Stellan, still trembling, brushed the last remnants of his tears from his cheeks with the back of his hand. The gesture was clumsy, almost childish, yet strangely endearing. He trailed after Cedric, who had already descended into Thornleigh's courtyard with a soldier's sure stride.
The night pressed close about them, velvet-black, pierced only by the torchlight that danced along the palace gates. Cedric's boots rang upon the flagstones, sharp and certain, and when at last he cast a glance behind, he found Grimshaw lingering several paces back—wiping at his damp lashes like some foolish schoolboy caught in mischief.
Cedric's brows knit, his lips parting into the faintest sigh of exasperation before his gaze swung forward once more. His olive eyes fell upon the waiting carriage, its lacquered panels gleaming beneath the trembling torchlight.
"Come along, Grimshaw," Cedric called, his voice low but firm, carrying across the courtyard with the authority of command. "Hurry now. We have not the luxury of sentiment. The investigation must go on."
Stellan sniffed faintly, lowering his hands, and quickened his pace with a sulking obedience. His violet eyes, still glistening, fixed upon Cedric with a child's wounded grievance. "Must we," he asked softly, "inquire into the manor as well?"
Cedric's stride did not falter. He stepped closer to the carriage, his cloak whispering like raven wings at his heels. "Yes," he answered with clipped certainty. "The boy lies poisoned within his own estate. That alone speaks volumes. Whoever wished him dead knew every corridor, every chamber, every silence of Blackwood Manor. It was no careless strike, but an intimacy of malice."
He placed a hand upon the polished frame, pausing only to cast a glance back at Stellan, his eyes commanding yet unreadable. "Up," he said curtly.
With a faint pout curling his lips, Stellan obeyed. He climbed into the carriage first, settling with a dramatic sweep of his cloak, as though he might yet claim some fragment of dignity in obedience. Cedric followed in measured silence, his tall frame filling the space as he seated himself opposite. A moment later the wheels lurched, and the carriage rattled into motion, carrying them into the waiting dark.
Inside, the silence stretched taut. Stellan at last broke it, his tone half-curious, half-fretful. "But how," he whispered, "are we to question him? If he is poisoned, half-dead, what answers could he give? He may scarcely whisper his own name."
Cedric lowered his head, his voice deepening, soft yet resonant as it filled the dim carriage. "We do not require his answers. What we need is entrance. Within those walls lies more than the boy's testimony—records, artifacts, shadows long concealed. The truth dwells there still."
Cedric's lips curved into the faintest line, grim as the edge of steel. "I know it well enough to tell you this: the hand that poisoned him was not working blindly. And if my suspicions prove true, that hand does not rest. Even now it watches… perhaps not only Blackwood, but Thornleigh itself."
His words fell heavy in the cramped chamber, and for a moment the carriage seemed swallowed by silence. Only the iron rattle of its wheels against the cobblestones echoed, like a drumbeat carrying them toward some dark fate.
Stellan sank back against the seat, his heart quickened by the weight of Cedric's certainty, his earlier tears now forgotten beneath a new fear. Yet even still, his gaze lingered upon Cedric—steady, searching—as though his only anchor against the storm of shadows lay in the man before him.
The carriage lurched upon the uneven stones, its iron-rimmed wheels grinding against the night road. Within, the air was tense—thick with the lingering scent of lamp oil and leather, and something else: the unspoken weight of thoughts left unsaid. Cedric leaned back against the velvet seat, one gloved hand rising to sweep through his burnished golden hair, fingers pressing against his temple as though he might still the current of restless suspicion flowing through his mind. His sigh, quiet yet deliberate, escaped into the shadowed chamber.
His olive eyes as he—lifted, fastening upon Stellan, who sat opposite him. "What is it?" Cedric's voice carried not irritation, but the gravity of a man whose instincts rarely slept.
Stellan's violet gaze faltered beneath the question, though the corners of his mouth twitched in defiance. He swallowed, his tone soft yet edged with that peculiar tremor of apprehension: "If… if they are everywhere, then—then are they still watching us now?"
