Lucen smirked faintly and threw the spell anyway, a crescent of pale force that cleaved the training dummy into halves.

Varik didn't react. He was only half-watching the spell. The other half of his attention stretched outward, beyond the chamber walls, brushing against the threads no one else could sense.

It was subtle. Too subtle for anyone under S-rank to pick up. A faint shift in the mana lattice of the air, the way a shadow clung a second too long at a corner, how the resonance of silence changed when an observer leaned in.

'Division Black,' Varik thought.

He didn't smile. Didn't frown either. He simply let the knowledge settle like a knife hidden beneath his coat.

Lucen dropped onto the bench, dragging a towel over his face. "You've been staring holes in the wall for the last ten minutes. Either I'm more interesting than you want to admit, or you've got something stuck in your teeth."

Varik's gaze shifted to him. "You feel it?"

Lucen blinked, the grin faltering. "Feel what?"

'Exactly.'

Varik's silence was answer enough. He pushed off the railing, steps slow, deliberate, as though every movement had already been measured three times before being allowed.

Lucen's brow furrowed. "You're doing that thing again."

"What thing."

"The thing where you get… I don't know. Mountain-serious. Makes me think we're about to fight a dragon I didn't know was hiding in the fridge."

Varik didn't answer right away. He circled the chamber once, hand brushing the wall briefly, like a man checking for cracks. The air was thick here, denser than it should be. Not an attack, not yet. Observation. Watching, recording.

"You're being observed," he said finally, voice calm, measured.

Lucen's towel stilled against his neck. His eyes flicked toward the ceiling, the corners of the room, the shadows. "By who?"

Varik looked at him for a long moment. He weighed whether to answer. To name them aloud was to invite weight onto the word. But Lucen wasn't a child.

"Division Black," he said.

Lucen leaned back slowly, a low whistle escaping. "The Association's pet ghosts. I thought those were just—"

"They're real."

"And they're watching me?" Lucen asked, brows raising.

Varik didn't confirm. He didn't need to. His silence said everything.

Lucen dragged both hands down his face, muffling a groan. "Of course. Because god forbid I go two days without someone new trying to catalogue my entire existence."

Varik stood in the center of the chamber, eyes closed. His breathing slowed, barely perceptible. When he opened them again, his voice was flat. "They're masking their presence. Well-trained. They'll stay invisible unless they want you to know."

Lucen tilted his head. "And you noticed them anyway."

Varik finally turned his gaze on him, steady as stone. "Yes."

For a heartbeat, neither spoke. The weight of it hung between them, the knowledge that the hunters tasked with being unseen had failed to escape Varik's eye.

Lucen broke the silence with a dry laugh. "So, let me guess. I should just… pretend they're not there? Smile for the hidden cameras? Maybe give them a little wave?"

Varik didn't answer immediately. His gaze stayed fixed on some point only he could perceive. Then: "Don't give them anything."

Lucen arched a brow. "'Anything' being…?"

"Don't show them what you are," Varik said simply.

Lucen stared at him. Then leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "You mean don't flex. Don't burn too bright. Don't give them a reason to scribble red flags all over their files."

"Yes."

Lucen smirked faintly, but there was no humor in it. "And here I thought you were the one who hated subtlety."

Varik's expression didn't change. "There's a difference between subtlety and survival."

For a while, the only sound was the faint hum of the chamber's mana vents.

Lucen sat back, eyes narrowing toward the ceiling. "'Division Black,' huh? Wonder how long until they realize they're wasting their time."

"They won't."

Lucen glanced at him. "Confident, aren't you?"

"They'll never stop watching," Varik said. "Not until someone tells them to."

Lucen tilted his head, studying him. "And that someone is?"

Varik's jaw shifted slightly. "Elira Dane."

The name landed heavy, even without explanation. Everyone in the hunter world knew it. The Association's Chairwoman. The kind of person whose shadow stretched further than most people's lives.

Lucen gave a low whistle. "Guess I should be flattered. Must've really caught her eye."

Varik didn't smile. "It's not flattery."

Lucen studied him, trying to read between the lines. Varik wasn't rattled, wasn't tense, but he was watching, in that way he only did when the situation was more dangerous than he let on.

