not just targeting me anymore," I said, the horrifying truth dawning on me. "He's targeting all of us. Anyone with a System. He's eliminating the competition. He's purging every glitch from the game."
"We cannot let this stand," Lyra growled, her hand gripping the hilt of her sword. "To allow the pack to be hunted down one by one is the act of a coward."
"And what would you have us do?" Elizabeth countered, her voice sharp with pragmatism. "Declare war on the entire Guild Alliance? On the City Watch? On the Mage's Guild? We are isolated, Lyra. Any open act of defiance would be the excuse they need to storm this wing and put our heads on pikes."
"Then we do not act openly," I said, a new, cold resolve hardening in my gut. I looked at the barmaid, at her tear-streaked face. I looked at the ghost of Marcus in my mind. The Duke had weaponized desperate people. He had turned them into monsters and then watched them burn. I would not let it happen again.
"Elizabeth, you're right. We can't fight them head-on. But we are the Glitch Raiders. We do not fight on their terms. We will fight in the shadows. We will build a resistance."
That night, I shed the fine clothes of the Lord Protector and donned the simple, hooded cloak of an anonymous adventurer. Luna, her own form hidden in a similar cloak, was a silent shadow at my side. Elizabeth had argued vehemently against it. It was too risky. I was too valuable. But I had to see it for myself. I had to understand the true scope of the purge.
The adventurer's district was a different world from the sanitized, orderly streets of the noble quarter. It was a place of life, of chaos, of desperation. But tonight, a new emotion hung in the air, thick as the tavern smoke: fear. The usual boisterous energy was gone, replaced by hushed, paranoid whispers. People looked over their shoulders, their eyes darting nervously at the increased presence of Iron Gryphon patrols, who moved through the streets with a new, swaggering authority.
Luna led me to a dingy, back-alley tavern called 'The Rusty Flagon.' Our informant, a one-eyed rogue named Jax, was waiting for us in a shadowy corner.
"Lord Silverstein," he grunted, not bothering with a bow. "You're either very brave or very stupid to show your face here."
"A bit of both," I replied, sitting down. "Tell me what you know."
Jax leaned forward, his voice a low whisper. "It's a purge, plain and simple. It started small a few days ago. Joric wasn't the first. There was a hedge-witch down in the slums, a girl they say could make flowers bloom out of season. The Mage's Guild 'detained' her for 'unlicensed elemental manipulation.' No one's seen her since."
He took a long drink of his ale. "Then there was Bren, the blacksmith. A quiet dwarf. Last week, he forged a sword that was impossibly sharp. Said he'd had a 'stroke of inspiration.' The Merchant's Guild heard about it, accused him of using 'stolen enchantment techniques,' confiscated his forge, and threw him in a debtor's prison. The list goes on. Anyone who shows a sudden, unexplainable new talent, anyone who steps outside the established norms... they vanish."
It was worse than I thought. The Duke wasn't just hunting for combatants. He was hunting for any System User, no matter how weak or harmless their ability. He was sterilizing the entire population of any potential glitches.
"Why?" I asked. "Why is he doing this? What does he gain?"
"Power," Jax grunted. "Control. He's creating a world where only the 'sanctioned' powers—the nobility, the Church, the established guilds—are allowed to exist. And he controls them all. He's eliminating all the wild cards. All the people like you."
"Are there others?" I asked, my voice tight. "Others who are fighting back?"
Jax let out a bitter laugh. "Fighting back? Most of 'em don't even know what's happening to them. They think they've been blessed by a god, or cursed by a demon. They don't know they're part of something bigger. They're scattered. They're scared. And they're being picked off, one by one."
I left the tavern, my heart a cold, heavy stone in my chest. I had seen the truth. This was a silent, one-sided war, a genocide of the gifted.
We returned to the West Wing, and I convened our council of war. I relayed everything Jax had told me.
"It is a systematic extermination," Elizabeth concluded, her face grim. "He is consolidating power in the most brutal way possible. And we are next on his list."
"Then we must give them a place to go," I declared, my decision made. "A place to hide. A place to fight back. We must build a resistance."
"Harboring known fugitives is an act of treason, Kazuki," Elizabeth warned, though her voice lacked its usual conviction. "It is a direct declaration of war against the Duke and the council."
