CHAPTER 8 — The Ghost Between Crates
The drop felt longer than it was.
Balik slid through the broken roof panel, fingers and toes catching the edges until he could hang and feel the air beneath him—cold, dry, smelling of dust, leather, and faint metal.
He let go.
He landed on a stack of coiled ropes, knees bent, weight spread, hands already out to balance. The ropes shifted under him with a soft crunch of fibers. Dust puffed up around his legs.
He didn't move.
He counted in his head.
One… two… three…
A boot scraped somewhere below.
Someone coughed.
A crate thumped into place.
No shout. No alarm.
Balik eased down, sliding from the rope stack to the floor. Stone met bare soles, cold and gritty.
The warehouse swallowed him.
From outside, it had looked like a single long block of stone and wood. Inside, it was a maze—rows and columns of crates stacked from floor to far rafters, some tied with rope, others banded with metal. Mana-lamps hung from support beams at irregular intervals, their pale, steady glow spilling in patches instead of washing the whole space.
Between those patches, shadows pooled thick.
Perfect.
Balik sank into one.
He pressed his back to a crate, closed his eyes for a moment, and just listened.
Footsteps. Four patterns.
One heavy, even—patrol.
One light, quick—worker.
Two near the entrance—stationary, lazy shifts of weight.
Voices.
"—said it was due yesterday—"
"—tell Ironhold they can wait, we're paying extra—"
"—if one more beastman drops a crate, I swear—"
His breathing matched the rhythm of the place. Slow, quiet, tucked between sound and silence.
Then he opened his eyes and began.
He moved along the crate wall, sliding sideways, shoulder brushing rough wood. The first aisle opened to his right—a narrow gap between two stacks, just wide enough for two men to pass with a box between them.
He peeked.
Crates stamped with a stylized claw mark and a circle—Tharok Clans sign. The smell from those was… wrong. Strong. Meaty. Even under waxed cloth and sealed lids, it seeped out—old blood, preserved flesh.
Beast parts.
Not just meat.
Balik's gaze flicked to a mark burned into the corner of one crate: a number string and three letters. He memorized it.
He stepped in only far enough to count.
Three crates high.
Four long.
Two deep.
Numbers slotted themselves in his head like stones in a wall.
He backed out when someone laughed on the other side.
He slipped down the wall, bare soles rolling from edge to edge, glide-soft, the way the orphanage had beaten into him and Varun had sharpened. Another aisle—this one stacked with smaller boxes, marked by a spiral symbol.
He lifted a lid half an inch.
A faint glitter met him—white dust in tiny cloth sachets.
He clamped it shut immediately and held his breath.
Mana dust.
Breathe that in wrong and your lungs burned.
These people weren't just moving food and tools. They were moving things that could feed cores. Strengthen cores. Explode cores.
He kept going.
The deeper into the warehouse he slid, the more… layered the smells became.
Meat. Oil. Treated leather. Iron. Faint sweet herb—the kind Mira once muttered was used in pain-numbing salves. Tangy, bitter scents that reminded him of the old woman in the lower ring who sold strange dried plants in wrapped bundles.
This was the world's underbelly, boxed and labeled.
Voices drifted clearer as he neared the center.
"—that's Grade-3 mana-steel, not this cheap scrap—"
The voice was rough, low, with a clipped accent Balik hadn't heard inside the base.
He inched toward it, hugging the side of a crate. At the end of the row, there was a gap where two stacks didn't quite meet, forming a narrow triangle of view.
He looked through.
A dwarf stood there.
Short, broad-shouldered, wrapped in a leather apron over chainmail. His beard was braided into two thick ropes that hung to his belt, tied with metal clasps. His hair was pulled back, showing a heavy brow and deep lines at the corners of his eyes—eyes the color of dull steel.
He held a thick bar of metal in one calloused hand, the other gripping a hammer with faint runes carved along its head.
