The question hung in the air of the small, dimly lit bedroom, as sharp and cold as a shard of ice.

“Where did you hear the name ‘Gilded Wolves’?”

Lord Alistair’s voice was a blade in the quiet, and for the first time since his chaotic arrival in this world, Ray was utterly, terrifyingly alone. He reached inward for the familiar presence of an archetype, for the cool hum of the system, and found nothing. The mental stage was dark, the curtain down. The system, as promised, had shut down. There were no advisors, no skills to call upon, no supernatural aid to see him through. A tremor of pure, undiluted fear ran through him. His own fear, magnified by the profound silence in his head. He was physically weak, his head a universe of throbbing pain, and his crutches were gone. He was just Ray, an eight-year-old boy with a frail body, pinned by the gaze of a desperate man who was rapidly losing patience. This, he realized with a surge of adrenaline that fought through the pain, was the purest performance he would ever give. There was no script, no director, no system. There was only the scene, the other actor, and the crushing weight of the stakes. His first choice was instinctual, drawn from decades of stagecraft.

“Motivation: Survival.”

“Character: Sickly, delirious child.”

“Action: Retreat.”

He let out a soft, pained whimper and curled further into himself, a portrayal of suffering that required tragically little acting.

“I… I don’t feel well, father,”

He whispered, pitching his voice to a thin, reedy note that he knew would convey weakness.

“I have no doubt,”

Alistair retorted, his tone unmoved. Ray analyzed the line delivery clipped, precise, devoid of sympathy.

“His objective is information, not comfort, he will not be swayed by appeals to emotion.”

“You collapsed at the feast,”

His father continued.

“Your mother is beside herself with worry, it is a perfect excuse.”

“But it will not serve you with me, the Thornes are gone.”

“The chance to secure our house for a generation is gone.”

“And it is all because you uttered a name you had no business knowing.”

“So I will ask you again, where did you hear it?”

Ray forced his breathing to remain shallow, mimicking a child struggling with fever. He needed a lie, a solid, believable foundation for his performance. The alibi he’d used at dinner was the only one he had. He had to commit to it, build the reality of it from the ground up. He looked up at his father, forcing his eyes to lose focus slightly, as if struggling to comprehend the words.

“The Gilded Wolves?”

he repeated, letting his voice crack.

“Are those the… the wolf-men?”

Alistair’s eyes narrowed.

“Do not play the fool with me, Ray!”

He’s not buying the delirium,

Ray thought. Too direct. I need to ground the lie in a believable source, an emotional truth.

“Ma…Master Theron told me,”

He said, the lie flowing from a place of deep professional habit. He pictured the grizzled Master-at-Arms in his mind, recalling his stern, pragmatic nature . What kind of story would he tell? A practical one. A warning.

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“He told me a story,”

Ray improvised, making his voice small, as if confessing a secret.

“We were practicing with the swords, and I… I fell.”

“He said I needed to be stronger, he said the world is full of wolves, not just the ones in the woods.”

“He said some men are wolves, too.”

“He called them sellswords.”

He paused, taking a shaky breath, watching his father’s face for any sign of acceptance. Alistair’s expression was unreadable, so Ray pushed on, layering the performance.

“He said the worst wolves come from Solara, and they dress in gold.”

“The Gilded Wolves.”

“He said they are monsters who would eat a little boy like me for breakfast.”

Now came the crucial part. He had to connect the lie to the inciting incident, to make his outburst at dinner the logical conclusion. He let a tear form and roll down his cheek, a simple but always effective trick.

“When I saw the guards with Lord Thorne… they had wolves on their shoulders.”

“I thought… I thought the monsters from the story were real.”

“I… I was scared.”

Ray was now doing a performance that could rival his finest performances of his past life. He wasn’t just reciting a lie; he was living the emotional reality of a terrified child who had seen his nightmares walk into his home. He was using the truth, his genuine fear, to power the fiction. Lord Alistair stared at him, his jaw tight. The story was cohesive, emotionally resonant, and utterly plausible. It explained everything. And yet, a flicker of doubt remained in his father’s eyes. He wasn’t entirely convinced, but he was stymied. How could he punish a sick, terrified child for being imaginative?

