One day ago

  -Asani-

  Asani walked the length of the dimly lit hallway with deliberate grace, his polished shoes clicking softly against the marble floor. Upon entering his office, he cast a brief glance at the open book resting beside the ornate chessboard atop his desk. Without a word, he retrieved it, closed the cover with reverent care, and placed it back onto the highest shelf of his bookcase.

  Behind him, footsteps echoed—measured, quiet, but undeniable.

  He did not turn.

  “The Forever War Between Alpha and Omega.” His voice was smooth, eloquent, and composed. “Tell me, Sir Sephtis… have you read it yet?”

  A raspy voice responded, oozing menace like smoke through broken glass.

  “I have, my lord. Many times over.”

  At that, Asani turned slowly.

  Standing before him was a man whose form defied nature. Sephtis was short in stature, yet carried the presence of something ancient and unforgiving. His eyes were voids of musou black—depthless, devouring. Skin mottled with ash and rot clung to a sinewy frame: muscular, yes, but with an unsettling leanness that suggested both strength and starvation. The upper edge of his mouth had been eaten away by some long-past burn, revealing a jagged row of teeth in a permanent, skeletal grin.

  His hair, shoulder-length and bone-white, defied gravity, floating in all directions as if each strand were tugged by invisible threads—puppeteered by some unseen, malevolent hand.

  Asani moved with poise to his desk and seated himself in a high-backed chair of obsidian leather, fingers steepling before him.

  “My favorite character is Nightmare,” he mused aloud, eyes drifting to the chessboard. “There is something exquisite in his simplicity. A natural-born predator.”

  Sephtis gave the slightest bow. “A fitting choice, my lord.”

  “Quite.” Asani’s gaze sharpened. “I counted three more near the fountain. I would like you to entertain our guests while I take my leave.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “And should they wander into the house?” Asani asked, tilting his head slightly.

  “Shall I dispose of them?”

  “Scare them,” Asani replied with a casual wave, as though discussing a mild inconvenience. “You may kill the girl.” His tone did not shift. “But as for Brennan—do not end him. Injure him if you must. I still have much to learn from him.”

  Sephtis nodded, eyes flickering with a dull gleam.

  “As you wish, my lord.”

  As Sephtis turned to leave, the room responded before he did. Each strand of his pale, ghost-white hair whipped sharply toward the door, as though pulled by an unseen force. They hovered there—reaching, pointing—while the rest of him moved with slow, deliberate weight. When he stepped forward, the strands followed, slithering through the air until the last tendril slipped past the threshold. His gait was neither a march nor a stride, but something more dreadful—like the walk of a condemned man who had long since embraced damnation. The darkness clung to his heels as if mourning his departure.

  Asani remained silent, unshaken. After a brief pause, he rose from his chair and walked to the tall, narrow window at the far end of the room. He unlatched it with a soft metallic click, and with no further hesitation, his form unraveled.

  Like a wisp of smoke caught in a sudden wind, he dissipated into a shifting, shadow-like vapor—shapeless, weightless, and silent. A curling tendril of black mist slipped out the window, and in the span of a blink, he was gone.

  He soared across the land with terrifying speed, a streak of living shadow streaking above the trees like a whisper loosed from a bowstring. Beneath him, the world blurred—gloomy branches, rotting leaves, and the distant outline of the old cabin.

  Just before crashing into the structure, he arched upward, banking with unnatural grace, rising over the roof like a shadow cast by nothing. He veered now toward the fountain, where faint voices crackled through the air like sparks before a fire.

  As he neared, he slowed.

  Leaves crunched below.

  Footsteps. Conversation.

  He reformed above them, silent and spectral, perched high on the gnarled branch of a dying tree. His body returned slowly, knitting itself back into place with a hiss of cold wind. Eyes narrow and keen, Asani observed the trio below.

  One man, tall and skinny, wore a red tie and white button-up shirt, a camera slung around his neck. His glasses flashed in the sunlight, nervously scanning their surroundings.

  Beside him stood a heavier man in a wrinkled blue polo, sweat forming on his brow despite the chill.

  And the third—a stark contrast—was bald, sharp-eyed, and dressed head-to-toe in an all-black suit. He moved like someone trained, someone who expected trouble.

  Asani tilted his head.

  He watched.

  Listened.

  Unseen.