For an instant, Cedric considered telling him no. To soothe, to assure, to dismiss the boy's anxieties as shadows cast by fevered fancy. But as his eyes lingered upon Stellan's pale face—so strangely satisfying in its mingling of pride and uncertainty—he found another impulse rising. A mischievous cruelty perhaps, or simply the urge to see his companion squirm. So instead, Cedric tilted his head, lips curving with the faintest ghost of a smile.
"Perhaps," he murmured, his words deliberate, "perhaps they are."
The color drained a fraction from Stellan's cheeks, though he immediately straightened his posture, lifting his chin in a gesture of bravado. "I—I do not fear such things," he declared, though his voice wavered on the last word. His violet eyes glimmered in the torchlight like fractured amethysts.
Cedric leaned forward, the firelight casting shadows sharp upon his cheekbones. "I think," he said slowly, "they linger in the night because it suits them. Creatures of cunning, creatures who perform too well in the moonlight. They slip between lamplight and shadow as though both were stitched into their very bones."
Stellan shifted uneasily, his long fingers knotting together. His lips parted as though to retort, yet no words came. It was not assassins he feared—that Cedric knew with unnerving clarity. No, there was something else gnawing at the boy's spirit: a fear older, darker, spectral. Ghosts. That childish terror, that private dread, was written plainly in his violet eyes though he sought desperately to mask it.
Cedric's mouth quirked with secret amusement. He almost laughed, but checked himself, savoring instead the quiet satisfaction of watching Stellan wrestle against himself, feigning courage that cracked beneath every glance of shadow.
Then the carriage jolted violently, springing upon a hidden rut in the road. Stellan pitched forward, his slender frame colliding against the velvet seat's edge. He would have fallen entirely had not Cedric's hand shot out—swift, steady, strong—catching him by the arm and pulling him back upright.
"What happened?" Cedric muttered, eyes narrowing as he steadied him.
Stellan's lips trembled but he offered no reply. His gaze was fixed upon the curtained window, where the night pressed in thick and absolute. What if, he thought, there truly was a ghost outside? What if the phantoms of this dark country lingered just beyond the glass, watching with hollow eyes?
Before Cedric could chide him again, the silence shattered. A blade sang through the night air, its hiss followed by a wet, dreadful sound—the tearing of flesh. Then, a scream, raw and unearthly, rending the stillness like a cathedral bell struck at midnight.
Both men froze. The scream cut short, leaving only the echo of violence and the carriage's groaning wheels.
Cedric's instincts flared sharp. He pushed himself upright, one hand falling instinctively to the hilt at his side. His face, once amused, now burned with cold determination. "Stay here," he ordered, his voice iron. "I will go out and see what is amiss."
Stellan jerked forward, eyes wide. "No—no, Cedric, do not! Stay—stay here. What if it was—what if it was not—" His throat closed upon the words. He could not bring himself to speak the word ghost, for fear that naming it might summon it.
Cedric's gaze snapped to him, flinty and unwavering. "Don't be a child," he said, low and stern. "We are spies, Stellan. Shadows ourselves. We cannot allow insult from any foe, nor tremble before phantoms conjured by the mind."
Yet still, Stellan pleaded, his voice fragile as paper in the wind. "Please—please, Cedric, do not leave me here alone." His hands gripped the edge of his seat until his knuckles whitened, his violet eyes shimmering with dread.
For a moment, Cedric wavered. Not with fear, but with the faint tug of something else—an awareness of the boy's fragility, his desperate clinging to bravado. Yet duty outweighed sentiment. With a final, decisive motion, Cedric shook free of the unspoken bond between them.
"I will return," he said firmly, though softer than before. Then, with the weight of inevitability, he turned and thrust the door open.
The night air poured in—cold, damp, and brimming with unseen menace. Cedric stepped down onto the road, boots striking the stone with quiet finality. Behind him, the carriage groaned, its lanterns casting long shadows across the earth.
Inside, Stellan remained, frozen, his heart beating a frantic drum against his ribs. He pressed his palms together, whispering words that were not prayers, not quite—only fractured promises to himself, desperate to keep the dark at bay.
Outside, the world had fallen silent again. Too silent.
