The portal sealed behind them with a sigh of displaced air. Not a snap, not a shimmer — a quiet folding-in, like a curtain drawn over something too bright.

  Gale stood still for a moment. No jolt. No wrench. Just... a shift.

  He ran a hand down his arm, as if expecting the wrong skin.

  Nothing hurt. Nothing was out of place. And yet—

  Something wasn’t right.

  Daimon drew a breath and touched his temple once, brief and sharp.

  “All right?” Gale asked.

  “Fine,” the boy replied. His voice was steady, but his eyes flicked across the dark. The warehouse stretched before them in near-total shadow, broken only by high slit windows that let moonlight fall in narrow blades. Enough to see shapes, nothing more.

  They stood in silence for a moment, listening.

  Nothing. No rats scurrying, no wind through broken boards, no distant sounds of the city beyond. Even their breathing seemed muffled, swallowed by the space itself.

  Gale moved first, three careful steps forward. His heel struck something that didn’t sound like floorboards. Kneeling, he brushed it with his fingers. “Tar cloth,” he murmured. “Still warm.”

  Daimon shifted beside him. “Warm?”

  “As if someone laid it down yesterday.” Gale stood and brushed his hands clean. “But that doesn’t make sense. Not here.”

  Daimon summoned a faint light, barely stronger than a candle. Amber shadows peeled back the edges of the dark. The warehouse came into view like something exhumed: clean, too clean. Surfaces free of dust. Corners untouched by webs. A long table stood at the far wall, littered with scrolls, ledgers, and quills still bearing dried ink. It looked less abandoned than paused.

  One of the scroll tubes pulsed faintly with residual glyphwork.

  “This place was warded,” Gale said. “But not to keep people out.”

  Daimon drifted toward the table, then paused mid-step. Something nagged at him—not quite pain, more like a persistent itch behind his sternum. “Then what?”

  “To keep time out. To keep things exactly as they were.” Gale’s eyes swept the rafters, the corners, searching for the break in the illusion. “As if someone wanted to preserve a moment.”

  Daimon reached toward the glowing scroll, hesitated. The strange unease intensified, making his skin feel too tight. “May I?”

  “Carefully.”

  The parchment was warm under his fingers. Not the warmth of magic—the warmth of recent handling. As he lifted it, a low hum reverberated through the room, as if the walls themselves were listening.

  “Gale.” His voice came out strained. He touched his temple again, pressing harder this time.

  Gale glanced at him with concern. “Portal sickness getting worse?”

  “I...” Daimon hesitated. The discomfort wasn’t fading like it should. If anything, it was growing stronger the deeper they moved into the warehouse. “It’s not just the portal.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Daimon set the scroll down, unable to find the words. How could he explain a pull he didn’t understand, toward something he couldn’t name? “It’s like walking into a room where someone just said your name. Like a held breath.” He met Gale’s eyes. “Like someone wanted us to find this. Specifically us.”

  Gale said nothing for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was grim. “Check the crates in the back. The ones away from the door.”

  As Daimon moved deeper into the warehouse, Gale remained by the table, studying the too-perfect preservation, the unnatural silence. He touched one of the ledgers—leather binding supple as if it were bound yesterday, ink that should have faded still dark on the pages.

  “Well, Ressan,” he murmured to the empty air. “Let’s see what was worth dying for.”

  Behind him, Daimon pried open a crate. A single crowbar, a dull grunt, and the wood split with a reluctant creak. The boy went very still.

  “Gale,” he called, not loudly, but with a note that cut through the air. “You need to see this.”

  Gale stepped beside him, crouched to see inside.

  And froze.

  Inside the crate, under a thick layer of tar-cloth, the contents glittered.

  Diamonds.

  Dozens of them—not cut or polished, just raw: rough-edged, irregular, some small as lentils, others nearly the size of a child’s fist. Their surface caught the meagre light with a sharp, cold shimmer, like frost on stone.

  Daimon took a step back.

  He didn’t know why. The light wasn’t blinding. The crate didn’t hum. No ripple of magic stirred the air. But something about the sight of them—that brightness, too perfect, too many—set his teeth on edge. His pulse beat faster.

  Gale, crouched by the crate, brushed a few stones aside with the back of his hand. Slowly, deliberately, he lifted one of the larger stones. Even before he held it to the light, he knew.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  All those nights in Vartis. All those interrogations. The council vote. Avessa’s arrest. Vos’s pale denial. The hollow look on Vannor’s face. Every road had pointed here.

  “I’ve seen these before,” he said, voice low — almost to himself.

  Daimon’s brow furrowed. “What are they?”