The tension in Alistair’s shoulders sagged, his cold fury giving way to a profound weariness. He turned away, pacing the short length of the room.

“Theron…”

He muttered.

“The fool and his old soldier’s tales, he has no idea what he has done.”

He stopped and faced Ray again, his eyes burning with a desperate, haunted light. The lordly mask fell away, and Ray saw only a terrified man trapped in a cage of his own making.

“You think I am paying those men for protection?”

Alistair asked, his voice a low, ragged whisper.

“You think Titus Thorne is a guest whose favor I am courting?”

He let out a harsh, bitter laugh that sounded like grinding stone.

“Gods, what a fool I have been.”

He leaned down, his hands gripping the wood of the bed frame, his knuckles white.

“Listen to me now, boy, and for once in your life, understand.”

“I am not paying the Gilded Wolves.”

“I am paying ‘The Argent Hand’.”

The name dropped into the room with the weight of a tombstone.

“The debt our family owes is to them,”

Alistair confessed, the words spilling out in a torrent of despair.

“The potion that saved your life as an infant was theirs, the price was ruinous, but they are not simple moneylenders, Ray.”

“They are a shadow that controls half the continent, and the Gilded Wolves… they are the Argent Hand’s collectors.”

“Their enforcers, they are the dogs that are sent when a debt is late.”

Ray’s blood ran cold. The entire picture, which he thought he’d so cleverly influenced, shattered and rearranged itself into a far more monstrous image. His father wasn’t hiring mercenaries. He was being extorted by a continental crime syndicate, and the Gilded Wolves were their muscle.

“Lord Thorne is an agent of The Argent Hand,”

Alistair continued, his voice cracking.

“He did not come here to offer salvation, he came to formalize our servitude.”

“The betrothal of Kaelen to Corbin was not an alliance; it was the final knot in their leash.”

“It would have made our houses ‘family,’ binding the Croft name and lands to the Argent Hand’s interests forever, a noble face for their sordid affairs.”

“It was a gilded cage, but it was a cage that would have at least kept us alive.”

Kaelen’s message suddenly blazed in Ray’s mind.

“The wolf is just a dog on a very expensive leash.”

She hadn’t been talking about Thorne. She had been talking about the Argent Hand.

“When you named those sellswords,”

His father breathed, his eyes wide with a fear Alex now fully understood,

“You did not just insult a guest, you signaled to an agent of the most powerful and ruthless intelligence network in Aethelgard that an eight-year-old boy in a remote keep knows the name of their secret enforcers.”

“You have turned us from a problem to be managed into a liability to be eliminated.”

The silence that followed was absolute. Ray could feel the blood draining from his face. His clever, system-fueled gambit had been the single most catastrophic mistake he could have possibly made. He hadn’t just rattled a cage; he had informed the zookeepers that one of the exhibits knew how the locks worked. Lord Alistair straightened up, his face once again a mask of cold, hard resolve. He had revealed too much, and now he had to bury it.

“Master Theron will be… reassigned.”

“You will not speak with him again,”

He said, his tone leaving no room for argument.

“You will recover from your ‘illness.”

“You will be a quiet, obedient, and unremarkable boy.”

“You will give me no more cause to suspect that you are anything other than what you appear to be.”

“The Argent Hand has eyes everywhere, from now on, you are not just my son.”

“You are a secret that could destroy us all.”

He turned and walked to the door, his footsteps heavy.

“Rest, Ray,”

He said, without turning back.

“Your survival, and ours, now depends on how well you can play the part of a simple child.”

The door closed with a soft click, plunging the room back into near-darkness. Ray lay shivering in his bed, the silence in his head no longer a relief, but a terrifying void. He had wanted to be a hero, to save his new family. Instead, armed with a moment of supernatural insight, he had single-handedly painted a target on their backs. And now, his powers were gone, leaving him alone with the consequences.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep