The descent into the streets of Orval felt like wading into a slow-moving river of iron and salt. The morning mist had begun to burn off, replaced by the hazy, shimmering distortion caused by the massive spiritual condensers mounted atop the Imperial warships. These machines hummed with a low-frequency vibration that rattled the teeth of the common folk, a constant reminder that the air they breathed was now a regulated commodity. Ghaith walked with a measured stride, his gray cloak swirling around his boots like a restless ghost. Beside him, May kept her hood pulled low, though her golden eyes remained sharp, taking in every flicker of movement from the shadows.
They moved through the Silver District, an ironic name for a place where the only silver to be found was the glint of fish scales on the cobblestones. The market was a cacophony of desperation. Merchants shouted over one another, their voices strained with the effort of selling goods that were increasingly taxed into oblivion. Behind them, patrolling in pairs, were the Imperial Peacekeepers. They were dressed in heavy, midnight-blue coats, their faces obscured by steel visors. On their shoulders, the Seal of the Iron Gaze pulsed with a rhythmic red light, allowing them to detect any unauthorized surge of spiritual energy.
Ghaith felt the Iron Gaze scanning the crowd. He instinctively suppressed the Flame of the Void, pulling the energy deep into the marrow of his bones. To the sensors, he would appear as nothing more than a hollow shell, a man without a spark. It was a trick he had perfected in the Village of Silence, where being noticed was often a death sentence. But today, the suppression felt different. It felt like holding his breath while submerged in freezing water. The Void did not like to be hidden; it wanted to consume.
Look at their eyes, Ghaith, May whispered, her voice barely audible over the din of the market. They aren't just tired anymore. They are afraid of their own shadows.
Ghaith followed her gaze to a young mother clutching a loaf of gray bread. Her eyes darted toward the Peacekeepers, her knuckles white. It wasn't just the soldiers she feared; it was the atmosphere of the city itself. The air felt thin, stripped of its natural vitality by the Black Portals that groaned somewhere in the distance beyond the horizon.
Fear is a tool, Ghaith replied, his voice a low rasp. If the Empire can make a man fear his neighbor, they don't need to waste a single soldier to keep the city in line.
They turned a corner into a narrower alley, where the smell of incense and old parchment began to override the scent of the sea. This was the Weaver's Lane, a place where those with broken seals came to seek illegal repairs or to buy charms that promised protection from the Imperial scanners. It was here that Ghaith hoped to find his first lead.
The shop was tucked beneath a sagging timber archway. There was no sign, only a small carving of a blind eye on the doorframe. As they entered, a bell chimed with a dull, flat tone. The interior was filled with rows upon rows of jars containing preserved spiritual conduits—glowing filaments taken from the hearts of monsters or the souls of the fallen.
A woman sat behind a counter cluttered with brass instruments and magnifying lenses. She was old, her skin like crumpled vellum, and her eyes were covered by a thick silken bandage. She did not look up, but her head tilted toward Ghaith as if she were smelling his very essence.
The Gray Ghost returns to the light, she said, her voice like the rustle of dry leaves. Or is it just the ashes of the boy I once knew?
I need information, Selina, Ghaith said, ignoring the jab. The harbor is full of ships, and the seals of the soldiers are behaving strangely. They aren't just scanning for energy; they are looking for something specific.
The old woman, known throughout the underworld as the Blind Seer, let out a soft, wheezing laugh. They are looking for resonance, Ghaith. The Black Portals are unstable. The Emperor's mages have found that the energy from the other side reacts violently with certain types of seals. They are looking for the Flame. Your Flame.
Ghaith's hand twitched toward his blades. Why?
Because the Void is not just a weapon, you fool. It is a key. The portals require a vacuum to stabilize, an anchor of absolute nothingness to prevent the energy from tearing our reality apart. They don't want to kill you, Ghaith. They want to turn you into a living battery for their new world.
May stepped forward, her hand glowing with a faint, warm light. They will have to kill us both before that happens.
Selina turned her bandaged head toward May. Ah, the little sun. Your light is bright, child, but even the sun can be eclipsed. You are the only thing keeping him anchored to this world. If they take you, he becomes the Void. And if he becomes the Void, Orval becomes a graveyard.
Ghaith leaned over the counter, his presence suddenly heavy and suffocating. Who is leading the search?
A name you know well, Ghaith. A man who shares your blood and your scars. Lailan. He has returned from the border, and he has brought the Masked Legion with him.
The mention of the name sent a jolt of cold lightning through Ghaith's chest. Lailan. The boy who had been like a brother to him in the Village of Silence. The one Ghaith had thought was dead, buried under the ruins of a failed mission years ago. To hear he was alive and working for the Empire was a betrayal that went deeper than any physical wound.
He is here? Ghaith asked, his voice deathly quiet.
He is at the Governor's Palace, Selina replied. He is waiting for you to make a mistake. And you just made one by coming here. The peacekeepers followed you into the lane.
Ghaith didn't wait for her to finish. He grabbed May's hand and pulled her toward the back exit of the shop. Just as they reached the door, the front entrance exploded in a shower of splinters and blue light.
In the name of the Emperor, stand down! a voice boomed, amplified by spiritual resonance.
Ghaith pushed May through the back door into a cramped courtyard filled with crates. Run to the clinic, May. Don't look back. I will lead them away.
No! she argued, her eyes wide with terror. I won't leave you.
Go! he barked, a command born of his old life. If they catch you, I have no reason to stay human. Run!
