BATTLE CARDS

FILED AS WORTHLESS

The captain's name was Rask.

He didn't offer it. Ren learned it from the medic, who whispered it while she checked his ribs — "Don't provoke him. He's not cruel, but he's not kind either. He does his job." She said it like a warning and a prayer at the same time.

The interrogation room was small and bare. A table. Two chairs. A lamp that hissed and flickered. Rask sat across from Ren with his scarred hands folded on the table and his gray eyes fixed on Ren's face.

"Start from the beginning," he said.

Ren told him. Not everything — not the woman in the light, not the voice, not the way the card had felt when it burned — but enough. The Rift. The demons. Toma. The alley. The high-tier demon. The fight.

Rask listened without interrupting. When Ren finished, the captain was silent for a long moment.

"The card," he said. "Show me."

Ren hesitated. His hand went to his pocket — the card was there, wrapped in its cloth, cold and quiet. He didn't want to give it up. He didn't know why. It was just a piece of cardboard. It was worthless.

But it wasn't. He knew it wasn't. He'd felt it.

"Show me," Rask said again. "Or I'll have the guards hold you down and take it."

Ren put the card on the table.

Rask picked it up. He turned it over, examined both sides, held it up to the lamplight. His expression didn't change.

"It's been registered," he said. "Before. Years ago." He looked at Ren. "Your father?"

"Yes."

"What was his name?"

"Alden."

Rask's hands went still. Just for a moment — a flicker, nothing more — but Ren saw it.

"Alden," Rask repeated. "I knew an Alden once. A long time ago." He set the card down. "He was a good man. A clever man. He used this card like it was a weapon, not a toy. He saved lives with it." He paused. "And then he disappeared."

"He wanted a quiet life."

"He wanted to protect you." Rask's voice was flat. "He knew what the card was worth. He knew what people would do to get it. So he hid it. And he hid you."

Ren said nothing.

"Did he teach you how to use it?"

"No."

"Did he tell you what it does?"

"No."

Rask picked the card up again. He held it between his thumb and forefinger, and there was something almost like pity in his eyes.

"Then I'll tell you what the archives say." He recited it from memory, like a man reading a file he'd read a hundred times. "Card Thirty-Two. Designation: The Last Word. Power: touch-based ability acquisition. Duration: ten seconds. Dilution: severe. Combat application: none identified. Status: archival."

He set the card down.

"Touch-copy. You touch something, you copy its power. For ten seconds. Diluted. One at a time." He leaned back. "That's it. That's what you have. It's the weakest card in the registry. The Order has tested it a dozen times over the years. It's never been useful. It's never been worth the risk of putting a wielder in the field."

Ren looked at the card on the table. It was just cardboard. Just a piece of printed cardstock with a symbol on it that he didn't understand.

It didn't feel worthless. It felt like the most important thing in the world.

"I killed a demon with it," he said.

"You killed a low-tier demon with it," Rask corrected. "After it had already been weakened by the Rift crossing. And then a high-tier demon nearly killed you, and you spent ten seconds holding it still before it broke free and killed two of my wielders." His voice was hard. "That's not a weapon, boy. That's a suicide note."

Ren's hands were shaking. He didn't know if it was anger or fear or grief. Probably all three.

"Toma died," he said. "He died because I couldn't save him. Because the card wasn't enough."

Rask's expression didn't soften. But something in his voice did — just slightly.

"People die," he said. "In this war, people die. The card doesn't change that. It just gives you a different way to fail." He stood. "You're not a wielder. You're not a soldier. You're a liability with a worthless card and a dead man's blood on your hands. I'm going to recommend you be sent back to the poor quarter and forgotten about."

He walked to the door.

"Wait," Ren said. "What about Toma? What about his body?"

Rask stopped. He didn't turn around.

"The city will bury him," he said. "In the mass grave. With the others."

"He wasn't just — he wasn't nobody. He was a person. He had a name."

"He still does." Rask opened the door. "But the world doesn't care about names, boy. It only cares about power. And you don't have any."

He left.

They buried Toma three days later.

It wasn't a funeral. It was a hole in the ground behind the city walls, dug by prisoners, filled with bodies wrapped in cloth. Ren stood at the edge and watched them lower Toma into the earth, and he didn't cry. He'd done his crying in the alley. There was nothing left.

