DONG!
DONG!
DONG!
The bell rang like a judge's gavel.
Each peal echoed through the estate like a hammer pounding against her skull.
Freya bolted.
She hit the ledge and launched herself down the ivy trellis, snapping vines and scraping brick on the way down.
She landed in a crouch among the hydrangeas just as a pair of guards rushed past the hedge, lanterns raised.
"Perimeter breach! Fan out! Check every entrance!"
Guards were swarming everywhere.
Freya clicked her tongue. "Tch…"
She slipped through the bushes and darted toward the east side of the manor, heart pounding but breath steady.
Her dark mana pulsed around her like a second heartbeat, blurring her outline and masking her scent.
Then—pressure. A sudden shift in the air.
A barrier spell.
The gate was sealed, snapped into place like invisible glass. Wards flickered to life across the iron, glowing faintly with arcane runes.
"Seriously?" she muttered, crouching beneath a row of tall hedges. "They're locking down the place like a treasure vault. Damn."
The clatter of armor approached—heavier than before. Not amateurs this time.
A voice barked from around the corner: "Sweep the north garden! Don't kill them—we need them alive!"
"Them?" Freya froze. "What the hell are they talking about?"
Puzzled—but no time to find out.
The longer she lingered, the more likely they'd triangulate her position—especially if they had mages.
She slid beneath a stone bench and focused.
Her mana shimmered outward in tendrils—feeling, sensing.
The estate grounds bloomed into clarity in her mind: patrols, wards, escape routes.
Southwest side. A weak point. Faint mana flow. Flickering. Possibly a gap?
A long shot. But better than being bagged and tagged.
"Let's hope those angry knights aren't waiting for me over there."
Mana surged through her limbs. She reached into the shadows—and vanished.
She reappeared behind a topiary in the central courtyard, just as two guards clanked past where she'd been a heartbeat ago.
"No visual," one muttered. "But the ward flared. Something moved."
"...Like a ghost," said the other, clutching his lantern tighter.
Not a ghost. But a shadow. Freya smirked in the dark.
She slipped past them, keeping low, weaving through rose beds and crumbling statues.
The moonlit yard became a monochrome labyrinth—silver light, black shadows, and the ever-looming threat of discovery.
She froze as a patrol rounded a corner barely ten feet away.
Pressing herself flat against the wall, she channeled mana to muffle her heartbeat.
One of the men paused. "Wait. Did you hear—?"
"No, don't fuck with me right now," snapped the other. "We've got orders. The mayor's family comes first."
They vanished into the manor. Freya exhaled—just barely—and moved.
The crack in the wards lay ahead.
She could see the shimmer now, like heat distortion over the servants' herb garden.
A laundry line fluttered in the breeze, forgotten shirts and aprons swaying like pale ghosts.
She broke into a sprint. No more stealth—just speed. If she could reach that gap—
"...What the—"
Her eyes widened.
Another shadow had emerged from the dark.
Racing for the same gap as her.
They locked eyes.
Just for a second.
A heartbeat of shock passed between them—two shadows in the dark, both desperate to escape.
The other figure—a tall silhouette wrapped in tattered black—seemed just as startled to see her.
No words were exchanged.
No threats, no questions.
Only instinct.
The figure moved first.
A flash of steel arced through the air—a blade, long and gleaming, too narrow to be a broadsword.
But it was fast. Controlled. Lethal.
Freya twisted away just in time. The edge sliced clean through the laundry line behind her, sending a nightshirt fluttering to the ground.
"Tch!" She kicked off the stone path, spun, and summoned The Reaper's Scythe in a shimmer of red-black mana.
The polearm roared into her grasp like an old friend, humming with the taste of battle.
She met the next swing head-on.
Steel rang against steel—scythe and sword clashing in a burst of sparks.
The impact rattled up Freya's arms, and she bared her fangs in a grimace.
"He's fast..." she thought, shifting her weight.
The shadow twisted with uncanny speed, sword flowing like water—cutting angles, slashing low.
Freya pivoted around the heavy shaft of her scythe, parrying with the haft and dancing backward, her boots skidding across damp grass.
She swung in return—a wide arc meant to force distance.
The scythe's curved blade gleamed in the moonlight, shrieking as it cut through air.
The other fighter ducked low and dashed in, trying to get inside Freya's reach.
He was highly trained. He knew weapons like scythe would be a liability close range.
Freya responded with a backward spin, the haft striking the stranger's ribcage with a dull thud.
Not full force—but enough to stagger.
She followed through—reversed her grip, brought the scythe down like a guillotine.
