Chapter 3 REGULARS

They showed up at the village gate just after midday, same as always.

The road sat empty, then suddenly there were three figures. One blink and there they were, like they'd just decided to be visible. The kids around the well scattered not screaming or anything, just moving out of habit. That’s what you did when immortals arrived. You stepped aside, the way you’d move for a storm rolling through. Not real fear, it was more like awareness. They moved differently through the world, and everyone knew it.

Zaren put down his hammer and glanced at the interface for info.

KRONOS. Level 847. Guild: Kronos Eternal. Quest objective: none active here. That was always a relief, but only just.

PIXIE. Level 312. No guild. Her name popped up in a soft pink, a player-chosen color, and Zaren always thought that detail told you way more about a person than all those stats ever coulder could. Active quest: “Find the Millhaven Cat”, the same one she’d had for three weeks now. The Millhaven cat, a tortoiseshell stray, showed up when it wanted and had no interest in being caught, immortal or not.

DREADNULL. Level 914. Guild: Crown of Thorns Officer. Active quest: none.

It was the last name that held Zaren’s attention. DREADNULL stood just behind the others. His name almost melted into the sky, so dark gray it was nearly invisible. No quest running, no visible objective. Maybe he was here for KRONOS, maybe just because he felt like it. Zaren disliked both possibilities.

KRONOS didn’t hesitate, he went right to the forge.

He moved like someone who never had to think about where he was going. The forge, the workbench, the blacksmith, the whole place mapped out and memorized long ago. He dropped a gauntlet on the counter. Good armor, enchanted, with the left knuckle smashed in, the kind of hit that’d take off a normal man’s hand.

“Fix it,” KRONOS said.

Zaren picked it up, turned it over. Clean damage probably done by one bad boss mechanic and KRONOS hadn’t dodged fast enough. Easy fix, hardly any material cost, about twenty minutes’ work.

“Eighteen silver,” Zaren told him.

KRONOS’s eyes flickered. Not mad or suspicious. Just momentarily thrown, like getting charged more for coffee than last time. “It was twelve last time.”

“That was a blade. This is enchanted armor.”

Neither of them commented on the lie sitting between them. KRONOS wouldn’t notice anyway, he never looked at Zaren long enough to see anything in his face. He half-listened, eyes drifting off the way they did when he tuned into someone Zaren couldn’t hear, in whatever world they spoke to him from.

“Whatever,” KRONOS said. He made the coins appear, already turning to leave. “Yeah, I’m coming. No, just repair stuff. Boring.”

Drev’s body wasn’t even twelve hours underground.

Zaren picked up the coins and counted them, slower than needed. Eighteen silver, it twelve last time. It was a tiny, private victory, one nobody but Mira and the forge walls would ever know.

PIXIE was next, she gave a little “Hi” before handing over her dagger.

She always greeted him. Three weeks of this cracked sword edges, snapped arrows, always a “hi” before anything else. Zaren never replied. He just took the dagger, the same one, even the same crack in the steel. She kept using it for things daggers weren’t meant to do, and kept bringing it back.

“You should stop prying things with this,” he said, holding it up. “It’s a dagger, not a crowbar.”

PIXIE froze. Her face did something weird for a player, it showed true surprise. Not over-the-top stream theatrics, just honest startle. Like the scenery had suddenly started speaking.

“You’ve never said anything before,” she said.

He hadn’t planned to, it just came out. Some things work that way. “The cat’s been near the old well. By the candle shop. If you wait long enough, it usually shows up.”

PIXIE stared and the silence felt thick. Somewhere out there, wherever she really was her hands probably hovered and her audience waited.

“Okay,” she said. “Thanks. I’ll… okay.” She took her dagger, lingered longer than she had to, then wandered off toward the candle shop with the dazed look of someone seeing something they can’t quite name.

Zaren made a mental note. He wasn’t sure what to do with it, but he kept it.

DREADNULL hadn’t budged from the square.

Twenty minutes passed. KRONOS came, dropped the money and left. PIXIE visited and drifted away. Throughout, DREADNULL stood there, rooted in the center of Millhaven, like a stone waiting for someone to remember it.

But he wasn’t idle. That was the difference. Some players just zoned out, their bodies slumping while their minds went elsewhere. Not DREADNULL, he took in the grain store ruins, watched the square, observed Lisse sweeping her doorway for the fourth time in a day, and the kids circling back to the well once the dangerous ones moved on.

He watched Zaren. It lasted about three seconds. Zaren glanced up, polishing the gauntlet, and DREADNULL was already looking at him. Not hostile, not warm, not distant just direct, unblinking and measuring.

Zaren didn’t look away. Neither did DREADNULL.

Then DREADNULL broke the gaze like he’d finished his inspection.

Zaren put his attention back on the gauntlet. By the time he looked up, the square was empty. Three icons on the interface drifted south toward the forest: KRONOS leading, PIXIE trailing, DREADNULL at the rear, never hurrying.

The forge quieted. The village nudged back into its rhythm. Zaren eyed his haul, the eighteen silver, stacked neatly. He picked one up and felt its cool weight.

He thought about DREADNULL, standing in the square with no quest, no real distraction. Just watching, not for amusement, but with a purpose Zaren couldn’t quite name. Studying the ruins, not as if they were broken, but as if they were clues.

Zaren kept a system in a notebook under the floorboards, a way of categorizing players. He’d been at it for weeks.

KRONOS was the achiever, the type who chased objectives, smashed things for rewards, totally predictable.

PIXIE was the explorer, a wanderer, someone drawn to small details, who said hi to blacksmiths to make the world feel lived-in. She was mostly harmless.

DREADNULL fit nowhere.

Not even with the griefers and chaos-lovers, the ones who hurt others for fun. DREADNULL hadn’t killed a soul in Millhaven. He hadn’t broken things, or even spoken. He’d just watched patiently for twenty minutes, like someone collecting evidence for a reason only he understood.

Zaren set the coin down. In the corner of his interface he saw the three icons vanish into the trees, PIXIE pausing to look at something a flower, maybe, or a rabbit, KRONOS far ahead and DREADNULL halted at the forest’s edge, his icon unmoving for a whole minute before finally heading in. Maybe he was looking back, or checking something.

Zaren reached for his notebook and scratched a new line beneath DREADNULL’s name: Doesn’t act like the others, watches the watchers. Reason unknown.