The city smelled like rot and regret.
Vaylin hadn't changed. Its skyline still bled smoke from broken spires. Rats still danced in gutters like they owned the streets.
And the sky, always gray, always coughing ash. But to Zaire Veylan, everything felt… quieter.
Like the city knew he was back.
He pulled his hood tighter, shadows clinging to his cloak like old friends.
His boots creaked across the cobblestone as he stepped past the rusted gate of the eastern ward, the slum the nobles called the "Dagger's Mouth."
They didn't know half of it.
Ten years gone. Ten years erased.
They buried his name, burned his house crest, and whispered stories to frighten their children.
But now they'd whisper for real.
"You shouldn't have come back."
The voice slipped out of the alley like venom. Soft. Familiar.
Zaire turned slowly, golden eyes locking with a gaunt man half his height, cloaked in filth and fear.
Thorn, the street informer. Still alive. Still greasy.
"They say you died," Thorn croaked, spitting to the side.
"They saw you die. Burned. I saw the ashes."
Zaire didn't smile. He just stared, and Thorn shivered.
"The dead don't speak," Zaire said, voice low. "But I do."
He tossed a silver coin into Thorn's palm.
"I'm looking for her."
Thorn swallowed hard.
"Eira? They took her. Three nights ago. Dragged her from the healer's den near Hollow End. No witnesses, except…"
"Except what?"
"Except one of the bodies they left behind — his chest was carved with your name."
Zaire's hands clenched. He didn't remember killing anyone. Not lately. Not since…
His thoughts blurred. That dream again. The knife.
The blood. Eira's scream.
"Where did they take her?"
"No one knows. But there's talk of a place. The old catacombs are under the royal library cult territory now."
Zaire turned, but Thorn grabbed his sleeve.
"You don't get it," he hissed. "This isn't just a kidnapping. They're saying you're the one leading them."
"Do I look like a man running a cult?"
"No," Thorn whispered. "You look like a ghost that came back to burn everything down."
Zaire walked away, cloak fluttering like wings of ash.
He didn't care what they believed.
He only cared about the scream that haunted him.
The one voice that called him back from the grave.
The library ruins stood silent as tombstones. No guards. No lights. Just a broken archway leading into blackness.
Zaire stepped in.
The cold hit first like magic, old and forgotten.
Then came the whispers.
He moved carefully, blades at his back, shadow stitched into his steps.
The catacombs beneath Vaylin were never this silent. Something was waiting.
At the foot of a stone stairwell, he found it.
A sigil. Fresh. Drawn in blood. His name etched across the floor in the dead tongue of the Ancients.
He knelt. Touched it.
A scream tore through his mind.
Eira's.
He staggered back, nose bleeding. The blood on the sigil began to move.
To rise.
Forming a shape. A face.
His face.
Then, the doppelgänger smiled.
"Welcome home, Zaire."