The flames of the Blood-Gold Market smoldered long into the night.
By dawn, only ruins remained. Charred stalls collapsed in heaps of ash, the scent of smoke clinging to the broken cobblestones. Coins still glittered here and there, but their shine was dulled, stained with dried blood.
Raze stood amid the wreckage, his hood drawn low. The dagger at his side was darkened, crusted with crimson from the battle hours before. Veynar's lifeless eyes still haunted his mind—the shock on the Syndicate enforcer's face as the blade pierced his chest.
The crowd had fled, but whispers remained. Even now, drifting on the morning wind, they reached Raze's ears.
"The ghost who killed Veynar…""No man strikes down the Syndicate and lives long after.""Is he a mercenary? An assassin? Or something worse?"
Fear. Awe. Suspicion. All woven into the murmurs of the survivors. Raze had wanted only to walk away, to disappear into shadow again. But the market had branded him with fire and blood. His name would not vanish so easily now.
He knelt where Veynar had fallen. The cobblestones were still sticky. Beneath the corpse, half-soaked in blood, lay a leather pouch. Raze slipped it open. Inside, a folded parchment sealed with black wax.
The wax bore a coin sigil split in two. He broke it and read.
"The Black Coin Pact.
Tribute schedules confirmed. Vault access ensured. When the fires of the Blood-Gold Market blaze, the city's veins will open. Gold is power. We claim it all."
Raze's jaw tightened. The Blood-Gold Market had been nothing more than a spark. The Syndicate's true fire aimed higher—the very lifeblood of the city itself.
If they controlled the coinflow, they controlled everything: food, weapons, even armies. Kings had fallen for less.
He tucked the parchment away. The fight for the market had only been the first move in a much larger game.
"Raze."
The gravelly voice broke his thoughts. Bronn emerged from the smoke, dragging his hammer behind him, soot streaked across his bald head. His armor was dented, his arms wrapped with blood-soaked cloth.
"You should've left when you had the chance," Bronn muttered. His eyes swept the ruined stalls. "This place is finished. No trader will dare sell here without Syndicate blessing. And you? You've painted a target on your own back."
Raze didn't look at him. "Veynar's blood wasn't enough to break them. He was just one claw of the beast."
Bronn spat on the cobbles. "You slit the beast's claw, and now its fangs are coming for your throat."
He wasn't wrong. Raze knew the Syndicate would never let this insult pass.
As they moved through the wreckage, survivors approached. A merchant woman, her face smeared with ash, grabbed Raze's sleeve.
"You killed him," she whispered, trembling. "You killed one of them. Maybe now we can—"
Her words broke off when a rock shattered near her feet. A group of men stood watching, their faces half-hidden in soot-stained scarves.
"Don't be fooled," one spat. "He's no savior. He's the butcher who brought Syndicate fire down on us."
More voices rose, angry, fearful. The crowd that had once cheered was now split—half desperate for hope, half blaming him for their ruin.
Raze pulled free and walked on, ignoring the shouts. He had no time to play savior. Survival was hard enough.
But deep down, a part of him knew the truth: the longer he stood in this city, the more he was being dragged into its war.
That night, the market lay silent. Firelight flickered only from a few lanterns hung by watchmen. Raze sat in a derelict inn at the edge of the district, parchment spread across the table before him.
He traced the words of the Black Coin Pact again. "Vault access ensured."
Vaults. The Syndicate was moving beyond street trade. They wanted the treasuries. If they succeeded, no one—king, noble, or beggar—could resist their grip.
Raze leaned back, staring at the cracked ceiling beams. He wasn't here to play hero. He never had been. Yet each step dragged him deeper into a storm that refused to let him walk away.
"Gold buys loyalty," Veynar had sneered before he died.But loyalty, Raze thought, could be broken.
The Syndicate didn't wait long.
Three nights later, the ashes of the Blood-Gold Market had barely cooled when whispers spread again. Merchants vanishing from their homes. Caravans hijacked on the road. Bodies turning up in alleys with throats slit and coins stuffed into their mouths.
The Shadow Blades had arrived.
Raze spotted the first one while walking through a narrow lane. A figure perched on the rooftops, too still, too silent. Their mask was bone-white, their daggers gleaming with oil. When the moon caught the steel, Raze knew—this was no common cutthroat.
The blade dropped for his spine.
Raze twisted, the strike missing by inches. His dagger snapped up, locking steel against steel. Eyes met through the bone mask—cold, empty, inhuman.
The assassin said nothing. Only struck again.
The alley filled with the hiss of blades. Sparks flew against the stone walls. Raze drove his knee into the assassin's chest, then rolled aside as another dropped from the roof behind him.
Two. At least two.
He fought with the precision of survival, cutting shallow but deadly strikes. One assassin crumpled, throat slashed. The other slipped into shadow, vanishing as though swallowed by the night.
Raze stood alone, blood dripping from his blade.
The Syndicate was done playing games.
Later, as dawn bled across the rooftops, Raze sat in silence on the inn's upper floor, watching smoke curl from chimneys. In his pocket, the parchment burned like a brand.
He wasn't just fighting for survival anymore. The Syndicate wanted the city's veins. Its gold. Its lifeblood.
And every whisper in the alleys said the same thing:
The hunter who killed Veynar was marked.The Shadow Blades would not stop.The war for the city had only begun.