The storm had not relented. Snow swept across the lower districts of Solace like a curtain of knives, burying lantern light and drowning cobbled alleys in silence. The wealthier tiers of the city had long shuttered their windows, curled by fireside behind charm-bound walls. But here, deep in the industrial sprawl of the slums, no such magic protected the bones of the buildings. Cracks yawned in walls. Roofs groaned under frost. And between the crumbling eaves, shadows slithered.
Lysander moved like one of them.
His coat was soaked through from the shoulders down, black hair pasted to his brow. Each breath came in a tight plume, fogging the cold night air. He kept one hand on the hilt of his sword beneath the folds, the other tucked into his inner coat where a small satchel of seals and ward papers rustled with each step.
Ahead, the alley forked sharply—a break in the darkness.
He paused.
A trail of blood, faint but unmistakable, curled along the frost-slick stones to the left. Not pooled. Smeared. Someone had stumbled here recently. Someone small.
Mira.
He pressed forward. The smell hit him halfway down the path: iron, rot, and smoke. It clung to the bricks. Faint whispers of it rose from beneath a broken grate in the alley floor.
Then he saw it.
A scrap of cloth—torn red silk, soaked through with blood. Caught in a rusted nail on the doorframe of a crooked shack.
Before he could approach, a blur dropped from the rooftop.
Lysander spun instinctively, blade halfway free—
—but it was too late.
A fist slammed into his chest, throwing him back. He crashed into the alley wall with a grunt, boots scraping across slush. The blow hadn't broken bone, but it had left a dent in his ribs.
Black silhouettes emerged from the dark. Three of them. Two flanking, one approaching directly. Their coats were tighter than the assassins from the tea house—fitted leather, silver trim. And their masks bore no insignia… only mirrored glass.
Then came the fourth.
He didn't walk. He glided.
Silver hair framed his face like a banner of moonlight, tied back in a braid eerily like Seraphine's. His eyes glowed faintly beneath the half-mask he wore—bone-white porcelain laced with gold. A single symbol hovered just above the brow: a burning crescent, edged with a double helix.
Lysander's breath caught.
The man smiled faintly. "You should have stayed in your tea house, halfbreed."
Lysander's eyes narrowed. "Who sent you?"
The silver-haired man tilted his head. "Oh, don't you recognize it? The technique. The pressure points. The style?" He drew two fingers through the air, and a gust of wind shaped into sigils behind him—blue threads dancing like calligraphy. "This is what true celestial art looks like."
He snapped his wrist.
A spear of condensed light shot toward Lysander's head.
He barely managed to roll aside, slamming into a pile of crates as the bolt shattered the wall behind him.
"You fight like a beast," the man said lazily. "Crude. Clumsy. All instinct."
Another blast shot forward.
This time Lysander didn't dodge. He lunged through it, sword drawn.
Steel met palm.
The silver-haired man caught the blade with a shimmer of magic along his wrist. Sparks flew. Frost erupted.
But it wasn't enough.
The man twisted Lysander's wrist, driving a knee into his ribs. He collapsed into the snow, coughing blood.
The others advanced, raising short blades.
Then something broke.
Inside.
A pulse.
His vision blurred. The alley dimmed. And in the pitch between breaths—
Everything sharpened.
His pupils narrowed to slits. His skin flushed pale. Steam hissed from his wounds, and a roar built behind his teeth.
The closest attacker lunged.
Lysander caught the blade in his bare hand.
And crushed it.
The metal buckled like paper between his fingers. He spun, elbowing the assassin in the throat and driving him backwards into the brick wall with bone-crunching force.
The other two hesitated.
Lysander stepped forward, unarmed, but radiating a pressure so cold it burned. Even the snow around his boots began to ice over in strange patterns, like runes etched by instinct.
"Your eyes," the silver-haired man murmured. "So that's why she hid you."
He threw a flurry of dagger-like constructs. Lysander ducked one, and parried another with his forearm. Blood sprayed from a shallow cut—but as it touched air, it shimmered.
Gold.
A delicate, flickering gold, like sunlight trapped in a drop of rain.
The silver-haired man's expression flickered.
"You shouldn't exist," he whispered. "You were supposed to die with the rest."
Then—
"Stop!"
Mira's voice tore through the dark.
She stood at the alley's mouth, face pale, hand clutching the shard of jade-like a talisman.
Her eyes locked on the silver-haired man.
"You…" she breathed. "I remember you. You were there. The night they died. My mother screamed your name."
The man's gaze didn't waver. "Then you know what happens next."
He raised his hand—
—but the whistle of horns echoed through the alley.
City patrols. Late. But not too late.
The man cursed under his breath.
He tossed something into the snow—
—a talisman wrapped in crimson silk—and vanished in a swirl of golden light.
His agents followed suit, fleeing into smoke and silence.
The alley fell quiet.
Lysander dropped to one knee, breath ragged. He looked down.
His palm bled freely—but the blood glowed, patterns tracing along his wrist like a tattoo beneath the skin. A circular crest shimmered faintly: a crescent, flanked by twin wings.
A memory stirred. Distant. Burned.
He winced. The image faded.
Seraphine would not be happy to see this.
He looked to Mira, who had fallen to her knees, clutching the pendant to her chest, shoulders trembling.
He approached her carefully. "We're not safe anymore," he muttered. "And whatever they want…"
He turned toward the stone wall beside the alley.
A crack had formed where the man had vanished.
Behind it, faintly, ancient glyphs pulsed.
Runes. Fused with the foundation.
A door.
Hidden beneath the tea house.
And it was waking up.