The Author's Draft

Chapter 85 - 4: Registration I

The Hunter Association headquarters was chaos.

Aiden stood outside the main entrance with Callum, staring at the mass of people crammed into the plaza. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands, all pressed together in a crowd that spilled out onto the street and blocked traffic in both directions. Police barriers had been set up to try and maintain some kind of order, but they were barely holding against the sheer number of bodies.

Most of them were young. Eighteen years old or close to it, faces pale with nervousness or flushed with excitement or blank with the kind of shock that came from having your entire life upended in seventy hours.

"Bloody hell," Callum muttered, his eyes wide as he took in the scene. "How are they going to process all these people?"

"No idea," Aiden replied. He’d pulled on the black demon mask before they left his flat, and now he was grateful for it. The crowd was packed tight enough that people kept bumping into each other, and having his face covered meant he could move through without worrying about being recognized.

His mother had stayed behind at the flat. She’d wanted to come, but one look at the crowd on the news broadcast had changed her mind. There was no point in all three of them getting crushed in this mess, and someone needed to stay in contact with his father.

Aiden adjusted the mask slightly, making sure it sat properly. The material was cool against his skin despite the press of bodies around them, and through the eye holes he could see everything clearly.

The plaza in front of the Hunter Association building was normally a clean, organized space with benches and decorative plants and wide walkways. Now it looked like a refugee camp. People sat on the ground because there was nowhere else to go. Some had brought bags with supplies, clearly expecting to wait for hours. Others stood in tight clusters, talking in low voices that blended into a constant background hum of noise.

"This way," Aiden said, putting a hand on Callum’s shoulder to guide him through the crowd. They pushed forward slowly, squeezing between groups of teenagers who barely noticed them.

As they got closer to the building’s entrance, Aiden started noticing something that made him pause.

Not everyone here was eighteen.

There were older people scattered throughout the crowd. Not many, maybe a few dozen that he could see, but they stood out because they moved differently. More purposefully. Less nervous. They weren’t here because they’d been summoned, they were here because they’d chosen to come.

’Unregistered awakeners,’ Aiden realized, watching a man in his mid-twenties navigate through the crowd with the kind of spatial awareness that came from enhanced perception. ’Coming in to register officially before the forty-eight-hour deadline.’

It made sense. The emergency protocols had made registration mandatory, and anyone who’d been hiding their abilities or just never bothered with the paperwork was being forced to comply now.

Aiden filed that information away and kept moving, pulling Callum along.

They’d made it maybe halfway through the plaza when the murmuring around them intensified.

"Is that him?"

"Holy shit, I think it is."

"The mask, look at the mask."

Aiden felt eyes turning toward him, people nudging their friends and pointing. He kept his expression neutral behind the mask and kept walking, but the whispers followed.

"It’s the guy from the video."

"The one who saved that old man at Whitechapel?"

"No way, he’s actually here?"

A girl maybe sixteen or seventeen stepped directly into their path, her phone already raised and recording. "Excuse me, are you the masked hunter from Westfield? The one who fought the B-rank dungeon break?"

Aiden didn’t slow down. "Move, please."

"Just one question," she pressed, walking backwards to keep pace with them. "Why are you here? Are you registering too?"

"Move," Aiden repeated, more firmly this time.

She opened her mouth to ask something else, but Callum intervened.

"He said move," Callum snapped, his voice harder than Aiden had heard it in a while. "Back off."

The girl blinked, startled, then stepped aside with a huff. But her phone was still recording, and Aiden could see at least a dozen other phones pointed in their direction now.

"Don’t engage," Aiden said quietly to Callum as they kept walking. "They’re just curious. Let them look."

"They’re being arseholes," Callum muttered, but he didn’t say anything else.

The whispers kept spreading though, rippling outward through the crowd like a wave.

"That’s definitely him, I recognize the mask."

"Think he’s going to register?"

"Why would someone that strong need to register? He already fights dungeon breaks."

"Maybe the Association forced him. They’ve been looking for him."

"My cousin said he saw him summon a dragon. An actual dragon."

"Bullshit."

"I’m serious, it’s in the video. Look it up."

Aiden tuned them out and focused on navigating toward the entrance. The crowd was getting denser the closer they got to the building, people packed so tightly that forward movement became a matter of inches rather than steps.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity of pushing and squeezing and listening to people speculate about who he was, they reached the main doors.

A security checkpoint had been set up just inside the entrance. Four guards in Hunter Association uniforms stood behind a table, checking IDs and directing people to different sections of the building. The line stretched back through the lobby and out the door, but it was at least somewhat organized.

Aiden and Callum joined the queue and waited.

The lobby itself was massive, three stories tall with a vaulted ceiling and marble floors that probably looked impressive when they weren’t covered in scuff marks from thousands of shoes. Banners hung from the walls showing various guild emblems and Hunter Association slogans about duty and service. The whole place had been designed to look important and intimidating, and it mostly succeeded.

Right now, though, it just looked overwhelmed.

People were everywhere. Sitting on the floor against the walls. Standing in clusters near the information desks. Queuing for bathrooms or water fountains or any of the various checkpoints scattered throughout the space.

The noise was incredible. Hundreds of conversations happening simultaneously, voices echoing off the hard surfaces and creating a constant roar that made it hard to think clearly.

"This is mad," Callum said, having to raise his voice to be heard over the din. "How long are we going to be stuck here?"

"No idea," Aiden replied. "Could be hours. Just be patient."

They shuffled forward in the queue, gaining maybe a meter every few minutes. Around them, other people were having similar conversations, complaints about the wait mixing with nervous speculation about the awakening ceremony and worried discussions about the invasion.

The queue crawled forward. Ten minutes passed, then twenty. Callum pulled out his phone to check the time, then frowned.

"Still no signal," he muttered. "Network’s completely dead."

"Rifts are interfering with communications," Aiden said. "Has been since they opened. Probably won’t get better until the barriers collapse."

Callum’s face went a bit paler at the reminder, but he nodded and put his phone away.

They’d been waiting for maybe half an hour when movement rippled through the crowd. People near the back of the lobby were turning to look at something, conversations dying down as attention shifted.

Aiden looked up and saw a man climbing onto a podium that had been set up near the main staircase. He was in his twenties, wearing a formal Hunter Association uniform with rank insignia that marked him as an A-rank official. His presence radiated authority even before he opened his mouth.

"Hello," the man said, his voice projecting across the lobby.

Nobody stopped talking. The roar of conversation continued unchanged, hundreds of people too focused on their own discussions to notice one more person speaking.

The man’s expression didn’t change. "Hello," he repeated, louder this time.

Still nothing. Maybe a few people near the podium glanced up, but the overall noise level stayed the same.

The man took a breath, and Aiden felt the shift in the air a heartbeat before it happened.

Power flooded into the man’s voice, spiritual energy amplifying the sound until it hit like a physical force.

"HELLO!"