Chapter 52: The One Who Broke the Crystal
The ink had long dried by the time Thalen Veyr reread the report.
He sat alone in a quiet stone chamber beneath the central chapel of Apollo's House of Order, located just three streets from the Adventurer's Guild in Karlune's Rest. Moonlight filtered in through the high window slits, pooling against shelves of parchment and sealed scrolls.
Before him lay a slim dossier:
Name: IsaacRace: Unconfirmed (claims "Human")Origin: Unknown – Marked UnregisteredClass: NoneNotable Event: System Crystal shattered upon contact during registration.
Thalen leaned back, fingers tapping lightly on the wooden desk.
"Shattered..." he murmured.
He wasn't a priest. Not a paladin or a judge. Just a recorder of oddities, an archivist of people who didn't fit into neat little boxes. But even he knew System Crystals don't break. They flicker. They reject invalid readings. Sometimes they even go dark.
But break?Only under extreme overload.
And that meant something extraordinary passed through it.
The Divine System was no divine mystery anymore. For most people, it was a tool—a part of life.
Everyone had a System. Everyone had a status. Farmers used it to monitor health. Soldiers used it to track growth. Mages used it to level their spells. But it wasn't something people could access freely. They needed churches, status readers, guild crystals—calibrated interfaces to see it properly.
Only the blessed could access theirs directly, and even then, they rarely understood how or why.
But this Isaac? He shattered a device made to withstand even royal-blooded adventurers.
It didn't make Thalen think "divine."
It made him think deceiver.
He turned toward the crystal shard on his desk. Recovered after the incident, it still pulsed faintly with residual resonance. He'd measured it twice. The reaction hadn't been S-rank.
It had gone beyond that.
"EX-rank," he whispered.
A term that barely existed outside of dusty scriptures and bard songs. Skills like that were considered lost, even by the elves and highborn bloodlines. The strongest living warriors had S-rank techniques—and even they were rare enough to be named in history books.
But this man, Isaac, registered no divine blessing, no noble blood, and no class.
"So what are you hiding?" Thalen muttered.
Footsteps echoed down the stairwell. Another figure entered the chamber—hooded, older, but clearly a superior.
"Still working late?" the man asked mildly.
Thalen nodded. "It's not every day a crystal breaks."
The elder moved closer, resting a hand on the shelf beside him. "We've flagged the record. You did the right thing. Keep him on the list. Don't confront him. Just observe."
Thalen closed the file. "Do you think he did it on purpose?"
"Maybe," the elder said. "Maybe not. There are some out there who use illegal methods—rune parasites, skill-bleeding. And there are cults that craft artificial Systems from corrupted relics. If he's one of them, we'll find out."
"…What if he's something else entirely?"
A pause.
"Then pray to Apollo he never realizes what he is."
Outside, the moon watched over Karlune's Rest.
Inside a modest adventurer's dorm, Isaac sat on a cot, boots kicked off, quietly flipping through the quest list he and Lira had taken.
She lay nearby, reading something borrowed from a guild shelf—A Beginner's Guide to Combat Invocation—her hair slightly damp from washing, her eyes calm for once.
They hadn't spoken much about the orb.
Not yet.
But it lingered between them. The look in her eyes when the glass broke. The forced laughter of the people around them.
They were no longer invisible.
Not truly.