  There was something curious about them—something out of place. He made no move, only crouched within the shadows of the twisted tree, cloaked in silence, a predator behind the glass of reality… waiting.

  They didn’t head for the cabin.

  Instead, they veered off toward a path nearly devoured by tangled brush and skeletal trees, the air growing heavier with each step. The ground underfoot was damp, soft, as if the forest had started to forget it was solid.

  “This place wasn’t like this a minute ago,” said the skinny one, raising his camera again. “None of these trees were here.”

  “Yeah,” muttered the heavier man, glancing nervously around. “Alora was right there. And John. Just... gone.”

  “You think they’re still close?” the photographer asked, scanning the treeline through his lens.

  “I don’t know, man. This whole place feels—off.”

  He pushed through some brush, gasping when he emerged into a small clearing.

  “Guys. Over here.”

  The others stepped in beside him—and froze.

  A lake stretched before them, perfectly still. Down the center, a glowing seam of purple and blue light pulsed like a heartbeat, illuminating the water from within. The glow bled outward, but faded quickly, the rest of the lake darkening into an abyss that seemed to pull at the eye.

  “...What the hell is that,” the one in the black suit finally said, quiet and grim.

  “Taking a picture,” muttered the camera man, already firing off a few shots.

  “Of course you are,” said the heavyset one, folding his arms. “Bet if it started talking, you'd ask it to pose.”

  “Hey, I’m documenting. That’s literally why you dragged me here.”

  “Document this,” he said, gesturing toward the water. “Weird glowing lake. Scary forest. Congratulations, we found the opening scene of a horror movie.”

  “And you're the first one to die,” added the suited man flatly.

  The heavier one snorted. “Joke’s on you. I refuse to go near that thing. I’ve seen enough Netflix to know how this ends.”

  “Yeah, you die second.”

  The suited man didn’t laugh. He crouched at the edge, eyes scanning the surface. “Doesn’t ripple. Not even from the wind.”

  “Maybe it’s not water.”

  “It’s too still,” said the camera man, peering through his lens. “Like it’s waiting.”

  None of them noticed the shape slipping beneath it.

  No splash. No ripple. No sign of entry.

  Below the surface, the shadows stirred.

  Asani passed between atoms, slipping into the depths like a thought into a dream—formless, silent, and unseen. The strange seam of light above fractured and danced across the blackness around him, but he moved deeper still, until even that shimmer disappeared.

  Then he stopped.

  And looked up.

  Above him, the lens flashed again, a brief burst of light cutting through the gloom. The skinny one stood closest—outlined by that impossible glow.

  And Asani… waited.

  Still.

  Watching.

  Blending with the dark.

  “I don’t like this,” the man in black muttered. “Something’s off.”

  “Yeah, no shit,” said the heavier man. “Let’s backtrack. We can come back when we find Alora and John. You with me, Eric?”

  “Yeah, I agree,” said Eric, adjusting his black suit. “Better bring your camera along and leave that lake alone.”

  Eric and the heavier man turned and began walking away, their silhouettes swallowed by the dim haze of the trees.

  But the cameraman lingered.

  Something in the lake caught his attention.

  He crouched low, setting the camera gently beside him, eyes narrowing as he leaned closer to the glowing surface. The water pulsed faintly, almost inviting.

  Then—movement.

  Asani struck.

  There was no splash, no noise, not even a ripple.

  The water accepted the man without resistance, like breath taken in a dream.

  Under the surface, panic erupted. The cameraman thrashed, bubbles erupting from his nose as he fought to escape. But his hands passed straight through Asani’s form—hazy, insubstantial, yet unrelenting. Asani pulled him deeper and deeper, past the wavering light above, into the dark.

  The man’s heart pounded as he clamped both hands over his mouth, fighting the scream and the instinct to breathe. His body shook violently, lungs screaming for air. His limbs flailed uselessly, heart slamming against his ribs as panic burst in his chest like a flare. There was no up, no air, no escape — only the sick realization that he was dying in the grip of something that didn’t even bother to hold him.

  Asani stared into him.

  Then slowly reached forward... and pulled the man’s hands from his mouth.

  There was a moment—just a heartbeat—of surrender.

  The man inhaled.

  Water rushed in.