Finally Lucen leaned back, crossing his arms. "Alright then. We let the shadows play their game. I won't give them anything worth writing home about. But—" His eyes flicked up, sharp. "If they do decide to stop watching and start acting?"

Varik's hand rested on the hilt of his blade without him even thinking. His voice was steady, cold. "Then they'll regret it."

Lucen watched him for another beat, then smirked faintly. "'Mountain-serious,'" he muttered again, under his breath.

Varik didn't respond. He didn't need to. The silence between them carried enough weight.

—

Later that night, when Lucen had finally crashed on one of the bunker's spare bunks, Varik stood alone in the dark corridor.

He closed his eyes and stretched his senses outward again. There, faint threads, like spider silk across the walls, tracing mana distortions where Division Black's observation lingered. Subtle. Patient.

Varik breathed once, slow.

Then, with nothing but a glance toward the nearest shadow, he whispered so softly it barely stirred the air.

"I see you."

The threads quivered, almost imperceptibly, before stilling again.

Varik's lips curved by a fraction, not quite a smile. "Keep watching. But remember… you're not the only ones who can hunt."

He turned, walking back into the bunker, his footsteps echoing steady and measured, leaving the shadows behind to their silent work.

And though Division Black prided themselves on masks and silence, for the first time in years, a ripple of unease traveled through their ranks.

—

They were five in total.

Five shadows perched in silence across the forgotten spaces of the bunker, in vents, in rafters, between the folds of dimensional shadow that even mana lamps couldn't quite reach.

To anyone else, the chamber was empty. To them, it was alive with silent signals: pulses tapped against cloth, minute changes in breath, coded flickers of mana across the nervous system. They were the unseen observers of the Federal Hunter Association's most dangerous interests.

Tonight, their assignment had been straightforward: observe, catalogue, assess. The younger one, Lucen. Level 28, anomalous data, irregular field reports. Too many inconsistencies.

But then the older one, Varik.

'He saw us.'

That thought rippled through their network like an unspoken chord, vibrating on the same wavelength. None of them had moved when it happened, Division Black did not move when compromised. They watched. They endured. They vanished when commanded.

But even now, perched in their invisible roosts, they could still feel it: the moment when Varik's gaze had sliced through the shadows as if they were tissue paper. The moment he had whispered two simple words:

'I see you.'

Not shouted. Not declared. Whispered, like a blade slipped between ribs.

The fifth of them, the one designated Signal, tapped her fingers against her thigh, each rhythm a code. Report.

The first responded with a fractional nod. Observation confirmed. Target Varik acknowledged presence.

Another pulse. Lucen remains unaware.

A third shadow flexed fingers, sign-language cut through air. Correction: Lucen does not yet remain unaware. Subject displays suspicion.

Silence rippled through them again. Even among Division Black, suspicion was dangerous.

"Transmit," Signal said finally, her voice barely audible, a scratch of sound that dissolved as soon as it existed.

From her sleeve, she drew the needle-thin relay, a black shard humming faintly with encoded mana. She pressed it once to her palm, and the shadows shuddered with a sudden, imperceptible shift.

Far across the city, in the highest office of the Association's tower, a woman would already be receiving their signal.

—

The report arrived as a whisper in her desk.

The tower was quiet at this hour, all but the low hum of elevators below and the rustle of documents shuffled by aides in the distance. Elira Dane sat in the heart of it, pen set aside, hand resting on the obsidian relay stone built directly into her desk.

The encoded pulse unfurled in her mind. Efficient, stripped of all excess language, no ornamentation.

Target: Lucen — anomaly confirmed. Current level insufficient to explain combat reports.

Companion: Varik. Confirmed direct detection of Division Black presence.

Statement issued: "I see you."

Division compromised. Recommend escalation.

Elira exhaled softly through her nose, tapping one finger against the desk.

'Varik. Of course.'

She had not built Division Black to be invisible to him. No. That would have been an absurdity. Men like Varik weren't fooled by shadows. He had always been… different. More weapon than man, in some ways.

But the fact he chose to acknowledge them, that was new.

It wasn't a slip. Varik did nothing by accident. That whisper had been a message, sharp-edged and deliberate. He wanted them to know that he knew.

And the question, the one curling like smoke in Elira's mind, was why now?