Serpahim Remenants | Open-World RPG

By half past six, the rain has stopped, but the city is still wearing it.

Water runs along the curb beside a row of parked bicycles. Office workers wait at the crossing with grocery bags and damp coat sleeves. A delivery rider studies the address on their phone, looks up at the buildings, and circles the block for a second time. Through an apartment window above the bakery, someone is practicing the same few piano notes with steady determination.

The bakery is selling its remaining rolls at a discount. Its owner writes the new price on a piece of cardboard while a customer explains, at length, why she only came in for bread and is now leaving with two pastries. At the neighboring pharmacy, a handwritten notice says the card reader is working again.

Across the street, The Last Light has not opened yet. A staff member drags a crate of empty bottles through its side entrance. Another replaces a rain-damaged poster advertising Friday’s live music. At the bottom, beneath the performers’ names, is a small line: Hosted by Mina Adler.

A bus pulls in beside the club. Its doors open, release a crowd, and close before the last passenger has finished putting away their ticket. An older man calls after it, more annoyed with himself than the driver. The next bus is twelve minutes away.

Farther down the road, temporary fencing surrounds a corner of the park. The sign attached to it announces maintenance on the footpath near the Ashen Grove. Someone has added an arrow in marker, pointing walkers toward a longer paved route. Two teenagers stop to debate whether the detour will make them late. They decide it will, then take it anyway because one of them is wearing shoes unsuited to the muddy shortcut.

At the crossing, the traffic signal fails to change. The waiting group grows. A woman with a suitcase checks the time and sighs. A cyclist dismounts to squeeze between a bollard and the corner shop’s outdoor display. The shopkeeper comes out to ask him to be careful with the flowers. They have the familiar argument of people who have had it before, neither especially angry.

The light finally turns green.

On the other side of the street, a young man drops a paper bag. Apples roll in three directions. A stranger catches one before it reaches the gutter; another sets down a briefcase to help gather the rest. By the time the young man has thanked them, the crossing signal is red again.

The city carries on around the small delay. A tram rings its bell. Someone in an upstairs flat calls a dog away from the open window. The delivery rider at last finds the correct entrance, though the customer has written “blue door” in the instructions and the door is unmistakably green.

Near The Last Light, the staff member with the poster steps back to judge whether it hangs straight. It does not. She fixes one corner, steps back again, and decides it is close enough.

Evening settles gradually into the gaps between buildings. Shop windows brighten. The bakery owner turns the sign from OPEN to CLOSED while letting one last customer inside. The bus display counts down from twelve minutes to eleven, then unexpectedly returns to twelve.

A light comes on above the side entrance of The Last Light. The staff member carries the empty crate indoors, leaving the door ajar for a colleague still taking out the rubbish. Nothing on the street requires an explanation beyond late buses, wet pavement, and people trying to finish their day.

The train departs the Last Platform at 11:08. At 11:13, it returns with the same passengers.

The station attendants do not announce an arrival. They open the doors, guide everyone back onto the platform, and begin taking names. This is the third failed departure of the night.

Some passengers are Newly Dead, still learning what the Last Platform is. Others have waited years before choosing to cross beyond the Threshold. One elderly spirit recognizes the attendant from her first arrival and asks whether she will have to make that decision again. The attendant tells her she has not lost her place.

The Hollow Court governs settlements around the Threshold and has procedures for delayed travel. None accounts for a train that moves, remains out of sight for several minutes, and arrives exactly where it started.

A clerk carries a ledger down the platform. She asks passengers what they saw through the windows. Their accounts differ. One remembers open water. Another saw the tunnel walls throughout the journey. A third heard someone calling from an empty seat but cannot remember the voice.

The clerk records each answer. She does not press the third passenger when their account begins to fade. Under the Last Courtesies, memories are not materials the Court can simply take because an inquiry would benefit.

Near the station clock, several older officials argue over what should be announced to the Newly Dead still waiting to board. One fears panic. Another points to the crowd watching the same train return again and again. The problem is already public within the station.

The clock advances. No departure appears on the board.

At the far end of the platform stands the Unmoored Judge, wrapped in layered funeral cloth. They have come without an escort and remain beyond the pool of light cast by the station clock. An attendant approaches them, then thinks better of it.

“I heard there are witnesses,” the Judge says.

“There are stranded passengers,” the clerk answers.

The Judge asks whether any passenger remembers an oath. The clerk closes her ledger. Around them, spirits exchange uncertain looks. The Fading has taken pieces of many lives, and a question about forgotten promises is rarely simple.