May hesitated for a fraction of a second, her heart breaking at the coldness in his eyes, then she turned and vanished into the shadows of the neighboring alley. Ghaith waited until her presence faded from his senses before he turned back to the doorway.
Two Peacekeepers stepped into the courtyard, their visors glowing red. They held spears tipped with jagged crystals that hummed with suppressing energy. Behind them, a third figure emerged—a man in a long, flowing coat of black silk, wearing a porcelain mask that depicted a weeping face.
The Gray Ghost, the masked man said, his voice smooth and melodic. I was told you had grown soft in your retirement. I see they were wrong.
Lailan, Ghaith said, his hand finally gripping the hilt of the Twin Silences. The mask is new. Is it to hide the shame of serving the people who tried to kill us?
Shame is a luxury for the living, Lailan replied, drawing a slender rapier that seemed to be made of solidified shadow. I have seen what lies beyond the portals, Ghaith. Our world is a candle in a hurricane. The Empire is the only thing building a lantern. You can help us, or you can be the wick that burns out.
Ghaith didn't respond with words. He drew his blades in a single, fluid motion. The Twin Silences did not catch the light; they seemed to drink it. The air around him began to turn cold, a frost creeping across the cobblestones as he tapped into the first layer of the Flame of the Void.
He didn't use the full power. He didn't enter the State of Emptiness. Instead, he channeled the energy into his movements, becoming a blur of gray fabric and steel.
The Peacekeepers lunged, their spears thrusting with military precision. Ghaith didn't block; he flowed. He stepped inside the guard of the first soldier, his blade whispering across the man's throat. There was no blood at first, only a thin line of frost, followed by the man collapsing as his spiritual energy was instantly drained into nothingness.
The second soldier roared and activated the seal on his gauntlet, sending a shockwave of red energy toward Ghaith. Ghaith raised his left blade, catching the wave on the flat of the metal. He twisted his wrist, redirecting the energy back at the soldier. The explosion threw the man against the wall, his armor cracking like an eggshell.
Lailan watched with a detached curiosity. Impressive. Your control has improved. But you are fighting for a dream that is already dead.
Lailan moved with a speed that rivaled Ghaith's. His rapier was a streak of darkness, striking with a flurry of stabs that targeted Ghaith's heart and eyes. Ghaith parried each blow, the clashing of their blades producing no sound, only sparks of gray and black light that devoured the air around them.
They were a mirror of each other—two boys raised in the same darkness, now fighting over the remnants of their shattered lives. Lailan was grace and precision; Ghaith was efficiency and absolute negation.
You can't win this, Ghaith, Lailan whispered as their blades locked. The city is already ours. Every brick, every breath. Your wife will be the first to pay for your stubbornness.
The mention of May was a mistake.
The Flame of the Void inside Ghaith's chest surged. The circle on his skin didn't just glow; it tore. A wave of suffocating cold erupted from him, shattering the windows of the surrounding buildings. Lailan was thrown back, his porcelain mask cracking down the center.
Ghaith stood in the center of the courtyard, his eyes now a solid, terrifying gray. The air seemed to be pulled into his very pores, creating a vacuum that made it difficult for Lailan to breathe.
If you touch her, Ghaith said, his voice no longer human, I will not just kill you. I will erase every memory of you from the world. I will make it as if you never existed.
Lailan stood up, wiping a trail of blood from beneath his cracked mask. He looked at the devastation around him, at the soldiers lying motionless, and at the man who was becoming a monster to protect his heart. He didn't look afraid; he looked satisfied.
That's the fire they want, Ghaith. Feed it. Let it grow. The more you fight for her, the more you become the key we need.
Lailan gestured with his hand, and a thick, oily smoke began to rise from the shadows. By the time it cleared, the masked man was gone, leaving only the sound of distant sirens and the smell of ozone.
Ghaith stood alone in the silence. The coldness slowly receded, and the gray in his eyes faded back to their natural shade. He felt a sudden, crushing weight in his chest—a mixture of exhaustion and a deep, gnawing dread. He had revealed himself. The hunt was no longer in the shadows; it was in the open air.
He sheathed his blades and moved toward the back exit. He needed to find May. He needed to make sure the light hadn't been extinguished by the darkness he had just unleashed.
As he ran through the winding streets of the Silver District, Ghaith realized that the promise he had made to May—the promise of a quiet life—was truly broken. But as he saw the familiar lights of the clinic in the distance, he made a new vow. He would not just build a wall around their home. He would burn the world that tried to breach it.
The Ashen Oath was no longer just a memory of the dead. It was the constitution of a new kind of power. Orval was about to learn that a man with nothing to lose is dangerous, but a man with everything to protect is a god of his own destruction.
He reached the clinic, bursting through the door with his heart hammering against his ribs. May was there, tending to a wounded laborer. She looked up, her golden eyes filling with tears of relief as she saw him. She didn't ask what had happened. She saw the frost on his cloak and the tremor in his hands.
She walked over to him and took his face in her hands. Her warmth began to melt the ice in his veins, pulling him back from the edge of the Void once again.
I'm here, she whispered. We're here.
The shadows are coming, May, he said, his voice trembling. And they are led by a ghost from my past.
Then we gather our own ghosts, she replied, her voice filled with a surprising strength. We are not the only ones the Empire has tried to bury. It's time to start digging, Ghaith.
In the corner of the room, the small potted plant on the windowsill suddenly bloomed, its petals a vibrant, defiant green. Outside, the bells of the harbor began to toll, signaling the arrival of the Emperor's personal envoy. The war for the soul of Orval had begun, and the first members of the Gray Family were already beginning to find their way home through the dark.