A young, twitchy soldier came pelting down the tunnel toward Ravik, skidding to a halt with a sharp salute.
“We found something, sir,” the boy reported, breathless.
That got their attention fast enough.
They followed him down one of the narrower tunnels until the passage opened into a jagged mouth leading upward. Cedric squinted through the gloom and caught sight of them—figures standing at the tunnel’s exit, brown robes draped over hunched shoulders, hands loosely clasped.
Priests of Rhyssa, if you judged by clothing alone.
So they vanished here.
Vesena moved first, fluid as water over glass, soundless as shadow. Cedric barely caught the glint of her dagger before it flashed once, twice. The first man never saw her coming. The second had just enough time to look surprised before his knees buckled. She eased both down as though putting children to bed.
Ravik and his soldiers surged forward behind her. They didn’t bother with elegance. Their blades slipped into soft places—kidneys, throats, the spaces between ribs. Cedric heard a muffled groan, a gurgling breath, but even that was swallowed by the slow, rhythmic chanting that floated from above like smoke.
He moved with them. One priest turned toward him—slow, confused. Cedric hesitated. If this man still prayed, did he deserve to die? But the thread had already unraveled too far. His blade moved too. The body slumped soundlessly. He caught it with one arm, lowering it gently to the stone.
Behind him, footsteps.
“You're slow,” Alaric murmured, his sword raised high.
Cedric didn’t glance over. “You’re loud.”
“Only to your sensitive ears.”
“Sensitive ears kept us alive in Narkhail.”
Alaric grunted softly but didn’t argue. They moved together, two parts of a clock. One refined, the other ruthless.
A figure shifted at the far end of the tunnel. Cedric raised his hand to signal—but Alaric was already moving, low and fast, the curved Varantian blade whispering out from beneath his coat. It caught the man clean across the side. The body hit the wall with a soft thud and slid down. Cedric dragged it into shadow, tucked it behind a stalactite.
Vesena crouched over one of the fallen priests, her blade still dripping. She pressed two fingers to his neck, then bent low enough that her braid brushed the stone. A sharp inhale.
Her eyes narrowed. “They’re drugged,” she murmured.
Cedric’s brows twitched. “Drugged?”
“Smoke in their lungs,” Vesena replied, straightening. “Opium, maybe. Or something stronger.”
Alaric’s jaw tightened. “Someone sent them here only to die.”
Ravik spat on the stone beside the body. “Then they are more dangerous, willing to risk everything.” He raised his hand, signaling his men forward.
From the tunnel entrance, a low, eerie chanting drifted down.
No time to waste.
They stripped the dead quickly, pulling the brown robes free and shaking the worst of the bloodstains out of the fabric. Cedric gave one cloak to Alaric, put the other on himself. He saw that Vesena had already put on one of the robes. It was too big for her, but she still looked lethal.
Ravik turned to the soldiers and barked. “Stay here. Guard the tunnel. No one goes in or out.”
The soldiers snapped to attention, more than happy to have a task that didn’t involve charging headfirst into the unknown.
Cedric adjusted the hood over his head, catching Alaric’s glance across the dim cavern. They pushed forward, slippingthrough the last of the winding tunnels until the earth above began to lighten with moonlight and the air grew warmer.
That was when they noticed that this tunnel led beneath the ruins of the Ivory Bastion.
Cedric’s lips curved into something that wasn’t a smile. The world always frayed where it was weakest. His job today was to follow and hold it, for as long as he could.