He said a prayer. He didn't know if anyone was listening.

Then he went back to the auxiliary wing and sat on his bunk and looked at the card.

It was cold. It was always cold now. The warmth he'd felt in the alley — the heartbeat, the waiting — was gone. It was just a piece of cardboard.

But it had chosen him. The woman in the light had chosen him. Grasp the power with your heart.

He didn't have a heart anymore. Toma was dead. His father was dead. He was alone in a compound full of people who thought he was worthless.

And yet.

And yet.

He couldn't let it go. The card. The feeling. The certainty — however foolish, however impossible — that there was something more to it. Something the archives didn't know. Something Rask hadn't seen.

He held the card up to the light and looked at the symbol on its face.

It was a word. Not in any language he knew. It was old and strange and it seemed to shift when he looked at it, like a reflection on moving water.

"Grasp the power with your heart."

He put the card back in his pocket. He touched it through the cloth, the way he always did, the way his father had always done.

And then he heard the voice.

Not a whisper. Not a breath. A voice — clear and quiet and unmistakably there.

"Ren."

He froze.

"It's not over. He's still coming. And you're the only one who can stop him."

He pulled the card out. It was still cold. Still dark. But the voice was real. He wasn't imagining it.

"Who are you?" he whispered.

"I'm the one who chose you."

"Seraphine?"

A pause.

"Yes."

The lamp flickered. The room was quiet. The world outside was full of people who thought he was nothing.

"Where are you?" he said.

"Here. In the card. In all of them. I'm sorry — I wanted to tell you sooner, but I couldn't. I had to wait until you touched the power."

"I used it. I killed a demon."

"You did more than that. You held a high-tier demon still. For ten seconds. That shouldn't be possible — not with the card in its base state. Not unless there's something more to it." She paused. "I think your father knew. I think that's why he hid it."

Ren's hands were shaking again. "The archives say it's worthless."

"The archives are wrong."

He stared at the card. He could see her now — faintly, in the back of his mind, a tall figure made of light and memory. She was beautiful. She was sad. She was looking at him like she'd been waiting for him for a very long time.

"The high-tier demon that killed your friend," she said. "It wasn't hunting the city. It wasn't hunting the Order. It was hunting me. And now that it's seen you, it knows where I am. It will come back. And it won't come alone."

"When?"

"Three days. Maybe less. Malachar has felt me wake up. He knows I'm here. He's sending everything he has."

Ren's mouth was dry. "And what am I supposed to do?"

"You're supposed to learn. You're supposed to train. You're supposed to stop being the boy who hesitates and start being the wielder who acts." Her voice was hard now. "You held a high-tier demon still for ten seconds. Do you know how long it takes most wielders to do something like that? Years. Sometimes decades. You did it on your first try."

"I nearly died."

"You nearly died because you didn't know what you were doing. That won't save you next time. Next time, you need to be better."

Ren looked at the card. He thought about Toma. He thought about the Bulwark — no, he didn't know the Bulwark yet. He thought about the two wielders who had died in the alley, holding the line while he ran.

He thought about the demon. The high-tier one. The thing that had killed Toma and smiled while it did it.

He wasn't going to run. Not again.

"What do I need to do?" he said.

"Train. Every night. Until you can hold the power for more than ten seconds. Until you can do more than just touch — you can copy, control, use." She paused. "And you need to find someone who will teach you. Someone who knows what the card can do. Someone who knew your father."

Ren's hands tightened around the card.

"Who?"

"The man who wrote the letter."

"What letter?"

"The one in your father's journal. The one you haven't found yet." Her voice softened. "Go home, Ren. Go back to the room above the laundry. Look under the floorboard where you hid the card. There's something waiting for you there. Something your father left."

He didn't know how she knew about the floorboard. He didn't ask.

"And then what?"

"And then you train. And then you fight. And then you become the one thing the demons are afraid of." She paused. "And then you stop Malachar. Or you die trying."

The lamp went out.

The voice was gone.

Ren sat in the dark, holding the card, and for the first time in his life, he didn't feel alone.

He felt terrified.

He felt ready.