Devotion. A curious word.

  Velimir lingered in the corridor’s embrace, swallowed by its shadows, as the term slithered into his mind unbidden. Devotion. A word the weak clung to, dressing their cowardice in something noble—gilded rot, if one were feeling poetic. True devotion, in the tongue of the Ancestors, meant hunger. A feral, unblinking thing that gnawed at the marrow of one’s ethics until only bone remained.

  What grew in those coddled from birth, untouched by cw or grit, was nothing more than a sapling—frail, crushable underfoot. But in people like him? Those who had stared the world’s cold, fanged reality in the eye and refused to blink? That was a bck-rooted oak—twisted, unyielding, drinking deep from the blood of failure and rising ever taller.

  He still remembered when he was nothing. Just another bottom-tier adventurer scrounging the scraps of the dungeon’s leavings, forever drowning in mediocrity, never strong enough to delve deeper. Then came Vor’akh. Or rather, the elder. His party would have called it an unfortunate encounter. They all died, after all. But for him? It was the best damn stroke of fortune he'd ever had.

  The memories cwed their way forward, begging to be savored, but there was no time. He exhaled sharply, casting them aside, and refocused.

  He’d waited precisely 237 breaths since Sasha’s departure, counted—each exhale a drumbeat toward vengeance. The daily detection spells made one thing clear: Mimi and Shiro’s watchfulness had cracks. Their little owl tricks dulled in blizzards, and a touch of sleeping agent in their pork dinner made sure those feathery sentinels slumbered through the night. Slipping out? Trivial. Amateurs.

  Now, he stood in Varkaigrad’s middle district, east side. The very heart of the city’s economy—the factories forging magic tools that kept its veins pumping. And what better pce to sow chaos?

  Unfortunately, the truly valuable ones were heavily guarded. The only pces left unprotected were the failures—the abandoned factories left to rot after betting on the wrong innovation, drowning in their own irrelevance.

  Most got recycled, flipped between owners in a dance of shifting fortunes, bouncing from hand to hand like a cursed relic. The economy moved like a living thing, ever-shifting, adapting. But what if the next buyer wasn’t looking to start a factory at all?

  That made it something better. Something far more useful.

  By day, it wore a mask of legitimacy, cobbling together worthless trinkets to make weaklings’ lives a little easier.

  By night?

  It became exactly what it was always meant to be.

  The chamber door loomed ahead, unmarked yet reeking of juniper oil—an elven affectation. That alone was enough to make Velimir’s lip curl in distaste. He schooled his expression quickly, though. Everyone in Vor’akh hated every other species, but even the wildest beasts knew when to suffer a pack. The elves—once licking dew from beastkin boots—now fancied themselves pyers in this game.

  They were still beneath Vor’akh. That much was clear. But even Velimir had to admit, some of what they’d done to help y the groundwork for this colossal conspiracy was... commendable. Still, he kept his priorities straight. There were enemies, and then there were true enemies.

  Three knuckles against steel: two sharp, one lingering.

  The runes fred, a glow slithering across the metal, and the door cracked open just enough to reveal a sliver of a moon-kissed face. Sharp cheekbones. Emerald-green eyes. Elven. Even now, draped in ceremonial robes as if attending a ga. Pompous bastards. As if they weren’t skulking in a sewer-adjacent safehouse.

  “Shadow’s Thorn?” The elf’s voice was thin, high-pitched.

  Velimir hated hearing his title from an elven mouth. Since his teacher—the elder—was called ‘Shadow Bde,’ this was the name given to him. He supposed he could’ve done worse. But still. An elf? Saying it?

  Without a word, he flicked his sleeve, exposing the tattoo coiled beneath his wrist—the symbol of a draconic head. A relic of something lost, something that once stood at the core of the Drakkari culture before time and weakness stripped it away.

  “Do I look like a wandering minstrel?” he said, covering it once more.

