The Vale Estate was a fortress of steel and silence. By midnight, every hall was empty, every servant dismissed. Only the faint hum of servers in the underground chamber broke the stillness.
Darius sat at the center of it all, his hands clasped loosely on the desk as a dozen encrypted files lit up the screens before him. Lucien stood at his shoulder, silent as always.
"Everything we found on Aresha Silas."
The woman's life unfolded in fractured fragments.Born into Veyrantis.Vanished at four.Rumors of fire and blood at eight.Reemergence years later as the master of Nine Cloud Abyssal, a shadow empire that ruled the seas and drowned anyone who defied them.
It should have been enough.But to Darius, the gaps in her story screamed louder than the facts.
"From four to sixteen…" he muttered. "There's nothing. No records. No sightings. As if she didn't exist."
Lucien's eyes flicked toward the screen. "It's not absence, sir. It's erasure. Someone scrubbed her past clean."
Darius's lips curved in something that wasn't quite a smile. "Which means there's something worth hiding."
His gaze sharpened.And if there was one thing he excelled at—it was unearthing what others wanted buried.
Across the city, inside a hidden chamber beneath the Silas estate, Aresha was giving her own orders.
The leaders of the Nine Peaks knelt in shadows, their faces obscured, their loyalty absolute.
"Vale will dig," she said, her voice like steel wrapped in silk. "He already suspects."
One of the peak lords spoke, hesitant: "Do you want him…removed?"
Aresha's eyes flashed, cold and merciless. Then, after a long pause, she shook her head."No. A corpse cannot fear me. And I want him to fear me before he bends."
The room stirred with unease at her choice of words, but none dared question.
She lifted her left hand, the dragon-and-phoenix tattoo glowing faintly beneath her glove."And erase what remains of the past. Burn it all. If even one whisper of what happened in the labs reaches him, I'll burn this city to the ground myself."
"Yes, Patriarch."
The council melted back into darkness, leaving her alone.
For a moment, Aresha allowed the mask to slip. Her reflection in the polished obsidian table stared back— silver hair, and the faint trace of exhaustion etched into her face.
She had clawed her way out of hell to build the world she now ruled. She would not let anyone—not even Darius Nyx Vale—drag her back into chains of the past.
And yet…
The memory of Saleena's tiny fingers curled around her neck returned unbidden, striking her chest with an ache she despised.
She crushed the thought, closing her eyes with a whisper only the shadows could hear."I cannot be a mother. I will not."
But her heart was already betraying her.
Back at the Vale estate, Darius stood over his children's sleeping forms. Saleena's hand clutched her stuffed fox, Draven's gaze half-open even in slumber—watchful, just like his own.
Darius's chest tightened. The thought echoed again.
She was like them.
He didn't believe in coincidences. And he wouldn't stop until the truth was his.
Two predators had stepped onto the same path. One digging deeper. The other burying faster.
And when they collided, neither empire would remain untouched.