The door creaked as West stumbled in, breaking the tension between Omni and Tyrus. The air inside was thick with cold stone, faint incense, and the metallic scent of iron from the shackles along the cell’s wall. A single candle flickered, throwing restless shadows across their faces.

  “West!” Omni exclaimed, half in surprise, half in disbelief. “You’re a little early, aren’t you?”

  The young man clutched the wall for balance, his eyes struggling to stay open. “We need to leave right now, Master Omni,” he slurred, his voice caught between urgency and intoxicated determination.

  Omni narrowed his gaze. “Are you drunk?”

  “What? Yes, but…no, wait? Master, now is not the time, we must leave now,” West said, the words tumbling over each other as his head swayed back and forth…

  “Right,” Omni said, snapping his fingers, “just as soon as you free Tyrus.”

  “What? No. We can’t afford the time, Master.” West replied.

  Omni stepped closer, the authority in his tone soft but unmistakable. “Is that a refusal of your duty?”

  West tried to straighten up, blinking hard to find his balance. “No, Master. I simply ask you to consider our situation.”

  Omni sighed softly and placed a hand on West’s shoulder. “You’re drunk and in no position to be questioning my decisions.”

  The young West's eyelids fluttered, and for a moment, he nodded off during the argument, barely conscious. The tainted wine had him in its grip.

  Then came the sound: boots against stone, the muffled chatter of soldiers drawing near. Omni’s expression sharpened. West, jolted awake, instinctively looked for cover.

  Before Omni could say a word, West had already climbed the wall, scaling the uneven stones like a startled cat until he pressed himself against the ceiling, breath shallow, body trembling.

  The door burst open. Two Evokian guards entered, heavy-shouldered and clad in worn bronze armor that caught the light. Their faces were hard and tired, eyes dim with routine violence. The taller one glanced around the room before fixing his attention on Omni and Tyrus.

  Enk stepped through the doorway, his armor catching the dull lamplight. “Lord Omni, there’s been an incident. We need to take you back to your quarters.” He held the door open with military precision, posture stiff enough to make his tension obvious.

  “Oh, well, I just needed a few more minutes, if I could just…” Omni began, his voice even but measured.

  “I apologize, but we must go,” Enk interrupted, placing a firm hand on Omni’s arm. The gesture wasn’t rough, but it left no room for negotiation.

  Omni sighed softly, offering Tyrus one last knowing glance before stepping past the threshold. Enk followed, his boots striking the stone with that clipped Evokian rhythm; command wrapped in courtesy. Their voices faded down the corridor, swallowed by the hum of the fortress.

  For a long moment, only silence remained.

  Then, Tyrus looked toward the ceiling. “You can get down now,” he said flatly.

  No response.

  Tyrus squinted up at the faint outline of the boy clinging to the shadows. West was dangling from the ceiling beams: eyes closed, cheek resting against his staff; sound asleep.

  The corner of Tyrus’s mouth twitched in disbelief. He sighed, slipped off a sandal, and with precise aim, hurled it upward.

  Whack.

  The sandal struck West square in the face. His eyes snapped open in panic, limbs thrashing as the staff slipped from his grasp.

  “What…?!”

  He crashed to the floor in a spectacular thud of limbs, cloth, and clattering wood, the sound echoing down the hall like a small disaster.

  Tyrus crossed his arms, unimpressed. “Graceful,” he muttered, retrieving his sandal.

  “What just happe…” West started to mumble, still half-dazed, when the door burst open again.

  An Evokian guard stormed in, sword already drawn, his face hard and pale in the lamplight.

  Before West could even react, Tyrus had already moved. In one fluid motion, he seized West’s fallen staff, spun toward the bars of his cell, and drove the weapon clean through them.

  The wooden shaft struck the guard square in the throat with a sickening crack.

  The man staggered, falling onto his knees; he clutched at his crushed larynx. His sword clattered uselessly to the floor. Gasping for air, his eyes bulged wide in a concluding, silent plea. Trying to shout out in pain or for help, but no sound came out.

  Tyrus twisted his left wrist and drew the staff back; then struck again. This time, the blow landed against the temple. The sound was dull and final. The guard collapsed. His eyes were still in shock, but his body was dead.

  West stood frozen, wide-eyed, mouth hanging open as his heartbeat thundered in his ears. He jolted into motion a second later, stumbling toward the door and slamming it shut with both hands.

  “Are you out of your mind!?” West screeched, the words strained, a yell muffled into a whisper.

  “I just saved you,” Tyrus replied evenly, eyes calm despite the blood of the guard now oozing out of the corpse.

  West glanced toward the body, the lifeless armor, the crimson rivers spreading across the floor… He hated to admit it, but Tyrus was probably right.