The dwarf slammed the flat of the hammer against the bar.
A pulse shivered through the air.
Balik felt it more than heard it—a dull, dense thunk that wasn't just sound. Mana resonated. The bar hummed faintly afterward, a quiet ring that vibrated up Balik's bones even from here.
"Proper temper," the dwarf muttered. "Core's at least Tempered level, this'll take it."
Tempered Core.
Balik had heard that term in whispered ranking talk. Past Embryo. Past Verdant. Where core and mana had been refined enough that a single swipe of a blade could split stone.
Someone snorted nearby.
"Don't care about temper," a human man said—a tall one with a crooked nose, scar on his chin, cheap enchanted bracers on his wrists. "I care if the buyer pays on time."
The dwarf grunted. "If the metal's bad, the buyer dies before paying anything. Then neither of us gets coin."
A beastman hefted another crate onto the stack beside them. Tiger stripes wound over her arms and throat. Her muscles bunched and released under her skin with each movement—smooth, powerful. Her yellow eyes rolled as the men argued.
"Humans," she said. "Always talk, never lift."
The scar-chinned man bared his teeth at her. "We lift coins. More important."
Their banter rode over a deeper truth Balik understood instinctively:
Power out here wasn't just about training yards and Tier lists.
It was about metal like that bar. About beast strength like her arms. About the way the dwarf's aura felt like a solid weight in the air—dense, unmoving. About the way the mirroring aura of the human captain felt thin, sharp… and just a little unstable.
He filed that away.
Mira's presence, earth-solid. Ishan's, heat-shimmer. This dwarf's, like a rock planted in place.
Every strong person felt different.
He slid away while their voices rose again. Further back, where the lights were weaker, the air cooler.
Here, crates didn't bear faction marks—no lion of Kshavira, no hammer of Ironhold, no Tharok claw or Lumeria leaf. Just plain boards, old ropes, dust.
Forgotten corners.
Balik stepped into the dim aisle, ears fully open.
Nothing.
No footsteps.
No breathing.
Only the soft ringing echo of the dwarf's test blow far behind him.
He moved faster now.
Crate lids here weren't sealed as carefully. He levered one up with his fingertips, just enough to peek.
Daggers.
Neatly arranged in straw. Metal clean, edges oiled. They weren't legendary weapons. No runes, no famous emblems. But they were sharp and balanced, better than the training knives back at the base.
He pressed the lid down and moved to the crate beside it.
A long, narrow shape wrapped in cloth rested on padded blocks.
He peeled the cloth back.
A sword lay there. Not decorative. No fancy guard. Just a simple, brutally practical blade—heavy enough to crush, sharp enough to split. The metal's surface had that faint sheen of refined mana-steel, like the bars the dwarf had tested.
Ishan would swing this like it belonged to him.
Balik wrapped it back, quickly.
Another crate.
Smaller, older, one corner slightly rotted. Inside, beneath a stained cloth, he found a wooden box marked only with a number.
He opened it.
A necklace coiled inside like a sleeping serpent. Simple chain, no gems, just a small, flattened metal disc etched with lines that curled inward toward a center sigil.
He didn't recognize the rune, but he felt the faint hum when his fingertip brushed it. Mana. Stable. Calming.
Mira.
She would value this, not for beauty, but for function.
Beneath the necklace, wrapped again, was another box.
This one barely larger than his palm.
His chest tightened without knowing why.
He opened it very slowly.
Inside, on a small pad, sat an orb no bigger than a marble.
It was almost colorless—faintly gray, faintly bluish. But deep in its center, like a dying ember, a tiny flicker of violet light pulsed.
Not regularly. Not strong.
But alive.
Beast core.
Not the kind used by show-off noble kids in street talismans. This was too dense, too compact for that. It felt… old. As if whatever beast it came from had not died politely.
Balik's fingers hovered above it.
When he let the tip of his nail touch the orb, a whisper of mana brushed his skin.
