Edmund’s men didn’t share his sudden sense of obligation.

  The alley still smelled of smoke and damp stone, and the sharp bite of whatever Jules had thrown clung stubbornly to the back of the throat. Water trickled somewhere nearby, down a gutter, into a crack, into a darkness that never stopped swallowing filth, and the cobbles underfoot were slick enough that one wrong step could’ve put a man on his back. Damien shifted uneasily, eyeing the three boys and the battered thief like they were all part of the same problem.

  “This is a street fight,” Damien muttered, low enough that only the group heard. “The pri—private, mustn’t involve himself in such things, even in disguise.”

  Another knight nodded. “And there’s a high chance these three are criminals, just look at their weapons. What if they’re only leading him to a trap?”

  With the suspicion unwavering, Damien stepped closer to Edmund, voice tight, the look on his face the same one he wore when a plan went awry.

  “Private… Edward,” he said, “we’re here to move quietly. We’re not meant to be seen involving ourselves in local trouble. Not with what we are, and who knows where they will take you.”

  Gualter glanced at Edmund’s coat, torn where Marc’s blade had sliced it. “He’s right,” he added gently. “We don’t even know if their story is true.”

  Edmund looked at the three boys again. Noel stood with his shoulders squared too hard, refusing to show he’d been frightened. Jules kept his eyes down the street, jittery and ready to run if the wind changed direction. Marc’s expression was a mask, the kind that said he’d already learned what panic cost. And the thief was sitting against the wall with his head hanging forward, water dribbling from the corner of his mouth, eyes darting like a trapped animal’s.

  Edmund exhaled. His men were right. The sensible choice was to walk away, and yet, he didn’t. “Then I’ll go with them alone. You can stay here.”

  Damien responded without hesitation. “No, that is not an option.”

  For a moment, the only sound was the distant hum of the city. Distant voices, cart wheels, someone shouting prices in the market, a bird crying somewhere above the rooftops.

  Damien joined knights and huddled a few steps away. Edmund didn’t need to hear their words to understand the argument. Duty versus prudence, honor against discretion. They spoke with clipped frustration, hands moving, heads bending close. Damien’s posture stayed rigid throughout, like a man trying not to look worried. When they finally separated, he returned first, expression resigned but not pleased. “You’re not going alone. If you insist on doing this, I’m coming.”

  Gualter lifted a hand. “Me as well.”

  Damien shot him a look, but Gualter only shrugged. “Someone has to keep this from turning into another brawl.”

  The compromise settled into the smallest group possible, and Edmund agreed. He turned to Marc and asked that they wait for a moment.

  Marc’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  “I can’t disappear and head somewhere without telling the rest of my companions” Edmund flicked his gaze toward the street, toward the direction they had come from. “Wait here. Don’t move.”

  Jules scoffed. “You think we’re just gonna stand around like obedient little—”

  “You will,” Damien’s stare cut him off like a blade.

  That shut Jules up fast.

  Edmund dispatched one of the men to fetch the others. The knight jogged off, boots splashing through a shallow puddle, and the alley was left with that tense, impatient stillness that always followed violence. Noel shifted from foot to foot, restless. “So…” he said, trying to act casual. “Mind telling us your names?”

  “Name’s Edm—Edward,” Edmund answered before introducing the others, and his companions who were just about to arrive. He told them the same fabricated story, that they were a group of travelling merchants.

  Noel blinked. “Merchant,” he repeated, like the concept surprised him. “You kick like a horse, fight like a bull, and you live off by sellin’ silverware and odd spices?”

  “He’s a… um… a hired mercenary,” Gualter corrected. “We’re the merchants… we hired him… to protect us.”

  “Ah, now that makes sense,” Noel nodded. “Could use a guy like you if—

  “Noel, they’re here to help us only this time,” Marc cut in.

  The message was clear, and Noel set aside whatever he wanted to say. Their work wasn’t something to be offered in an alleyway, and most strictly, not by them. They waited a while longer, exchanging mundane stories all the while. Somewhere nearby, warm laughter spilled out of an open window. A cart rattled past the mouth of the alley, the smell of onions and fried oil drifting in for a second before it vanished. Overhead, clouds moved in slow layers, pale and heavy.

  Footsteps approached at last. Aristide appeared first, his gaze already searching for threats before he even fully entered the alley. Behind him came Serena and Leif, and the former’s eyes went immediately to Edmund’s coat. She hurried to his side, asking what happened, if he was injured. Thankfully, it was just the fabric. Edmund just started explaining to her the situation when somewhere nearby, Noel made a small sound. It was barely a breath, but it drew attention like a bell. Noel was staring at Serena as if the alley had suddenly become brighter.

