Chapter 63: You Wouldn’t Want That Secret Getting Out, Would You?

The meeting point sat deep inside Frostwind Forest a small pocket map known as the Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms, centuries-old trees in full bloom scattered across it, petals drifting steadily down over grass still damp from morning.

Alexis stood beneath one of them, armor fitted and practical, a slim blade resting easy in one hand.

The scene around her looked almost staged for effect soft pink petals settling against a backdrop of distant snow-capped ridgelines, the whole tableau carrying the kind of quiet drama that belonged on a recruitment poster rather than a casual meetup.

The moment Kael came into view, something sharpened behind her eyes.

One hand stayed tucked behind her back, where a small device sat ready in her palm.

She triggered it the instant he was close enough, and a faint, clarifying light washed briefly across her vision the device’s one function doing exactly what it promised, cutting straight through whatever stood between her and the truth of what lay underneath.

The bronze mask dissolved from her view like it had never been there at all.

What she saw instead stopped her cold.

I know that face.

She’d known it for years, in fact it had hung on her wall since she was old enough to choose her own posters.

"Wait." Her voice came out thinner than she intended. "Unrivaled is Silversong? That’s that’s not possible."

Since the day Ascension launched, Unrivaled had owned the Ascendant Rankings outright, the mystery of what sat behind that mask fueling entire forums dedicated to nothing but speculation.

Plenty of theories had floated around a celebrity hiding from exposure, someone with real-world fame too valuable to risk.

A handful of threads had even floated the idea that Unrivaled might secretly be Silversong himself, the swordsman who’d walked away from Ironclad Esports right before launch to vanish into total anonymity.

Every serious analysis had eventually dismissed that theory outright. The playstyles didn’t match.

The class didn’t match. As a devoted follower of Silversong’s career for years, Alexis herself had been among the loudest voices insisting it couldn’t possibly be true.

She remembered the exact thread where she’d argued the point for three pages running Silversong was a blade specialist down to his bones, the kind of player whose entire identity on the server had been built around close-range precision and nothing else.

A Beastlord relied on companions to do the heavy lifting. Nothing about that profile matched the man she’d followed since his first ranked season.

She’d been so certain, in fact, that she’d once bet an entire guild dinner on the theory being nonsense.She was going to owe someone a very awkward apology.

And now the evidence sat directly in front of her, undeniable.

The single strongest melee talent this server’s ever produced and he’s been playing a Beastlord this whole time.

If this got out, it would detonate across the entire server overnight. Every forum, every stream, every guild channel all of it would be talking about nothing else for weeks.

Right now, it was just her, standing frozen, staring at a face she’d memorized years before any of this began.

Kael waved a hand in front of her eyes, clearly confused by the sudden blank stare. "You good? You just checked out on me."

"...It’s nothing." She shook herself back into focus, forcing the excitement off her face before it gave anything away.

I only wanted to peek out of curiosity. I never expected to actually find something this big.

Her mind moved fast once the initial shock passed, settling into something colder and far more calculated.

This is leverage. Real leverage.

She let a slow, deliberate smile surface, tucking the device away.

Kael, oblivious to what had just happened, glanced around the clearing. "You alone out here? Where’s the rest of your team?"

"Waiting on the other side.

Figured I’d talk to you first." She tilted her head. "About last night’s offer."

"The guild."

"I want to buy it. Same as before."

Kael’s expression flattened immediately. "Already told you not for sale. Don’t waste both our time."

"No chance at all?" She held his gaze a beat longer than casual conversation required, then let the smile turn sharp. "You really don’t want the whole server finding out Unrivaled is Silversong, do you, boss?"

Kael went still.

She used something to see through the mask.

It clicked together fast the blank stare, the sudden shift in her tone the moment she’d recovered.

He’d known this exact moment was coming eventually. Masks only held for so long against people determined enough to look past them.

He just hadn’t expected the clock to run out this fast, or to lose this particular hand before he’d even noticed he was playing it.

For one brief, irritated second, he genuinely considered how much simpler this entire life would have been if he’d just worn a full helmet instead of a half-mask that left his eyes and jaw exposed to exactly this kind of problem.

He kept his voice level despite the sour note settling in his chest. "Who else knows?"

"Just me. For now." She let that hang a moment before continuing, almost gently.

"I’m good at keeping things quiet, if the price is right. Agree to my terms, and this stays between us."

"And for what it’s worth the number I offered for that guild was more than fair. You wouldn’t be walking away shortchanged."

"Easier for everyone if it’s just the two of us who know," she added, watching his face for the moment it finally cracked, already composing in her head how she’d phrase the guild transfer paperwork once he gave in.

Kael’s mouth curved instead faint, unreadable, nothing like the reaction she’d been expecting.

He tilted his head slightly, gaze drifting up toward the floating readout still hovering above her from her own lingering scan.

[TidalBlade]

Level: 28

Status: Capable

Bond Success Rate: 75%

"What’s funny?" Her scan hadn’t fully faded yet, and she caught the shift in his expression before he even answered a slow, creeping unease settling where confidence had sat a moment earlier.

Kael didn’t bother with a reply.

He raised one hand instead, leveled it at the center of her brow, and triggered the skill without ceremony.

Warden’s Mandate.

Golden runework bloomed instantly across her forehead, spreading in intricate, binding lines faster than she could react to them.

His own level and stat sheet sat so far ahead of hers that the contract’s baseline odds were already stacked heavily in his favor and with the Ring of Infinite Fortune quietly rigging every roll behind the scenes, seventy-five percent might as well have been a guarantee.

A clean chime rang out a heartbeat later.

"Bond successful. Legendary-tier companion acquired: TidalBlade."

Across the clearing, petals kept drifting down over the grass exactly as they had a moment earlier, indifferent to the fact that the balance of power between them had just flipped completely in the space of a single, uncontested breath.

Whatever Alexis had walked into this meeting expecting, it hadn’t been this. She’d come looking to pull a string. Instead, she’d just discovered exactly how it felt to be one.