It slid into him like cold smoke.
His breath caught.
For a heartbeat, the darkness around him… shifted. Just a little. Not enough to move. But enough that his outline felt thinner, his edges less clear.
Then it was gone.
His heart thudded.
"Later," he breathed silently. "You're trouble later."
He closed the box and tucked it under his shirt, inside the waistband of his trousers. It sat flush against his skin—small, cold, almost weightless.
Perfect.
He scanned the stack again, mind calculating, then slid back to the dagger crate.
The ring came from a low box near the floor—a plain iron band nested atop a bundle of rags. At first glance, it was nothing. But the inside held faint lines etched into the metal, forming a tiny circle-case.
Varun had once muttered about dimensional storage when interrogating a merchant. "Small ones barely hold more than a sack," he'd said. "Big ones are rare. And dangerous."
This was small.
Balik slipped it on his right middle finger.
It fit perfectly.
He focused on it, feeling inside.
There. A tiny hollow. Space just large enough for a few items if he stacked them carefully.
He worked quickly now, feeling time pressing on his neck.
Daggers first—four of them, nestled mentally in the ring's space. Then the wrapped long sword, though he had to angle it in his mind and imagine it shrinking to slide into the dimensional pocket. The ring resisted, then accepted, the blade vanishing from the physical crate with no sound.
The necklace went last.
He hesitated only a second before sending it into the ring's space as well. Safer there for now than in his palm.
Coins in a smaller box—he left those. Too obvious if someone checked his weight. Another ledger book, packed with numbers and names—that he opened, scanned rapidly, then closed.
Noble names. Minor guild crests. Regular shipment cycles.
He wouldn't remember it word for word.
But he'd remember enough.
He slipped the ledger back exactly as he'd found it.
Mission spoils rule: take what you can, but anything the powerful want, you lose. If you're greedy and stupid, you just lose earlier.
He cast his eyes over the corner one last time.
He noted what he was leaving—the extra daggers, the second-worst sword, the spare chain shirt. He counted silently, building a list for later.
If Varun asked, he'd have numbers.
Numbers made greed look like calculation.
"Oi!"
The shout snapped through the warehouse.
Balik froze, muscles locking.
A crate somewhere near the front had slipped from a worker's grip, crashing to the ground. Wood splintered. A spray of some foul-smelling liquid splashed across stone.
"What did I say about the sealed ones!" the scar-chinned guard roared.
"Sorry!" someone babbled. "I—I didn't mean—"
The dwarf let loose a string of curses in his own tongue, stomping over, boots thudding like hammers.
All eyes turned that way.
All attention.
Balik moved.
He slithered out from the shadowed aisle, staying low, sliding behind a stack while voices rose. He kept the crates between himself and the commotion.
"Do you know what that was worth?" the dwarf snarled. "I ought to—"
"Relax," the scarred man snapped. "We bill them extra. The beast is already dead."
Dead things caused trouble even after death, Balik thought.
His bare foot hit a plank that shifted.
It creaked.
Just enough.
He stopped breathing.
A few meters away, a guard with a thin iron circlet around his head—mana-sense focus—turned his head sharply.
"What was that?" he muttered.
Balik pressed himself into the narrow gap between a crate and the support beam behind it, spine scraping rough wood, arms at his sides. The space was tight; his ribs expanded against the crate when he tried to breathe.
The guard walked closer. His boots thudded, then slowed. He looked toward Balik's row, brow tightening.
If he had a core, if he had mana, if his presence was anything but an absence, the circlet might have picked up something.
Instead, the guard's senses slid right past him, like someone feeling for heat in a block of ice.
"Rats," the guard muttered finally. "This place's crawling with them."
Balik stayed motionless as the man spat on the ground and walked past, shoulders relaxing.
He counted to twenty before he shifted again.
His chest ached from the held breath.
Shadow suits you, Tejas whispered faintly, half-accusing, half-afraid.
