In the middle of a dark underground corridor stood two figures, lazily chatting and from time to time shifting from foot to foot to keep warm. The stone walls of the prison were damp, and the air was cold, tinged with a faint smell of mold. The light from the magical crystals set into the ceiling cast pale shadows, stretching them long across the corridor.

  A woman with short silver hair, adjusting her collar and yawning, muttered:

  “If they keep sentencing traitors from the Vengeful Thunder Family at this rate, we’ll soon run out of space.”

  A tall man with red hair, leaning his shoulder against the wall, snorted and joked:

  “That’s fine. There’s always the commoners’ prison. It’ll be amusing to watch the nobles fighting over the more comfortable cells.”

  The woman chuckled and jabbed him lightly in the ribs with her elbow.

  “Keep it down. Or we’ll get reprimanded.”

  The man let out a heavy sigh, shuddering from the dampness.

  “I hate prison shifts. Especially in winter…”

  “Come on,” she said, cocking her head as she listened to a distant sound. “It’s already a little warmer.”

  She narrowed her eyes slightly.

  “Listen…”

  They both fell silent.

  In the stillness of the dungeon, somewhere in the distance, the clear sound of dripping water echoed. Steady and calm—like meltwater seeping through cracks in the stone, finding its way down.

  The man tilted his head, trying to catch the source of the sound.

  At that very moment, while their attention was fixed on the echo of the droplets, two black mice quietly darted along the floor near the corner of the corridor. Their small bodies nearly blended into the shadows, their paws making not the slightest sound.

  The mice slipped behind the guards’ backs and stopped.

  For a split second, their silhouettes wavered.

  In the next instant, they dissolved into black smoke that rose soundlessly and, as if alive, slipped straight into the bodies of the two mages.

  At once, both—the man and the woman—froze, as if their bodies had gone rigid in a single instant and their minds had simply gone blank. Their gazes turned glassy, their breathing even and shallow, their arms hanging limply at their sides. From the outside, it might have seemed they had merely fallen into thought, but not a trace of life remained in their posture.

  At that moment, Kael and the Black Rat stepped quietly out from around the corner.

  They moved in perfect synchrony and without a sound, their steps so soft that even the damp stone floor made no noise at all.

  Passing the motionless guards, Kael cast them a swift glance and noted inwardly, “Convenient magic…”

  The Black Rat did not pause for even a second. Moving deftly closer, she ran her hands over the man’s clothes, then the woman’s—the movements so precise and swift that Kael didn’t even catch the moment a ring of keys appeared in her palm.

  She gave a sly smile, one brow lifting slightly, and nodded ahead to signal the way was clear.

  Without saying a word, they continued deeper into the prison.

  Moving soundlessly along the corridor, they turned into a side section housing several elite cells—the doors here were thicker, and the lighting crystals burned steadily, without flicker.

  Without slowing her pace, the Black Rat inserted a key into the first barred door of the section and carefully turned it. The lock opened without a sound.

  When the door opened quietly, it revealed three more guards inside. One stood by the wall, while two sat at a table closer to the central passage, playing cards—or so it seemed at first glance. In truth, they too were frozen, their gazes empty and their bodies motionless, as if their minds had been torn away in a single instant.

  Without exchanging a word, the Black Rat and Kael walked past them and stopped at the door they sought.

  The Black Rat knelt and pressed her palm against the door, pausing for a moment. Her brows furrowed slightly, as though she were facing an intriguing puzzle that required a careful approach.

  Then, with a smooth motion, she drew a strange silver disc from her spatial ring.

  Kael’s eyebrows lifted almost imperceptibly, and inwardly he murmured, “Oh… I’ve never seen one in action…”

  Kneeling as well, he watched closely.

  The Black Rat pressed the silver disc against the door, and at once runes flared across its surface, arranged in a spiral from the center to the rim. Light coursed through the symbols unevenly: some runes glowed brightly and steadily, others faintly, flickering as if resisting.

  She placed her other palm against the metal door and began channeling her mana into the protective circle, controlling the flow with steady precision.

  At that very moment, several runes on the disc went dark, as though they had been switched off or suppressed.