A young passenger produces a paper ticket. The clerk tilts it toward the light and sees an impression beneath the printed destination. She asks permission to examine it. He agrees, but his fingers remain near the edge until she has finished.

The hidden impression resembles a station mark. Its date is older than the Hollow Court’s current platform records.

From inside the train comes a bell. Its doors are still open. No driver is visible through the front window.

The officials fall silent as the destination board changes, letter by letter, to a place none of them has approved for travel. The young passenger reaches for his ticket. The clerk gives it back.

The Unmoored Judge looks at the new destination and says, very quietly, “That passage was closed.”

The station clock stops. The train waits with its doors open.

The city’s walking map shows one path through the park. At dawn, there are two.

The new path curves around an ash tree and passes beneath an arch of living branches. Beyond it lies the Ashen Grove, where lamps burn in daylight and the ground carries the smell of rain that has not fallen in the city.

By noon, three people have crossed from the human side. Two return by different entrances. The third is still somewhere in the Otherwood.

A Keeper ties a ribbon around the ash tree to mark the boundary. She tells curious walkers that the path is closed for maintenance. Most accept the explanation. Their phones show the original route, and nothing beyond the arch looks strange until they come close enough to enter.

A Fae traveler emerges with mud on his formal shoes. He says he came by a road through the Briar March, a route the Keeper’s records describe as sealed. He carries a written passage claim bearing Lord Bracken Vale’s name.

“That road was open,” he says.

“The road being open doesn’t establish your right to use it,” the Keeper replies.

“Lord Bracken Vale would disagree.”

“Then he can submit his claim under the Covenant of Paths.”

The traveler folds the paper without handing it over. He says the seal on the old route has failed and that others have already used it. The Keeper asks for their names. He declines to give them.

Farther inside the grove, hoofbeats pass behind a screen of trees. The Wild Hunt is carrying out a warrant nearby. Its riders have a named quarry and an authorized route, but a newly opened crossing can place bystanders where neither was expected. The Keeper sends word of the change before any rider reaches the ash tree.

A cyclist stops on the city path to check a map. They see the ribbon and turn back toward the main road. On the Fae side, the traveler watches until the cyclist is gone.

“Humans are getting closer to these roads,” he says.

“They’ve always lived beside them,” replies the Keeper. “We’re the ones who have to keep track of where the boundaries are.”

Wind moves through the arch. For a few seconds, the lamps beyond it go dark. When they return, a narrow side path is visible beside the route into the Ashen Grove. Neither the Keeper nor the traveler saw it earlier. Pale stones border its entrance, and several have been pushed out of alignment.

The Keeper kneels to inspect them without crossing. The traveler recognizes the marks on one stone and steps away.

“What is it?” she asks.

He does not answer at once. The hoofbeats stop somewhere beyond the lamps. A distant voice calls a name, followed by a second voice giving the same name from another direction.

The Keeper rises, leaving the stones untouched. She sends a new warning along the established path: there is another road open, and nobody has yet determined where it ends.

The archive case is sealed. Its locks are intact. The document listed third in its inventory is gone.

An Argent Covenant archivist compares the remaining pages with the sign-out ledger. The missing page is a correction to an examination of an angelic relic. The original examiner reported a trace using an Oculus Grace; the correction may say whether that finding survived closer scrutiny.

Someone signed the case out under Dr. Soren Falk’s name.

Falk has been missing for years. His archive access was revoked before that. A forged signature is the simplest explanation, though it does nothing to explain how the case was returned and resealed without leaving a discrepancy in the cabinet’s records.

The archivist calls for a second investigator. Together they check the room, then the corridor beyond it. Nothing appears disturbed. A maintenance worker replaces a ceiling light at the far end of the hall, unaware that an examination record could matter to people far beyond this building.

The Covenant has endured for generations without seeing a living angel. Its hunters still possess training, institutions, and inherited Graces, but those Graces have weakened. A reliable angelic trace would be important. A false one, presented as reliable, could be just as dangerous.

Before the investigators decide whom to notify, a witch arrives for a scheduled meeting. She carries a copied ward design from the Hearth Archive. The ward has begun admitting something it was made to exclude, while continuing to pass the tests that should have revealed a fault.

Under the Ash Accord, Covenant hunters and Ashen Circle witches can share evidence without handing over every private record behind it. The arrangement works best when both sides arrive believing the other has kept accurate records.

The witch lays her copy on the table. A phrase has been added in a different hand, small enough to disappear between the ward’s normal instructions. The archivist retrieves the corresponding Covenant copy. Its margin is blank.