Cedric stilled his breath, every sense sharpened to a blade's edge. Something lingered here. He felt it upon his skin, a presence that pressed from the dark like unseen hands. Slowly, his gaze swept the roadside, tracing the hollow lanes and the mist that curled above them.
And then he saw him.
At first—merely a silhouette, poised upon the carriage roof as though gravity itself bowed in servitude. A figure cloaked in obsidian, the hem embroidered with threads of silver and gold, catching the moonlight like molten veins. Cedric's blood iced. That design, that mark—he knew it. Eclipse Elite.
His hand went to his sword. Steel rasped free of its sheath, the sound clean and final as judgment. Cedric stepped forward, boots biting against gravel, his voice a low demand. "you?"
But before the words could fully leave his lips, the figure stirred. A gloved hand lazily twirled the blade it carried—an arc of polished steel flashing in the dark like a shard of lightning. From beneath the hood came eyes, obsidian and merciless, cutting through the night to pierce Cedric's own.
"How tedious," the assassin drawled, voice languid, as though the scene bored him. "I find no delight in striking down creatures of no consequence. Men such as you are… dull amusements."
His blade rose, not with haste but with a mocking slowness, until the tip hovered, directed squarely at Cedric's chest. "Yet if you insist upon standing before me,
then perhaps you are prepared to meet the end you deserve."
And with that, he vanished.
Not with sound, not with warning. One heartbeat, he was upon the carriage roof; the next, he was gone. Cedric's eyes darted, his muscles tightening. He scarcely had time to react when the figure reappeared—no longer above, but directly before him, mere steps away, his cloak whispering against the stones.
The assassin's lips curled, revealing a faint, cruel smile. "Are you ready," he asked, voice smooth as poison, "to say farewell to your life?"
Cedric's grip tightened upon his hilt. His chest rose with steady breath, yet his mind raced, reeling with the truth his instincts already screamed: this was no ordinary assassin. The speed, the precision, the arrogance—this was a phantom of flesh, a blade bound to shadow.
And still, he held his ground. His eyes locked upon the assassin's with iron resolve, fury burning beneath their calm veneer. For Cedric it was no trembling novice to fold beneath threat; though his heart thundered, his stance betrayed no falter.
The assassin tilted his head, amused by the silence, and twirled his blade once more—each circle gleaming brighter, a serpent coiled in metal. The night seemed to close in around them, the mist thickening, the stars themselves dimming to spectate the clash poised to ignite.
Cedric whispered inwardly, not to any god, but to the unyielding fire within himself: If this be my end, let it be upon steel, not upon fear.
And he raised his sword to meet the shadow.
The assassin's blade stilled mid-swirl, gleaming like a fragment torn from the moon. His head tilted ever so slightly, the motion deliberate, feline, and cruelly elegant. The hood slipped back a breath, unveiling the faintest trace of a smirk—an expression carved not from mirth, but from disdain.
"Tell me" he murmured, his voice silk laced with venom, "do you know why I am here?"
The night seemed to tighten around the question. Even the wind ceased its whisper, as though nature itself bent to hear the answer.
Cedric's jaw hardened. He did not give words, only the subtle tightening of his grip upon the hilt of his sword, the knuckles whitening beneath his glove. His eyes—olive fire in the half-light—met the assassin's unflinchingly. No reply, no falter, no indulgence of the enemy's game.
The assassin chuckled low, a sound devoid of warmth, resonant as a dirge. "Ah," he said, tilting his head further, eyes glinting with malignant amusement, "silence. That, too, is an answer. Defiance dressed as composure."
His steps were slow, deliberate, boots whispering upon the stones as he advanced a single pace. The blade's point descended like a compass arrow, aligning with Cedric's heart.
"I am not here for coin, nor vengeance. No—your kind mistakes us for shadows of mere mercenaries. But we are not shadows. We are the night itself."
The words fell heavy, thick as the scent of iron that hung in the air. Cedric's breath deepened, his sword raised higher, shoulders squared like a fortress prepared to endure siege.
The assassin's smile deepened. "So be it," he whispered. "Let the night decide which of us shall claim it."