  The Black Rat’s expression sharpened, her brows drawing tighter together—the ward was more complex than she had expected.

  She shifted her palm slightly, subtly altering the angle of contact, and adjusted the flow of her mana with it, guiding it along the ward’s circuit differently than before—more delicately, yet denser in certain places.

  The runes on the silver disc shifted at once. Those that had burned brightly dimmed, while several of the faint ones flared brighter, as though responding to the new configuration.

  Watching this, Kael recalled lines from old notes and, tilting his head slightly, murmured inwardly, “To open a magical seal, you must form a precise mana pattern within the door—at the correct density.”

  He gauged the volume of mana being poured in, assessing its stability and density.

  “It was probably Durimar or Vulnar who set this seal. It’s designed so that only a Jade Mage can supply the required density of mana. They really went all out…”

  A predatory smirk slowly formed on his face.

  “But even that isn’t enough.”

  A few more tense seconds passed. The Black Rat maintained the flow, gradually adjusting it, as though searching for the right key to a complex lock.

  And then the runes on the silver disc trembled.

  In the next instant, all the symbols flared at once with a steady light, forming a perfect spiral without a single flicker.

  A satisfied grin immediately spread across the Black Rat’s face. She shot a brief glance at Kael and nodded.

  With a sweep of her hand, black mana burst from her body, instantly forming a dense spherical barrier around the door. A thin film of darkness enveloped stone and metal, muffling any connection to the outside world.

  Only then did she speak freely.

  “Now no one will hear us. We can proceed.”

  As soon as she finished speaking, Kael rose to his feet and, placing his hands behind his back, calmly pushed the door inward with his foot, stepping into the cell.

  The hinges creaked softly, but thanks to the barrier, no one in the prison heard it.

  Opposite the entrance, seated on the cold stone floor, was Zeiran with his eyes closed. His wrists, ankles, and neck were bound by strange red metal rings. On his bare torso, directly over his heart, a complex pattern had been burned into the skin—a seal imprisoning his mana.

  Kael had not yet taken a single step inside when, in the silence of the cell, a hoarse, venomous old voice rang out: “I told you, I’m not hungry.”

  He spoke without opening his eyes, as though expecting another warden.

  But in the next instant, a voice rang out, and Zeiran flinched.

  “Won’t you even look your death in the eye?” Kael said calmly.

  Zeiran’s eyes snapped open.

  For a moment, confusion flickered in them—then recognition. He saw Kael standing at the entrance, and beside him, the Black Rat.

  The shock was so intense that the old man seemed to lose his voice. His lips twitched, but the words did not immediately come.

  Yet in the next moment, numbness gave way to fury.

  He sprang to his feet, his voice breaking into a roar.

  “Get over here, you damned brat!”

  But he did not manage to take a step.

  The Black Rat flicked her hand, and her mana immediately seized Zeiran’s body, wrenching him off the floor. His arms and legs were yanked apart, as though stretched on invisible threads pulled taut.

  Only now, suspended in the air and feeling his limbs strained by an unseen force, did Zeiran realize the truth—the woman beside Kael was a Jade Mage.

  His gaze darted to her, lingering on the dense, steady aura of her mana, and confusion flickered in his eyes.

  Clenching his teeth, he barked:

  “Who let you in here?! I was removed from power only recently, and Lasthold has already degraded this far?!”

  His voice trembled with rage and a trace of madness. It seemed that during his imprisonment, the old man’s mind had begun to falter. His words carried a desperate attempt to cling to the remnants of his former greatness.

  Watching this, Kael merely shook his head slowly.

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  “Respected Elder, you suffer so.”

  A cruel smile, devoid of warmth, appeared on his face.

  “And as a dutiful junior, I have come to ease that suffering.”

  At those words—and at the cold, murderous look in Kael’s eyes—Zeiran seemed to come back to himself for a moment. For the first time, genuine fear flickered in his gaze.

  “What are you… Why are you here?!” he shouted, jerking against the hold. “Do Durimar and Vulnar know about this visit?”

  Kael did not even deign to answer him.

  He merely turned his head slightly toward the Black Rat and said calmly, “Open this bastard’s mouth—make sure he can’t close it.”