  His earlier bravado evaporated. His shoulders straightened. His bright-brown eyes widened with a boyish sparkle, the kind of stunned curiosity that didn’t belong in a place that smelled like smoke and dried fish.

  “Who—who’s… that?” he asked, almost reverent.

  Gualter answered first, keeping it smooth. “That’s Serena,” he said. “She’s with us.”

  Noel took a small step forward before thinking better of it. Then he took another until he was only a few paces from her.

  “Hi,” he said.

  It wasn’t suave, not even confident. It was more of a greeting that sounded like it escaped him against his will. Serena blinked, caught off-guard, then offered a polite, careful smile. “Hello.”

  Noel swallowed, suddenly aware of his own dirt-streaked sleeves and the bruises forming on his face. “I’m… Noel,” he said, in a way that made it seem like even he wasn’t sure if that was his name. “Nice to meet you.”

  Jules stared at him like he’d grown a second head. Marc’s eyes narrowed in disbelief and reached out, grabbed Noel by the ear, and pinched hard.

  “Ow!” Noel yelped, instantly snapping out of whatever trance he’d fallen into.

  Marc dragged him back a step like he was hauling an unruly child away from a cliff. “Focus,” he hissed. “We’re not here to flirt.”

  “It wasn’t— I wasn’t—” Noel stammered while Marc dragged him away from Serena.

  Leif coughed once, suspiciously like a laugh he refused to let out.

  “Who are these guys again?” he asked, eyeing the three boys the way he eyed wild animals.

  Edmund explained what had happened, how the chase had ended, what the thief had admitted, and his intention of helping them get their seal back. By the time he finished, Serena’s expression had tightened into something sharper than concern.

  “Let me come with you,” she said immediately.

  “I’ll come too,” Leif added, already half a step forward.

  Edmund didn’t plan on brining them along. Although he agreed to help the three boys, he too was uncertain what he was going into. Still, he knew the two Alvarynn full well. Telling them no would only lead to a prolonged debate, in which he would give in. Without further thought, he let them come, but with one condition.

  “If this leads to a fight, you’re not going to join, unless it’s absolutely necessary,” the prince said. “I don’t want to risk revealing what you are.”

  Both Leif and Serena looked like they wanted to argue, but reluctantly, they both nodded. They too didn’t want to give Edmund more trouble than what was already at hand. Aristide exhaled like he’d been holding his patience in his teeth. “Are you sure you want us to head back to the inn?” he asked

  The older prince nodded, and the group split. Edmund and his companions moved through the streets at a brisk pace, turning away from the busy main roads and into narrower passages where the city smelled different, less spice and bread, more damp stone and refuse. Laundry hung from lines above like tired flags. Window shutters sat crooked on their hinges. Somewhere behind a door, a child cried. Elsewhere, someone laughed too loudly, like they were trying to prove hunger couldn’t touch them.

  A thin drizzle began to drift down, cold enough to sting the face. Noel glanced back over his shoulder as they walked, still eyeing Edmund like he couldn’t decide if he admired him or resented him.

  “So where’d you learn to fight?” he asked. “You’re strong. And I mean—when you hit me? That didn’t feel like a punch.” He rubbed his ribs as if remembering it hurt. “It felt like getting hit by a sledge hammer.”

  Edmund didn’t miss a step. “Nowhere in particular… just the road, maybe,” he said after the briefest pause. “It’s part of the job. Staying strong.”

  Marc made a sound that was almost a laugh, but meaner. “I’ve fought mercenaries,” he said. “They don’t move like you. And they sure as hell don’t hit like that.”

  Damien’s voice cut in, smooth as a locked door. “He’s gifted,” he said, glancing at Edmund with an expression that dared the boys to question further. “That’s why we… took him in.”

  Noel’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t look convinced.

  Gualter, sensing the thread tugging toward danger, changed the direction with practiced ease. “What about you three?” he asked. “If we’re going to help, we should know something about who we’re helping.”

  Marc’s shoulders rose and fell in a stiff shrug. “We’re just regular people stuck livin’ here,” he said.

  “You don’t like Danuville?” Gualter asked.

  Marc’s gaze swept the street, cracked stones, sagging roofs, a woman sweeping the same patch of dirt like it might eventually become clean if she hated it enough. “You’ve seen what it’s like.”

  “It ain’t pretty,” Noel muttered, quieter now.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  Edmund looked ahead, then asked, carefully, “How long have you lived here?”

  Noel hesitated, hoping he would sound convincing enough. “Our family’s been here for generations.”

