The fear was familiar. The satisfaction was not.
Ravi stumbled back into the Nethervault's central chamber, the grinding sound of the stone door sealing the world away behind him. He leaned against the cool wall, his breath coming in ragged gasps, his body trembling with the aftershocks of adrenaline. He could still hear the guard's scream, still see the chaotic ruin of the wagon in the alley.
The satisfaction was a cold, sharp thing. It wasn't the heroic pride of a battle won. It was the icy relief of a predator who had successfully defended its territory through cunning camouflage. He had imposed his will on the world, caused catastrophic failure in his enemies, and no one was the wiser. For the first time in his life, his cowardice had been an asset, not a liability.
Lyssara was waiting for him by the scrying table. She didn't offer comfort or praise. She simply looked at him, her arms crossed, her expression one of intense, clinical evaluation.
"Report," she commanded, her voice cutting through his chaotic thoughts.
"It worked," Ravi said, his voice hoarse. "Just like you said. The grate... the horses... the axle. It all just... happened."
"It didn't just 'happen,'" she corrected him, stepping closer. Her eyes scanned him from head to toe, as if searching for cracks, for flaws in her new weapon. "You were the catalyst. You were the single, unpredictable variable introduced into a stable system. And the system broke."
He hated when she talked about him like he was a physics experiment. He was a physics experiment, but he hated being reminded of it.
"Is this it, then?" he asked, a desperate hope creeping into his voice. "We hit them, we hurt their supply line. Do we wait now? See what they do?"
Lyssara laughed. It was a short, sharp, humorless sound. "Wait? Ravi, this wasn't the battle. This was the opening line of a story." She pointed a slender finger at the glowing map on the obsidian table. "Look."
He dragged himself over to the table. The red sigils representing the Warden's Watch were in a frenzy. A large cluster of them swarmed the alley of the 'accident,' while others were moving in frantic, erratic patterns throughout the city. A city-wide alert had been raised.
"They're confused," Lyssara explained, her voice humming with a strategist's excitement. "They don't know what happened. They'll question the surviving guards, who will tell them a story of rotten iron and spooked animals. It will sound like incompetence. Heads will roll. The Warden will be furious."
She tapped the map. "But one accident is a fluke. Two is a coincidence. Three... three is a pattern. Three is enemy action. We have their attention. Now, we have to teach them what to be afraid of."
"What are you talking about?"
"A curse needs a narrative," she said, pacing around the table. "Right now, they're looking for a saboteur, an assassin, a rival guild. We need them to stop looking for a person. We need them to start being afraid of the shadows. Afraid of bad luck. We need to build a myth around these 'accidents,' a legend so terrifying it rots their morale from the inside out."
She stopped pacing and her eyes, glittering with a dangerous fire, locked onto his. "And every legend needs a monster. Or, in our case, a very, very unlucky saint."
The dread in Ravi's stomach returned, colder and heavier than before. "No. No more. I almost got caught."
"You were brilliant," she countered smoothly. "You played the part of the terrified victim perfectly. Because you were terrified. That's your gift, Ravi. Your fear is the most convincing disguise imaginable."
He shook his head, backing away again. "I can't. It's too risky. Someone will see something, figure it out—"
"Hiding in this vault is the bigger risk now," she cut him off, her voice turning sharp as a razor. "They're on high alert. They will tear this city apart stone by stone looking for the cause. They'll find every bolthole, every hidden cellar. Our only true sanctuary is to become the one thing they're too terrified to hunt. We don't hide from them, Ravi. We become the reason they hide."
Her logic was a cage, closing in on him again. She was right. The city was no longer just a dangerous place; it was a hunting ground, and they were the prey. His brief, chaotic intervention had ensured it.
He felt a wave of hopeless resignation. He was trapped. Trapped in this world, trapped in this vault, trapped in this body that unmade reality on contact. His only path to survival was to walk the one Lyssara was paving for him.
"What's the next 'accident'?" he asked, the words tasting like ash in his mouth.
A grim smile touched her lips. She had won. "An object is one thing. Now we move on to a person. A symbol."
She tapped another location on the scrying table—the bustling, open square of the Grand Market. At its center was a whipping post, a place of public punishment and humiliation. A single, large red sigil was stationed there.
"That's Captain Valerius of the City Watch," she explained. "A brute known for his cruelty. His favorite pastime is making public examples of merchants who are late with their 'protection' fees. He's the Warden's public fist. He projects the Warden's power through fear."
Ravi stared at the red sigil, a glowing icon of a violence he wanted no part of.
"So we create another alleyway disaster?" he asked. "Spook his horse? Break his cart's axle?"
Lyssara shook her head, her eyes fixed on his.
"No. That's not personal enough. That's not a story. To build a proper legend," she said, her voice dropping to a low, conspiratorial whisper, "the accident has to happen to him. In public. When he's at his most powerful and most cruel."
"He's going to try to kill me."
"Of course he is," she said, as if stating the obvious. "That's the point."
She leaned in closer, her voice barely a breath, but each word was a perfectly forged hook.
"Tomorrow, Captain Valerius will be making an example of a weaver who couldn't pay his tithe. The market will be full of onlookers. You are not going to fight him, Ravi. You're not going to touch him."
"You are going to stand in his path and let him destroy himself. In front of the entire market square."