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"Shit. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck."
Gregory cursed through the Knight of the Moon's throat, the words coming out wrong in a voice that wasn't his, and kept running.
The body under him was younger than Armand's had been, faster in the legs but weaker through the chest, and every stride cost him a fraction more air than it should have. He hated running in an unfamiliar frame. Thirty years of knowing exactly how far he could push a body before it failed him, and now he was guessing.
How does a Legendary-rank monster get that strong.
He'd fought Legendary opponents before. He'd fought them and won, methodically, with the full arsenal of a Divine Hierophant behind him. What he'd just watched in that district wasn't a fight. It was a demonstration, the kind you gave to something you didn't consider a threat.
Behind him, the district was still burning in patches, orange light throwing long shadows across rooftops he'd known for a decade. The sound of it followed him even at this distance: structural collapses, the low continuous roar of a fire finding new fuel, and underneath all of it, occasionally, something that might have been laughter.
He hit the capital's outer wall and vaulted it in one motion, landing hard on the far side, breath coming ragged through lungs that weren't originally his.
Fuck this.
He was three streets past the wall when a figure dropped into his path.
Gregory stopped hard, weapon coming up, causality already spinning toward the answer before his eyes finished the turn. He knew this face. He had watched this face put a hand through Armand's chest an hour ago, had felt the betrayal land with the specific weight of eleven years of trust turned inside out in a single motion.
"Guildmaster," Wei Liang said.
Gregory's grip tightened on the sword.
"You," he said, and the word carried everything it should have carried: the chest wound, the dragon through the ceiling, the eleven years he'd spent believing this man served him.
Wei Liang's third eye opened, slow, deliberate.
Something moved through Gregory's mind like a hand smoothing a wrinkle out of cloth.
The weight went with it.
"Guildmaster," Wei Liang said again, and this time the name landed warm and familiar, no wound behind it at all.
Gregory's grip on the sword eased. Some old reflex recognized the face and found nothing there to be alarmed about, no reason for the blade still half raised between them. He lowered it, faintly embarrassed at his own jumpiness.
"You should retreat to the capital and request reinforcements from Her Majesty the Queen," Wei Liang said. "The engagement in the district has exceeded what any current asset can counter alone."
"That bitch Victoria." Gregory said it out of habit, some part of him grateful, absurdly, for a familiar voice giving him a familiar problem to be annoyed about.
"Yes. Her." Wei Liang's expression didn't change. "You have perhaps four minutes before the pursuit locates this body. I would recommend using them."
Gregory nodded, already turning the advice over, already halfway to trusting it as completely as he trusted every briefing this man had ever given him.
"You always did think three steps ahead of everyone else," Gregory said.
"I try, Guildmaster."
"How did you even find me out here."
"I have my methods." Wei Liang's tone carried the same dry, familiar competence it always had. "You are wasting the four minutes."
Gregory almost laughed. That was Wei Liang too, the same clipped impatience he'd shown in every meeting for a decade.
"Right." He rolled his shoulders, preparing to move. "Thank you. I mean it."
"Of course, Guildmaster."
Gregory turned to go.
And something in the turning broke it.
A half-second flicker, a seam in the world that shouldn't have been there, and every ounce of the weight Wei Liang had smoothed away came back at once: the chest wound, the dragon, the sleeve he'd recognized a moment too late while his own blood ran out onto a table.
Gregory's blood went cold.
"You," he said again, and this time it carried everything it should have carried the first time.
Wei Liang tilted his head. The calm didn't crack. If anything, something in his posture eased, the particular ease of a man whose work had just concluded on schedule rather than as a surprise.
"There it is," he said.
Gregory didn't ask how long the trick had run. He didn't need to. The sword was already moving, the Fated Declaration collapsing around Wei Liang's throat with the full weight of a Divine Hierophant's fury behind it, thirty years of betrayal compressed into a single motion, doubled now by the theft of even the anger he'd been owed.