  “Who taught you to fight then?” Gualter asked. “You’ve got skills, and your weapons don’t look like something you just picked up from the sideroad.”

  Marc responded without moving his eyes from the road. “You’ve got to learn how to fight, in any way you can, if you want to survive here.”

  The answer was simple, enough to explain everything that no further questions needed to be asked. Eventually, the street narrowed again, bending toward a darker stretch of buildings where the windows seemed to watch back. The town gradually quieted down, until the sounds died all together. They’ve reached an abandoned neighborhood. Marc slowed, then lifted his chin toward the turn.

  “This is the place?” he asked the thief.

  The man nodded. “Just up ahead.”

  Here, the air felt colder, heavier. Wind pushed through empty window frames with a low, hollow whistle, carrying the sour stink of stagnant puddles and old rot. The cobbles were cracked and uneven. Shutters hung half-open on abandoned houses, tapping softly now and then when the breeze caught them. The thief, still bound, nodded toward a large building set back from the street.

  It looked like it had once been something communal. A hall, maybe. A place where people gathered for meetings or celebrations. Now it stood slumped and gutted, its roofline sagging, its boards grey with age, its windows either broken or sealed with warped planks.

  “It’s there,” the thief said quickly. “That’s the hideout. The gang should be inside.”

  Edmund didn’t loosen his grip on the situation for a second. Damien kept a hand on the thief’s shoulder, firm, while Gualter watched the street behind them. The plan was simple. Leif and Serena remained across the road with the thief, partially sheltered by a low stone wall and a toppled cart. Edmund, his two soldiers and the three boys would enter the hideout and retrieve the seal.

  Slowly, they walked toward the degraded building. Every step was measured. Boots rolled from heel to toe to keep the stones from clacking. Even their breathing felt too loud. They reached the building’s side and crouched beneath a window. A jagged hole gaped in the frame, the glass long gone. Edmund leaned in and peered through.

  He saw nothing.

  Only shadows and the vague outlines of overturned furniture. Damien scanned the surrounding street. Gualter listened, head tilted slightly, and still nothing came.

  Edmund glanced back and lifted two fingers in a quick signal to Leif and Serena.

  We’re going in.

  They both nodded, faces tight. The prince turned back, and he and the small group moved to the door. It wasn’t locked. That alone set Edmund’s nerves on edge. He nudged it open slowly. The hinges gave a faint groan that felt deafening in the quiet. They froze, listening for an answer.

  None came.

  They slipped inside, and the air hit them first. The stale alcohol, damp cloth, and the musty bite of wood that had been wet too many times. It smelled like a place that had been lived in hard and abandoned fast. The interior was a vast hall. High ceiling beams vanished into darkness above. Tables and chairs were scattered in careless angles, some overturned, some broken. Crates had been stacked into makeshift barricades and then half-dismantled again. Bottles littered the floor, glass catching the faint light, some shattered into glittering shards that would crunch under a boot if anyone was careless.

  Along one wall, strips of fabric hung like curtains, tacked up to cover holes where winter wind would otherwise cut straight through. A few old blankets lay in heaps, flattened and dirty. It would appear people had slept there recently. Edmund had expected noise. Even a gang had habits. Men talking, coughing, snoring, arguing, laughing too loud. Instead, there was only the soft whistle of wind through cracks, and the occasional drip of water somewhere deeper inside.

  Everything felt wrong.

  Gualter’s voice came out low, barely more than breath. “Are hideouts always this quiet?”

  “No,” Marc said, and for the first time since they’d met him, he sounded genuinely uneasy. “Places like this… there’s always noise. Someone drinking, someone complaining, someone playing dice. Always.”

  They advanced deeper, keeping low. Damien gestured for spacing, two steps between each of them, enough room to react if something lunged out. They ducked behind crates, checked corners, tested doorways with the edges of their blades rather than their hands. A loose plank creaked under Marc’s boot, and everyone froze. No one came looking.

  Gualter leaned toward Edmund, voice cautious. “Are we even in the right place? Because this looks like—”

  He didn’t finish. A sound cut through the hall sharp, sudden, and close. The sound came again, faint, rhythmic, and unmistakably wet, coming from the far end of the hall.

  Edmund’s gaze followed it through the gloom until he spotted a door that sat slightly ajar. The air around that end of the building felt different. Colder and thicker, carrying a sour, iron tang that didn’t belong in an empty room. They approached in a slow line, careful with every step. Marc reached the door first and leaned in, peering through the crack.

  At first, it looked like more of the same. Scattered debris, warped boards, dim light spilling in through holes overhead. Marc pushed the door open wider with two fingers, silent as he could manage, and slipped through. Edmund followed, the rest close behind.

