After the fall of Vael'Tor, Tarokai wandered Veyl in silence, disappearing into forests, ruins, and cities that whispered his name like a curse. But he was never truly alone.
Sometimes, the wind would carry laughter beside him. And sometimes, he was a cat.
Not metaphorically—literally.
A sleek, red-eyed black cat, silent as death and sharp as shadow. It was during his time in the Eastern Sky Markets that he met her—Alexandra, a girl whose lineage traced back to the broken remnants of the old Roman Empire. She carried herself like a general, even in exile.
"How the hell are you a cat?" she asked one day, as Tarokai leapt from a windowsill and returned to his human form with a flicker of dusk.
He dusted his coat and blinked with a soft smirk. "The ancestors of the Cult of the Final Draw were demi-humans. Turns out mine... were cats."
She stared at him blankly. "Cats."
"Very wise ones."
"You're serious."
"Deadly."
From the alley's edge, the scholar—revealed now to be named Calvus—huffed and adjusted his scrolls. He was of noble Roman descent himself, obsessed with Alexandra in a way both pitiable and persistent.
"That is not how genetic heritage works," Calvus muttered, annoyed. "You can't just be a cat."
"Is that what you tell your mirror every night, Fuck-Face?" Tarokai muttered, stretching his fingers.
"Don't call me that!"
In one swift movement, Tarokai transformed, darted up Calvus's robes as a cat, and scratched a clean gash across his cheek before leaping back and reappearing as a boy again, seated lazily on a barrel.
Calvus screamed. Alexandra snorted. And the rogue howled with laughter from the shadows.
"You deserved that," Alexandra said.
"He always deserves it," Tarokai replied.
Their travels took them to sunken basilicas, haunted forests, and the shattered peaks of the Elder Heights. In every place, Tarokai drew cards and whispered to fates unseen. In every place, death followed.
And yet, for the first time, he laughed.
But fate is not so easily forgotten. The cards had been quiet of late.
Too quiet.
And in his bones, Tarokai knew.
A new draw was coming.