  The Black Rat gave a short nod.

  In the next instant, her mana surged into Zeiran’s mouth in a sharp stream, forcibly prying his jaws apart and pinning his tongue down. The old man’s jaw cracked under the unnatural pressure. His facial muscles twitched, but he could not resist.

  He tried to roar, but only muffled, indignant groans and rasping sounds escaped his throat—helpless and humiliating.

  Kael stepped calmly closer to Zeiran, stopping so near that only a few handspans of air separated them. The helpless old man’s eyes were slightly above Kael’s, yet in that moment it did not feel as though Zeiran were looking down on him.

  On the contrary—now Kael stood above the proud Zeiran.

  For a fraction of a second, the thought pricked at him. A memory flared—a cold gaze from above, the crushing pressure of another’s will. He remembered himself in Zeiran’s place. His own helplessness before the God of Knowledge and Madness.

  Kael’s face twisted almost imperceptibly. But he immediately cast aside those memories, returning to the present.

  “You didn’t truly think I would allow you to live, did you?” he said calmly.

  Pure horror flared in Zeiran’s eyes.

  Kael made a slow gesture with his hand, and a black pill appeared in his palm, its surface etched with strange, gleaming violet spirals. They shimmered faintly in the crystal light, giving off an ominous air.

  He lifted it to the level of the old man’s eyes.

  “I prepared this personally for you.”

  Kael’s fingers moved unhurriedly closer, and he placed the pill carefully on Zeiran’s tongue.

  “As soon as it enters your body, you will begin to lose your mind,” he continued in an even voice. “And then it will feel as though insects are crawling beneath your skin—ones you will desperately want to claw out.”

  He leaned a little closer.

  “The descriptions say the victim quickly bleeds out.”

  Even the Black Rat, standing behind him, tensed for a moment at how coldly he spoke.

  Zeiran immediately began to moan, thrashing desperately in her hold, as though trying to beg for mercy with sound alone. His eyes widened to their limit, and suddenly tears streamed from them—denial, rage, pleading, and animal terror all mixed together.

  He no longer looked at Kael as an enemy, but as a sentence.

  But Kael’s expression did not change.

  He calmly pushed the pill deeper with his finger and, releasing a thin pulse of his mana, forced it straight down the old man’s throat, giving him no chance to spit it out. The pill vanished, sliding inside.

  In the next moment, Zeiran let out a scream so sharp it almost immediately broke his voice. The sound was sharp and fractured, but the barrier absorbed it, keeping it within the cell.

  Kael smirked coldly.

  “What an astonishing will to live…”

  And, tilting his head slightly, added, “No less than I had when you wished to kill me. Ironic, isn’t it?”

  Zeiran tried to scream again, but instead of a roar, only a hoarse rasp tore from his throat. His eyes suddenly lost their shine, his pupils quivering as his body shuddered from head to toe.

  “It seems the pill has begun to take effect…” Kael noted to himself.

  A spasm ran through the old man’s body, his fingers clenching as his breathing turned ragged.

  Kael turned to the Black Rat and said:

  “You can release him.”

  She held her gaze on Zeiran for a moment and asked doubtfully, “Are you sure?”

  “All his mana is blocked right now,” Kael replied calmly. “He cannot resist the poison’s effect.”

  After a brief pause, Kael added, “Under normal circumstances, a pill like this wouldn’t have affected him at all. This poison wasn’t designed for secret assassination…”

  The Black Rat, attempting to ease the tension, joked:

  “That’s good. Then I’m safe.”

  “Yes,” Kael nodded shortly. “And soon you’ll be even more grateful for that.”

  The Black Rat slowly dispelled her mana.

  The invisible force vanished, and Zeiran immediately collapsed onto the stone floor. Instead of rising, his body began to tremble and convulse, as though something beneath his skin were writhing, trying to tear its way out.

  Looking down at him, Kael said evenly:

  “It’s a rather insidious poison. It was used for torture—binding the victim and forcing them to endure horrific sensations…”

  He paused briefly and added more darkly:

  “They bound them because otherwise the mage would simply kill himself.”