  The room beyond was just as large and cluttered. Afternoon light cut through gaps in the roof in pale shafts, illuminating dust motes that drifted lazily like ash.

  The sound grew louder and clearer. It came from deeper inside, where those beams didn’t reach and where the shadows pooled thick between stacked crates and collapsed furniture.

  Chew.

  Tear.

  Chew.

  Damien’s hand tightened on his weapon. Edmund felt it too, that creeping sense of wrongness, the instinct that something here wasn’t merely dangerous but unnatural. They moved forward. The smell hit them properly then. Damp cloth, old rot… and underneath it, the sharp metallic bite of fresh blood. In the dark ahead, something shifted.

  A figure knelt on the floor, hunched over something in its hands. Its shoulders rose and fell in a slow, possessive motion. The wet sound continued, steady and obscene in the quiet hall.

  Noel swallowed audibly behind them. “What is he doing?” he whispered.

  Marc’s face tightened. “I’ll get closer,” he murmured, voice low but determined. He lifted a hand toward the group. “Stay here.”

  Everyone instinctively crouched behind the nearest crates and broken tables, using whatever cover they could. Edmund kept his eyes on Marc, watching the way he placed his feet, heel to toe, avoiding glass and loose boards.

  Marc crept forward, took another step, and his boot came down on something brittle. The sound was small, but in that silence, it might as well have been a bell. The figure stopped chewing. For a heartbeat, it didn’t move, then its head snapped up. Slowly, almost lazily, it began to rise.

  Marc straightened too, trying to mask the jolt of fear by turning it into anger. “Hey!” he called, loud enough to carry. “You live here?! Where’s the rest of your gang?”

  The figure turned, and Marc’s bravado faltered.

  The man’s clothes were torn and hanging off him in strips, darkened at the front by old stains and fresh smears. His chest and arms were marked with wounds, some crusted, some raw, as if he’d been dragged through barbed stone. His posture was wrong, too stiff in the shoulders, too loose in the neck, like his body was being held upright by something that didn’t quite fit inside it.

  But it was his face that made Marc stumble back.

  His eyes were pure white, not rolled back in panic, not glazed with drink, but blank and lifeless. It was as though the irises had been erased. Blood slicked the corner of his mouth. And when his lips parted, his teeth were too sharp, uneven points that caught the faint light like little blades. He stared at Marc without blinking.

  Marc’s voice cracked despite himself. “What the—”

  His gaze dropped, following the man’s hands to what he’d been crouched over. Something pale… and human.

  A severed arm.

  The realization hit like a punch to the gut, and Marc’s stomach lurched. He took a step back, his eyes locked on the thing’s face. The man didn’t follow. He only stared, head canted to one side, still as a corpse. Marc backed away slowly, breath turning thin. His guard slipped for half a second. That was all it took. The man exploded forward, arms clawing, jaw unhinging wide, teeth bared, going straight for Marc’s throat.

  Marc’s scream tore through the hall and snapped everyone into motion at once. The others burst from their hiding places the moment Marc hit the ground. He was on his back, boots scraping for purchase, both hands shoved up against a thrashing shape on top of him. It wasn’t fighting like a man, it was clawing and biting, jerking its head in sharp, hungry snaps that made its teeth click.

  Without a second thought, Noel moved before anyone could stop him. He slammed into the attacker and drove a fist into its jaw. The impact sounded solid, bone on knuckle, yet the thing barely reacted. Noel didn’t stop and hooked an arm around it from behind and hauled with all his weight, flinging it aside like a sack.

  Marc sucked in air, eyes wide, chest heaving.

  Noel grabbed his forearm and yanked him upright. “What happened?!”

  Marc’s voice came out harsh, breathless. “They’re—” He pointed shakily toward the man, the one Noel just wrenched off him. “That one lunged at me and I—I—”

  He didn’t get to finish.

  The man Noel had thrown aside rose.

  Not like a stunned thug pushing himself up. Not even like a fighter shaking off pain. It rose too smoothly, too quickly, head tilting as if the hit had meant nothing at all. Its white eyes fixed on Noel. Its mouth opened, lips peeling back to show teeth too sharp and wet with red. It was only then Noel noticed the corpse and severed arm behind it.

  Noel squared up on instinct. “Want some more?”

  A sound answered him from deeper in the hall. Then another. Low, small growls, rapid and layered, like too many throats making the same hungry noise at once. It came from behind crates, from doorways, from the dark seams of the building where daylight couldn’t reach. Shapes started to move. Men, if they were men, stepped out one by one, then in a slow spill that turned into a wave. Torn clothes. Blood-smears, blank white eyes, mouths parted with the same mindless intent.

