The halls of Elarith Vale bled silence.
Smoke-gray stone and steel doors stretched out before him like ribs of a long-dead leviathan, pulsing faintly with forgotten sorrow. No warmth lived here. No light blessed these halls. Only the echo of distant chains, and the hiss of breath too still to be sleep.
And he moved through it—the man in the grey cloak.
His boots made no sound. His cloak swept like a shadow that had unshackled itself from its master. His mask—half black, half white—reflected none of the torchlight, but those jade-green eyes behind the slits glowed with something ancient.
> August.
He did not call the name aloud. That was not his way.
But he was close.
He could feel it, like a ripple in the wrong part of a dream. Something delicate and furious was still alive in these halls—chained, but not broken.
So he moved deeper.
He passed doors carved with grotesque imagery. Murals that told stories of pain dressed in poetry. He ignored them all.
Until—footsteps.
Fast. Uneven.
An assassin emerged from the shadows—tall, with silky black hair, one elegant bang curling across his temple like vanity personified. His eyes gleamed with calculation, but his lips were moving—
> Muttering something.
A spell? A command? A warning?
It didn't matter.
The masked figure didn't slow.
He appeared before the assassin like thunder given form.
The assassin barely gasped before he felt a blade not at his throat—but past it. Blood already painted the wall beside his face. The masked man had moved faster than his eyes could register, blade vanished again like smoke.
His voice was not cruel. Not loud.
But it shook the air like truth.
> "Where is he?"
The assassin staggered back, but the masked man was already there again—closer, blood splattered lightly across the white half of his mask.
The assassin reached for his dagger—
Too slow.
The masked man caught his wrist, twisted it like paper, and lifted him effortlessly by the throat with one gloved hand. The assassin's boots kicked once, twice against the wall, but there was no mercy in that grip.
> "Where," he said again, voice like dusk wrapped in iron, "is the boy with silver eyes?"
The assassin choked, gasping, and in that moment he understood—
This was no mere servant.
This was a myth in motion.
This was judgment walking in mortal skin.
"I—I don't know which chamber," the assassin spat, breath shallow. "They moved him. Kellian ordered—"
That was enough.
The masked man dropped him.
The assassin crumpled, coughing, his fingers twitching toward another blade—
But a flicker of pressure on his shoulder pinned him down.
"Tell no one I was here," came the low warning. "Or you'll wish I was."
And then the figure vanished down the corridor—not running.
Just moving.
Fast enough to outrun sound.
The corridor held its breath.
Stone walls stood still. Even the flames in the sconces seemed to lean back, aware that this part of the night would not pass without scars.
The masked man moved forward, cloak sweeping like ash on wind, steps soundless.
And then—
A shift.
A weight in the air.
Not footsteps.
But presence.
He turned.
There, at the far end of the hall, stood Elysian Nevan—tall, immaculate, draped in the dark uniform of the Eclipse Elite, his long black coat stitched with whispering threads of moon-silver. His hair was tied back tight, save for one sharp strand that fell across his forehead like a deliberate flaw carved by ice.
His eyes—those eyes—were already narrowed.
Calculating.
Elysian did not speak.
He didn't have to.
In a blink, he moved.
A blur of black, a flicker of blade—
The masked man met him.
No introduction.
No warning.
Only the sound of steel clashing like bells at a funeral.
---
They fought like elements.
Elysian was precision—strikes that cut through the air like letters carved in scripture, clean, flawless, deadly. His blade sang of years spent perfecting the quiet art of killing without question.
But the masked man was unorthodox.
No rhythm.
No pattern.
Just movement. Swift. Merciless. Unreadable.
He ducked beneath a horizontal slash, caught Elysian's wrist with one gloved hand, twisted, pivoted—then flipped backward with feline grace, landing without a sound.
Elysian exhaled sharply.
For the first time, he adjusted his stance.
"Not ranked," he thought. "Not on record. Who trained him?"
The next exchange came faster.
Steel blurred. Feet slid. Sparks leapt from walls as blades scraped stone. The hallway became a dance floor, sacred and silent and filled with intent to end.
And then—contact.
The masked man struck first.
A glancing blow across Elysian's jaw—not deep, but enough to draw blood.
Elysian staggered back one step. He touched the cut. Looked at the red on his fingertips. And smiled.
> "You're no servant," he said at last, voice like cold glass. "So who are you?"
The masked man said nothing.
Only raised his hand, open-palmed, in a gesture of come closer.
