They moved through the Quiet Tongue.
The fog had rolled in thick that night, curling around Karihad's slums as if it were a hungry thing.
No one loitered in the alleys. No drunks stumbled from the taverns. Doors were shut, lanterns dimmed. The only light came from the soft glow of smoldering ash in the barrels outside—a flicker of fire amid the silence.
Lan walked at the center of the group, cloaked in a dark overcoat, his face entirely obscured by a lacquered black mask with no markings.
Only his pale eyes shone from within, cold and unreadable. Bragg followed at his right like a moving wall of fur and muscle, his own mask carved with the jagged teeth of a beast.
Venom, who had led them here, moved with casual confidence, the only one among them who wore no full mask—just a crimson cloth tied across his face.
They said nothing. No names were spoken.
Here, in the Quiet Tongue, silence was safer than breath.