  Edmund felt the shift in the room, the way the air tightened, the way the silence broke into a rising chorus of wet breaths and shuffling feet. Dust drifted down from the beams as something bumped a table deeper inside. A bottle rolled and shattered somewhere, glass tinkling like ice.

  The prince drew steel, so did Damien and Gualter, blades flashing as they came up into guard. Jules cursed under his breath and slid devices from beneath his coat, small metal canisters gripped like lifelines. Marc snatched his knife up off the floor, knuckles whitening around the handle.

  The one Noel had punched lunged at him again fast, head-first, mouth yawning wide. He caught it by the shoulders and shoved, bracing his legs. It thrashed, snapping at the air inches from his face. Marc moved in like a shadow and slashed across its throat. The creature didn’t die with a scream. It made a wet, broken sound, more animal than human, and folded, twitching on the floor, but there was no time to stare. The others hit them all at once.

  Edmund stepped into motion, power gathering instinctively into his sword. Lightning crackled along the steel, sharp and bright in the gloom. He swung, and the blade cut through a charging body, leaving behind a scorched line where the strike landed. The smell of burnt cloth and singed hair snapped through the air.

  Damien fought like a man who’d decided mercy was a luxury they couldn’t afford. One attacker rushed him from the side, Damien pivoted and drove his blade through it with a brutal efficiency, ripping it free and turning immediately to meet the next. Another came from behind. Damien spun and struck again, sending his blade down hard.

  Gualter wasn’t as heavy a hitter, but he was quick. His breathing came fast and sharp as he slipped between lunges, landing shallow cuts where he could and retreating before teeth snapped shut. He moved like a man fencing against wolves, always half a step from disaster, always searching for an opening that wouldn’t get him dragged down.

  Jules’ devices hissed and popped in his hands. He threw one, then another. Smoke burst, sparks flared, then fire, crawling across splintered boards and catching on torn sleeves. The heat didn’t frighten them, but that at least made them hesitate. A stutter in their advance, bodies recoiling from heat like instinct still lived somewhere deep inside them.

  Noel’s punches landed with force, but it was like hitting meat that didn’t register pain. He struck one in the temple, it snapped back, then lunged again, jaws clacking. He grabbed another by the collar and drove it into a table hard enough to splinter wood. Still, it stood and kept coming, hands clawing, mouth searching.

  More poured out from doorways. From behind curtains. From the shadows between stacked crates. Their growls layered over each other until it sounded like the building itself was snarling.

  Edmund’s lightning flashed again and again, each crackling burst throwing the hall into brief, violent clarity. Faces slack and unblinking, white eyes reflecting light without recognition, mouths smeared red as if they’d forgotten what speaking was. Damien’s blade rang against bone. He didn’t shout orders anymore. He didn’t waste breath. He simply cut, pivoted, then cut again, fury distilled into precision.

  The hall dissolved into chaos, and the worst part was realizing the fight wasn’t simply difficult. It was futile.

  The ones they dropped, those that weren’t split apart or burned, began to move again. A man Edmund had cut across the torso twitched, then pushed himself up, the charred line across his chest smoking faintly. Another with a ruined shoulder rolled it once, as if testing a stiff joint, and came shambling back into the fray. Wounds that should have emptied bodies onto the floor like sacks of meat were treated like minor inconveniences, scratches that didn’t matter.

  Marc backed away, horror tightening his face. “They’re getting back up,” he rasped.

  Edmund’s voice came out like a growl. “Then we put them down properly.”

  His grip tightened until his knuckles ached. Lightning arced again, brighter this time, yet even as bodies fell, more kept coming, and the hall’s shadows kept producing teeth and hands. Then, a new sound cut through the chaos. Something louder than a growl. Wood splintered, beams groaned, heavy footsteps that made dust rain from the ceiling. The door at the far end of the room buckled outward as something on the other side had thrown itself into it with brute impatience. The door burst outward, and something came barreling through

  It was enormous, three times a man’s height, too big for the doorway it had chosen. It came in hunched, shoulders grinding the warped beams. Its mass blotted out what little light reached that end of the hall. Two heads rode the same thick neck, one slightly higher than the other, both turned toward the room with red, hungry eyes. Four arms swung beneath them, stitched on at uneven angles, cords of dead muscle flexing wrong. Crude seams crisscrossed its green-gray flesh, staples and stitches biting deep. It looked as though someone had tried to build a body from spare parts and didn’t care what it would look like.

  Edmund felt the hair rise along his arms.

  This wasn’t just a gang, and this nightmare had only just begun.