  His body convulsed, seizing against the pull of the lake. His throat burned, lungs scorched as they filled with cold, glowing water. And then…

  The body hung in the water like a forgotten marionette — limbs weightless, spine curled slightly as though even in death, it recoiled. His mouth hung open, leaking a slow stream of bubbles from slackened lips. Eyes wide, but unfocused. Not fear anymore — just vacancy. An open door with nothing behind it.

  Asani lingered.

  He hovered inches away, head tilted with eerie curiosity. The man’s final panic still echoed through the space, not in sound — but in the residual churn of what he’d tried to be. A survivor. A witness. A soul worth sparing.

  But none of that remained.

  Asani leaned forward and, with inhuman gentleness, pressed a finger to the man’s forehead. Not to harm — but as if to seal him. A silent benediction from something that had never known mercy.

  Then, he began to unravel.

  First, his legs dissolved into thin ribbons of shadow that bled upward, his body folding in on itself like smoke caught in a drain. His torso followed, dispersing without bubbles, without sound, without the water reacting at all. By the time his face broke into black vapor, the glow of the lake had dimmed — as if it too had held its breath.

  And then Asani was gone.

  The surface above remained smooth. The trees whispered nothing.

  Only the body remained, drifting in the endless hush, limbs floating with the slow rhythm of the deep — as if it might wake up again, or worse, move.

  But it never would.

  Not now.

  Not here.

  Not in his water.

  Asani moved silently through the trees, trailing the remaining two men. He didn’t rush — he stalked. Observed. Waiting for the perfect place to appear.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  Then he found it — a slight rise just ahead of the path, half-shrouded in fog and framed by leaning birch trees. He stepped out slowly, letting just enough of himself become visible, and projected his voice with a calm, almost amused clarity.

  “May I help you gentlemen with something?”

  Both men flinched, startled. Eric spun around first, his breath catching as he saw the pale figure standing off the trail.

  “Sorry, man,” Eric said, regaining his composure. “We’re just looking for two of our friends. We got turned around somewhere.”

  Asani tilted his head, curious. “And who might your friends be? Perhaps I’ve seen them.”

  “Alora and her friend John,” Eric replied. “Also… our buddy Jake. He’s just back that way, near the lake.” He pointed behind them, toward the path they had just come from.

  Asani blinked slowly, his expression unreadable. “Hmm… I’m afraid I don’t know of a John or an Alora,” he said. “But I do recall a man with a camera heading toward the cabin.” He gestured the opposite way — forward, further up the trail.

  The heavier man squinted, glancing at Eric.

  “How does that even make sense?” he muttered.

  Eric frowned, growing irritated. “No, man. Jake’s by the lake. We literally just came from there — like, minutes ago,” he said, his tone clipped.

  Before Asani could answer, a voice rang out from the distance.

  “Guys! Over here!”

  It was Jake.

  But it came from the cabin — far ahead.

  Eric and the heavyset man froze. They turned slowly toward each other, faces paling as unease crept in.

  “…That’s not possible,” the heavier man whispered.

  Eric didn’t answer. His eyes stayed locked on the path ahead, where the voice had come from. Then, slowly, he turned back to Asani.

  But Asani was already gone.

  Asani locked eyes with Eric, a faint smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth — just enough to unnerve.

  “Well… whoever that is,” he said, voice smooth, “he’s the only other person I’ve seen here.”

  Then, with deliberate ease, Asani turned his back on them and began walking toward the cabin. No urgency. No explanation.

  Eric watched him go, jaw tight. “Cory, be careful with this guy,” he muttered, just loud enough for his friend to hear. “He looks like a freak.”

  His tone carried more than annoyance — there was a tremor of instinct in it. Something deeper. Something wrong.

  They started after Asani, staying just far enough behind. The fog had thinned slightly, revealing more of the surrounding woods… and something else.

  Cory stopped suddenly. “Holy shit,” he breathed, pointing through a gap in the trees. “Is there… is there nothing holding that up?”

  Floating above the distant canopy was an island — small, jagged, and hanging motionless in the air. No wires. No beams. Just suspended in space like a piece of broken reality.

  Eric stared at it, his expression hardening. “That’s it. We need to be on guard.”

  He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a pair of dull brass knuckles, slipping them over his fingers with practiced ease. The faint clink of metal sounded like a promise.

  Ahead of them, about a hundred yards away, Asani disappeared through the cabin’s door.

  The two men exchanged a glance.

