"WORK."
The roar tore through an abandoned building at the outskirts of Velthoria.
Aven hurled the book at the wall with such force that dust shook loose from the ceiling. Blood vessels swelled across his forehead, veins standing out like twisted ropes under his skin.
"ARGHHH."
His voice cracked, and the rage collapsed in on itself.
Tears streamed down his cheeks, dripping from his jaw as his knees buckled. He hit the floor with a dull thud, palms sinking into the grime.
"Aveline…"
The name came out strangled.
After Kael had killed Aven's wife, he had crawled back to his family's estate broken and hollow. Only his sister had been able to pull him out of that void, helping him piece together the fragments of himself so he could function again. She had been the only thing anchoring him.
So when the news arrived that she had died during a simple history course at the top of Threnfall, something inside him shattered beyond repair.
Everything he had rebuilt scattered like dust in the wind.
There was no reason left.
He had lost control completely. Servants in the mansion had endured his sudden fits of violence and incoherent shouting. That alone might have been ignored, but the moment he barged into his father's office, screaming that the Valthorne family must kill the Eireindaile or he would kill his own father, everything was over.
Aven could never have killed Vael, but threatening the head of Valthorne was enough to have most people executed on the spot.
Instead, Vael stripped him of his title, banished him from the family, tore the noble name from him as if ripping out a vein.
Aven had nowhere to go.
So he came here.
To the abandoned house he and Aveline had played in as children.
The peeling walls, the broken windows, the familiar smell of old wood.
All of it stabbed deeper into him.
He lifted his arm and gritted his teeth. His fingers trembled, but he forced them still as he dragged the blade across his skin, opening another long cut. Blood welled up instantly, spilling down his forearm and dripping into the refinement orb in his hand.
He reached to the side where a pile of bodies slumped against the wall, a heap of discarded mortals he had dragged here in desperation. Their chests were torn open, ribs cracked apart.
Aven grabbed another heart, still faintly warm, and tossed it into the orb.
"Work."
His voice trembled.
"Work, and I will spend the rest of my life killing him."
He whispered it like a prayer, like a plea to whatever listened.
"Just work…"
He held the bleeding orb close to his chest, clutching it with shaking fingers.
He no longer cared what it turned him into.
He no longer cared what he needed to become.
As long as he could reach Kael.
—
Kael crouched and brushed his hand gently over the head of a stray cat.
The cat hissed once, fur rising, before darting back into the undergrowth between the trees.
Kael's hand hovered in the air a moment longer, still held in the shape of the pat that never truly landed. Then he lowered it, adjusted the hem of his coat, and straightened his back. His gaze drifted upward.
A man hung pinned to a tree, skewered clean through the stomach by the golden rod.
"Who sent you"
The man only stared at him, eyes wide and empty.
'Dead…'
The body slid forward and dropped heavily to the ground as the golden rod dissolved into gold particles.
Kael looked at the body for a moment.
'Someone is getting bold.'
Kael had only gone for a walk to clear his mind when the man had burst out of a bush, brandishing a knife and shouting threats. It could have been a desperate mortal with the worst possible timing, but it could just as easily have been a message.
A reminder that someone knew exactly where Kael was.
'I really have created too many enemies recently.'
As his world widened, as more families and factions became entangled with him, Kael felt the grip he had on his surroundings slipping. He no longer knew what Syleena was doing or where she had gone. He had thought the chaos was beginning to settle, that things were finally turning predictable again, but the moment the Weeping Eye entered him, everything shifted. The eye had become a variable so great that Kael could not even trust his thoughts or his instincts anymore.
He knelt beside the corpse and went through the man's pockets with methodical precision, searching for a note, a coin, a symbol, anything. But each pocket he turned out was as empty as the man's gaze had been.
Nothing.
Kael rose to his feet and brushed the dirt from his palms. The forest around him felt unnaturally silent, as if the trees themselves were holding their breath.
By the time the bright blue sky had faded into a deep stretch of starlight, he was still moving through the frozen undergrowth. Each step crunched against the hardened ground, every shard of ice and jagged clump of frost pressing sharply through the soles of his boots. The cold air stung his lungs. His breath came out in thin ribbons of white that curled upward and vanished into the night.
Hours passed without him noticing.
Only when his fingers curled instinctively around his stomach did he finally snap back into himself. He stopped beside a boulder, pressing one hand against its icy surface to steady his balance.
That was when he felt it.
A tightness deep inside his chest. A tremor running through his hands. A strange weight gathering in his ribs and spreading through his limbs like a creeping shadow. He stared down at his fingers as they shook, uncontrollably at first, then in smaller, sharper pulses.
It was the first time he had ever felt it.
Anxiety.
The realization struck harder than the cold. It unsettled him more than the corpse in the woods, more than any blade pointed at his throat.