  “Get me out of here,” Tyrus said softly. “Do not make Omni wait.”

  West snatched back his staff, shaking his head in disbelief. “You’ve got a strange way of saying thank you,” he muttered, crouching by the cage lock.

  From a hidden pocket, he drew two thin iron picks, handmade and worn smooth from years of use. His hands trembled from the spiked wine and adrenaline, but his training carried him through; one click, then another, and the lock snapped open.

  The cage door creaked outward.

  Tyrus stepped out with intentional calm, his shadow stretching across the blood-slick floor. “And now we’re even.”

  He knelt beside the fallen guard, rummaging through his armor until he found a small dagger. The blade was dull but serviceable. Tyrus twirled it once between the fingers of his left hand before tucking it into his belt.

  “I will lead us to Omni,” he said, turning to glance at West one last time, eyes glinting in the faint torchlight, before slipping silently toward the door.

  West’s thoughts sloshed somewhere between the haze of moonshade and the chaos of Omni’s new plan.

  Still, he followed Tyrus.

  The two of them moved like mismatched shadows through the dim, stone corridors of the Evokian fort; one stumbling with half-drunk bravado, the other gliding forward with the quiet precision of a wolf. The air was thick with the scent of oil and steel, torches burning low and crackling on their mounts.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “Careful,” Tyrus whispered as West knocked into a barrel.

  “I am careful,” West hissed back, steadying himself. “Just, you know… sideways careful.”

  To their luck, or maybe divine intervention from whatever God pitied fools and assassins, most of the guards had abandoned their posts. The halls were eerily empty, the echo of their footfalls muffled beneath layers of dust and straw.

  West squinted ahead, trying to keep his eyes focused. “You notice how quiet it is?” he murmured.

  Tyrus didn’t respond. He didn’t need to.

  Because the quiet was breaking.

  Through the corridor ahead, the sound of a voice began to crawl through the dark; deep, resonant, cold. It carried like a sermon and a curse.

  “What we have here is failure. My failure.”

  West froze. Even through the fog of his intoxication, he recognized authority when he heard it.

  “That’s Bens, their leader,” Tyrus whispered.

  They crept closer, crouching by the archway that overlooked the courtyard. The flickering light of dozens of torches cast monstrous shadows across the stone. Soldiers stood in perfect formation below, a sea of armor glinting beneath the night sky. They were watching Bens and a few of his elite men surround Elijah and the now drunken troops under his command.

  “Elijah is, after all, my southern commander,” Bens continued, his crimson cape catching the firelight. “Promoted closer to divinity by my own command. The failure of his men is his failure… and his failure… is mine.”

  West and Tyrus exchanged a glance; the drunken boy’s brow furrowed in disbelief, the warrior’s face unreadable but taut with restrained aggression. They moved along the inner wall, weaving between narrow walkways and hanging chains, edging nearer to where Lord Omni waited.

  “And so it is up to me, and only me”

  Crack! The sound of Bens whip cut the air.

  “To correct my errors,” Bens said, his voice now a roar that raged through the fort’s hollow heart.

  “Elijah!”

  Crack! The whip went off.

  “Commander of the southern wall! You have allowed your men. NAY, led your men into a disgraceful show of drunkenness and dereliction of duty!”

  Crack!

  “You, Elijah! A warrior of the Evokian tradition and mighty class have allowed yourself to be duped by a common merchant.”

  Crack!

  Elijah screamed.

  A sound so raw it cut through the stone, high and broken, the sound of flesh meeting fire, of punishment meant for spectacle.

  Bens’s voice didn’t falter. “Our southern commander, finding himself sleeping in the mud. Drunk!”

  Crack!

  The scream came again, wetter this time.

  Tyrus tilted his head toward the noise, eyes dark with fascination, or hunger. The warrior said nothing, but his hand flexed near the dagger at his belt.

  Crack! The whip landed another fatal blow.

  The screaming continued.

  “And how do we find his men, protectors of our southern command? Drunk!” Bens raged on.

  Crack!

  “You can put the dagger away, this is a rescue mission, not a massacre,” West murmured, his voice shaky but sardonic, “are we rescuing the holy man from these savages, or are we joining them?”

  Tyrus finally glanced at him, just one sharp, cutting look before moving forward again through the cold corridors toward Omni.

  He stopped at the bend of the corridor, his body still as stone. The air continued to scream with Elijah’s suffering. The torchlight flickered over the damp walls like a nervous fire. Tyrus tilted his chin ever so slightly, his eyes narrowing toward a narrow doorway ahead; the chamber where the Evokians kept Omni.

