When joy becomes a crime, the blade sings not with rage—but with laughter.
The streets of Syr-Kharad are awash with color for the first time in generations.
Children fly paper kites shaped like suns. Bells chime with laughter instead of sorrow. Bonfires are lit along the River Yrelin, and couples dance beneath the lifted veils of grief.
Kael watches from a rooftop, holding the Fourth Shard, its sorrowful glow now tempered, pulsing like a heart that has learned to beat again.
Lia sits beside him, nursing a bruise from their last fight, sipping from a flask of honeyed duskroot.
"We brought joy back," she says."We unchained the dead," Kael answers.
But then, from the heart of the celebration, screams cut through the air.
Someone is laughing.
And someone is dying.
In the center square, a noblewoman falls—her neck opened cleanly, smiling even in death.
Another man collapses at the bazaar, laughter bubbling from his mouth as his eyes empty.
Within moments, five lie dead.
All were seen smiling moments before.
All killed with surgical precision—one strike, one cut.
Their expressions, frozen in joy.
A message is left on the last body:
"Joy is a disease. I am the cure.—The Laughing Dagger"
Kael clenches his fist around the shard. Something about the pattern of deaths feels… ritualistic.
Lia retrieves a piece of blood-soaked parchment left behind. The ink is not ink.
It's Shard-infused ichor.
Whoever this assassin is—they're using a shard to kill.
That night, Kael, Lia, and Ihlon meet in the Mirror Vaults beneath the Library of Mourning, speaking in hushed tones.
Ihlon shivers when Kael mentions the name:
"She was once called Seriyel Vaetra. A Shardbearer. The first to reject joy after the fall of the Hollow Throne. She believes joy is the lure of the Nameless One."
According to Ihlon's fragmented memories, Seriyel once served as Shardbearer to the King of Delirium, the Mad Emperor who danced with devils.
When he fell, she sealed her shard within herself, fusing it with her soul and renaming herself: The Laughing Dagger.
She believes Kael's resurrection of joy is a threat to the world's stability—that grief is safer than hope.
"Her shard is the Fifth. The Shard of Delirious Grace," Ihlon says."To take it, you must laugh as she kills you. And not die."
To draw her out, Kael hosts a mock festival of joy in the square.
Masked revelers dance, jugglers twirl flame, musicians play tunes not heard in generations.
All to tempt the assassin to strike.
Kael wears no mask.
He dares her to come.
And she does.
At the peak of the celebration, with fire in the sky and dancers leaping through the air, a blade flashes.
Lia shouts.
Kael ducks—and meets her eyes.
Seriyel.
Clad in ash-veils and ribbons, her grin serene, her blade glowing with madness. She doesn't attack like an assassin—she dances, slicing through the crowd like a waltz of death.
Every strike accompanied by a haunting laugh.
Kael blocks her—barely—and the shard within him shivers. Her blade sings, resonating with his own.
Their battle becomes a performance—Kael with the flames of grief and hope; Seriyel with the dance of madness and clarity.
She taunts him between attacks:
"Did you think sorrow had no worshippers? That pain makes you righteous? You are not a savior. You are a crack in the dam."
Kael burns brighter, channeling the sorrow of Syr-Kharad, letting it merge with the shard.
He laughs—not in mockery, but in memory.
He sees his mother's face, his brother's betrayal, his own death in the ruins of Caldrithar—and he laughs.
And in that laughter, he finds strength.
Seriyel falters.
And Kael cuts the mask from her face—revealing eyes wet with tears.
Not of madness.
But of relief.
Seriyel kneels.
"I wanted to die happy. You gave me that."
Her shard, now freed, floats between them.
The Fifth Shard—a crystal of shifting hues, laughter and sorrow swirling within like dancing smoke.
Kael takes it.
And his mind expands.
He sees the Labyrinth of Breathing Stars, a city between realms.
He sees a man with Kael's face—but older, wearing seven shards—and burning the sky itself.
He sees a god falling into fire.
And a voice speaks:
"Five of Seven. The Wheel begins to turn."