The shadow raised the sword just in time—steel met bone-metal with a cracking hiss of magic.
For a moment, they were locked, faces inches apart.
Freya saw a glint beneath the hood—eyes like silver, not human.
The figure shoved off and retreated, nimble as a fox.
They circled.
Breathing heavy, tension mounting. Both covered in flecks of grass and dirt. The garden seemed to hold its breath.
From inside the manor, more bells tolled—guards shouting. Lanterns bobbing in the distance.
Time was running out.
Freya's scythe crackled with dark mana, and she lunged again—low sweep aimed at the knees.
The figure flipped over the blade in an impossible arc, twisting midair.
Freya snarled and launched a barrage—slash, spin, jab, cleave.
Every strike flowed into the next. Like death dancing in the wind.
But the shadow moved like smoke, parrying with precise flicks of the sword, occasionally countering with thrusts that came within inches of her throat.
Then—a misstep happened.
Freya got caught on a low garden fence—just for a split second.
The stranger lunged, sword tip aimed at her heart.
"Shit!" She dropped and hit the ground hard, rolled under the attack, and kicked upward, boot slamming into the figure's gut.
The stranger stumbled back—but only for a breath.
Both paused again.
No words. Just burning eyes, ragged breath, and planning the next attack.
Then—A horn blew from the north wall.
Voices barked orders. Dozens of boots thundered closer.
The scythe and sword lowered slightly—neither victory claimed, neither willing to risk staying longer.
The figure shouted, "Go! I'll hold her off!"
Another silhouette burst from the dark—a second figure, broader, rougher, carrying someone slung over his shoulder like a sack of flour.
A boy, maybe ten or twelve, unconscious, limbs dangling under the moonlight.
The second figure bolted for the gap between the wards, boots pounding across the grass.
Freya's eyes flicked toward them. "Kidnappers?" distracted, her guard dropped for maybe half-a second.
But that was enough.
The first figure lunged again—faster this time, desperate, almost reckless.
His blade carved a gleaming arc through the darkness, aimed straight for Freya's throat.
She dropped low—barely in time.
The sword hissed past, close enough to shear a strand of her hair.The air it cut slapped her cheek, sharp and cold.
Freya snarled, her fangs flashing under the moonlight.
Her scythe swept out in a vicious horizontal arc, low and lethal.
Clang!
Steel collided and locked, the impact sending a spray of golden sparks across the garden path.
The sound cracked through the night like flint on stone.
"You're not getting away," she spat, voice low and trembling with fury.
Her boots dug into the gravel, and she pressed forward with renewed force.
Another clash—then another.
The scythe whirled in her hands like an extension of her will, graceful and brutal.
The stranger's blade trembled to keep pace, his stance faltering.
From the manor behind them came shouting. Doors slammed open.
Lanterns flared to life—bright pinpricks swaying through the hedges as guards scrambled out.
"Shit, this is all your fault!" Freya growled and went faster, angrier with her scythe.
But the figure's movements also grew tighter, more cautious.
And with a final clang, their blades locked, their eyes just inches apart.
She recognized the shift immediately—he wasn't trying to kill her now. He was stalling.
Defensive guard. Measured footwork. Eyes flicking past her shoulder.
He's waiting for an opening to escape.
"Like hell you are," she snapped—and with a burst of mana, she forced her scythe upward, inching his blade back to his neck.
The figure recoiled, instincts kicking in.
Freya pivoted hard, spinning on her heel.
The haft of her scythe twisted in her grip, reversing direction in a heartbeat—and then she struck upward, driving the blunt end straight into the gap beneath his ribs.
Thunk.
A grunt of pain burst from his lips.
He staggered, breath catching, eyes wide behind his hood.
Freya lunged, ready to end it—
But her eyes snapped to the ward shimmer just in time to see the second figure vanish through it, taking the boy with him.
"NO!" she screamed, voice cracking with rage.
The air distorted like a heatwave, magic warping the space where they'd vanished.
The wounded man turned—blood dripping from his side—cast one last look at her, and launched like a cannonball to the closing gap.
Freya lunged—but too late. The ward shimmered, then sealed shut.
Locked. Unbroken.
And those kidnappers had also disappeared in the alley.
Freya stood frozen, frustrated, breathing hard—scythe still crackling in her grip.
And then the guards were here at last. "Freeze!"
"Put down your weapon and show us your hands!" Dozens of crossbows took aim.
Freya sighed, putting the Reaper's Scythe on the ground, slowly. Hands in the air.
"Boys," she muttered, "this is not what it looks like."