The morning after the tavern incident was too quiet.The streets of Virelia bustled as they always did merchants calling out their wares, carts creaking under sacks of grain, guards making their lazy rounds. But Aloysius could feel it, like a stone lodged under his skin: the air around him had changed.
He kept his hood low as he moved through the marketplace. Every sound seemed sharper. The scrape of a cartwheel. The slap of boots on cobblestone. A faint hiss no, a whisper.
You left one alive.
The shadow's voice was velvet and venom all at once."I didn't kill anyone," Aloysius muttered under his breath.
Not yet. But they carry you now.
Aloysius's steps slowed. "Carry me?"
Before the shadow could answer, movement caught his eye. Across the street, a man stood motionless in the crowd. Dark coat. Hood down. A long, pale scar carved across his cheek. His gaze was fixed directly on Aloysius.
It wasn't the scar that made Aloysius's pulse spike it was the faint shimmer in the man's pupils. A strange ring of light that pulsed faintly, like an ember.
The man lifted his hand. On his palm, etched in something black and smoking, was the unmistakable shape of Aloysius's distorted shadow-form.
It wasn't a tattoo. It moved.
The man mouthed a single word: Found you.
The crowd seemed to bend around them, and Aloysius knew in his gut this was no casual encounter. This was a trail one that started last night, in the tavern, and would not end until one of them stopped breathing.
The man turned and vanished into an alley.Aloysius hesitated for a breath, then followed.
As he stepped into the shade between buildings, the noise of the city fell away. The air thickened, and the cobblestones seemed to stretch into impossible distances.
Somewhere ahead, the stranger's voice echoed not aloud, but inside his skull."You're not the only one with a shadow, Herrold."