The head came free clean.
Wei Liang had not moved to stop it.
Gregory stood over the body, breathing hard, causality reading still ringing with the aftershock of a memory that had been taken from him and given back at the exact moment it would hurt the most.
"Interesting reflexes, Divine Hierophant. Talking to a corpse one second, taking its head the next." A voice, close, amused, close enough that it hadn't come from any distance at all.
Gregory felt something cold run down his spine.
He turned, weapon already drawn, causality reading spinning up to identify the threat before his eyes had finished the turn.
"WHOA. Whoa, whoa, calm down, calm down." Both hands went up, empty, placating.
Gregory's guard didn't drop.
"Silas." He said the name like it tasted bad. "The mad alchemist. What the fuck are you doing here."
"Hehe." Silas grinned, gold skull catching the moonlight, the brand at his temple visible even in the dark. "This old man came to help you out, Divine Hierophant."
Gregory's expression went suspicious in a way that required no causality reading at all.
Silas smiled wider.
"But there is a condition."
Gregory's face distorted.
"Fine," he said, through his teeth. "As long as it's not unreasonable."
Silas clapped once, delighted.
"Ohhh. As expected of the Divine Hierophant. Very decisive."
"So what is the condition, you snake." Gregory's voice had gone flat, the specific tiredness of a negotiation he already knew he was going to lose. "Your alchemist guild should rename itself the merchant guild if you're after benefit this badly."
"This old man will take that as a compliment, Divine Hierophant."
"Follow me."
Silas led him down into the city's drainage system, the Knight of the Star's stolen body moving with an ease that suggested he'd used this route before.
"The sewers." Gregory almost laughed. "You really are smart."
"Haha. Just the same old trick."
They ran through the dark, water and worse things splashing underfoot, the tunnel narrow enough in places that Gregory's shoulders scraped brick on both sides. Silas moved through it without slowing, without checking his footing, a man navigating a route his body had memorized long before tonight. Somewhere above them the fighting continued, a pressure Gregory could feel through the stone even without hearing it directly. He was grateful, briefly, for the ceiling of rock between him and whatever was still happening up there.
The tunnel opened out beyond the capital's boundary, and the two of them stood in open air again: moonlight, mist, the sound of the ongoing catastrophe still audible far behind them.
"Okay, Divine Hierophant." Silas rolled his shoulders. "Where to next?"
"Wait. Before that." Gregory raised one hand. "Let me give you a buff first, in case we need to fight."
"Oh." Silas pressed both hands together, a small performative bow. "Then this old man thanks Divine Hierophant Gregory for his generosity."
Gregory cast the spell.
A golden thread shot out from his palm and struck Silas's chest, and behind him, across his back, a tattoo bloomed into existence: the night sky, stars scattered across obsidian skin, constellations Gregory had drawn from memory a hundred times before.
"I grant you the title of Dusk."
"Thank you, Divine Hierophant."
Gregory's face didn't match the gratitude. He looked, if anything, more displeased than before, as though the gift had cost him something the transaction hadn't accounted for.
"Take me to Leylin," he said.
"The second branch of the Blinding Light Guild. Correct?"
Silas asked it like he already knew the answer.
"You snake-like alchemist," Gregory said. "You know a lot."
"Hehe. Of course."
They came up out of the tunnel into a clearing half a mile from the road. A dozen figures in dark cloth stood waiting there, arranged in a loose perimeter, holding a stillness that came from precise instruction rather than patience.
"Greetings, Master Silas."
Silas smiled at them, warm, familiar.
Gregory's eyes moved across the group. Dark division. Stealth-trained, information specialists, the kind of assets a proper alchemist guild kept quiet about even to its own allies.
"Hmp." He looked at Silas sideways. "So you came prepared."
"Of course." Silas spread his hands, gold skull tilting in something that might have been pride. "This old man always does things cleanly."
He turned to the waiting group.
"Escort the Divine Hierophant to Leylin."