The moment came like a blade sliding free of its sheath.
Lord Averre stood tall among the carnage, smiling as though he were not surrounded by the corpses of his guards. "Good," he whispered to Killian. "Very good. Your blood sings true."
The words twisted in Killian's head, coiling with rage and memory. His parents' lifeless eyes. Their blood bottled, priced, and sold like fine wine. The Averre crest stamped on the ledgers.
The shadows pressed against his skin, urging him. He didn't resist.
A tendril lashed forward, wrapping around Averre's throat. The noble's smirk faltered for the first time. His hands clawed at the darkness, but Killian's fury fed it, tightened it, made it unbreakable.
Averre tried to speak, tried to taunt one last time, but his words died in a strangled gasp. The tendril snapped his neck with a crack that echoed across the blood-soaked hall.
Lord Averre crumpled to the floor like a discarded puppet.
Killian stood over him, chest heaving, the shadows writhing around him like serpents drunk on blood.
There was no satisfaction. No relief. Only silence, broken by the thunder of boots outside.
The manor doors burst open. The city guard surged in, black armour glinting, swords drawn. Behind them came cloaked figures with pale faces and glowing eyes — not men, not entirely.
Killian didn't wait to see more. He turned and ran.
Through the kitchens, out the servants' door, into the night. Alarms rang through the city, bells tolling, voices shouting his name. The blood of Averre's guards — of Averre himself — clung to his hands and clothes like a brand.
He had killed one of the most powerful nobles in the realm. There would be no hiding now.
Caer Vallis at night was a maze of narrow streets and marble spires. Torches bobbed in the dark as the guard spread, searching. Their shouts echoed off stone, their steel boots clattering like hammers.
Killian ran until his lungs burned, ducking into alleys, climbing walls slick with frost, always one step ahead of the pursuit.
The shadows answered his panic, wrapping around him, smothering his footsteps. Once, when a squad of guards cornered him, the tendrils lashed out without his command, knocking them sprawling long enough for him to escape.
But every use cost him. His blood pounded like fire in his veins, his hunger sharpened into pain, and the memory of the nobles drinking from Averre's goblets gnawed at him.
He fled downward. The noble towers gave way to crooked buildings, then to broken bridges and stairways that plunged into the under-city. The stink of rot and mildew grew thick. Rats scurried over his boots.
It was here the city guard's torches faltered, their hunt slowing. Even they feared the underbelly of Caer Vallis.
But someone else was watching.
Killian stopped. He felt her before he saw her — eyes on his back, sharp as knives.
She stepped from the dark ahead of him. Tall, lean, copper-haired, her pale face half-lit by the moon. Her eyes glowed faintly, molten copper catching firelight.
"You made quite the mess tonight," she said softly. Her tone was calm, almost amused. "Killing Averre. Bold. Suicidal. Both."
Killian's fingers twitched toward the shadows curling at his side. "Who are you?"
She smirked. "Someone who doesn't care for Averre's kind. Someone offering you a choice."
Behind him, the shouts of the guard grew louder, closer. He didn't have long.
"Come with me," she said. "Or die here. Either way, the city will remember your name."
He followed.
She led him through winding alleys and hidden paths, deeper and deeper until the air grew thick with damp and smoke. Finally, she pushed open a rusted door set into the side of an abandoned tannery.
Warm lamplight spilled out. The smell of blood and iron hit him like a tide.
Inside, a dozen faces turned toward him — cloaked men and women, some sharpening blades, some playing dice, all dangerous. Their stares cut like blades.
The copper-haired woman threw her hood back.
"This one's mine," she said. "He's under guild protection."
A ripple of murmurs passed through the room.
Killian stepped inside, his heart still hammering from the chase, his hands sticky with Averre's blood. He knew he had only traded one kind of danger for another.
But at least here, he wasn't running.
Not yet.
Before Killian could ask anything else, a voice called from deeper in the tunnel. "Harlow! Wardens at the outer gate