The map consolidated everything he had learnt. Elara's data streams indicated an unusual, persistent energy source at the old Halcyon Observatory, which had been abandoned for decades after city lights rendered its telescope obsolete. Alaric examined his dimensional charts, recognised the location, and pointed to a barely discernible knot in the Thread above the site.
"A snare," the old man had wheezed. "Or a nest. Tread lightly... Eclipse-born."
Mordecai had no intention of treading lightly. The convergence was too perfect... too clear an answer to his silent, years-long prayer. He went alone, dismissing Kaiphus' anxious fluttering and ignoring the ghost of Lina's backup offer. This was his hunt. His burden.
The observatory stood like a skeleton against the moonless sky, its dome a rusted wound. The air was unnaturally still. No crickets or insects. He moved quietly, Kaiphus blending into the darkness, steady and calm. The main door was chained shut, but the lock was new, shining in the starlight. It felt like an invitation.
He used a whisper of force, and the lock snapped with a sound like a breaking bone. Pushing the door open, he stepped into the cavernous, circular main hall. Dust and nothingness. That was what he expected. The air was thick with the smell of decayed wood and pigeon droppings. The great telescope was a behemoth frozen in time, pointing uselessly at the sealed dome.
And then he saw her.
In the centre of the room, directly under the apex of the dome, stood a figure. Slender. A woman. Her back was to him, but her hair: a cascade of night-black, was achingly familiar. And around her neck, catching a sliver of stray light from the broken door, was a glint of silver. A locket.
His heart stopped. "Cassandra?" The name was a breath, a fracture in his carefully constructed composure.
The figure turned slowly. The face was hers. It was the same delicate bone structure, the same full lips, and the same galaxy-swirl eyes he saw in his dreams. But the expression… it was all wrong. It was guarded, hardened, the look of a caged animal assessing a new threat. There was no recognition, no relief, only a flat, calculating coldness.
It was that look, more than anything, that screamed the truth a second before the trap sprang.
The air shimmered. From behind support pillars, from the shadows of the massive telescope's base, figures emerged. They were not Ra'Zul's purebred shock troops. These were mercenaries, a ragged collection of human and non-human sorcerers, their auras a discordant symphony of stolen power and cheap enhancements. They moved to encircle him, their loyalty sold to whoever paid in the currency of power.
Then he stepped forward: a man built of raw, brutal strength. His face was hard and grim, his eyes cold as flint. He wore segmented, black armour, and a belt at his hips held his trophies: small, pointed sorcerer's teeth and curved metal shards that Mordecai recognised with a sick feeling as pieces of Eclipse-forged armour.
"The little prince of a dead world," the man's voice was a gravelly crush. "The Tyrant offers a bounty for your return. Alive. He is… curious about the one who slipped the net."
Mordecai's eyes snapped back to the woman. "Who is she?" he demanded, his voice tight.
"A reflection. "A lure," the agent shrugged. "One of many broken toys in the Tyrant's collection, reshaped to remember a face. It was a simple spell. We knew you would come sniffing."
The confirmation was a physical blow. This wasn't Cassandra. It was a phantom, a golem of flesh and memory designed to hook his heart and reel him in. The hope that had fuelled him curdled into a white-hot rage.
The confrontation didn't just burn. It exploded.
Mordecai didn't give them the chance to tighten the circle. With a roar that was twelve years of grief and fury given voice, he unleashed the Bone Serpent. It did not form from the ground up; it erupted from his back, a torrent of screaming vertebrae and a skull that filled the space with its silent shriek. He was done with restraint. Kaiphus flared into a shield of solid shadow, deflecting a volley of searing energy blasts.
The fight was a storm of light and death. The Serpent was a whirlwind of destruction, its tail smashing mercenaries into the walls, its jaws snapping and ending lives with brutal efficiency. Mordecai moved within its wake, a dervish of martial arts and concussive sorcery, every movement an extension of his rage. He was a force of nature, and for a few glorious seconds, he was winning.
He saw the agent of Ra'Zul raise a hand, a shard of void-dark energy forming in his palm, aimed not at him, but at the false Cassandra.
A reflex, born of a lifetime of protection, seized him. He lunged, shoving the woman out of the way, taking the brunt of the blast on a hastily conjured ward that shattered on impact. The force threw him back, his shoulder slamming into the base of the telescope.
He looked up, dazed, to see the woman, the phantom... staring at him. Her cold, guarded expression had fractured. In her eyes was a tumult of confusion, fear, and a dawning, terrifying clarity.
The agent laughed, preparing another strike. "Sentiment. Your kind's eternal weakness."
But the woman moved. As the agent's spell flew, she didn't run. Instead, she threw herself in front of Mordecai. It wasn't a grand gesture; it was a desperate, clumsy lunge. The spell meant for him grazed her side, and she cried out—a raw, human sound that was nothing like the controlled silence she'd maintained.
In that moment, as she fell towards him, her hand shot out and grabbed his. Her fingers were ice-cold. She didn't speak. With a frantic, desperate strength, she pressed her palm against his, forcing him to feel the ridges carved into her skin.
He didn't need to see it. He felt the shape. Two words, etched into her flesh with a blade or a claw.
Not yet.
Their eyes met. Hers were no longer caged animals. They were prisoners, blazing with a final, urgent message. Then, with a gasp of pain, she twisted away from him. A crack appeared in the air behind her, a jagged tear that smelt of hot iron and static. She threw one last, agonised look at him and vanished into it.
The observatory was suddenly, deafeningly silent. The agent of Ra'Zul was gone; his remaining mercenaries were dead or had fled. The Bone Serpent dissolved into motes of pale light. Mordecai was left alone in the wreckage, kneeling on the dusty floor, his hand still tingling with the ghost of her touch, the message seared into his senses.
Not yet.
And then he caught it, carried on the displaced air from the dimensional rift. A scent. Mint, from the soaps of their childhood baths. And underneath it, the faint, sharp tang of woodsmoke.
It was her. Not the face, not the locket, but the scent. The real Cassandra, somewhere, had reached through the illusion, through the tyrant's control, for one single, impossible second.
The hope that pierced him then was not a gentle dawn. It was a blade, sharp and cruel and beautiful, sliding between his ribs. She was alive. She was a prisoner. And she was fighting. The hunt was over. The war had just begun.