The snow hadn’t stopped since the night the assassin revealed herself. Four of them moved through the white, Raizō, Taren, Velrin, and the last surviving mercenary. Everyone else was gone. She hunted differently now. During the day, she didn’t hide her presence. She let it press against their backs—cold, deliberate, patient. A shift of air. A weight on Raizō’s chest. A prickling across Taren’s neck. She wanted them to know she was following them because there was nothing they could do to stop it.

  Raizō felt the same suffocating stillness he’d felt in the ruins when Garron nearly cut him down. Back then, the world went quiet before the strike, no wind, no breath, just death waiting. That same stillness kept returning now, again and again, with every step they took. His expression stayed calm, but lightning snapped silently across his arms and through his boots. The more exhausted he became, the harder it was to suppress it. Taren noticed every spark. He didn’t know what Raizō looked like afraid, Raizō never showed fear, but lightning like this meant something inside him was tightening. Velrin was falling apart. He wasn’t a fighter and wasn’t meant to endure this. His breaths came too fast in the cold, his legs shaking under him. If Raizō and Taren hadn’t pulled him out of danger multiple times, he’d have died in the first few days.

  At night, the true nightmare began.

  She attacked only in darkness, never to kill at first, just enough to keep them awake and too scared to rest. When they tried to sleep, she disrupted the shadows. When they tried to eat, she destroyed their rations. When they lit a fire, she extinguished it instantly. She was breaking them piece by piece. The last mercenary didn’t even get a warning. One moment he walked ahead, the next he dropped face-first into the snow, clean cut through the neck. No one saw the strike.

  Three remained.

  They kept moving because stopping meant death. Tracks vanished under falling snow. Wind cut through their clothes. Their breaths grew shallow and ragged. Even Raizō’s eyelids felt heavy, and Taren staggered with each step. By the twelfth night, exhaustion forced them to camp. Velrin collapsed against a tree. Taren kept watch, barely able to hold his spear steady. Raizō stood only a few steps from them, unsure if he was more tired or more wired. That was when the stillness hit him. Complete, suffocating stillness. The same pressure he felt before Garron’s killing swing. The same warning he’d felt every time she struck.

  Raizō turned, and she was already there.

  She emerged from the darkness like a shadow stepping out of another world. Masked. Silent. Eyes hidden behind a narrow slit of black cloth. Her blade swept toward his ribs, silent, perfect, fatal. Raizō barely twisted aside. Lightning ripped across his arm, burning bright as the steel skimmed past him. He countered instantly. And he realized something important. she was strongest at distance… but vulnerable the moment he stepped inside her reach. Her power was space, angles, stillness, silence. His was close-range dominance, tight, decisive strikes too fast for her style. He stepped in and threw a short, crushing strike to her chest. She slipped back, but not perfectly. His lightning grazed her arm, the spark snapping against her sleeve. She jerked slightly, the first sign she wasn’t untouchable. Her stance shifted. Sharper now. Less patient. More intent.

  Raizō pressed the advantage, narrowing the distance again, but she changed positions instantly and crossed behind him, blade cutting through the air with no sound at all.

  “Taren!” Raizō shouted.

  No response.

  “TAREN!”

  Nothing.

  Taren stood facing the opposite tree line, oblivious. Not because he wasn’t paying attention, but because he literally could not hear Raizō. She had sealed the space around them. Her domain wasn’t invisibility. It was erasure—a pocket of darkness and absence where sound and presence disappeared.

  A perfect killing ground.

  Her blade swept toward Raizō’s jaw. He blocked with his forearm—sparks exploded from the impact, jumping onto her wrist. She recoiled slightly from the shock before recovering, shutter-smooth, reassessing him. He stepped forward again, trying to trap her in close quarters, but she flickered back into the darkness. Snow didn’t even crunch beneath her boots. She reappeared at his flank, another killing arc, this time faster.

  Raizō ducked under it and struck upward, lightning bursting across his knuckles. This time, it hit her mask. She jerked again, the spark crawling through the cloth and scattering across her shoulder. She wasn’t expecting him to adapt this fast. She swung again, faster than before, an attack meant to end things. Raizō met her halfway, lightning flashing across the silence like a contained explosion.

  Then she stopped. One step back. Blade lowering slightly. Breath calm but… strained. Emotion unreadable behind the mask. She didn’t retreat in fear. She retreated in conflict. And then, she vanished. A blur swallowed by darkness. The absence vanished with her. Wind howled, snow shifted, branches creaked.

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  Taren spun around, startled. “Raizō? Did you—wait… were you fighting her!?”

  Raizō didn’t answer. He just stood there, lightning fading from his arms in small, reluctant crackles. Three days later, Driftmoor finally appeared through the storm. Raizō saw its outline through the haze, crooked chimneys, a leaning watchtower, a warped wall half-buried in ice. Relief tried to rise in his chest, but another truth hit him harder: They wouldn’t survive another night out here. Not like this. Not with her growing desperate. She sensed it too. The moment Driftmoor came into sight, her attacks changed. A blade tore through Raizō’s coat. A wire sliced open Taren’s arm. Velrin collapsed and had to be dragged upright. She attacked again before they even lifted him. And this time she wasn’t testing them. She wasn’t warning them. She wasn’t trying to exhaust them. She was trying to kill them.