  West followed his gaze. An Evokian guard paced lazily in front of the door, armor scraping softly each time he turned.

  “One guard,” West whispered, crouching low. “I can take this guy.”

  But Tyrus didn’t move. His stare had gone glassy, haunted. He wasn’t seeing the man in front of them; he was seething with wild and untamed rage.

  The guard’s face came into view again. Zemo.

  The face struck Tyrus like a hammer. Memories crawled from the earlier; boots pressing him into the dirt, the sting of a whip, the sound of the mob’s laughter, and Zemo’s weak punches.

  Tyrus lifted a hand, stopping West in his tracks. His voice came out low, roughened by the weight of it.

  “No. I want him.”

  West frowned, tightening his grip on his staff. “Control yourself, you animal. I’ll put him down.”

  He eased past Tyrus, crouched low, the torchlight sliding over his face as he moved. The smell of iron and sweat filled his lungs. West waited for Zemo to turn his back, then swung, but the arc came a fraction too wide.

  Zemo ducked. The staff cut air where his skull had been.

  His hand went to the hilt of his blade;

  And before he could draw it, Tyrus was already there.

  The dagger flashed once. Then again, and again.

  Tyrus slammed Zemo, pinning him against a wall with his broken hand. His other hand began driving the blade into Zemo's throat. The sound was wet, percussive, obscene. Zemo convulsed, red froth bubbling at his lips, a strangled gargle drowned beneath the echoing screams of Elijah’s continued punishment

  But Tyrus didn’t stop. His breath came low and steady, each thrust slower, more calculated; ritual made flesh. The fury in his eyes had burned away into something colder: a cruel serenity.

  West’s heart punched against his ribs. The haze of moonshade clearing from the adrenaline rush; what filled him now was clarity edged with horror. He grabbed Tyrus by the shoulder, yanking him back.

  “That’s enough!” he exclaimed. “We’ve got to go!”

  Zemo slid down the wall, leaving a crimson smear in his descent. His body folded in on itself, the last breath leaking from him like steam from a dying forge.

  On the other side of the wall, Omni lifted his head. The muffled scuffle had reached him; a sound of struggle he could not name. His bound hands trembled mid-prayer.

  Then the door burst open.

  “Master Omni!” West panted, half-stumbling into the room. “We have to go…now!”

  Omni blinked, confusion gathering in the lines of his face. “And where is Tyrus?”

  “I’m here,” came the quiet reply.

  Tyrus stepped through the threshold, dagger still soaked, his face covered in a crimson mask. Omni’s breath caught, though only for a heartbeat.

  “Then come. Let us go.”

  They moved as one. The holy man hesitated at the doorway. Zemo’s corpse lay crumpled there, the torchlight flickering across his glazed eyes. Omni’s lips parted, a prayer half-formed but lost before it found shape. His faith wavered in the silence.

  West pressed a hand against his arm. “Later, Master. Move.”

  The three slipped into the dark, leaving behind a stain that would never fade from stone.

  They passed through the southern wall, the same breach West had stumbled through hours earlier, where night dripped thick as oil. Patrol torches burned in the distance, their light slashing across the walls in restless orange ribbons. Most of the soldiers had gathered in the inner courtyard, drawn to the spectacle of Bens’s “lesson.” The air stank of burning resin and spilled wine; the empire’s perfume.

  Shadows clung to the trio as they moved. Omni steady and solemn, Tyrus a silent storm just ahead, and West trailing behind, clinging to his master’s arm like a boy too young for the weight he carried.

  “Master Omni,” West whispered, his boots dragging through the gravel, “I’ll ask again…reconsider bringing him! Think of the risk.”

  Omni’s gaze stayed fixed on the horizon. “West, you have not seen what I have seen,” he murmured, “but I pray that you will.”

  West frowned. “I’ve seen what he can do. And what he is. Master Omni, don’t let your vision cloud our promise.”

  Omni’s lips twitched with a knowing smile. “Your mind still swims in the haze of moonshade, my friend. We’ll revisit my decisions when the sun clears your head.”

  West stumbled over a root, groaning. “Master Omni… if I should fall to the moonshade’s sleep, would you mind carrying me forward?”

  Omni didn’t even slow. “No.”

  He said it with a simple grin that caught in the moonlight.

  West tried to laugh, but the sound never made it past his throat. His legs gave out, the ground rising up to meet him. The last thing he saw before sleep claimed him was Tyrus’s silhouette ahead, knife glinting like a sliver of midnight, gait calm, unhurried. A wolf walking beside lambs.

  Omni didn’t look back.

  The moon hung over the fort: pale, pitiless, and unblinking, as West surrendered to the deep and dreamless dark of moonshade.