"We have located the spy, Your Grace. He is in Flameheart Tavern."
They met in a tavern back room under a low ceiling and a single oil lamp. The air held smoke, stale ale, and old grease. Sound leaked through the door in short bursts—voices, a laugh, a cup set down too hard.
The attendant knelt on the floorboards with his head down.
Duke Terros stood over him in a fur-lined cloak. Outside, Anticourt's bells rang faint through the shutters.
Terros of Loria listened, jaw tight.
"Do you know whose man he is?" he asked at last.
"No, Your Grace." The attendant kept his eyes on the ground. "He does not wear the colours of any Lord known to be in Anticourt. The Shadow Walkers followed him to the messenger post. He sent a letter to the north."
"Was the bird shot down?"
The attendant swallowed. "No, Your Grace. It flew too high, too swift. The men could not bring it down."
Terros's expression stayed flat but his fist moved.
It drove into the man's stomach with a crack like a club into a sack of grain. The attendant lifted off the ground, spun, and skidded along the lane before tumbling to a stop in the dirt.
He coughed, pushed himself up on shaking arms, then staggered back to kneel.
"The Duke is merciful," he rasped.
Terros ignored him and stared toward the town's lantern-glow.
If that letter reaches Bren and lands in Blackfyre's hands…
He flexed his fingers until they stilled.
"I will have to ask him for aid," he muttered. "If I am exposed, his own games in the Capital come into the light."
He turned sharply.
"The nobles at Flameheart," he asked. "Are they in the inn?"
"No, Your Grace. Most have gone to the brothels, to 'sample the local cuisine.' The inn holds only merchants, some stewards, and the knights you seek."
Terros's lip curled. "Convenient."
He tapped his thigh once, twice.
"We keep those nobles where they are," he said. "They must hear noise and see smoke, but keep their throats safe. If they think bandits are testing the walls, they'll stay tucked in their pleasure-houses and wait for someone else to bleed on their behalf."
He leaned in, voice lower.
"Tell my escort: make a show. Fire, light, cracking stone—enough to startle the townsfolk and pin the brothel lords in place. Let it look like common raiders and sellswords. No banners. No heraldry."
"As you command, Your Grace."
Terros's gaze went past the inn roofs to ledgers only he could see.
Men whispered filth about dukes and lords; he could drown that in more words.
Thirty thousand magic cores were different.
A year's yield from his mines ran forty-five, maybe fifty thousand cores. If that many vanished from the imperial tallies, the clerks in the Capital would lift their ink-stained heads. They would ask if the mine was failing. If the mine stood sound, they would ask where the tribute had gone.
And if some knight's report—sealed, stamped, and flown north—mentioned missing cores and dealings with Shadow Walkers…
Reitz Blackfyre would need no proof. One measured complaint from Fulmen's Earl to the Emperor, and Terros would end up before the Tribunal. A duke could be stripped. A line could end on a block.
The spy had to die. The hawks had to fall. The rest—his patron in the inner court could bury under ten other scandals.
Terros surveyed Anticourt from afar, people shouldn't know he was here tonight.
"Begin," he said.
From the town proper, Anticourt's bells shifted—shorter, sharper.
It was the old alarm for attack.
Inside Flameheart Tavern, the knights took off anything that could identify them with House Blackfyre. They exchanged their blackplate and fish helm with common gambeson.
The inn had been loud moments before: mugs clinking, dice rattling, merchants arguing over cargo. The sound frayed and thinned. Someone swore. Someone else laughed in denial.
Rycharde was already on his feet in the upstairs chamber, hand closing on the haft of his warhammer.
"Raiders?" he muttered.
The other Blackfyre knights stirred, reflexes hauling them from half-doze to alert. Armour creaked. A sword slid an inch from its sheath.
On the big bed, Ezra lay sprawled on his back, blanket tangled around his legs, hair a dark wild halo on the pillow. His face sat slack with the boneless sleep of a child.
