The fire crackled softly in the hearth. It was an old flame, built from cedar and wildthorn, their sap-rich branches filling the cabin with a sharp, comforting scent.
The amber glow spilled over stone walls, flickering gently against worn bookshelves and the tangle of tools Nik never fully put away. Shadows danced across the floor, long and slow, like time itself was unwinding for a breath.
Kaiden sat cross-legged on a woven mat, his hands wrapped around a bowl of broth. He sipped in silence, letting the warmth settle in his chest. His limbs still trembled, not from pain or fatigue, but from something else.
He'd opened a part of himself today.
And the world had opened back.
Across from him, in his usual chair that creaked like it remembered better years, Nik sat with one leg over the other, turning an old iron poker in the flames. He hadn't spoken since they returned. He didn't need to. His presence, solid and unshaken, had done all the talking.
Until now.
[ Niklaus ]
"Kaiden."
The boy looked up.
"Come closer..."
"Bring that fire in your chest with you."
"I think it's time you heard a tale older than this cabin."
Kaiden set his bowl aside and moved to sit beside the chair. He leaned back against Nik's worn boots, the way he always had when he was younger, before the testing, before the trait, before the world became so loud.
[ Niklaus ]
"You felt it, didn't you?"
"That tug."
"That question the Void asked you."
[ Kaiden ]
"...Yeah."
[ Niklaus ]
"Good."
Nik reached behind his chair and pulled out a worn flask. He took a sip, then stared into the fire for a long moment. When he finally spoke, his voice dropped, low and distant.
[ Niklaus ]
"I was fifteen when mine woke."
"A little older than most."
"Back then, we didn't have terms like 'Trait' or 'Passive Web.'"
"Just power."
"Strange things that happened to strange people."
[ Kaiden ]
"You have the curse, too?"
"...Void of Aena."
"You have it too?"
[ Niklaus ]
"No."
"Not quite..."
"Mine wasn't space."
"It was silence."
"A deep one."
"The kind that follows you like a shadow and listens when no one else will."
He tapped the iron poker against the stone. A low 'ting' echoed like a bell that wouldn't finish ringing.
[ Niklaus ]
"They called it the Listener's Curse."
"Back when people feared the quiet more than the monsters."
Nik groaned.
"At first, I thought it was just a weird affinity."
"Monsters got quiet when I was near."
"People too."
"Like the world was… leaning toward me."
[ Kaiden ]
"But that doesn't sound cursed."
[ Niklaus ]
"It wasn't."
"Not at first."
"I leveled like anyone else."
"Got my boosts, my perks."
"My Strength hit eighteen before I was sixteen."
"But then, one day... it stopped."
[ Kaiden ]
"Stopped?"
"What do you mean, stopped?"
"What happened?"
He turned toward Kaiden then, his eyes catching the firelight, glinting not with regret, but something deeper.
[ Niklaus ]
"Level ten."
"That's when the System stopped counting for me."
"I still gained experience."
"Still leveled."
"But my HEART Status?"
He shook his head.
"Flatlined..."
"No increase in Strength."
"No speed."
"No anything."
"Just... silence."
Kaiden felt a chill crawl up his spine, despite the warmth of the fire.
[ Kaiden ]
"So you've been stuck?"
[ Niklaus ]
"Since before your parents were born."
"I watched brats I used to train overtake me in power."
"I got slower."
"Weaker."
A slight pause.
"But smarter though..."
"Because what else could I do?"
He smiled then. Not sadly.
But like a man who'd made peace with a quiet war.
[ Niklaus ]
"I learned to read everything."
"I stopped chasing numbers."
"Stopped waiting for the System to notice me."
"Instead, I started noticing things it couldn't."
"People."
"Monsters."
"The earth before a quake."
"The wind before a trap goes off..."
"I learned how to cheat the system that forgot me."
[ Kaiden ]
"...Did it hurt?"
[ Niklaus ]
"Not in the way you think..."
"It's not pain that breaks a man."
"It's being forgotten."
"Your body can heal from pain."
"You can scream through it, fight through it."
"But when no one remembers what you fought for..."
"That's when pieces of you start fading."
"You walk into a Concordium hall, and your name doesn't even flicker on the slab."
"You fight for a village and no one remembers the old man who stalled the wyrm long enough for the kids to run."
He chuckled softly.
[ Niklaus ]
"They all remember the knight who dealt the finishing blow."
"Because his stats showed it."
Kaiden was quiet.
Then he whispered.
[ Kaiden ]
"...Is that why you know so much?"
"About Traits."
"About curses."
"About... my curse?"
[ Niklaus ]
"Parts of it."
"I had to learn every corner of this world that stats don't cover."
"Resonance frequencies."
"How items don't care who you are if you understand them."
"The invisible rules."
"The grey areas..."
He looked down at Kaiden then, his voice soft.
[ Niklaus ]
"I knew you had something strange in you, boy."
"Not because the system told me."
"Because the world leaned toward you."
"Just like it did for me."
Kaiden's throat tightened.
[ Kaiden ]
"...So I'll never gain stats either?"
Nik took another sip. Then he set the flask down and leaned forward.
For a moment, he didn't speak. He simply stared into the flames.
Then, slowly, deliberately, he unbuttoned his shirt.
One. Two. Three buttons undone.
Each one felt heavier than the last, like unlocking a vault sealed by memory. The firelight played across his chest as the fabric loosened.
What he revealed wasn't a scar, or a wound.
It was a mark.
Etched into his skin, like it had been burned there at birth.
A key. Not ornate or gilded, but ancient. Primordial. And coiled around it, two serpents. One black as ink. One white as the sky.
Their sinuous bodies entwined in an eternal dance, neither devouring the other, but never resting either.
[ Kaiden ]
"You have a mark too?"
[ Niklaus ]
"Hahaha..."
"Of course, boy."
"I am a Stagin after all!"
Nik stopped chuckling after a while.
"This... is the mark of my curse."
"Of the silence that hears everything."
"Of the gate that opens only when you've nothing left but to listen."
Kaiden stared. His hand moved before he realized it — fingers stretching toward the mark. But Nik's hand gently stopped him.
"Yours burns."
"Mine whispers."
"But both are doors."
"And both demand a price."
He rested his palm on Kaiden's shoulder, firm and steady.
"What the cost is, I don't know."
"But what I do know..."
He looked into Kaiden's eyes then, not with pity, but with weight. With truth.
"...is that your growth won't come from the System."
"It'll come from the fire inside you."
"And if that fire stays lit..."
"It doesn't matter what number the system tells you."
"...Because there are things that can never be measured by numbers."
Kaiden's birthmark, hidden beneath his shirt, pulsed with heat. He touched it gently — an open chest, still faint, but undeniable now.
Kaiden glanced into the hearth as one of the charcoals popped.
The flames licked at the stones. Not wildly. Not high.
But steady.
Like a heart that had weathered too many winters and still beat on.
He reached up and touched the edge of his mark, now warm beneath his shirt, like embers under skin.
[ Kaiden ]
"I'll keep going, Pops."
"Even if it's slow."
"Even if it's... nothing."
Nik smiled.
[ Niklaus ]
"Good..."
"Because... Nothing?"
"Nothing is exactly where everything starts."
The fire burned low into the night.
"The world may forget you, Kaiden..."
"But fire remembers."
Outside, snow whispered against the shutters.
Inside, two cursed souls sat quiet, the bond between them glowing quietly, steadily.
Like flame beneath the ash.