Lyan was walking through the hallways on his way to library when it happened
The first shout tore through the manor like a blade drawn too fast.
Lyan felt it before he understood it—the subtle shift in the air, the way servants froze mid-step, the way guards snapped upright as if a string had been pulled taut inside them. Sound followed a heartbeat later: boots pounding stone, steel scraping from scabbards, voices overlapping into a single, rising roar.
The house was in commotion.
Not the ordinary bustle of a noble estate, not the controlled chaos of a morning inspection or a visiting dignitary. This was different. This was panic straining against discipline.
Lyan stood from his desk, fingers tightening around the ledger he had been studying moments before. The numbers scattered from his mind, replaced by instinct. His gaze flicked to the door just as it flew open.
"My lord!" A young attendant stumbled in, breath ragged. "The west corridor—there's been a breach."
A breach.
The word echoed far louder than the shouting outside.
Lyan's jaw set. "Explain."
The attendant swallowed. "We… we don't know how. The guards were repositioned because of the disturbance in the outer halls. Someone slipped through."
Slipped through.
Lyan moved past him without another word.
The corridors were alive. Servants were being herded back into side chambers, guards forming lines that were too hurried, too uneven. Orders were barked and contradicted in the same breath. The house's carefully layered security—rotations, checkpoints, overlapping patrols—had been disrupted by the very chaos meant to protect it.
Fear had found the cracks.
Lyan walked calmly through it all, his presence forcing a path open. Conversations died as he passed. Guards straightened, shame and tension warring in their eyes.
He listened—not for voices, but for patterns. The noise was loud, yet poorly aligned. Footsteps overlapped where they should have been staggered. Orders repeated where they should have been anticipated. The house was reacting instead of thinking.
Steel rang somewhere ahead. A cry followed—short, sharp, then abruptly cut off.
Lyan's pace did not change, but something cold settled in his chest.
The west corridor came into view, torches flickering violently as air rushed through open doors. Two guards lay on the floor—alive, but unmoving. Blood streaked the wall in a thin, precise line.
Precise.
Not the mark of a brawler. Not desperation.
An assassin.
"How did this happen?" Lyan demanded.
The captain of the guard knelt by one of the fallen men, face pale. "The alarm in the lower hall drew half our force away. By the time we realized—"
"You realized too late," Lyan finished.
The captain bowed his head.
Lyan stepped forward, eyes scanning the corridor. No lingering presence. No rushed footprints. Whoever had come through had already chosen their path and vanished into the deeper layers of the estate.
The house was loud—shouting, running, metal clashing—yet Lyan felt an unsettling clarity settle over him.
"They were never meant to kill here," he thought. "Not yet."
Lyan fingers curled slowly. They had never intended to finish their work here. This intrusion was a measure—of response time, of confusion, of how quickly authority fractured under pressure.
Around him, the tension peaked. Guards doubled back on patrols. Doors were sealed. Every shadow felt suspect. The estate, once a symbol of controlled authority, now trembled beneath its own weight.
Lyan raised his voice—not loud, but firm enough to cut through the noise. "Secure the inner halls. Rotate patrols in pairs, not squads. And remove the wounded immediately."
The captain snapped to attention, relief flashing briefly across his face. Orders were relayed, this time cleanly.
Lyan stood alone in the corridor as the house obeyed.
The commotion slowly bent back into discipline, but the damage remained.
An assassin had walked through a duke's home.
And everyone knew it.
Lyan looked down the darkened passage where the intruder had disappeared, his expression unreadable.
The air shifted.
Not sound. Not movement. Nothing that would draw the eye or raise alarm.
No one noticed when he appeared.
The assassin was simply there—behind Lyan, inside the innermost corridor, where only trust and authority were meant to walk. His presence was flawless, erased by the noise, the orders, the lingering chaos of the house trying to steady itself.
Lyan felt it a heartbeat too late.
Steel flashed.
The sound that followed was not a shout, nor a clash of blades.
It was a wet, decisive thud.
A head struck the stone floor and rolled.
Only then did the corridor fall silent.
Blood fanned outward in a dark arc as the assassin's body collapsed a half-second later, knees folding as if the strings holding him upright had been cut.
Guards froze, eyes wide, minds scrambling to catch up to what had already happened.
Lyan stood untouched.
A man stepped out from the inner hall.
The hall fell silent as the man appeared, stepping smoothly from the shadows. His eyes swept the room with an unsettling precision, taking in every detail—yet it wasn't Lucian he seemed to regard.
He spoke, his voice low and deliberate, words barely carrying beyond his lips. At first, it sounded as though he were talking to no one, simply murmuring under his breath. But then Lucian noticed the subtle cues, the tilt of his head as if awaiting a reply, the barely perceptible nods, the occasional pause, and the deliberate flick of his fingers. Someone—or something—was listening. Just out of reach.
Lucian's gut tightened. There was a rhythm to the man's speech, a cadence that suggested communication, coordination, purpose. His calm exterior struggled to mask the sudden awareness that this was more than a casual visitor.
The guards did not stir; the maids continued their tasks, efficient and composed, as if the man's presence was no more alarming than a stray breeze. Yet Lucian could feel the tension in the air, a quiet insistence that something unseen watched and responded to the stranger.
For a moment, the man's eyes flicked to Lucian, sharp and assessing, but his attention drifted again, almost imperceptibly, to where no one stood. Lucian's fingers itched to move, to act, to understand—but the invisible presence, the silent conversation, held him in place.
The hall's shadows stretched, and the stranger's voice, still quiet, wove through them like a thread connecting two points only he could see. The tension was almost tangible: unseen, unacknowledged by anyone else, yet impossible to ignore,
Logic told him the man was some one of importance. His mind raced piecing together the cluues, with the way the servants regarded him he was also so someone familiar, but who could he possibly be.