  Raizō’s instincts roared. Taren pulled Velrin by the coat, nearly carrying him. Lightning snapped violently across Raizō’s arms as he forced himself between them and death. Every step triggered a strike. She lunged again. Raizō met her blade with his forearm, lightning surging violently and burning the skin beneath her glove. She recoiled, then came again, faster, angrier. Taren’s breathing was ragged. Velrin fainted mid-run. Raizō’s vision blurred around the edges. The gates were close. Just a few more steps. Driftmoor’s guard barely registered them until they crossed the threshold. The moment Raizō entered the clearing—

  Her presence vanished.

  Inside Driftmoor, lanterns glowed faintly. Smoke drifted from a few chimneys. The cold wind still cut deep, but the presence that haunted them for almost two weeks evaporated instantly. Velrin collapsed. Taren dropped beside him. Raizō remained standing only by habit. They stayed like that until someone finally approached, Driftmoor’s steward, waiting for Velrin's arrival. Once Velrin identified himself, the man rushed them inside.

  Heat returned slowly. Velrin slumped against the wall, trembling. After a long silence, he pulled out the payment contract.

  “You completed the escort,” he rasped. “And… the others are dead.”

  Raizō said nothing. Velrin handed him a full pouch of coins that were heavy.

  “This is your pay. And the shares of the others. I—I can’t take them.”

  Taren blinked. “All of it?”

  Velrin nodded desperately. “You saved my life. More than once. But… please. Leave Driftmoor quickly. If the one who hunted us sees you here…”

  He couldn’t finish the sentence.

  Raizō closed the pouch. “We’ll go.”

  The storm finally calming into a harsh, brittle quiet. Raizō slept for the first time in nearly two weeks that day. Taren slept even harder. But somewhere far from the village, deep within the frozen woods, the assassin knelt in the snow. She had removed her mask, holding it loosely in her lap. The air around her was still, her breath barely visible in the cold. A voice stepped into that absence.

  “Report.”

  “I failed.”

  A pause. Then:

  “…Unexpected.”

  He walked around her slowly, deliberately. Boots barely crunching in the snow. She didn’t lift her head.

  “Reason?”

  “Interference,” she said. “Mercenaries.”

  He stopped behind her.

  “Velrin D’Arc is alive then.”

  “Yes.”

  The wind didn’t move. Only the slightest pulse of pressure hinted at the man’s displeasure.

  “A failure is a failure,” he said quietly, “but it changes nothing. You are already being sent to Aseran. A task awaits you there.”

  She nodded. “Understood.”

  “I will send another to deal with Velrin.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Follow the ones who interfered,” he continued. “If they survived you, they are worth evaluating. Report their movements.”

  She bowed deeper. “Understood.”

  “Go.”

  The snow shifted gently as she rose, pulling her hood low, mask disappearing beneath her coat. She walked into the darkness until the forest swallowed her whole. She did not look back.

  Two days later, they left Driftmoor at dawn, heading toward the harbor. Taren adjusted the strap of his bag over his shoulder and muttered, “So much for Frostmarch, huh? We crossed half a continent and didn’t get a single clue.”

  Raizō exhaled. “We got money.”

  Taren snorted. “Yeah, and we’re heading straight into Veluna, the richest place on the map and the easiest place to go broke.” He thumped Raizō lightly with his elbow. “Hope you can keep us alive financially too.”

  Raizō gave him a flat look, but the corner of his mouth twitched slightly. They approached the pier where travelers gathered for ships heading south. Traders loaded crates, sailors argued over shipments, and the smell of salt mixed with cold. Then someone stepped toward them.

  A woman.

  She moved with quiet poise, dressed in simple traveling clothes, a black coat with faint purple stitching along the cuffs, boots dusted with frost, and gloves that looked hardly worn. Her hair was black but ended in faint, subtle purple tips, almost catching the morning light. Her eyes were the same shade, clear, steady, and unnervingly calm. Raizō noticed her beauty, but not in a romantic way. She was striking because she didn’t look like anyone else here. Distinct. Controlled. Unusual. She stopped in front of them and bowed politely.

  “You are heading to Veluna?” she asked.

  Taren blinked. “Yeah. Why?”

  “My name is Shizume,” she said evenly. “I am a certified guide for travelers entering Veluna. I was assigned to assist passengers on this ship.”

  Her posture perfect. Her tone deliberate. Her expression unreadable. Too unreadable. Raizō narrowed his eyes slightly.

  Taren whispered, “She’s… stiff.”

  “Formality is encouraged in my profession,” she replied without looking at him.

  Raizō studied her, steady gaze, stillness, efficient movements. Something about her felt off. Like she wasn’t used to normal conversation. Like she was playing a role. But nothing about her seemed threatening.

  “We’ll see once we get there,” Raizō said quietly.

  She bowed again. And the wind carried the ship south. And the three of them set sail toward Veluna, unaware of how entangled their paths were about to become.