“Which version was tested?” the investigator asks.

“Mine,” the witch replies. “Before that line appeared.”

The archivist begins recording the difference. A chime from the outer entrance interrupts her. A visitor has arrived carrying a document case with the same classification mark as the missing correction.

The visitor claims they were instructed to return it today. They show the case through the archive door’s window but do not surrender it. Their visitor pass is valid. The name of the person who arranged the appointment has been removed from the current schedule.

The investigators let the visitor into the corridor. No one offers an explanation for why the case was missing, and the visitor does not ask why three people are waiting beside an open cabinet.

“I was told to deliver this unopened,” the visitor says.

“By whom?” asks the archivist.

The visitor checks a note on their phone. The message gives an office number instead of a name. That office has been empty since Falk disappeared.

The witch looks from the case to the altered ward on the table. She draws neither conclusion aloud.

At the end of the corridor, the maintenance worker switches on the repaired light. For an instant, the visitor’s case casts two shadows in different directions. The archivist notices. So does the visitor.

Then the light steadies.

At The Last Light, the music does not stop when the envelope arrives.

A server leaves it in a private booth between two untouched glasses. The guest seated there studies the seal, then watches a second guest rise from a table across the room. Neither opens it.

Mina Adler reaches the booth first. She picks up the envelope by its edges. The wax bears the insignia of the Court of the Rhine, pressed over a smaller mark someone has tried to obscure.

“Who delivered this?” she asks.

The server points toward the entrance. The courier has already gone.

Outside, rain glazes the street. Inside, humans crowd the dance floor, unaware that anyone has reason to worry. That separation is part of what keeps The Last Light operating. A dispute among vampires can remain a private matter as long as no one turns it into a spectacle and nobody outside the supernatural world has reason to examine the aftermath.

Tonight, someone has taken a photograph near the private booths.

Mina sends a member of staff to find the photographer. She gives another instructions to keep the music going and the exits clear. The guest who received the envelope remains seated, hands flat on the table.

A message under Princess Adelheid von Raben’s seal can summon a member of her Court or announce a judgment. Justicar Konrad Weiss normally handles violations that could bring hunters into vampire affairs. Mina has received no warning from either of them that official business would take place in her club.

The Crimson Compact provides a way for the Crimson Courts and the Argent Covenant to contain incidents before they become open conflict. It cannot help much if a forged command sends one side after a person the other has already promised to protect.

The second guest returns to the booth without being invited. “That seal is genuine,” they say.

Mina turns the envelope toward them. “Which one?”

They examine the smaller impression and go quiet.

At the bar, two patrons argue over whether the photographer was taking pictures of the stage. Neither has noticed the booth. Mina would prefer to keep it that way. She slips the envelope into her jacket and walks toward her office, with both guests following at a careful distance.

Her phone lights up before she reaches the door. She reads the message, then glances toward the front windows.

“Konrad is coming,” she says.

“That isn’t why I’m worried,” replies the guest from the booth.

Across the street, the photographer stands beneath an awning, speaking into a phone. A car pulls up at the curb beside them. Its rear window lowers, and the photographer shows the unseen passenger the image on the screen.

Inside The Last Light, Mina closes her office door without locking it. She places the sealed envelope on her desk. For a moment, all three stare at the damaged wax.

Then someone knocks from the hallway.

“Mina,” a staff member calls. “There’s another courier. They say they were sent to collect a reply.”

At 8:17 p.m., the green service door on Lindenstraße stops leading to the Menagerie Underway.

It opens onto a storage room full of folding chairs. The room belongs to the building above it. Its lights work, its walls are solid, and the caretaker who comes to investigate has never heard of the passage that should be there.

Belowground, the corresponding exit still exists. Residents can see its painted frame at the end of the corridor. When a courier opens it from their side, however, they step into the same storage room with no visible way back.

By nine o’clock, three more Underway entrances have failed.

The neighborhood beneath the streets remains busy despite the disruption. Workshops finish their evening repairs. Families carry food home. A resident delivering medicine takes a longer route through two occupied buildings, careful to avoid a stairwell that may no longer connect to anything. For most of them, hidden passages are part of ordinary life. Their sudden absence is as serious as losing a road, a front door, and an emergency exit at once.

At the Glass Lantern, Kira Voss spreads a map across a table and marks each failed entrance in red. She leaves the room open. Anyone affected can bring a report, provided they respect the Host’s rules.

Otto Grimm arrives from his safehouse with a list of residents stranded on the surface. One is an elderly woman who cannot safely cross the city aboveground. Another is a child whose family can still see their apartment through an Underway window but cannot reach its door.

