Night fell over Cevala like a metal coffin.
The moment the sun vanished behind the horizon, the gates groaned shut—massive slabs of reinforced wood and iron sealing the city with the finality of a verdict. Soldiers marched like a flood through every street, their torches slicing the darkness.
From loudspeakers perched atop towers, a cold metallic voice echoed endlessly:
"WANTED NUMBERS 257 AND 259.
ANY INFORMATION WILL BE REWARDED IMMEDIATELY."
On the roof of an abandoned townhouse, Veron and Abrin lay hidden between broken tiles and creeping shadows. Their breaths moved in perfect silence.
Below them, flames swayed across alleys as patrol squads scoured every exit.
Abrin exhaled slowly, his voice barely a whisper.
"Escaping the city itself… is harder than escaping the soldiers."
Veron's calm did not waver. His eyes tracked the patrol routes with lethal, silent calculation.
"We're not escaping," he murmured. "We're leaving—through a door they don't know exists."
Abrin turned his head toward him.
"You are full of secrets…"
Veron brushed dust from his cloak.
"It isn't a door."
He paused.
"It's a man."
Abrin blinked.
"…A man?"
Veron's gaze remained fixed on the city below.
"The Gray Crow."
Abrin froze for a heartbeat, his breath catching.
"I thought he was just a rumor…"
Veron offered a thin, fleeting smile.
"My father told me of him. Years ago."
Abrin looked at him sharply. "Your father… knew the Gray Crow?"
Veron didn't answer.
His silence was the answer.
Their descent from the rooftop unfolded like a silent chase scene, each movement precise and cinematic. The city below pulsed with tension.
Torches swept the narrow alleys.
Doors rattled as families bolted themselves inside.
Metallic chains snapped into place across hidden exits.
Cevala had become a cage.
Veron and Abrin slid down an old drainage pipe, dropped onto a crumbled balcony, and leapt lightly from roof to roof. Their dark robes flickered like phantoms against the moonless sky.
They landed at last in the deserted Night Market.
Where chaos usually lived—shouts, music, sizzling grills—there was now only a thick, breathless silence.
Stalls stood abandoned.
Shadows clung to every corner.
Faces peeked fearfully from cracks in boarded doors.
Until—
in the deepest, unlit corner of the market—
sat a man.
A thin, unmoving figure wearing a mask, feathers etched in cold metal. Only two pale gray eyes stared out, soft as dying embers.
Veron stepped toward him without hesitation.
"We need passage to the Eastern Continent."
The masked man's voice drifted out, smooth and quiet, almost emotionless.
"My services are expensive. Why should I help you?"
Veron held out something small.
Not coins.
Not an ID.
Not a weapon.
A ring.
Old.
Heavy.
Marked with a hand symbol.
The Gray Crow froze for a second.
Then, slowly… he reached out and held the ring between two fingers, as though touching a ghost.
"…I haven't seen this in three years."
A faint smile tugged beneath the mask.
"Before I help you," the Crow murmured, "a small task."
Abrin crossed his arms.
"We're not errand boys."
The Crow didn't blink.
"Then you won't cross the sea."
The task was simple only in words:
retrieve a small wooden box
from a deserted house near the river—
a house now surrounded by soldiers.
Not a test of strength.
A test of silence, patience, and shadow.
So they went.
The scene unfolded like a stealth film:
They slipped across slick rooftops glimmering with torchlight.Abrin disabled a watchtower light with a precise flick of a thrown nail.Veron knocked loose a rain barrel, the crash drawing guards away.They crawled through a narrow stone duct, old spiderwebs clinging to their skin.Abrin vaulted from one balcony to another without a sound.Veron slipped behind a guard and tapped his shoulder from the opposite direction, vanishing the instant the man turned.
And finally—
Inside the abandoned house, drowned in dust and silence, they found the box beside a cracked window.
Untouched.
Unmarked.
Far too important to be left alone.
They returned with it unseen, unheard, unchallenged.
Far away, in a dim room lit by half a candle, another figure watched their fates twist.
Dirak.
Commander of the Skyrend Legion—a man whose strength was whispered about more than spoken aloud.
He sat in silence, fingers tapping the arm of his chair as Kael knelt before him.
"Sir… Veron rejected our offer, and he is building his own legion. We discovered that he owns a Retsu blade, and there is now a strong fighter beside him."
Dirak lit a cigarette with slow, dangerous calm.
Smoke curled around his lips like a warning.
"…They will become problems."
A long drag.
An exhale.
"Send Mira. I must return to the kingdom soon."
Kael stiffened.
"Mira…? But sir—"
Dirak's gaze sharpened.
Kael rose to his feet, fear evident in his posture.
"Your command."
Veron and Abrin returned.
The Gray Crow opened the retrieved box.
Inside lay a ring of keys—simple, rough, old.
He sighed.
"Thank you. I left the keys to the old station in that house before the soldiers came for it. And because of you boys, escaping an execution always attracts trouble."
He closed the box with a click.
"Now… I will take you out of the city. But the price is thirty thousand Rizo."
Veron nodded. "Fine."
"But not tonight. The port is crawling with guards."
Abrin asked, "So what now?"
The Crow pointed downward.
"From beneath the city… through the forgotten canals."
They followed him through a hidden hatch behind the Night Market stalls.
A cold draft rolled up the moment the hatch opened, carrying the smell of old stone and stale water.
They descended.
Beneath Cevala was another world:
Narrow tunnels carved centuries ago.Black water rippling with soft, eerie echoes.Distant metallic clanks from guards above.
Abrin shivered, rubbing his arms.
"This place feels… weird."
Veron stepped forward without hesitation.
"This place leads somewhere free."
The Crow stopped beside a giant rusted gate, layered with forgotten symbols. He inserted one of the keys, turned it, then pressed an ancient mechanism hidden within the wall.
A deep, earth-shaking rumble rolled through the canal.
The gate opened…
as though exhaling a buried scream.
Revealing a long, pitch-black tunnel stretching into eternity.
"Through this tunnel… we will reach the old docks."
The torchlight flickered.
Veron looked at Abrin.
Abrin nodded once.
Side by side, they walked into the darkness.
The gate began to close behind them and the Crow—
just before the metal sealed the world.