Evered glanced at him, then away. "He looks like he's been trampled," he murmured.
"He has," Oswyn replied. "He's run dry. We keep him breathing and let him rest."
Evan stood at the foot of the bed, already belting his sword on over a plain tunic; he'd shed his plate earlier to move unnoticed. Shouts rose from the street below.
"We first decide what to do with Lord Ezra," he said, voice calm and flat. "We don't leave him alone. We don't go down there and fight while he's up here unguarded."
Deimos, on a stool near the shuttered window, lifted his head. The Demon Hunter still wore his leathers; his whip handle gleamed at his hip.
"They'll be after you," Deimos said. "The spy. They know someone listened and ran, but not whose colours he wears. Until they see your face, they still grope in the dark."
Below them, something heavy smashed into a wall. The floorboard under Ezra's bed shivered.
"They're inside the inn," Evan said.
"Should we go down and hold the common room?" Evered asked, flexing his fingers.
"If we all go, no one watches him," Evan answered.
An impact cut the argument short.
The wall of the neighbouring room blew inward with a roar.
Stone, wooden slats, and plaster burst in a cloud. A boulder the size of a man's torso tumbled through, shattered a bed frame, and rolled to a stop with a dull, final thud. Dust boiled through the cracks around the connecting door, turning the lamplight to a dirty haze.
Everyone flinched except Deimos who was already expecting the the attack, he had been watching while he talked to the rest.
On the bed, Ezra's eyes flew open.
"Can you keep it down with your video games?" he snapped in crisp English, irritated tones none of them had ever heard. "It's late and you have your speakers on full blast. Can't a guy get some sleep?"
He blinked, dazed as the foreign words left his mouth, then winced as more shouts rose from below.
The knights stared.
"...What'd he say?" Dynham whispered. "Sounded like fog-talk."
"Dream-tongue," Galwell said. "Nonsense."
"They're hitting the rooms one by one," Phobos said sharply. He was already up, hand on his whip. "Looking for the spy's door."
Evan moved.
He scooped Ezra up in both arms. The boy clung to him on reflex, small fingers digging into the tunic, cheek pressed to Evan's shoulder.
They spilled into the corridor.
Three steps.
Then the darkness came.
It peeled off the far wall like oil off stone. One moment held a narrow corridor with a cheap rush-mat runner and guttering sconces. The next held a thicker blackness, a hunched smear of shadow that moved like a beast.
It lunged down the hall in silence.
Deimos acted.
His arm flicked. The whip leapt into his hand and through the air. Barbed cord cracked forward, cut a clean line through the gloom, and struck something inside the shadow with a wet sound.
The dark mass jolted and hung mid-lunge, pinned as if on an invisible nail.
"Now!" Deimos shouted. "Rycharde—[Fire ball], where my whip struck!"
Rycharde pivoted, palm snapping up. Flame bloomed into a tight sphere of orange heat and streaked down the corridor.
It hit the shadow in a blossom of light.
Darkness burned away like cobweb in a furnace. For a heartbeat, the corridor flashed bright as noon.
In that light, the truth showed.
He was a boy.
Fourteen, perhaps fifteen—gaunt, hollow-cheeked. Black clothing hung threadbare; his boots had the worn, mended look of the poor. Half his face had burned to glistening meat and bone, and he screamed as the darkness flickered around him, trying and failing to close.
"That's a boy," Dynham muttered. "Dead wrong, that."
He lurched forward, but Phobos caught his arm in an iron grip.
"No." Phobos locked Dynham's arm. "He's with them. He'd cut you the same. Kill it."
The boy writhed, half in flame, half in dark, fingers clawing at his chest as if he could pull the shadows back over himself like a blanket.
Deimos stepped in, face grim.
"We use whips," Deimos said, eyes on it, "because steel can't bite what you can't touch. A sword swings at smoke. Light strips it off. Then you take the heart."