“Anyone hurt?” Kira asks.

“Not yet,” Otto says. “That answer has an expiration time.”

A resident proposes calling the Argent Covenant. Hunters may have records of damaged routes or equipment that can identify an altered ward. Others object immediately. The Common Shelter Rules protect Menagerie refuges from being treated as territory any stronger faction may search.

Kira listens until the arguments begin to repeat themselves. “Help can come here,” she says. “It comes under our terms.”

A courier brings news from the eastern passage. Its surface entrance opens normally, but the painted directions inside no longer match the corridors. Someone has placed a small white mark beside each wrong turn. The marks are fresh. Whoever made them knew the route had changed before most residents did.

At 9:46 p.m., there is a knock at the Glass Lantern’s outer door: three strikes, a pause, and three more.

Kira looks at the map. That door connects to one of the passages she marked missing.

The knocking comes again. On the other side, a voice asks for shelter. It sounds close, tired, and entirely certain of where the door should lead. Nobody at the table agrees on where it leads now.

The Ninth Choir’s previous candidates had all left a trace of something angelic. The difficulty was proving where it came from. One had handled a relic. Another possessed an unusually strong Hunter Grace. A third had been near a ward designed to imitate both.

The evidence on Aurelia Veyr’s table is different. It shows the same unexplained signature appearing in three places over six minutes—and moving between them.

Dr. Soren Falk pins a city map beneath the records. “First here,” he says, indicating an apartment building. “Then beneath the railway bridge. Then at this entrance to the Menagerie Underway.”

Runa Skeld studies the distances. “Someone could walk that route.”

“Someone did,” Soren says. “Or something carrying the signature.”

He has learned to make that distinction aloud. His Oculus Grace helped identify the first trace, but it cannot tell him who caused it, or whether the cause was an angel.

Aurelia places a fourth sheet beside the map. It is a record of a failed ward, obtained by Verena Holt. The ward did not break when the signature passed. For a fraction of a second, it treated an unknown presence as something it had been made to admit.

“Whose ward?” Runa asks.

“Not mine,” Verena replies. “I would remember writing a rule like that.”

Moth stands at the window, watching traffic pass below. The Underway entrance on Soren’s map no longer opens from the street. According to Moth, it was connected the night the signature appeared. They cannot say where its passage leads now.

The room grows quiet when Aurelia produces the final piece of evidence: a short recording from a public security camera. The image is poor. Rain blurs the lens, and the camera faces the pavement rather than the building entrance. Several people pass through the frame. A cyclist stops to adjust a chain. Someone carrying a parcel waits beneath an awning. Another figure crosses behind a bus and never appears on the other side.

The footage offers no clear face and no answer about which person, if any, carried the trace.

Soren has watched it enough times to know every movement. “The signature appeared while the camera was recording,” he says. “For once, we know it wasn’t an old relic sitting in an archive.”

“That makes this a lead,” Aurelia says. “It doesn’t make anyone in that street the Vessel.”

The Choir’s name for its hoped-for discovery has begun to sound like a person they already know. They do not. They cannot even establish whether the signature belongs to one being, an object being carried, or an event that followed the route for reasons of its own.

Runa folds her arms. “How many people have seen these records?”

“Only those in this room,” Aurelia says.

Verena looks at the camera still. “The ward’s owner has the failure report. The Covenant may have its own reading. Whoever disconnected the Underway entrance knows it changed.”

Moth turns from the window. “I didn’t disconnect it.”

No one accuses them. No one reassures them, either.

Aurelia assigns the first inquiries. Soren will compare the new trace with the Covenant’s older angelic records. Verena will examine the ward’s original design. Runa will retrace the street route while the rain may still have left something sheltered beneath the bridge. Moth will find out whether the missing entrance moved or was deliberately cut away.

They will observe before approaching anyone on the footage. It is the first point all four agree on, though their reasons differ.

As the meeting breaks up, Soren notices something he missed in his earlier viewings. At the edge of the camera frame, the person with the parcel pauses beneath the awning. They are looking across the street, toward the apartment building. A moment later, the cyclist looks in the same direction.

Soren plays the clip again. Just before the bus passes, a light goes on in a third-floor window. Both figures turn away.

It may be a coincidence. It is also the first ordinary address they can investigate without guessing which face in the crowd belongs to the Vessel.

Aurelia writes the apartment number beneath the map and circles it once. Outside, evening traffic moves past the building as it has every day since the recording. Its residents come and go, unaware that a secret alliance has just learned where to begin looking.