  The elf’s nostrils fred. Annoyed. Disapproving. But cowed. He stepped aside.

  The chamber was crowded—mostly elves, but a few beastkin mixed in as well. At the back stood a dormant elven portal structure. Seemed like the st incident had spooked them.

  That sent a spark of irritation through Velimir’s chest. The only ones who died there were beastkin. Fighters affiliated with Vor’akh. Not a single elf. Convenient. But at least he could trust the fallen had died with their fangs bared.

  “You’re te,” hissed a figure at the center of the congregation.

  Some eyes flicked toward him, but they didn’t dare linger. As they shouldn’t.

  Velimir, however, turned his gaze on the one man here with an equal standing. An elf.

  Well. Half an elf.

  A half-drakkari abomination. Drakkari prestige tainted by elven filth. Half-blood. Half-competent.

  “Apologies, Maelivar,” Velimir drawled. “I was busy not strangling a child. Priorities, you understand.”

  Maelivar snorted—an ugly sound on his too-smooth skin. “I need reports. Now. That was the same excuse st time. Or should I remind you—you’re not just there to babysit her?”

  Velimir chuckled. No, he wasn’t the type to curse fate for his own incompetence. If the Sablethorn princess still breathed, it wasn’t because he couldn’t get rid of her. He ‘had’ to entertain her—py the role—so her so-called Gold-rank father wouldn’t suspect a thing.

  “Nope,” he said, rolling his shoulders. “I did, in fact, dig into who exactly hit our base in the lower district.”

  “And?”

  “Got news. Not the good kind.” Velimir exhaled, shaking his head. “We need to be careful. The information I got was vague—something about a poison being involved. No specifics. But this wasn’t a raid. Every single person there was wiped out. No pattern, no strategy—just pure, unhinged chaos. Even those Iron Pact idiots were rattled.”

  Maelivar sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “So, still almost nothing? I hate uncertainties. Loose variables like this.” His emerald eyes sharpened. “We have someone out there—a single person—who destroyed one of our bases alone?”

  Velimir let out a breath. “At this point? Best we can do is pray to the Ancestors nothing goes wrong tomorrow.”

  Maelivar snorted at the mention of the Ancestors.

  Once, that might’ve angered Velimir. But by now, he was getting used to faithless creatures. The Ancestors had a special pce in hell for people like him. And when their retribution came, it would strip skin from bone while they screeched.

  For now, though, they were still useful. Pawns in a grander game.

  The discussion soon devolved into a final checkup. It was already past midnight, and tomorrow, the stage was set.

  “Is the catering staff fully infiltrated?” Maelivar asked.

  “Yes,” Velimir said. “Personally ensured it.”

  “Any suspicions from your side?”

  “Suspicions?” Velimir snorted. “She thanked me for correcting her flower arrangements. The Sablethorn line is a gutter.”

  Of course, if he were honest, the patriarch was a little paranoid. But admitting that in front of this abomination? Out of the question.

  After all, trust had already been forged.Forged lineage papers. Forged references from the most prestigious academy on the continent. Stamped and certified by a well-bribed scribe.

  An Elven academy, sure. But even he had to admit—that carried weight.

  The patriarch’s trust had been won with a well-staged performance. A daring rescue of his beloved daughter from a fabricated assassination attempt (carefully orchestrated by allies, of course). Then, a whisper of curiosity—introducing her to the wonders of dimensional runic magic, a perfect excuse to acquire ritual components under the guise of innocent schorly pursuit. And for the final touch? A cursed heirloom slipped into her possession, ensuring that when the entity crossed over, she’d be the first morsel on its pte.

  From there, it was smooth sailing. The estate’s security runes? Swapped out for identical copies, except these would unravel at the ritual’s peak. The banquet wine? Laced with a slow-acting sedative, brewed from a Vor’akh bioweapon so subtle it could lull even the most formidable guests into vulnerability by the time the festivities reached their climax.