Balik didn't argue.
He moved.
The way out was harder than the way in.
Going in, he'd been falling into cover. Going out, he was climbing against notice.
He retraced his path carefully, mapping each step, each sound, each change in light. The broken roof panel felt very far away.
Someone slammed a crate closed.
Someone laughed too loud.
The dwarf's hammer rang again.
At one point, a worker came down his aisle faster than he expected, boots clapping hard.
Balik dropped instantly, flattening under the low lip of a pallet, cheek pressed to cold stone. The worker's boot heel passed inches from his fingers.
The smell of unwashed skin and cheap ale hit his nose.
He fought a sneeze.
His eyes watered.
He dug his nails into his palm and let pain anchor him.
The moment passed.
Little by little, step by careful step, he reached the stack he'd first dropped onto.
The ropes waited there, coiled and still.
He climbed them silently, bare toes finding purchase. The roof gap loomed ahead—a ragged rectangle of dull sky framed by cracked planks.
His fingers found the edge.
The rusted nail bit his fingertip as he pulled himself up.
Pain stung sharp; wet warmth beaded.
He didn't hiss. Didn't curse.
He just climbed.
His shoulders cleared the hole. Then his hips. Then his feet, the last toe scraping the splintered wood.
He rolled onto the rooftop and lay there for a second, chest rising and falling, the city air suddenly feeling clean compared to the closed-in smells below.
"Alive," Ishan's voice murmured near his ear.
Balik opened his eyes.
Ishan crouched beside him, messy hair blown slightly by the wind, amber-gold eyes warmer than the day's light. His posture was loose, but the tension in his shoulders betrayed how closely he'd been watching.
Mira stood a little further back, not crouched—simply standing, cloak drawn tight, braid over one shoulder now. Her earth-brown eyes locked onto Balik's face, scanning every line, every twitch.
His hands. His breathing. The way his eyes moved.
"Well?" she asked.
He pushed himself up to sitting.
"Four guards," he said. "Two at the front, one patrol with bad knees, one inside with a mana circlet. One dwarf—Ironhold, Tempered level, checking metal. Beastfolk loaders. Crates: three stacks of Tharok-marked beast parts, four rows of mana dust sacks, three pallets of mana-steel ingots, two of mixed herbs, one of Lumerian-style blades. A side corner with unmarked crates—tools, weapons, some jewelry. Ledgers near the dwarf's table."
As he spoke, the mission stopped being terror in his mind. It became lines and numbers again. Facts.
Information.
Mira's eyes softened a fraction.
Ishan let out a low whistle. "You saw all that in one run?"
"One run," Balik said. "I can draw it later."
He didn't mention the tiny box pressed cold against his stomach.
Or the items sitting weightless in the ring space on his finger.
Mira's gaze dropped to his hands.
Her eyes narrowed on the iron band.
"You took spoils," she said.
Not accusing.
Just fact.
Balik considered lying.
He didn't.
"Some," he said. "Nothing obvious missing from the main stacks. Daggers. One sword. A necklace. A few coins I left. I memorized what's still there so if they cross-check, it looks like the right crates were hit at the right depth."
Ishan blinked. "You planned that while hiding from a dwarf and a mana guard?"
"Yes," Balik said simply.
Ishan's grin was bright, sudden.
"Monsters raising monsters," he said proudly.
Mira held out her hand, palm empty, fingers steady.
"The necklace," she said.
There it was. Not greed in her voice.
Just expectation.
Balik slid his thumb over the ring, focusing inward for the first time since filling it. He pictured the necklace, coiled like a snake in the small space.
It appeared in his palm with a faint weight and a whisper of displaced air.
Mira's eyes flicked to that movement, then back to his face.
He dropped the necklace into her waiting hand.
She caught it easily.
The chain glinted dull silver in the low light. Her thumb brushed the etched disc.
She stilled.