Elysian's smile dropped.
And in that moment, he knew—
This was no ghost.
No stray.
This was a force with purpose.
And he was not here to duel.
He was here to take something back.
The corridor was breaking.
Not in stone—but in stillness.
Steel clashed again, hard and fast. Sparks flared like fireflies caught in a storm.
Elysian twisted into a low sweep, blade flashing upward in an arc meant to split bone from breath. But the masked man caught the motion mid-air, spinning his own weapon in a blur that slapped the strike away, the sound ringing like a bell in a ruined cathedral.
Elysian stepped back, fast—just in time to avoid the heel that cracked through the air where his throat had been.
The masked man was relentless.
He didn't fight with elegance.
He fought like water falling from a great height—silent, merciless, and crushing.
He moved in a way that made no sense.
Too fast.
Too unpredictable.
One moment he was low to the ground, the next he was behind Elysian, elbow striking like a hammer into his ribs.
Elysian grunted.
His blade slipped.
Mistake.
The masked man seized it—stripped the dagger from Elysian's fingers and flung it down the hall without looking. The blade clattered away like a warning no one would hear.
Elysian launched into a kick—but was caught mid-spin.
A blur of grey cloth.
Then—
A slam.
His back hit the stone wall.
Hard.
He gasped.
And before he could move, a gloved hand had wrapped around his throat—tight. Unrelenting.
The masked figure stepped in close.
The white side of the mask caught the flickering light.
But it was the jade-green eyes behind it that held him there.
Eyes like prophecy.
Eyes that had seen fire and were not afraid to walk through it again.
"Where is he?" the masked man growled.
Not loud.
But it vibrated through the assassin's bones like thunder coiled inside a whisper.
Elysian choked. His hands scrabbled at the wrist holding him, but the grip did not loosen.
"I won't ask again."
The pressure increased.
Just a little.
But it was enough.
Elysian's pride cracked like stained glass.
He coughed—struggled—but finally, the words scraped out:
"L–lower wing... end of the corridor… behind the iron doors... guarded only by chains."
The masked man held him there a moment longer, as if testing whether to believe him—or crush the lie out if needed.
Then he let go.
Elysian collapsed to his knees, coughing, gasping for breath.
But when he looked up—the masked man was gone.
Not vanished by magic.
Just speed. Purpose.
He had a direction now.
And August Everheart was no longer alone.
The corridors bled dusk-light now.
What fire the sconces offered was weak and worn, like the breath of a dying god, barely clinging to the walls. Dust hung suspended in the air, disturbed only by the windless passage of one cloaked figure—grey, silent, unstoppable.
The masked man walked where no mercy had tread for years.
His steps were precise.
But his heartbeat had begun to quicken.
He had seen things—unspeakable corners of empires, vaults where children were trained to kill like it was prayer—but even he, who did not flinch before death, felt something shift in his chest the closer he came.
He passed rusted doors.
Empty cells.
Shackles that still swayed from the ceiling, as though the wind had only just touched them. But there was no wind.
Only memory trapped in stone.
And then—
He stopped.
The corridor narrowed.
There it was.
The iron gate.
Massive. Blackened with time.
Its hinges gnarled like twisted limbs.
It stood not like a door, but a sentence. One meant to separate the sacred from the damned.
The masked man stepped forward.
His jade-green eyes searched the seams. There was no lock—only rusted chains, thick as wrists, crisscrossed and sealed with silence.
And beneath it all…
A sound.
Faint.
Breathing.
> He's here.
The masked man reached up.
Not with violence.
But with intent.
His gloved fingers moved with swift precision, undoing the chains without clatter, each link coming undone as if time itself had bowed to the urgency of this moment.
One by one…
Until the last chain dropped like a fallen verdict.
The masked man placed one hand on the cold gate.
And pushed.
The door creaked open, slow and loud.
What lay beyond was not a cell.
It was a chamber of shadow, carved from the earth itself. The stone was slick with condensation, lit only by a small brazier in the far corner, casting trembling gold against the walls.
Chains hung from the ceiling.
And there—
In the center—
August.
Shackled like a fallen saint, arms lifted, silver hair matted with sweat and defiance, body far too still.
His head was bowed.
But the moment the door opened—
He stirred.
Slowly. With effort. Like waking from a nightmare stitched into bone.
His smoke-grey eyes fluttered open, hazed with fever, but sharp enough to register one thing:
He was no longer alone.