Chapter 2: The Curator's Gambit

Chapter 2: The Curator's Gambit

“What are you?”

The question hung in the rain-slicked air between them, as sharp and cold as an icicle. Kai’s first instinct was to run. His second, more rational instinct, was that he wouldn’t make it two steps before this woman had him on the pavement with a broken arm. The sheer, coiled potential for violence in her stance was an almost physical force.

“I’m a grad student,” he stammered, the words sounding pathetic even to his own ears. “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about. My hand slipped, I got a shock from the wiring, that’s all.”

A lie. A desperate, flimsy lie.

The woman, Catharine Wen, didn’t even blink. A ghost of a smile, devoid of any warmth, touched her lips. “Faulty wiring. Simon Zhou, a man who rewired a pre-war thermionic valve amplifier in his sleep, killed by a ‘gas leak.’ And now his shop has faulty wiring. Bastion City is having quite a run of bad luck with its utilities.”

Her sarcasm was a scalpel, effortlessly slicing through his denial. She knew. She knew it all.

“I was Simon’s business manager,” she continued, her voice dropping to a low, confidential tone that was more menacing than a shout. “My name is Catharine Wen. And the organization I work for doesn’t believe in coincidences.”

Kai’s mind raced, trying to find an escape route, a way out of this conversation. But her gaze held him pinned. He could feel the faint thrumming from the scar on his hand, a nervous pulse reacting to her proximity. She wasn’t just a person; she was like Simon’s shop, humming with a contained energy that his new sight could barely perceive.

“The item that was hanging on that wall,” she said, stepping closer, forcing Kai to retreat until his back was against the cold brick of the building next door. “It wasn’t a photograph. Not really. It was a containment seal. An arcane anchor designed to pacify and bind a… local disturbance.”

“The Smoldering Hag,” Kai whispered, the name tasting like ash in his mouth.

Catharine’s expression hardened, a flicker of confirmation in her eyes. “So you have met her. That explains the scar.” She gestured towards his hand with her chin. “The seal was stolen three nights ago. The same night Simon died. With it gone, the entity it was suppressing is growing stronger, more aggressive. Its influence is beginning to bleed into the city. A rash of unexplained fires in the East Docks. A sudden, statistically impossible spike in violent assaults in the Narrows. Rage is its native language, and the whole city is starting to listen.”

This was too much. It was the stuff of his folklore research papers, not a conversation to be had in a rainy alley. “What organization?” he demanded, his voice cracking. “Who are you people?”

“We are the Order of Curators,” she stated, as if announcing a corporate department. “We maintain the Veil between your world and… others. We catalogue, contain, and when necessary, neutralize supernatural threats. Simon was one of us. He was the Curator of this city, and his murder was a direct attack on the Order.”

Curators. The Veil. It sounded like a fantasy novel, but the cold certainty in her eyes and the memory of burning claws in the forest told him it was terrifyingly real. He was drowning, and she was calmly explaining the molecular composition of water.

Catharine reached into the inner pocket of her blazer. Kai flinched, his mind screaming gun, but she produced something small and metallic. She held it out on her gloved palm. It was a tarnished silver lighter, an old Zippo, intricately engraved with a pattern of coiling serpents.

“You have a rare talent, Mr. Vance. An untrained one, but powerful. I need to know how powerful.” Her eyes were chips of flint. “This is a test. Tell me what you see.”

Kai stared at the lighter. His first thought was to refuse, to deny this madness once and for all. But a morbid curiosity, the same academic impulse that had led him into Blackwood Forest, took hold. He was afraid, but he also desperately needed to know. He needed to understand what was happening to him.

He focused on the object. The tingling in his scar bloomed into a warm, pulsing glow, visible even in the dim light of the streetlamp. The world around the lighter dissolved into a grey haze, and the object itself became a focal point of shimmering energy.

Echoes. Memories clung to it like iron filings to a magnet.

He saw flashes, disjointed and chaotic. A hand, not Catharine’s, snapping the lighter open, the flame flaring to life. The scent of sulfur and expensive cologne. A dimly lit room, the walls lined with glass cases filled with writhing, shadowy things. Then, a single, dominant image burned through the others. A man with slicked-back hair and cruel eyes, the serpent engravings on the lighter momentarily gleaming in the reflection of his glasses. He was laughing as he pressed the lit flame to a writhing sack of… something… that screamed without a mouth. And on the back of his hand, a tattoo: a leaking wine barrel, rendered in blood-red ink.

“Well?” Catharine’s voice cut through the vision, pulling him back to the rain-soaked alley.

Kai staggered, blinking, the residual images fading like afterimages on his retina. “A man,” he gasped, his throat dry. “He… he uses it to torture things. In a room full of glass jars. He has a tattoo… a red barrel, leaking.” He looked up at her, seeing his own shock reflected in a brief, unguarded widening of her eyes.

She snapped the lighter shut and pocketed it, her professional mask slamming back into place. But he had seen it. He had passed the test.

“The Crimson Cask Cartel,” she said, the name sounding like a curse. “Poachers. They traffic in the supernatural. We believe they murdered Simon for his research and stole the seal to harness the Hag’s energy.”

She took a final step toward him, her presence completely eclipsing his world. The choice he thought he had—to run, to hide, to forget—was an illusion.

“Here is your situation, Kaelen Vance,” she began, her tone leaving no room for negotiation. “You are a civilian who has witnessed a Class-Four entity. You are an unregistered, active Seer. You have knowledge of the Order and one of our primary antagonists. In our lexicon, you are a catastrophic liability. A loose thread that, if pulled, could unravel everything.”

A cold dread, far deeper than what he’d felt in the forest, settled in his bones.

“Normally, a liability like you would be… sanitized.” The word was sterile, clinical, and utterly terrifying. “Your memory of the past week would be wiped clean. You’d wake up with a mild concussion and a lingering, inexplicable fear of the dark. We are very good at it. Clean. Efficient.”

She paused, letting the weight of the threat sink in.

“However,” she continued, “you also possess a unique perceptive ability that we currently lack. The Cartel is skilled at hiding their arcane footprints. But you… you can see the echoes they leave behind. You could be the key to finding the seal before the Hag’s influence destabilizes this entire city sector. You could be the key to finding the men who killed Simon.”

The ultimatum landed with the force of a physical blow. There was no third option, no middle ground. He was a pawn on a chessboard he’d never even known existed.

“So you have a choice,” Catharine concluded, her dark eyes boring into his. “You can be an asset, or you can be a problem we solve. Help us track the artifact, and you might just get the answers you’re looking for. Refuse, and you’ll forget you ever had questions.”

The rain fell harder, plastering his dark hair to his forehead. He looked at this terrifying, pragmatic woman, at the city glowing with hidden energies all around him, and at the phantom scar on his hand. He thought of Simon’s kind eyes and his violent, lonely death. He thought of the gas leak that killed his parents years ago, another ‘unfortunate accident’ that had never felt right.

It wasn't a choice. It was a conscription.

“When,” Kai asked, his voice a raw whisper, “do we start?”