The black quill's ash still floated in the shop's frost-laced air when the next strike came.
Not a knock at the door, nor the sound of boots on the street—Nexus did not give its predators away so cheaply. Instead, the lights outside flickered once, twice, then died, plunging the block into an engineered dusk. Grav-cars slowed midair, rerouted by traffic AI. Holoscreens on corner posts sputtered static before rebooting with neutral adverts, their signal feeds hijacked.
Every window became a mirror of faint blue light. Every shadow stretched a little too long.
Jade tilted his head. The city had been muted. This was the Ravens' hand at work.
Gorvoth swore low and ugly. "Grid interference. They're cutting sightlines and comms. Means they want to keep what happens here small enough to bury."
Niamh's voice was sharp with maternal fear. "Then we leave. Now. Before they close the block completely."
Jade shook his head, blindfold shifting with the motion. "They already have."
A shape landed on the roof with a weightless thud. Another at the rear alley. Two more shadows peeled from the grav-car that had paused a block away, their cloaks diffusing into the air as they moved like smoke.
Jade felt them through Void Sense—hearts steady, breathing shallow, minds honed to the surgical stillness of professionals. Each Raven was a blade sheathed in silence. Each had already decided where to cut.
His frost stirred. His darkness listened.
The first Raven struck from the roof, a blade of condensed plasma arcing down through the ceiling tiles. Jade raised his palm. Frost lanced upward, met the blade, and the collision shrieked as ice flash-boiled into steam. He vanished with teleportation before the plume blinded the room, reappearing beside Gorvoth.
The second Raven slipped through the alley door as if the hinges had never existed. Cloak shimmered with optical weave, their poisoned dagger angled toward Niamh.
Jade's Seed of Darkness pulsed. A shadow peeled up from the floor, tendrils wrapping the Raven's wrist, slowing the strike by a fraction. Enough. Jade blurred forward, frost coating the dagger before it could bite. The Raven twisted free, but the weapon clinked uselessly to the floor, brittle with rime.
"Behind!" Gorvoth barked.
The third Raven came through the window with no sound at all, twin daggers gleaming with anti-mana inscriptions. Jade's ice blade coalesced in his hand, runes flickering faintly across its edge. Steel met frost with sparks of blue and black.
The clash rattled shelves, bottles bursting into shimmering fumes. The shop became a haze of alchemical smoke, frost crystals, and spreading darkness that devoured the light from every shattered lamp.
Niamh pressed herself against the counter, trembling but fierce. She grabbed a shard of broken glass, as if it could matter against men who killed for guilds. Jade glanced once—saw the terror in her eyes—and snapped his frost wider, forming a wall between her and the intruders.
"Niamh," he said softly, his voice the calmest thing in the storm. "Stay there."
She didn't argue. She couldn't.
The Ravens pressed harder. They moved like a single body in four parts, blades angling in patterns that sought to limit his teleport arcs, corner his frost, bleed him into revealing every card. Their silence was louder than war cries.
Jade's dual irises gleamed beneath the blindfold, their light leaking like twin eclipses. His darkness rose with his frost, twining together. Frost was the edge, cold and sharp. Darkness was the weight, silent and consuming. Together, they formed a storm.
He let it bloom.
Shadows bled from corners, stretching across the floor like living ink. Frost formed veins through the black, glowing faintly violet where Belgusari hunger kissed the edges. The air chilled to knives, and the Ravens slowed, cloaks stiffening under the sudden weight of cold.
One lunged, dagger aimed at his throat. Jade twisted aside, teleporting three steps to the left. The dagger struck only smoke, and in its place the Raven met a wall of frost that closed like a jaw. He barely escaped, cloak shredding as shards bit his side.
Another flung a disc that detonated in a pulse of violet energy, scattering the darkness, countering the frost. For a heartbeat, Jade's storm fractured.
He closed his eyes.
Void Sense saw deeper than sight. It traced the blood pumping through veins, the twitch of tendons, the heat of intent. The world slowed into clarity.
Jade exhaled, and Belgusari's Hunger whispered. Frost curved sharper. Darkness coiled deeper. His aura swelled until the shop groaned with the strain of it.
The Raven with the plasma blade swung again, a diagonal arc meant to cut him clean through. Jade raised his palm. Darkness surged upward, swallowing the blade entirely in silence. The plasma hissed, devoured like a candle in the void.
The Raven froze, for the first time unsure.
Jade stepped forward. His ice blade pierced the cloak at the shoulder, frost spreading like wildfire down the assassin's arm. The Raven dropped the weapon, retreating into smoke.
Another lunged low. Jade caught him with a tendril of darkness that solidified into ice, impaling his leg against the floorboards. The Raven did not scream. He only snapped his own bone free to escape, vanishing back into shadow.
Blood dotted the frost.
"Enough games," Gorvoth growled, stepping forward with a hammer of alloy pulled from behind the counter. His movements weren't quick, but they were decisive—each swing forced a Raven to adjust, breaking the perfection of their rhythm. He was not a combat Awakener, but he was a man who had killed before.
Jade's storm pressed harder. Frost cracked across the ceiling, icicles spearing downward. Shadows thickened until even the faint light of the holoscreens outside could not pierce the room. The Ravens were still silent, still deadly—but slower now.
And Jade was only growing faster.
He teleported behind one, frost blade swinging for the kill. The Raven twisted, cloak folding impossibly, and avoided death by a breath. But the swing tore half the mask from their face. For an instant, Jade saw an eye—cold, mechanical, gleaming with augments.
Not fully human.
His heart tightened. These were not just mercenaries. They were something deeper, something threaded into the interstellar guilds' darker contracts.
Before he could press, a signal pulsed across the block. He felt it as a vibration in his bones, like a bell tolling under the city's skin. The Ravens froze mid-motion.
Retreat.
One by one, they dissolved into cloak and smoke, withdrawing with surgical precision. The rooftop shadow leapt away. The alley intruder slipped back into the night. The one pinned to the floor vanished into black mist, leaving blood on the ice. The shop grew still.
Only the frost remained. Only the darkness lingered.
Niamh collapsed to her knees, breath ragged, glass shard falling from her trembling hand. Gorvoth stood firm, hammer braced against the counter, jaw clenched tight.
Jade lowered his hand. His storm receded slowly, reluctantly, frost fading into mist, shadows curling back into corners. His chest rose and fell with controlled breaths, but his eyes burned beneath the blindfold.
[DING!]
Quest Update: Escalation survived.
New Objective: The Ravens will not stop. Identify their Curator.
Duration: 29 Days.
Reward: ???
Jade exhaled. The night was quiet again. Too quiet.
Somewhere, in a tower high above the Spire, a figure watched the failed strike through a dim display. Their fingers drummed once on the table, then stopped.
"Interesting," they murmured. "Send for the Curator."
The order moved through channels unseen. And Nexus, already humming with tension, shifted its weight again—closer now to open war.