"Then let it be so," I said, my voice ringing with a conviction that left no room for argument. "Our guild charter reads, 'We are looking for those who don't fit in, those who see the cracks in the world.' These people... they are our people. We will not abandon them. This is the purpose of the Glitch Raiders."
The argument was over. Our new mission was clear.
Finding a safe house was the first challenge. The West Wing was a gilded cage, watched constantly. We needed somewhere hidden, somewhere off the books. The answer came from an unexpected source: Gorgomoth's captured mercenary, the one I had freed. I had given him a new life, but I had also planted a 'Resonant Stone Trace' on him. Through a series of discreet, coded messages passed through Luna's network, I called in my favor.
His reply came two days later. An abandoned warehouse in the city's sprawling, lawless dock district. It was owned by a shell company, its deed records buried under a mountain of bureaucracy. It was perfect.
We put out the call, a new, more urgent whisper through the city's underworld. The Glitch Raiders offer sanctuary. If you are being hunted for your 'gift,' if the world has branded you a monster, there is a place for you. A safe harbor. A chance to fight back.
They came. Not in a flood, but in a slow, fearful trickle.
The first to arrive was the hedge-witch Jax had spoken of. Her name was Anya, a young girl no older than sixteen, with wide, terrified eyes and a 'System' that allowed her to accelerate the growth of plants. She was not a warrior; she was a gardener. And the Mage's Guild had tried to dissect her to understand her "heretical" magic.
The next was a grizzled, one-armed ex-soldier named Gregor. He was cynical, world-weary, and deeply distrustful. His 'System' was simple: it gave him a perfect, unerring sense of balance, making him an impossible swordsman to disarm, even with only one arm. He had been discharged from the city guard and branded a "cheat" after he defeated his captain in a sparring match.
One by one, they came. A dozen of them. The outcasts. The glitches. A collection of broken, terrified people whose only crime was that they had been blessed, or cursed, with a power the world did not understand.
We gathered them in the cavernous, dusty main room of the warehouse. It was cold, it was damp, but it was safe. For now. I stood before them, this small, pathetic, and beautiful flicker of rebellion. I saw my old self in their eyes. The fear. The confusion. The feeling of being a bug in a system that wanted you deleted.
"My name is Kazuki Silverstein," I said, my voice echoing in the quiet room. "Like all of you, I have a power that I did not ask for. A power that has made me a target. The world outside these walls, the men who rule it, they fear us. They fear us because we are different, because we are unpredictable. They will hunt us. They will cage us. They will try to erase us."
I looked at each of them, at the fear in their eyes, and I let them see the iron resolve in my own. "But they have made a mistake," I continued, my voice rising with a strength I didn't know I possessed. "They think we are scattered. They think we are weak. They think we are victims. They are wrong. Today, we stop being victims. Today, we start fighting back. You are not just glitches anymore. You are Raiders. And together... we will show them what happens when the bugs in the system learn how to bite."
A flicker of hope, a fragile, beautiful thing, ignited in the room. For the first time in weeks, they were not just scared. They were angry. And they were together.
It was a perfect moment. A moment of unity, of a new beginning.
And it was in that perfect moment that the main doors of the warehouse, doors we had thought were secure, burst open with a deafening crash.
A squad of the Duke's elite, black-armored personal guard flooded into the room, their swords drawn, their faces hidden behind merciless, featureless helms. They formed a perfect semi-circle, trapping us.
And at their head stood a figure who made my blood run cold. It was the grizzled, one-armed soldier. Gregor.
He was no longer looking at me with cynicism and distrust. He was looking at me with a cold, triumphant smirk.
"Sorry, Lord Protector," Gregor said, his voice dripping with a casual, brutal betrayal. He held up a small, heavy pouch that jingled with the sound of gold. "But the Duke's gold pays better than a lost cause."
He had been a plant from the beginning. A Judas goat to lead the lambs to the slaughter.
Our safe house, our sanctuary, our one glimmer of hope... it had been a trap from the very start. We were surrounded, outnumbered, with a dozen terrified, non-combatant glitches cowering behind us.
The captain of the Duke's guard stepped forward, his sword pointed at my heart.
"Kazuki Silverstein," he said, his voice a muffled, synthesized rasp from behind his helm. "By order of the Lord Regent, your little rebellion is over."