One week later, beneath the dripping canopy of a half-collapsed chapel in the slums of Valis, Thalen found his actor.
"Name?" Thalen asked.
The young man across from him shifted nervously. Nineteen, maybe twenty. Dust-colored hair. A hunter's build that hadn't filled out yet.
"Deren Moss," he said. "D-rank. Scout class. I do recon for salvage crews in the Emberline."
"You're good with maps?"
"I live off them."
"Good." Thalen slid a sealed scroll across the table. "You're going to deliver a prophecy."
Deren blinked. "A… what?"
"A divine revelation. A holy quest. Call it whatever you want. All you need to do is deliver it to one man."
"…And that man is?"
Thalen smiled. "Veylen Cross."
Deren went pale.
"I'm not suicidal."
"No," Thalen said calmly. "You're clever. Which is why you won't be alone, and you won't be lying."
He held up a silver coin etched with unfamiliar script—one of the first divine quest tokens Thalen had crafted using his Quest Architect skill.
Deren reached for it, but Thalen didn't let go.
"This is a real quest. One that Veylen can sense. The weight, the pull—he'll believe it's divine. That it came from above."
"…It didn't?"
Thalen smiled thinly. "I am above. At least, to him."
He released the coin and slid over a second object: a burned journal page scrawled in half-mad writing, stained with false blood and ash.
A prophecy.
One he had meticulously authored through his system interface.
"And when the Ashdrinker stands before the burnt altar, the flame shall judge him. He will walk into ruin, or be reborn in blood."
Cryptic enough to be divine. Personal enough to feel real.
"I don't need you to interpret it," Thalen said. "Just read it. Give him the coin. And then vanish."
"Why me?" Deren asked, still staring at the parchment. "Why not a priest?"
"Because a priest would seem too clean," Thalen said. "Too expected. He'd sense the performance. But a grimy little scout with soot on his boots and trembling fingers? That sells desperation. Authenticity."
Deren swallowed.
"…And if he kills me anyway?"
"He won't," Thalen said. "Because you're not threatening him. You're validating him. Giving him a chance to believe he's chosen."
He paused, lowering his voice.
"He's waiting for a reason to burn something down. We're giving him one."
Quest Architect – Active
Target: Veylen Cross (indirectly)
Title: "Trial of Ash and Judgment"
Conditions: Arrive at the Ash Altar ruins in Emberline within 10 days. Confront what lies beneath.
Reward: Revelation of fate (A fate created by me)
Failure Penalty: Eternal irrelevance
Thalen wasn't sure if the system truly honored the fake reward. But it didn't matter.
Because Veylen wouldn't walk away.
Not from this.
The Ash Altar was a half-collapsed ruin filled with heat-bleeding glyphs, a dormant fire elemental, and decaying magic runes. If stoked—if Veylen went there believing it held answers—it might kill him. Or worse, spark a reaction that Thalen had designed.
A trap masked as legacy.
Four Days Later
Deren Moss delivered the prophecy.
He waited near one of Veylen's usual haunts: a tavern on the Emberline fringe called the Cracked Cinder. He rehearsed his lines twenty-three times before Veylen arrived.
"I have a message," Deren said as Veylen passed.
Veylen stopped walking.
Deren's heart pounded.
"…From whom?" Veylen asked.
"From something older than fire," Deren said. He held out the coin and the parchment.
Veylen took both.
Read.
The silence that followed was longer than Deren could bear.
But then—laughter.
Low. Dangerous.
"Another prophecy," Veylen muttered. "They always show up when the world wants me to change."
"Will you go?" Deren whispered.
Veylen tilted his head.
"If it's bullshit, I burn it. If it's truth…" He tucked the paper into his coat. "Then I'll burn that too."
And just like that, he walked away.
Deren collapsed into an alleyway ten minutes later, shaking.
Meanwhile
Thalen watched the scene unfold via scrying lens—a relic he'd loaned to a street thief who owed him six favors and a clean escape from a Rift collapse last winter.
Every contingency was planned.
If Veylen ignored the prophecy? No risk. It would fade like a false omen.
If he went?
He would walk into a chamber built for destruction.
But Thalen wasn't there.
He wouldn't be.
Because the Quest Architect wasn't just a skill.
It was a blueprint for divine theater.
Three Days Later: The Ash Altar Ruins
At the center of the Emberline lay the ruins of a pre-Collapse cathedral turned hunting shrine, long abandoned.
Inside the altar chamber, buried under layers of ash and cracked sigils, was a buried elemental core—chained by sealing glyphs that only reacted to a specific frequency of magic.
Fire.
Thalen had tuned it.
The moment Veylen entered, the seals would react.
Thalen watched through another borrowed eye—this one a minor scryer bound to a relic merchant he'd bribed to tail the hunter at a distance.
Ashdrinker stepped through the shattered gate.
And the altar began to pulse.
Yes.
Yes.
Now.
The temperature spiked.
Veylen drew breath—
And then?
Nothing.
He didn't flinch.
Didn't burn.
He stepped toward the altar.
Smiled.
Reached out—
And absorbed the pulse.
The entire elemental backlash?
He drank it in.
Fire was his element.
The trap became fuel.
The altar exploded in a controlled burst, but Veylen walked out without a scratch—his aura flaring, stronger than before.
Thalen's mouth went dry.
It made him stronger.
The system sent no warning. No punishment. But the message was clear:
[ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT FAILED]
[A-Rank Hunter Empowered by Quest Completion]
Thalen sat alone in his hideout, staring at the cold screen of his tablet.
He had tried stories.
Divine illusions.
Strategic proxy pawns.
And yet…
Veylen Cross didn't just survive his myth.
He embraced it.
Thalen rubbed his face, heart pounding.
He needed a new plan.
Something he hadn't tried yet.
Because Veylen wasn't just a man.
He was the kind of story that killed the storyteller.
And Thalen was starting to realize—
The system didn't want a fair fight.
It wanted a legend.