Night in Velmire was always colder than it should've been.
The wind cut through alleys like knives, whistling between chimneys and cracked roofs, carrying the scent of coal smoke and something fouler—burnt hair, old blood. Somewhere in the distance, a baby cried, unanswered.
Syaoran walked with his hood pulled low, blending into the flickering lanternlight and crumbling stone. He wasn't running errands tonight. He wasn't carrying bread or supplies. He was hunting answers.
The parchment was still hidden back at the tavern. Teren was resting, his fever subdued for now. Rinna had agreed to keep watch while Syaoran followed a name whispered by the courier before he fell back into unconsciousness:
"The Crimson Cloak."
Not a name, exactly. A warning. A beacon.
Rebel leaders didn't walk freely in cities like Velmire. Not unless they were ghosts. The stories painted the Crimson Cloak as a phantom who passed through walls, toppled towers, and slit throats in the dark. But Teren had met her. Had received the map directly from her hand.
So Syaoran searched.
---
The deeper he went into the slums, the fewer patrols he saw. But something else stirred here. Whispers. Signs scrawled in chalk on brick—three strokes crossed by a jagged line. Rebel marks. Directions.
He followed them.
A turn left at the fallen statue. A narrow path behind the tanner's ruin. A red thread tied to a drainpipe.
And then: footsteps.
Too light for a soldier. Too many for one person.
Syaoran ducked behind a low wall just as figures emerged from the dark. Three of them—hooded, fast, purposeful. They didn't speak, but one carried a lantern that flickered oddly, the light pulsing in time with her breath.
Magic.
Syaoran narrowed his eyes and followed, careful not to step where the frost cracked.
The figures led him to a broken tower near the city's edge, half-swallowed by rubble and ivy. They vanished inside through a hidden stone door.
Syaoran waited.
Five minutes. Ten.
Then he moved.
---
Inside, the air was warm. Lit by floating orbs of light—artificial stars in a ruined world. The floor had been swept, crates stacked with rations, maps pinned to old library shelves. It wasn't just a hideout.
It was a war room.
And standing at its center, staring at a wide, glowing map of the kingdom, was her.
She wore a tattered red cloak over tight leather armor, her face hidden behind a half-mask of bronze. One hand rested on the hilt of a curved blade. The other—crackling faintly with wind magic—hovered over a cluster of small figurines on the map, each carved to resemble battalions.
She didn't look up.
"You've been following us for the last half hour," she said coldly. "You're either brave or foolish."
Syaoran stepped out of the shadows. "Teren sent me."
At that, she looked up.
Eyes like dying stars—bright, silver, and full of exhaustion.
"Alive?"
"Barely The Watch was close."
The Crimson Cloak exhaled. "Then the map survived."
Syaoran nodded. "What is it?"
She paused, studying him.
"A map of buried ruin," she said at last. "A dungeon hidden beneath Velmire. Older than the kingdom. Older than the sky cities. It holds a key… to an old god."
Syaoran's voice was steady. "I want to help."
"Why?"
"Because I'm tired of watching this kingdom rot."
Silence
Then she motioned to the table. "Then you'd better understand what we're facing. The king is the least of our problems"
She moved a marker—a jagged obsidian piece—toward the center of the map
"The Cult of Ilarum is already moving. And if they find the gate beneath the city before we do... we all burn"