The muscles at the corner of her jaw loosened slightly, as if the subtle mana in the metal had taken a fraction of tension from her bones.
"Why me?" she asked.
Her voice wasn't demanding.
Just… curious.
Balik thought about lying again.
Because I owe you.
He didn't owe anyone anything.
"Because you'll use it," he said. "Not sell it. And you won't kill me later to see if I had more."
Ishan snorted. "High praise."
Mira's lips quirked.
Not quite a smile.
"True," she said. She fastened the chain around her neck in one smooth motion, tucking the disc under her shirt.
She looked… no different outwardly.
But something in the way she stood changed—barely. As if the ground under her feet agreed with her more.
Ishan jabbed Balik lightly with his elbow.
"And me?" he said, trying to sound joking but not hiding the expectation in his eyes.
Balik lifted his right hand, calling the long wrapped sword from the ring.
It slid into existence with a faint weight, the cloth slightly cooler than the air around it.
Balik leaned it toward Ishan.
"You break things," he said. "You should have something worth breaking them with."
For a second, Ishan just stared.
Then his face split into a grin so wide it almost looked painful.
"You're serious?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Don't give things like this to people casually, little ghost. They'll start following you like dogs."
"You already do," Balik said.
Mira made a soft sound that might have been a suppressed laugh.
Ishan took the sword reverently, pulling the wrapped blade halfway out. The metal caught the light—not shining, just steady.
He swung it once in the cramped rooftop space.
Mira stepped aside without blinking.
"Too heavy?" she asked.
"Perfect," he said.
He wrapped it again, holding it close.
Neither of them asked if that was everything.
They knew better.
Mira's eyes lingered once more on the line of Balik's shirt, on the way it bulged the tiniest bit near his waistband where the small box lay hidden beneath.
She said nothing.
Trust wasn't exactly the right word for what sat between them.
But it was something.
"Let's move," she said. "We have to get back before someone important needs to pretend they knew all this first."
They crossed the rooftops again, the city sprawling out around them—rings of stone and light and noise, all ignorant of three shadows slipping home.
Later, under Varun's gaze, Balik recited everything he'd seen.
Crates. Marks. Goods. Guard numbers. Patrol path. Even the dwarf's muttered insults.
Mira and Ishan confirmed, filling in aura impressions and core feel where Balik's dormant presence couldn't sense.
Varun listened, silent, amber-brown eyes unreadable.
The masked Outer Circle watcher stood in the corner, arms folded, gaze heavy on Balik the entire time.
When Balik finished, no one spoke for several heartbeats.
Then the masked one said, "He's… thorough."
Varun's head tilted a fraction.
"A ghost in the middle of steel and beasts," the watcher added. "Keep him in the dark a while longer."
Balik felt cold crawl up his spine at the phrasing.
In the dark.
Where shadow lived.
Varun nodded.
"Balik," he said. "You did well."
The words were simple.
But in this place, they were not cheap.
"You'll be moved to Tier 2," he continued. "Officially. We'll tailor your training. Information. Stealth. Knives. No beast cores, no flashy spells. The others will chase light. You'll learn to own blind spots."
Balik lowered his head slightly.
"Yes."
As he left the room, the tiny orb hidden under his shirt pulsed once against his skin.
Faint.
Patient.
Waiting.
He touched it briefly through the cloth.
Not yet, he thought.
One day.
Not yet.
Beside him, Ishan walked with his new sword slung over his back, humming under his breath, the heat of his awakened fire-core radiating comfort.
Mira walked on his other side, necklace hidden, eyes calm, steps steady, presence like quiet stone.
They looked less like handlers now, less like seniors—
and more like a unit.
Not friends.
Not family.
Something in between.
In the deep, quiet place inside him where Tejas and Balik argued in whispers, a third presence began to take shape.
Not light.
Not dark.
Just a boy learning to be a shadow in a world that worshipped power.
And for now, that shadow had survived.