  As if confirming his words, Zeiran suddenly roared in a broken voice:

  “No! What is this?! Get away! Get away!”

  His hands began to strike frantically at his chest and shoulders, his neck and stomach, as though he were trying to swat away invisible insects crawling beneath his skin. His nails left bloody streaks across his flesh, his breathing turned into hoarse sobs.

  But what happened next made even Kael flinch.

  Zeiran suddenly bent down and sank his teeth into his own wrist, savagely tearing off a chunk of flesh. Blood splattered onto the stone floor and across his chest, yet it seemed pain no longer existed for him—or had already been drowned in madness.

  Almost immediately, he began clawing at the wound with his nails, as if trying to rip something out from beneath his skin.

  For a moment, Kael felt nausea rise in his throat. He immediately turned away, muttering a sharp curse. “Damn it…”

  A thought flashed through his mind: “Did I overdo the dosage? This might be too much…”

  The Black Rat, watching what was happening, said quietly, “You’re quite vindictive, Kael. I wouldn’t want to be your enemy.”

  Kael, still averting his gaze, replied quickly, “The descriptions of this poison’s effects were far less vivid.”

  Casting a brief glance over his shoulder at Zeiran inflicting increasingly severe injuries upon himself, at blood already spreading across the floor in dark streams, Kael felt an unpleasant chill run down his spine.

  “Had I known the effect would be this savage,” he said quietly, forcing down the nausea, “I wouldn’t have dared to use it.”

  The Black Rat shifted her gaze to him, then back to the writhing old man.

  “Maybe we should kill him—so he doesn’t suffer.”

  Kael slowly shook his head.

  “No. That would leave clear signs of murder. And once this poison is fully absorbed into the body, no one in Lasthold will be able to detect it.”

  The Black Rat raised an eyebrow slightly in mockery, watching Zeiran snarl and writhe across the floor, smearing crimson streaks over the stone.

  “You think anyone will believe Zeiran did this voluntarily?”

  Kael replied coldly, “Will they have a choice? They’ll have to believe the old man couldn’t endure the loss of power and went mad.”

  For several seconds, the Black Rat watched the former Elder’s agony in silence. Then her face hardened, as if she had recalled many fallen comrades.

  “A quick death is too easy an end for him…” she said evenly. “Let him suffer before he dies. In his time, that old man tortured and killed hundreds of people. He deserves this.”

  Kael stood in silence for several minutes, listening to the horrific sounds and feeling the nausea gradually subside. Slowly turning back, he looked at Zeiran again.

  The old man was barely breathing.

  He had driven himself to such a state that within seconds he had lost almost all his blood. The convulsions grew rare and weak, his movements unconscious, as though his body were twitching on sheer reflex.

  For a moment, Kael felt a flicker of sympathy toward his enemy. But then, recalling how this man had wanted to kill him and everyone he cared about, Kael quickly pushed the thought aside.

  With a stony expression, forcing his emotions aside, he said firmly:

  “Zeiran undoubtedly deserved this. But perhaps… in the future, I’ll choose faster and less vivid methods of revenge.”

  By then, Zeiran was barely moving. The pool of blood had spread across the floor and slowly crept toward the boots of Kael and the Black Rat.

  A final painful rasp escaped the old man’s throat.

  And a moment later, his body jerked one last time—and went limp.

  A heavy silence settled over the cell.

  The Black Rat was the first to look away, turning toward the door.

  “As far as I’m concerned, that’s a fitting death for such scum.”

  Kael nodded, not lingering a moment longer, and turned as well.

  “We’ve done what we came to do. There’s no reason to stay.”

  With those words, they quickly left the cell. The Black Rat placed her palm against the door, restoring the magical seal, already knowing the proper “key.” It took only a few seconds for the protective pattern to close softly, as though no one had touched it at all.

  After that, they just as quietly closed the entrance to the wing with the elite cells, and then returned the ring of keys to the clothing of the silver-haired woman, carefully placing it exactly where it had been before.

  From start to finish, no more than fifteen minutes had passed.

  As soon as they slipped unnoticed from the prison and vanished into the night streets of Lasthold, the guards’ stupor lifted.

