Glorified errand boy.

The Vested, he learned, were basically the Ossuary's secret maintenance staff. They maintained restricted sections of the libraries, ensuring ancient texts remained preserved and catalogued.

They carried confidential messages that couldn't be entrusted to communication artifacts. They hand-delivered notes between high-ranking Ossuarists who didn't want their communication recorded.

They fetched specialized soul tools from secure storage. They assisted with mundane but sensitive tasks like preparing chambers for high-level assimilations or clearing areas after particularly messy soul debt incidents.

They were trusted with secrets, but only because they were too low-ranked and too closely monitored to do anything meaningful with that trust.

Finn carried out his duties as a Vested efficiently and without complaint, but he remained watchful and observant.

He noted which areas of the Soul Sanctum were most heavily warded. Which levels seemed to have the most traffic versus those that remained eerily empty even during peak hours.

He filed it all away, building a mental map of the intricacies of the Ossuary itself. His title as a Vested made it such that no one paid attention to him whenever he moved around.

The only real downside of the role, one that irked him greatly, was the complete lack of privacy.

The Vested were housed in communal quarters. Five to a room, sleeping in narrow bunks with barely enough space to move between them. His roommates were all older than him by at least a decade, men and women who'd been Vested for years and had long since accepted this as their permanent station.

They weren't unkind, but they also weren't particularly interested in befriending the new addition to their ranks. They had been primed for years not to be inquisitive, so they just did their jobs, slept their allotted hours, and asked no questions despite the fact Finn had caught them staring many times, especially because of his metal-like wings.

Finn had no problem with their silence and non-inquisitiveness, but the fact that they were always around also meant that he was never alone.

And that meant his soul debts were becoming increasingly difficult to manage…

It had taken him two days to realize why Althea's Order Edict wasn't providing lasting relief.

It was because of the Pride Before Healing soul debt.

The debt made his body reject assistance. It reduced the effectiveness of any healing or stabilization provided by others by 70%. Which meant Althea's temporary fix wore off far faster than it should have, leaving him to wrestle with the Ferropteryx's nature largely on his own.

Besides that, the Live Prey Compulsion was another obvious issue.

Food prepared in the Vested's communal dining area made him nauseous. His body rejected it on an instinctive level, recognizing that he hadn't killed it himself. He managed to choke down enough to avoid unnecessary attention, but it provided almost no nutrition. He could feel himself growing weaker, his body slowly starving despite having access to meals.

He needed to hunt. To kill something with his own hands and consume it.

But there was nowhere in the Soul Sanctum to do that without raising unnecessary questions.

The Sovereign's Isolation was equally problematic.

Being in close quarters with four other people made his skin crawl. Every accidental brush of contact when passing in the narrow space between bunks felt… degrading, as if his very nature was being insulted. He found himself unconsciously pulling away whenever someone came too close, fighting the urge to lash out at them and create distance.

Unsurprisingly, his roommates noticed. They started giving him more space, but from their expressions Finn could see they thought he was just antisocial or suffering from some sort of trauma. The Ossuarist world was chock full of broken people anyway.

Finn let them think whatever they wanted. It was easier than explaining.

Another of the debts, The Sky Tyrant's Vertigo, was also troublesome because it drove him to seek height.

Being underground and surrounded by stone walls created a constant background anxiety that gnawed at his mind. He felt trapped. Suffocated. Wrong.

So to remedy this, he developed a routine.

Every day, during the brief periods between assigned tasks, Finn would make his way all the way up to the top levels of the Soul Sanctum, past the entrance at top level, and into the public-facing administrative building that sat above.

Ten floors up, at the very top, he'd found a secluded corner. It was a maintenance access point that led to a narrow exterior ledge overlooking the vast empty lands where the Soul Sanctum was built.

Finn would go there and simply stand with his wings spread wide, feeling the wind, the open air and the vast sky above him for five to ten minutes. That was all he could spare before his presence was needed elsewhere.

But those brief moments of solitude and height kept him sane.

Barely…

This was Finn's routine for the following days.

But by the fifth day, Finn reached his limit.

He needed privacy. Real privacy. Time and space to actually address his soul debts rather than just managing them moment to moment.

He'd spent hours analyzing potential solutions during the sleepless nights when his Predatory Insomnia kept him alert and restless. His mind had cycled and re-cycled through every mythological figure he could remember from Earth, searching for the perfect counter to the Ferropteryx Eagle's chaotic nature.

He previously had a mythical figure in mind, but even still, it was all he could do to keep his mind busy, so he kept comparing and contrasting, weighing the characteristics of different characters against each other…

And now he'd found his answer.