  Then they heard it again.

  “Hey guys — over here!”

  Jake’s voice.

  Exactly the same as before. Same tone. Same pacing. Same everything.

  But this time it came from inside the cabin.

  Eric and Cory stopped walking.

  Cory’s voice was low, uncertain. “Did he just… say the exact same thing?”

  Eric didn’t answer.

  He was staring at the cabin door, suddenly very aware of how quiet the woods had become. No birds. No wind. Just fog, the island in the sky, and that voice echoing from a place it shouldn’t be.

  And Asani was in there with it.

  As they reached the abandoned cottage, its crooked roof sagging under age and moss, Eric held up a hand.

  “Wait here,” he said, eyes fixed on the entrance. “Let me check it out first.”

  Cory nodded, though unease was written all over him. Eric stepped into the threshold — cautious, tense.

  Inside, the cottage was deathly silent. Dust hung in the air like fog. No sign of Jake. No sign of Asani.

  “Look at the doorframe,” Cory called softly from outside.

  Eric turned and narrowed his eyes. Deep gouges scarred the wood, claw marks that dug through the frame like a beast had torn its way in — angry, determined. The edges splintered outward, as if something had been forced through with violence.

  He glanced at Cory, who stood frozen at the threshold, wide-eyed.

  Then Eric turned back and moved deeper into the cottage.

  He crept down the narrow hallway, passing peeling wallpaper and creaking floorboards until he came to the first room on the left. It was sparse: an old desk, a rotting chair, dust-covered books collapsed on the floor — but no people.

  No Jake. No Asani.

  He turned to head back — and paused.

  “Cory?” he called, stepping into the front room.

  But Cory wasn’t there.

  In his place, leading out the doorway, were small, scattered patches of blood. Dark red. Still wet.

  Eric’s heart kicked into overdrive. He rushed outside—

  “Cory!”

  There, slumped against the outer wall of the cottage, was Cory. Still breathing. Barely.

  His hands were trembling, pressed hard to the gaping wound in his chest. Blood soaked his shirt, pouring through his fingers. His mouth moved but no sound came out — only a broken wheeze.

  “Jesus—!” Eric started forward—

  WHAM!

  A crushing force slammed into his back, sending him flying forward. He hit the ground hard, tumbling into the dirt. Air shot from his lungs in a violent gasp as pain flared up his spine.

  He rolled over, coughing, and staggered to his feet.

  Standing in the doorway, framed by the shadows of the cottage, was Asani.

  But this wasn’t just a man anymore.

  His eyes glinted with cold amusement. Calm. Inevitable.

  Eric raised his fists, brass knuckles catching the dull light, and settled into a boxer’s stance.

  Then Asani extended one pale hand in front of himself.

  With a whisper of air, a weapon appeared — long, curved, and faintly glowing.

  A hasta.

  Its form shimmered slightly, as if forged from smoke and moonlight, but its edge looked real enough to cut through steel.

  Eric swallowed hard.

  No more hiding.

  No more mystery.

  Now came the fight.

  Eric tore off his black jacket and flung it aside like it had become too heavy with rage to bear. His eyes locked on Asani, burning with a glare sharp enough to cut steel. Muscles coiled, jaw tight, he sank into his stance—but Asani was already moving.

  The rush came like a thunderclap.

  Asani surged forward with the suddenness of a lightning strike, his hasta sweeping toward Eric’s skull—not to kill, but to humiliate. But Eric caught it. Just in time. Fingers clenched around the polished haft, breath caught in his chest.

  Asani’s smirk cracked across his face like a split mask—amused, predatory, unfazed. It was the grin of a man who’d already written the ending and was only playing through the motions.

  Fueled by fury, Eric charged. His fist cocked back like a loaded weapon, brass knuckles gleaming in the amber light. He threw his punch with the full weight of his desperation—but it slammed into Asani’s open palm.

  Time slowed.

  Then Asani’s fingers closed.

  It was like watching stone grind stone—unyielding, slow, deliberate. The knuckles shrieked under the pressure. Metal groaned. Then the scream of shearing brass echoed out—followed by something far worse.

  Eric’s fingers snapped free like brittle twigs caught in a vice, blood bursting from his crushed hand in a grotesque bloom. His scream ripped the air apart, primal and broken, as he collapsed to his knees, clutching his wrist like he was trying to hold his soul inside.