  The red-haired man blinked, as though he had merely been distracted for a second, and shivered from the dampness.

  “Good thing you’re here,” he continued, as if the conversation had never been interrupted. “Otherwise the sound of those droplets would’ve driven me mad.”

  The silver-haired woman laughed softly, adjusting her gloves.

  “Careful, or I’ll think you’re trying to court me.”

  The man smirked, rubbing his nose slightly.

  “And what if I am?”

  Their voices carried calmly along the corridor, mingling with the steady echo of falling droplets. In the elite section, laughter rang out as one of the guards foolishly lost a game of cards. Not a single guard, not a single mage in the prison noticed that over the past fifteen minutes, something terrible had taken place.

  In the elite, untouchable cell where the proud and unyielding Elder Zeiran had sat only moments before, there now lay his mutilated corpse.

  No one had entered, and no one had left. The protective seal was intact, and the door unbroken.

  By all appearances, the old man had wrought this cruel madness himself. And in truth, it had been. Zeiran had killed himself with his own hands. There were no traces of other mages.

  ? ? ?

  At that moment, Kael and the Black Rat were already walking calmly along a night street in Lasthold. The snow beneath their feet had melted in places, leaving dark damp patches on the stone pavement, and muted voices and laughter drifted from the taverns.

  After watching Kael in silence for a while, the Black Rat finally asked, “Do you feel any better?”

  Kael slowly turned his gaze to her, as if he had been lost deep in thought. There was neither joy nor relief nor sorrow in his eyes.

  After considering her question for a moment, he replied calmly:

  “This situation doesn’t warrant emotion. We did what had to be done. People like him cannot be left alive.”

  Lifting his eyes to the starry sky and recalling stories from chronicles and ancient annals, he added:

  “You never know how life will turn, or which scoundrel might suddenly be given a second chance. If there’s an opportunity to eliminate an irreconcilable enemy, you must do it without hesitation.”

  At those words, the Black Rat slowed her steps for a moment. In her gaze flickered once more the sense that the one walking beside her was far from a sixteen-year-old boy, but someone who had seen far more than he should have.

  Turning his words over in her mind, she said quietly, “Your reasoning sounds bloodthirsty. But that doesn’t make it any less true.”

  Kael gave a crooked smile.

  “Let’s not talk about blood and bloodlust anymore. I’m still feeling a little sick.”

  For a moment, images surfaced in Kael’s mind of how the God of Knowledge and Madness had tortured him—forcing him through countless horrors without granting him even the chance of death.

  “Mad cruelty isn’t new or frightening to me,” he muttered. “I thought killing would simply be another manifestation of it.”

  He fell silent for a moment, then added honestly, “But as it turns out… killing is entirely different.”

  Kael exhaled, as if shedding the last remnants of tension, and with a crooked smile said, “To be honest, I wouldn’t mind a proper drink right now.”

  The Black Rat smirked and, as if wishing to encourage him, said, “Care for some company? I’d gladly celebrate the death of that piece of trash.”

  Kael chuckled softly, trying to dispel the lingering gloom.

  “It would be an honor,” he replied with a nod.

  With those words, the Black Rat suddenly clapped him on the back and gave him a slight shove, confidently leading the way.

  “There are a few taverns owned by the Forsaken Brotherhood,” she said. “Let’s go there. We won’t be disturbed.”

  Kael smirked as he walked beside her.

  “Excellent choice. And we won’t even have to pay for it.”

  The Black Rat stopped for a split second, raised an eyebrow, and looked at him with feigned indignation.

  “And who told you that?” she snorted. “You’ll pay every coin!”

  Kael laughed, and with it the heaviness of the past few minutes finally faded.

  “Then I hope you offer good discounts to good friends.”

  “We’ll see how you behave,” she shot back, quickening her pace. “What if you get drunk and start smashing dishes?”

  Laughing, the two of them continued along the lively streets of Lasthold. Stars shone above the city, warm light poured from the open tavern doors, and for most of its residents, this evening was no different from any other—an ordinary night, ordinary conversations, ordinary laughter.

  No one knew of the horror in the elite cell, nor of the unknown threat moving toward them from the south.