He drove his dagger down once to the boy's heart, clean and hard.
The boy twitched, then fell still. Wisps of darkness shivered, unravelled, and evaporated into the air like breath on a cold morning.
Deimos yanked the blade free and wiped it on the dead youth's sleeve.
"They're stronger at night," Phobos said. "Same pack or not, it doesn't matter. Stay in the light. No alleys. No dark rooms. Hold until dawn."
The Bren knights exchanged glances. Rage sat under their skin. These were the people who hunted children—who had tried for Ezra once already.
Evan tightened his grip.
"We move," he said. "We keep Lord Ezra between us and the brightest fire we can find."
They ran for the stairs.
Flameheart's common hall had become a war zone.
Tables lay overturned and shoved into makeshift barricades. Benches sat shattered, ale soaking into splintered wood. The hearth roared, flames clawing up the chimney, throwing hard shadows across the low ceiling.
Ten local knights in plate with Anticourt's crest in the middle fought in a ragged line near the center of the room. Steel rang. Men shouted as blades bit.
The enemy came in two parts.
The first were men—hard-eyed, disciplined, leather and chain showing no colours. Their gear was scuffed, patched to read as mercenary work. Three fought openly near the bar: a chipped axe, a curved sabre, a heavy cudgel. They didn't shout. They didn't gloat. They pressed forward in measured steps, cutting at throats and torch-hands.
The second were… not quite men.
Shadows clung to corners and rafters, too thick for the lantern light. Tendrils spilled from them, snaked across floorboards, and coiled around table legs. Now and then, a bulge of gloom stretched and lunged at a knight like a hunting cat.
"Arcanists!" one town knight roared from behind an overturned table. His helmet was gone; blood ran down his temple. "These damned shadows—what are they?!"
"Arcanists—here?" he shouted. "Since when do hired knives run with that rot?"
"Less talking, more stabbing!" a third bellowed, flinging a stool at an encroaching shadow.
"[Stone Bullet]," roared one of the knights. The spell cut into the dark and hit wood behind it. There was neither scream nor blood.
Three of the knights charged forward and went straight into the shadow. When the darkness spat them back out, only two were still standing—both bleeding from gaps in their armor
"Fall back," Deimos roared. "Engage from afar, torches on one hand, spears on the other! The more ground your weapon covers the better!"
Deimos and Phobos drove straight through.
Their whips cracked across the chaos, carving bright lines that shoved back the nearest darkness and opened a path. Evan ducked low, Ezra clinging to his back now, arms locked around his shoulders, eyes narrowed with stubborn effort to stay awake.
They surged toward the front door in a knot, the five Bren knights forming a half-ring around Evan and the child. A shadow lunged; Galwell's spear flashed and forced it back. A mercenary stepped into their path; Evered's mace crashed into his forearm with a crunch and sent his sword spinning away.
They reached the door.
A roar outside drowned out the battle.
Then the world exploded.
The heavy oak doors burst inward as a boulder slammed through them. Wood shattered, iron hinges shrieked, splinters flew like arrows. The stone bounced once across the floor and plowed through two empty tables, gouging the planks before it came to rest.
Dust and smoke billowed. Men coughed. A local knight too close lay groaning, pinned under wreckage.
As the haze thinned, the party froze.
The way out had turned into a kill lane.
The street in front of Flameheart seethed with bodies and blackness. Bandits and sellswords stood in loose ranks, torches up, steel bared, faces lit from below in ugly orange. Beyond them, at the edge of the torchlight, thicker pools of shadow slid along the ground and up the walls, clinging to eaves and filling alley mouths.
One of the mercenaries near the door spotted Evan and the cluster of armoured men behind him.
He grinned, missing teeth showing.
"Well now," he drawled. "Looks like the rat brought friends."
Behind him, the darkness gathered itself to spring.
On Evan's back, Ezra's small hands curled tighter into the knight's tunic.
They were surrounded.