  Across the clearing, Cory lay slumped against the cottage wall, breath shallow, blood soaking through his shirt in thick, spreading blotches. His eyes widened with horror, lips parting in a silent gasp as he watched his friend’s mutilation. Hope leaked from him like the blood from his chest—slow and unstoppable.

  But Asani wasn’t done.

  No—this wasn’t war to him. It was art. A dance. A cruel little theatre in which he was both actor and audience. With the casual grace of a cat toying with a mouse, he circled Eric, letting the moment stretch, watching the agony ferment.

  He was just getting started.

  Eric’s scream cracked the air, a sound woven from agony and fury. “You freak!” he bellowed, blood drooling from his ruined hand. “You have no reason for this. You're just a fucking freak!”

  But his words fell like feathers against stone.

  Asani kept walking, slow and deliberate, his presence darker than a midnight storm. Shadows seemed to cling to him, drawn toward the gravity of his malice. His expression was unreadable—neither anger nor joy—just an icy disappointment.

  “Is that all the fight you have left?” he muttered, voice low and hollow, like wind slipping through a crypt. “I expected more.”

  He raised his hand.

  And the earth answered.

  With a sudden tremor, the ground beneath Eric cracked open like it had been holding its breath too long. A jagged fist—knotted, pale, and slick with black soil—erupted upward, punching through the crust of the world itself. Fingers like broken antlers clawed at the air before gripping the edge of the rupture and pulling something out.

  It was Eric.

  Or some warped, guttural imitation of him.

  The thing that emerged dragged its disfigured body into the dim light, skin blistered, eyes bulging like peeled grapes. Its right hand ended in a ragged stump, echoing the real Eric’s mutilation in grotesque mimicry.

  “I can create a better challenge… from nothing,” Asani said, almost wistfully, as the doppelg?nger stood and snarled with slavering anticipation.

  Meanwhile, at the threshold of the cottage, another figure stirred.

  “Cory,” came a soft, hoarse whisper. “Come over here.”

  Jake.

  Crouched low, eyes gleaming like something feral, he waved from the shadows of the doorway. The voice was just familiar enough to pierce through Cory’s fear.

  Cory’s face lit up faintly with fragile relief. He started to crawl, leaving smears of blood in his wake. He lifted one trembling hand from the wound on his chest—and immediately, fresh blood poured in thick rivulets, soaking the earth beneath him.

  Still, he pushed forward. He had to get away.

  Jake crawled back inside, beckoning him in like an old friend offering shelter from a storm.

  Cory crossed the threshold and collapsed inside the cottage, breathing hard, eyes darting to Jake as he tried to speak.

  “Where… where the hell have y—?”

  But he never finished.

  Jake’s jaw came unhinged with a wet, splitting crack, the bone shifting unnaturally as his mouth opened far too wide—far beyond anything human.

  Then he lunged.

  With the sound of tearing meat and snapping bone, Jake bit deep into Cory’s face, ripping skin and muscle from his skull in a single, monstrous chomp. The scream that came next wasn’t human—it was garbled, gurgling, the sound of a dying man trying to remember how to cry.

  Cory reeled backward, blood pouring down what was left of his face in a mask of pulp and horror.

  Jake bit again, this time into the side of his skull, and Cory’s body spasmed before falling still.

  Outside, Eric stared wide-eyed as his twin—his nightmare—grinned with teeth too long and eyes too empty.

  And Asani simply watched it all, arms crossed, like a director admiring his favorite scene.

  The twisted double of Eric began to change, its form unraveling into something not born from flesh but from fear itself. Its bones cracked like splintering wood as it grew taller, leaner, more terrible. Fingers stretched into jagged claws, twitching with hunger. Black sludge leaked from its hollow eye sockets, trailing down its face like the tears of the damned.

  Eric stumbled back, paralyzed for a breath—and then bolted, driven by pure, primal fear. He barely made it ten feet before something cold and metallic bloomed from his gut.

  Asani’s hasta.

  It erupted through his abdomen with a hiss of torn flesh and shredded will.

  Time fractured.

  The world seemed to hold its breath.

  Eric dropped to his knees, eyes wide with the surreal weight of what had just happened. He looked down at the cruel metal jutting from his body, its edges stained crimson and pulsing with the rhythm of his dying heart. Trembling, he tried to lift his left hand toward it—but his strength was already leaving him like water through cupped hands.

