The bell's echo still trembled in the air when Elena stepped into the hall.It wasn't a chime — it was a warning, low and resonant, like a heartbeat amplified through stone. Somewhere beneath her feet, water shifted.
He was already halfway down the staircase, moving with the precision of someone who had done this before. His coat flared with each step, the black feather at his collar swaying like it was alive.
"Stay behind me," he ordered without looking back.
"I don't take orders."
"Then take survival advice."
By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, he had crossed to a wall lined with tall glass-fronted cabinets. He pressed his palm against a panel carved with a peacock motif — there was a mechanical click, and the cabinet slid aside to reveal an arsenal.Not guns.Blades. Crossbows. Curved weapons whose edges gleamed in the candlelight.
He took two — a short, jagged dagger and something she'd never seen before, a slender blade with a hooked tip. The latter he tossed to her without hesitation.
"I don't know how to—"
"You will if you want to keep your heart inside your chest."
The air in the house changed. She didn't just hear them now — she felt them. The intruders. A faint vibration in the floorboards, like a predator pacing in the dark.
From the canal tunnel came a sound she couldn't mistake — the splash of water displaced by more than oars.
"Dogs?" she asked.
His mouth curved faintly. "Not the kind you've met."
He strode to the double doors at the end of the hall, swung them open, and the smell of the canal surged in — brine, wet stone, and something coppery beneath.
The first of them emerged from the shadows. They were men, but not quite. Their movements were too fast, too fluid. Faces obscured by lacquered masks painted with snarling wolf jaws. In their hands, black tridents, dripping water.
"They're not here for me," she said, reading the precision in their advance.
"No," he agreed, "they're here for the mirror."
A mirror she had seen for less than ten seconds and already wanted to understand.
The lead attacker lunged, water flying from his coat in silver arcs. The Alpha moved before Elena could blink — sidestepping, blade flashing, sending the man crashing into a marble column. The trident clanged against the floor, skidding toward her. She kicked it into the shadows before another could grab it.
Two more were in the room now, their feet silent on the marble. One went for her.
She raised the hooked blade instinctively, catching his strike. The shock travelled up her arm, but she didn't drop it. He snarled — a sound that made the hairs on her neck rise — and came again.
This time she moved first, slashing low. The blade's hook caught the edge of his trident, twisting it out of his grip. It clattered across the marble, and she realised she was breathing hard, not from fear, but something sharper.
The Alpha had already dropped another one, his blade finding the gap between mask and collar with lethal precision. He looked at her briefly — assessing — then jerked his chin toward the back of the house.
"They'll keep coming through the canal. We move."
She followed him through a corridor lined with shuttered windows. The pounding in her ears matched the sound of boots and claws against stone. He stopped before a panel in the wall and pressed the black feather at its centre. The wood slid aside, revealing a narrow staircase descending into darkness.
"After you," he said.
"You trust me to go first?"
"I trust that you won't get far without me."
The air grew cooler as they descended. The stairs ended in a long, arched passageway lit by faint, phosphorescent stones set into the walls. The water here was clearer, almost luminous, flowing in a silent underground channel.
A sleek black boat was tied to the stone bank.
"You have an escape canal?"
"I have many," he said, untying the rope. "This one leads outside the city walls."
They stepped in. The moment the boat pushed off, the sound of splashes behind them erupted — the masked wolves dropping into the channel.
He handed her the dagger again. "They can swim faster than we can row."
"So what's the plan?"
He smiled, sharp as the blade in her hand. "We make them regret the chase."
And with that, he turned the boat toward the deeper dark, where the walls began to narrow and the water's glow dimmed. Somewhere ahead, a low rumble began — not the sound of pursuit, but something bigger, hungrier.
Elena tightened her grip on the blade, not sure if she was more afraid of what was behind them… or what he was leading them toward.