Garuda. The divine mount. The loyal servant who chose duty over tyranny and righteous purpose over prideful independence.

It was perfect. Thematically, Garuda had lots of aspects that opposed the Ferropteryx's nature while still maintaining the core power and majesty of a sky dominator.

But he needed time to attempt the Aspect Adaptation. He needed hours of uninterrupted focus to carefully channel the mythological essence, to impress it upon the Ferropteryx soul mass and reshape its fundamental nature.

And he needed to do it somewhere no one would interrupt. Somewhere no one would witness what he was capable of.

The Soul Sanctum offered no such place… At least not for someone of his rank.

Finn lay in his narrow bunk, staring at the stone ceiling barely three feet above his face, listening to his roommates' steady breathing as they slept through another night.

His wings ached from being folded so tightly for so long. His stomach growled with hunger that normal food couldn't satisfy. His skin crawled from hours of proximity to others.

Once in a while when he met Althea, she helped him by using her Order Edict, which pacified the debts for a short while.

But it was clear that was not enough.

Just a few more days, he told himself. He just had to wait till the mass-deployment started. Hopefully, the Vested were also going to be a part of the deployed Ossuarists.

Then, in the chaos of a new world, where eyes couldn't be kept on them as strictly, he would find a private place to permanently remedy his situation…

He had to.

Because if he didn't stabilize the Ferropteryx soon, he wasn't sure how much longer he could maintain the facade of control.

.

.

The news came on the sixth day.

Finn was in the middle of delivering a sealed message to a Caretaker on the seventeenth underground level when he felt a sudden shift in the Soul Sanctum's atmosphere.

A collective tension rippled through every Ossuarist he passed. People began moving with greater urgency. Conversations became quick and curt. Ossuarists who'd been walking at normal pace suddenly accelerated toward specific destinations.

Something had happened.

Finn completed his delivery quickly, then made his way toward one of the main message boards where official announcements for Vested were posted. He forced his way through the throng of Vested, clearing people out of his way with his massive wings and earning curses by the way.

But he didn't care. He quickly reached the front and scanned the announcement hastily.

MOBILIZATION NOTICE - VESTED PERSONNEL ONLY.

To All Vested Personnel:

As of 04:47 this morning, the World Tear barrier has begun accepting entry. Stable passages have been created. Full mobilization protocols are now active.

Vested Assignment:

Due to your unique clearance status and operational knowledge, select Vested personnel will be deployed as peripheral support for Caretaker-led teams and standard Ossuarist units operating within the breach.

Names Of The Selected Listed In Alphabetical Order By Surname:

Abigail Aarons

Adam Abe…

Finn's eyes rapidly shuffled through the names, looking for Finnegan Slade, Finn, Slade, or anything similar to that.

All around him, the voices of the Vested rose in excitement.

I'm assigned to a team—!

Finally! Something actually interesting!

I heard they could see entire cities in there—

My cousin's a Caretaker, maybe I'll finally—

Finn tuned them all out, focusing fully on searching for his name as his heart thumped against his chest.

Nothing.

His heart started to pound harder. He could feel his agitation growing with every passing second. The Ferropteryx's influence made the sensation sharper, more visceral.

No. No. Check more carefully, he chided himself, releasing a breath, and slowly, very slowly checking through the names despite the fact he already knew the answer he feared to admit.

But after another minute of repeated, careful check-throughs, he had no choice but to admit it.

His name wasn't there.

Out of dozens, maybe even more than a hundred Vested being deployed, his name was conspicuously absent.

Why?

The question burned through his mind, droning with increasing intensity.

Was it because he was new? Because he was too young, too untested? Because someone had flagged him as unreliable due to his obvious soul debt issues?

Or was it something else?

"Hey move out of the way asshole! You're blocking our view!" Someone behind him yelled, and he snapped back to attention, wading his way out of the crowd as his mind moved rapidly in a jumble of thoughts.

What happens now? What can I do? What about Althea? Could she somehow do something about this? The Preceptor? Priest…?

Priest.

Finn frowned immediately. Was this his doing? Was it him who made this happen?

He had barely finished the thought when suddenly, he felt a gaze on him. A familiar gaze.

His head snapped up at the chain bridge that cut across overhead.

On it, smiling down at him with his set of pearly white teeth and his usual playfulness, was Priest.

A slow scowl began to color Finn's face as he locked gaze with the man. But it was schooled quickly to a blank expression after he noticed two things.

One, Priest was clearly visible to everyone. He was in plain sight, unhiding.

And two, he was not alone. Beside Priest, on his left, was Althea, looking down at him with a soft gaze. And by his right, was a young man Finn had never seen before…

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