CHAPTER 90: INTERVIEWER (2)

Lucen sat with the notebook open in his lap, the paper spotted faintly where rain had once touched the edge.

His fingers hovered over the page, still slightly raw from earlier casts. The ink-stain on his thumb made a soft dot near the margin as he pressed it down absentmindedly.

The street around him was quiet now, low-volume traffic, shoes on concrete, the occasional grind of a hover platform moving crates too large to walk with. No voices nearby. The only crowd was inside his head.

He closed his eyes for a second.

Let the city fade.

And replayed Varik’s voice.

"Design something that breaks line of sight. Disorients tracking. Not invisibility. Not glamor. A real vanish. One that punishes pursuit."

Lucen exhaled through his nose.

Then started drawing.

Not a spell.

Not yet.

Just shapes.

Arcs. Crosshatch. Inner loop, outward trace, sharp downstroke. Sigil roots. The kind of marks that would trigger compression without anchor, like pressure collapsing in a bottle, sealed wrong and dropped.

He knew what wouldn’t work.

Actual invisibility? Detectable. Too obvious.

Cloak spells? Beatable by infrared, mana-sense, even raw noise.

He didn’t want a spell that made him invisible.

He wanted a spell that made people think they hadn’t seen him in the first place.

Different logic.

Different lie.

He drew the first draft quickly.

Glyph base: distortion compression. Three-thread. Mid-cost.

That meant it would bend space, not erase him.

He added a logic layer: field echo. Thin, quiet. Would leave behind a false memory of his body being one step left of where it had been.

Not just a blur, a delayed shape.

An echo of his own movement.

Then he thought about pursuit.

Punishment.

"What happens when they follow?" he muttered.

He sketched a branch glyph outward, sharp triangle vector, split logic.

If the target’s attention stayed locked after the vanish trigger, then the spell would reflect back a short-pulse feedback into their line of vision.

Not blindness. Not damage.

Just disorientation.

Like the visual equivalent of stepping into a room you swore had furniture in it, then realizing it never did.

He grinned a little.

"Delusion layer."

It was nasty.

Not lethal.

Just... confusing.

He could fine-tune it.

Three second range delay.

Half-meter offset image ghost.

Echo memory persistence.

False movement line.

He stopped.

Checked the shape again.

It wasn’t elegant yet.

But it was solid.

He gave it a name, on paper only.

[Threadmask]

It felt sharp. Clean. Not dramatic. Just practical.

Then his system pinged.

[New Glyph Draft Detected: Threadmask (Incomplete)]

[Thread Classification: Tactical Utility / Field Escape]

[Spell Slot Allocation: Pending (1)]

[Mana Cost Estimate: 28]

[Recommended Binding? Y/N]

Lucen stared at the page.

Didn’t bind it yet.

He wasn’t done.

He needed an exit trigger. Something fast.

’Right-hand cast motion. Spiral inward. Pull breath deep, trigger with wrist flick—’

He drew the gesture.

Tested it in the air, once.

Felt right.

Not flashy.

Just clean.

Another ping.

[Gesture Confirmed: Threadmask Trigger Accepted]

[Effect Radius: 3.2m]

[Falloff: Disorientation / Echo Drift Trace Active]

[Classification Tag: Cloak / Mislead / Redirect]

Lucen clicked his tongue.

Then smiled.

"Close enough."

He tapped the page once. Slow.

Then flipped to the next one.

He still had two slots left.

But this one?

This was the first that made him feel untouchable.

Not a weapon.

A shield made of confusion.

—

Lucen tapped the notebook shut with one gloved finger, ink drying unevenly in the top-right margin where his spell notes had bled a little from pressure.

The city air felt heavier now, mana heat rising off concrete, light shifting slightly overhead as a longboard caster zipped past on the upper lane trail.

He exhaled. Calm. Cool.

Then he heard the footsteps.

Not loud.

Not trained.

Just fast.

Untrained runners always had a tell, rhythm off, heelstrike wrong. This one was no different.

She rounded the corner like someone half-chasing a deadline and half-pretending she hadn’t just made it worse.

Zey.

Hair looser now. Out of breath. One hand on her phone, the other clutching the strap of a side-slung gear bag that looked too expensive for someone with that much nervous energy.

She saw him on the bench and nearly tripped.

"Okay—wait—don’t leave—"

Lucen didn’t stand.

Didn’t even blink.

He just watched her skid to a stop five feet in front of him, panting, hand half-raised like a civilian trying to prove they came in peace.

Zey pointed at him, still catching her breath. "I—I forgot to ask you—earlier—I ran—okay, you don’t care that I ran—anyway—"

Lucen raised a brow.

She straightened, exhaled once, and finally said, "I didn’t get any usable audio. For the vlog."

Lucen blinked once.

She continued, cheeks red now. "From when you humiliated Halren. The angles were amazing. The flare was clean. You looked—serious, but like cool-serious, not murder-serious."

Lucen tilted his head. "That your official journalism?"

She laughed nervously. "No. I mean—yeah? Kind of. But not real journalism, I just... do this for my stream. Drift culture, up-and-comers, meltdown footage, spell glitch reels, that stuff."

Lucen leaned back against the bench, arms folded.

"And you thought I’d give you what, a follow-up interview?"

Zey flinched. "No! I mean, yes. Kind of. Look, I wasn’t going to come back but—then I looked at the footage again and—"

She pulled out her phone, tapped twice, and held it up without showing the screen.

"There’s this moment—like two seconds before you say anything. Your system flared. Like—not big, just—clean. Too clean. Not like C-rank threading."

Lucen’s expression didn’t change.

Zey lowered the phone.

"I don’t know what I saw."

Lucen replied, "That’s probably for the best."

She blinked.

Then: "So you’re not a C-rank?"

Lucen gave her the flattest stare he could manage.

Zey cleared her throat. "Right. Don’t answer. Cool. Secrets are sexy. No—not sexy, just—mysterious. You know what I mean."

He didn’t respond.

She pressed on. "Look. Just one question. Honest. I won’t stream it."

Lucen waited.

Zey raised her fingers like a scout pledge. "Off-record. No tags. No system relay."

Lucen’s eyes narrowed. He could feel the mana circuit in her device humming faintly—still active. He raised one brow.

She sighed and muttered, "Fine."

Then tapped the side of the phone and killed the stream glyph. The tone cut.

She looked up.

"I’ve recorded a lot of duels. Drifts. Dumb flex fights. But I’ve never seen someone scare off a classed fighter without casting anything first."

Lucen shrugged lightly. "Sometimes words hit harder."

Zey nodded. "Yeah. Sure. But your words didn’t flare like low-rank ego. They flared like someone who’s holding a bigger gun behind their back."

Lucen didn’t answer.

Zey hesitated.

Then asked, quieter, "Are you going to make enemies from this?"

Lucen stared at her for a long beat.

Then finally said, "I already have."

She opened her mouth.

Closed it.

Lucen stood, slipping the notebook back into his coat.

"I’m not your story."

Zey swallowed. "No, but you will be someone’s."

Lucen turned and walked away.

Zey didn’t follow.

Not this time.

She just watched him disappear back into the shadow of the mid-level corridors, phone dimmed, audio off, system quiet for once.

And she realized—

She wasn’t recording a hero.

She’d filmed a warning.