  Each breath was harder than the last.

  Each blink slower.

  His lungs burned. His chest hitched. Blood bubbled from his mouth in coughs that painted the air red.

  Behind him, he felt it—that thing. The nightmare. Its presence loomed like a living shadow, close enough to touch. The heat of its breath licked the back of his neck, reeking of rot and oblivion.

  But none of it mattered anymore.

  Eric’s will cracked, and with it, his grip on life.

  He let go.

  He let the dark take him.

  His body collapsed forward, slumping over the hasta like a broken puppet, blood pooling beneath him in lazy spirals. His eyes, half-lidded and vacant, stared into nothing as the last flickers of his awareness faded.

  Silence fell.

  No cheers. No screams. No sound but the whisper of wind through broken leaves.

  Only two bodies remained: Cory, bloodied and slumped at the cottage doorway, watching through blurred vision…

  And Eric, alone in the dirt, claimed by something older and crueler than death.

  Asani drifted from the blood-stained clearing, his expression unreadable—less triumphant than tired. There was no thrill in dominance without resistance, no satisfaction in crushing things already broken.

  He had hoped, just once, to feel something.

  Instead, disappointment clung to him like smoke.

  His body unraveled into a roiling black mist, edges writhing like serpents made of shadow. He surged into the sky—a dark cloud gliding above the treetops, fast and low, like a storm chasing silence. The air around him shimmered with wrongness, the world itself recoiling from his passage.

  Asani didn’t walk the path home.

  He haunted it.

  With a gust of unnatural wind, he slammed through the upper window of his house, glass parting as if it feared to cut him. The vaporous form coalesced midair, stitching itself back into flesh and bone just before his boots hit the polished floor of his office.

  The room greeted him in silence—still bathed in amber light, still immaculate and eerily still, like time had no dominion here.

  Asani exhaled once through his nose, slow and unimpressed.

  No challenge. No purpose. Just another hollow performance.

  Asani paused mid-step.

  His eyes scanned the room, slow and deliberate.

  Something was wrong.

  Books lay strewn across the floor like wounded soldiers, their pages torn and fluttering in the still air. The weapons lining the walls—precise, symmetrical, sacred in their arrangement—were now missing, gaps yawning like broken teeth. And at the center of the chaos, the mannequin—his silent sentinel—lay collapsed in a heap, lifeless, its hollow eyes staring at nothing.

  Asani’s expression darkened. He didn’t yell. He didn’t scowl.

  He simply said, in a voice that seemed to echo from the corners of the room:

  “Sephtis.”

  The air thickened.

  A moment passed before Sephtis entered through the far door, white hair floating around him like strands of silk underwater. His movements were loose, lazy, as if even gravity respected his indifference.

  He glanced at the ruined mannequin and gave a shallow sigh.

  “Poor Manny didn’t make it,” he said, the sorrow in his voice faint and practiced. “Shame.”

  Asani didn’t blink. “And what of our guests?”

  Sephtis spoke as though reading from a grocery list. “They survived. Both of them. I sent nightmares after them—had one zeroed in on the girl. Should’ve worked. But then your long-lost brother showed up.” He sneered at the word. “Cut through my constructs like they were made of fog. Sorry, my lord. I failed.”

  “No,” Asani said, calm but razor-sharp. “That’s fine.”

  A thin smile touched his lips—cold, calculating.

  “He’s on the list now… now that Brennan has returned.”

  With that, he raised both hands, fingers curling as if plucking invisible threads. The room shivered. Time unraveled in small pulses around him. The books leapt back to their shelves, their pages sealing shut. The missing weapons reappeared on the walls in perfect symmetry. The shattered glass reformed. The chaos folded in on itself until not a trace of disruption remained.

  Even the mannequin stirred.

  Its limbs snapped back into place with stiff, jerking movements. Its glassy eyes flickered. Then, like a marionette given purpose once more, it stood, turned, and walked silently across the hall into the neighboring room.

  Asani exhaled, the weight of control returning to his shoulders.

  “Let them run,” he said quietly. “The longer they live, the more they’ll remember. And that… is far more valuable than their deaths.”

  Sephtis nodded, eyes narrowing with intrigue.

  Somewhere beyond the walls, the storm began to gather.