His right eye dulled for a single breath, the world softening around the edges. Then his gaze snapped back into focus, sharpening like glass, cold and exact.
"Stop."
The word left him in a whisper, barely audible even to himself.
His fingers clawed into the fabric of his coat. His jaw tightened. The forest remained quiet, the stars above unmoving, and Kael stood there for a long moment, breathing slowly as if wrestling with something beneath his skin.
Something he refused to acknowledge.
He pushed himself away from the boulder and slipped his hands into his pockets. His entire expression settled back into its usual stillness, the coldness sliding into place like a mask.
'It is able to mess with my emotions too?'
The thought surfaced as naturally as any of his own, yet Kael could not determine if it belonged to him or something else. The uncertainty scraped against the edge of his mind.
"I need mindstones."
Under normal circumstances Kael would have chosen to earn mindstones the standard way, through missions and commissions, not because of any moral restraint, but because such methods were the easiest way to remain unnoticed.
But things were no longer normal, and the urgency was beginning to press down on him.
---
He entered the apartment and tossed his coat over the sofa without looking. The room felt warmer than usual, almost suffocating. Kael sat at the edge of the bed, his thoughts circling in tight, blurred loops. After a moment, he let himself fall backward, allowing gravity to take him. The mattress swallowed his weight and the world faded into sleep.
Kirr. Kirr.
Kael opened his eye slowly. A small bird stood perched on the window stool, singing with its entire body, puffing its chest in the soft morning light.
He rose from the bed, walked to the window, and exhaled softly.
"Awefully beautiful today."
Outside, the world had changed overnight. A thin, untouched layer of snow covered the rooftops and the streets below. It was the first snowfall of the year, marking the official beginning of winter.
Kael rested a hand on the cold glass.
For a moment, the stillness felt almost peaceful.
Then the faint tremor in his fingertips reminded him why he needed to move.
He turned from the window with the same precision he used when approaching an enemy.
A decision was already forming.
Even though it was early in the morning, people were already moving through the streets, especially the children. The fresh snow had pulled them outside like a call, their small bodies wrapped in knitted gloves and thick hats, their breath rising in little bursts of white.
Clusters of them pushed clumps of snow across the pavement, rolling them into crooked spheres to build snowmen. Laughter and playfull screams echoed between the buildings.
Kael was forced to halt when a child darted past him, nearly colliding with his leg. The boy skidded to a stop a few paces ahead, spun around, and bowed so deeply his hat nearly fell off.
"S-sorry!"
Kael offered a warm smile, and the boy's eyes lit up with relief, and he sprinted off again, vanishing into a group of children who were already calling his name.
Kael watched them for a heartbeat longer.
He continued down the street, his expression settling back into silence as the snow crunched beneath his boots.
'Is the black market open today?'
Even though it was illegal and supposedly hidden, everyone in the Luminaire district knew about it. Valthorne knew too, of course, but they chose to ignore it. Some things were easier to pretend not to see.
Kael stepped into an old stone church, and walked past the pews and descended into the crypt below. What should have been a cramped burial chamber was gone. In its place stretched a vast, straight underground street, carved deep beneath the city.
Kael estimated it ran at least two thirds the length of Velthoria. Both sides were packed with small, improvised housing units and narrow storefronts. Luminaires moved through the space freely, their voices blending with the rustle of fabric and the scraping of crates. Every stall was owned by a Luminaire selling something someone else was not supposed to have.
To Kael's right stood the only structure linked to Valthorne. A bar. It served as a hub where people could anonymously post requests of any kind.
Requests for rare materials. Forbidden items.
Even assassinations.
'Yea… no way someone from Valthorne runs this behind their back.'
Kael pushed through the crowded street and slipped into the bar. The moment he crossed the threshold, heat wrapped around him like a blanket. Mug smoke, warm light, and the murmur of voices filled the space.
'Thankfully some rules still apply here.'
He found an empty table near the mission board and sat down. The board itself was cluttered with pinned notes, scraps of parchment, and messy handwriting from hundreds of hands. Nothing written clearly or with names, everything vague on purpose.
Unspoken rules held this place together. No killing inside. No stealing from someone seated. No exposing identities. The rules were flawed and full of loopholes, Kael could think of dozens, yet the black market still operated without collapsing.
Laughter rang out. Someone clinked their glass against another's.
Kael leaned back, his gaze drifting across the mission board as he searched for the kind of job he needed.
'Something quick and profitable.'
His finger tapped rhythmically against the wooden table.
Request after request blurred together.
'Too messy… too much exposure… would take too long…'
Then his eyes stopped.
In the far corner of the board, half-hidden beneath newer postings, rested an old slip of paper, its edges curled and yellowed with age.
Kael's fingers stilled.