  A full year. That’s how long it had taken to worm their way in. Because the answer was never outside, never found in brute force. Sometimes, the path to truth had to be pried open with dirty hands.

  It was then that a ugh, raw and wheezing, curled out from the room’s darkest corner.

  Velimir’s spine went rigid. He knew that sound. Instinct kicked in—he dropped to one knee. So did everyone else as a crushing weight swept over the room.

  Gold ranks. A league of their own. But instead of despair, the fire in his gut burned fiercer. The hunger to cw his way up. To carve his name into that power.

  “Come closer, little Thorn.”

  The elder. His teacher.

  She lounged in a throne of bone, her form a shifting mirage—one moment a crone, the next a viper, then a girl with Sasha’s chestnut brown braids. The closer he stepped, the thicker the shadows grew, curling into his lungs like smoke, making each breath burn. He didn’t stop.

  Good.

  “Your work pleases me,” she crooned, her voice a thousand screams pressed into a whisper. “The child’s sigils… you altered them as I suggested?”

  “As instructed.” He kept his gaze lowered—just shy of submission, but never truly yielding. The elder had taught him that bance. “The containment array will colpse precisely when the elder’s distraction reaches its… crescendo.”

  A cw—or talon, or branch, he couldn’t tell—grazed his jaw. “Clever boy. You grasp the poetry. Not mere sughter. Revetion.”

  He did. Oh, he did. It was never about destruction. Not once. It was about the message they carried.

  Let Varkaigrad’s precious unity splinter as their wards turned to acid, their children’s gifts to ash. Let them glimpse the Ancestors’ true face—not in war cries, but in the silence between screams.

  “And the elder’s duel?” Velimir wasn’t sure if it was the right question, but it had to be asked. She would be facing five house heads alone. He would never doubt her superiority, but gold ranks were still gold ranks. Skill could be outweighed by sheer force in numbers.

  The shadows rippled.

  “A distraction, yes. But also… a lesson.” Her voice slithered through the dark. “They will watch an entire bloodline erased before their eyes. And they will understand. How fragile their peace is. How hungry the old ways remain.”

  The room stiffened. Especially that half-elf abomination. Velimir savored it.

  “And after?”

  The elder’s ughter stripped yers from the walls.

  “After, little Thorn, we feast on the aftermath.” She exhaled, and the runes above her head fred, bloody and brilliant. A stone inscribed with sigils dropped into his hands. “Your way out.”

  A teleportation anchor. Sensible. When the ritual began, chaos would reign. There was no guarantee he would survive once the entity crossed over. He was ready to die for the cause—ready to burn in valor. But this? This all but ensured he’d live to see it through.

  He bowed low. “Gratitude, elder.”

  “A trifle,” she rasped, her form now a writhing mass of centipede legs and smoke. “I’d hate to lose my favorite brush before the canvas is stained.”

  She was in a good mood tonight. And he had finally earned her praise, after so damn long.

  For a moment, he hesitated—then seized the opportunity.

  “Elder, I’m certain your vast ears have heard of what happened in the lower district.” He wasn’t one to admit pses in control, but something about that ordeal gnawed at him. If he could catch the elder’s interest, she might track down whoever had been behind it—and grant them the slow, exquisite death they deserved.

  A sharp, distorted cackle.

  “Oh, there are many in this wretched nd still brimming with instincts fit for leaders.” Her tone was amused, almost approving. “Whoever it was, they orchestrated a masterpiece with sheer violence. Ahh, A magnificent beast. The mental fortitude of a true beastkin—to commit such grievous, artful sughter. Commendable. Pure, primal hunger. A shame they waste it on… ethics.”

  Velimir smiled. Something about it felt eerily familiar.

  “You’re going to recruit this… animal?”

  “Try is the keyword, little Thorn.” A rasp of amusement. “They either join… or become a martyr worth remembering. Either way, my respect will be theirs.”