"Cassian, was it?" His voice was the same—calm, commanding, irritating in how sure it sounded. "So you went from Stillkin, to servant, to Sir Qahir's squire… to Qahir's son?"
He didn't deserve an answer. He spoke like verdicts.
"How can that be?" he went on, brushing dust from his robe with two neat flicks. "Sir Qahir's family were slaughtered by my hands."
He drifted to the bar's edge, lifted a stool, and sat with the lazy grace of a man who thinks every room is a throne room. He took a dusty glass from the counter, swirled the stale liquid like a connoisseur testing wine.
"So…"
He paused—just long enough to make the air wait—then tipped the glass over his mask. The liquid vanished into the white, as if the mask were cloth, as if it could drink for him. A low groan rose from behind the gold-stitched cross, the sound of someone savoring a vintage that wasn't there.
"I'll ask again," he said. "Cassian. A boy from a distasteful world lies to one of the Starborne, then rifles through the belongings of another. Is that correct, Stillkin?"
He already knew the answer. He always did.
Naqra's fingers tightened on the back of my neck. She twisted her head toward me—too far.
"Come on~ SPILL IT!" she sang, bright and wrong, her voice ricocheting between my ears.
"You already know—so why ask?" I rasped. My voice scraped for air as her grip tightened on my throat.
He stood, set the glass down with a soft click.
"I am a curious creature, you might say." His tone was almost pleasant. "It is… disproportionate for a slave to be shielded by a knight like Qahir. He is ruthless. Powerful. A man with no regard for men, women, or children." He waved this off as if discussing weather. "I don't blame him. We are the same—save for rank and remit. I've known him for centuries—not personally, no, but I know his work."
He inhaled—slow, theatrical.
"So, Cassian. Why are you the exception to his lack of mercy?"
He came closer until a foot was nothing. Then he leaned in quick, the gold-stitched cross filling my world. Inches. If he had eyes, they were on me—bright with hunger for the one answer he wanted more than any confession.
"I…" I stalled on the edge of the lie. Truth or lie—either way I die. But if I lie, Qahir stays safe. "I don't know," I managed. "I wonder it myself. Maybe you don't know him as well as you think."
Naqra's fingers crushed my throat; the last words scraped out like rust. Then—air. She let go. I hit the floor on my knees, coughing dust and glass, staring up at the two people who had already killed my world once.
"That could be true," Qassi said. He turned toward the door he'd come through, voice casual as weather. "Perhaps I'll let you live this once. I'm curious what you'll do with it."
He started away, lifting a hand in a lazy farewell, as if dismissing a servant.
"Awww~ but I wanted to kill him, my lord," Naqra pouted, trailing after.
Their voices thinned with the distance.
"Soon enough I'll let you play," he said, a light pat to her head. "But not with him, Naqra."
They vanished into the dark hall.
But from behind there were no straps, no ties for their mask—just a smooth white shell that fused cleanly into the neck, like porcelain poured over bone. No stitching showed at the back. Qassi's gold cross and Naqra's red grin belonged only to the front of those faces; from behind the masks were blank, seamless, and skin-tight.
Am I free?
Did I actually survive—again—with these monsters?
A breath. Then the air changed.
Four figures were just there in front of me—as if the room had blinked them into place. Three wore the black-stitched masks: blank, silent, executioner-still. The fourth was different—white stitching so pale it almost disappeared against the mask, sewn in the shape of a crescent moon.
"Alright, boy," the moon-stitched one said, voice flat with authority. "You're coming with us."
Hands seized my arms from both sides. My knees slid on grit; splinters dug into skin. I didn't fight. Not because I was brave—because I understood something worse:
Qassi hadn't spared me.
He'd passed me along.
The white-stitched one touched my shoulder—and before I could blink, the tavern was gone.
Darkness. A corridor that seemed to run forever, doors marching down both sides like an optical trick that wouldn't stop. The air was cold and dry; my breath sounded too loud, then too small.
I was alone.
Where did I go?
I pushed myself up from my knees. Left and right, the hallway stretched until the dark swallowed it. Every door looked the same: iron latch, pale wood, a seam of black around the frame.
Panic ate the edges of my vision.
I grabbed the nearest handle. Cold. I yanked the door wide.
Nothing—an endless, weightless black that wasn't a room so much as the idea of falling. I slammed it shut. Next door. Same void. Next. Same. The latches clicked like a metronome counting out my fear.
I started running.
Door—void—slam. Door—void—slam.
My feet slapped the stone; the sound lagged behind me like an echo that couldn't keep up. The corridor did not curve, did not rise, did not end. It only repeated. My legs burned. My lungs scraped. I kept going until my knees buckled and I hit the floor hard enough to see sparks behind my eyes.
I don't know how long I'd been there.
Minutes. Hours. A lifetime narrowed to doors that opened onto nothing.
But—there was nothing else to do.
So I ran. I kept running, as if distance itself could wake me up, as if speed could tear a seam in the dark and let the world back in.
My breath clogged my throat with every step. Each inhale felt harder to swallow than the last.
Then a voice moved through the corridor—as if the hall itself spoke.
"What is mercy?"
I didn't answer. I froze.
Is this the moon-stitched one's Luminaris?
It has to be. What else could it be?
I shut my eyes and fished for Qahir's lesson, the one he hid inside scorn so it would stick: The sharper imagination wins—not bigger, sharper.
If I pour everything into the next door… it might work.
I reached for the nearest handle. Not corpse-cold anymore—warm, like a palm had just left it. I turned.
Light washed over me. Grass brushed my shins. The air smelled green, wet, alive—an indoor garden laid out beneath a pale sky that couldn't be real.
What did I imagine?
Then I saw him.
Luca.