The Deal Without A Signature
Vayrik stands alone in the guild's archive, surrounded by dust and silence. A strange mirror looms before him, tall, jagged, and pulsing faintly with golden light. No one else can use it. No one else dares.
The mirror flickers. Not with torchlight, but with memory.
"You shouldn't have come back here," the mirror whispers.
He doesn't answer.
His reflection is fractured. Not broken, but split. One side glows with the twin sigils etched into his palm. The other is shadowed, flickering with Kaane's infernal resonance.
---
Years earlier.
The Kithritch estate, before the ruin.
Vayrik sits beside Kaane on the balcony, overlooking courtiers, trade emissaries, and diplomats leaving with empty hands.
"We could fix this," Vayrik said quietly.
"Pull back, stabilize. Rebuild."
Kaane scoffed.
"We don't rebuild. We rewrite."
"We were born into a name that meant something."
"A name no one feared."
That night, Kaane took the first pact sigil.
Vayrik never slept again.
---
Alone in the ruins.
At the edge of delirium.
Vayrik made his own bargain—not with blood, but with wit.
Twin voices called to him—playful, cruel, divine.
Kiros and Velith: the Twin Gods of Games and Mischief.
"You want revenge," one said, chuckling.
"You want rules that bend without breaking," the other whispered.
"We want entertainment."
Vayrik didn't kneel.
He flipped a coin.
It landed sideways.
The gods laughed.
And chose him.
"Then you're ours, little founder."
---
Back in the present, Vayrik presses his palm to the mirror.
Golden light spills across the room.
He remembers Kaane's face twisted by infernal heat. His power untempered by strategy.
"You could've ruled," Kaane said, bleeding.
"You could've won."
Vayrik whispered back:
"I did. I just didn't have to lose myself to do it."
---
Vayrik leaves the archive.
His fingers glow faintly with twin sigils. A spiraled dice and a fox's tail.
He walks past the guild's stone foundation.
Past Kaane's tomb.
He doesn't speak.
But his power would answer for him.
"The game isn't over."