  “Trouble.” Gale exhaled, as if something lodged deep in his chest had finally begun to shift. “These are what got three councillors condemned in Vartis. The same diamonds smuggled through the docks last spring. Everyone said the trail started in Kentar. But no one... no one found the source.”

  He moved to the next crate, cracking it open—more diamonds, sapphires, smoky quartz, chunks of obsidian that looked like cooled tears. Not just diamonds. A collection.

  Daimon lingered a step behind, rubbing his temple. The strange pull in his chest hadn’t faded—if anything, it was growing stronger.

  “Something wrong?” Gale asked, not looking up from the gems.

  “Just... portal hangover.”

  Gale nodded absently, studying the spread of stones like they were a map, not cargo. “Look at the quantity. The crates—designed for ease of loading. Flat edges, standard size. No merchant marks, which means smuggled. And not by wagon. These went through the docks.”

  “So Ressan was involved in the smuggling?”

  “Either that, or...” Gale stood, scanning the warehouse again—the perfection of it, the false stillness, the scrolls still warm. “Or someone else wanted them found. Wanted us to find them.”

  There was a pause. Daimon folded his arms, not trusting himself to get closer to the crates. “Us specifically?”

  Gale didn’t answer right away. The weight of memory pressed against him—months of dead ends, false leads, political maneuvering that had torn Vartis apart. And here, in a preserved warehouse in Kentar, sat the evidence that could have prevented it all.

  “Maybe Ressan hid them here and died for it,” he said at last. “Or maybe someone else is playing a much longer game than we thought.”

  He glanced around the warehouse, suddenly aware of every sound, every draft, every silence that seemed too deep. “Either way—we need to move. Fast.”

  Behind him, Daimon stayed by the diamonds, staring but not really seeing, his hand pressed unconsciously against his chest where something he couldn’t name continued to pull.

  “I don’t like it,” Gale muttered, striding back toward the crates. “We’ve been led here, and I still don’t know if Ressan was the bait or the trap.”

  “Both?” Daimon offered, his voice weaker now. He pressed fingertips to his temple, and Gale caught the slight tremor in his hand.

  “You alright to open another portal?”

  Daimon nodded, but his eyes lingered on the nearest crate. The diamonds lay hidden beneath tar-cloth, but their presence seemed to press against him like a weight he couldn’t name.

  He stepped back, steadied himself, and lifted his right hand.

  There was no incantation. No sigil. Just motion—a single, clean gesture across the air, as if he were slitting a curtain with an invisible knife.

  Reality parted.

  It didn’t crack like normal portals did—no hum of energy, no flare of arcane discharge. It simply peeled, from one side to the other, revealing a tunnel of flickering light that shimmered like a heat haze over stone.

  Gale’s breath caught. Not at the spell—at the absence of it. Every rule he had learned warned that this was impossible. And yet here it was: clean, steady, and quiet.

  “You’re not disassembling anything,” he murmured. “You’re not even translating spatial coordinates. How are you keeping the bridge stable?”

  Daimon’s jaw tensed. Sweat was already beading at his hairline. “I’m... not really sure.”

  “You’re bridging two locations without anchoring either side. That shouldn’t be possible.”

  “I’ve always been like this,” the boy muttered. “I feel where the seam is, and I open it. You can call it talent, if you want.” A pause. A flicker behind his eyes. “I don’t.”

  For a moment, Gale just stared. Then shook himself and crouched by the nearest crate. “Save the mysteries for later. We’ve got five minutes at most.”

  First came the scrolls and documents—Gale stuffed them into a canvas sack, still warm from Ressan’s recent handling. Then the crates, hauling them through the shimmering passage one at a time. The air on the other side was cooler, darker—the faint scent of incense and sandalwood hit them like a slap. The third floor of the Crescent swallowed them in its wine-red hush: low sofas, heavy drapes, gilded candleholders dripping wax into air thick with myrrh and ambition.

  Daimon had anchored the portal directly to Ludmilla’s private parlor.

  Gale moved quickly, carrying the lighter load to spare the strain on Daimon’s hold. Every step across the threshold made his spine crawl. Not from danger—there was no disruption, no bodily disassembly—but from the wrongness of it. It felt too easy. Like they were cheating the rules of the world and it hadn’t noticed yet.

  By the fourth trip, Daimon was visibly flagging. His right hand twitched. The edge of the tear rippled.

  “Alright,” Gale said. “Let it go. We’ve got enough for a first haul.”

  Daimon exhaled and clenched his fist. The portal closed with a faint hush—not a pop, not a snap. Just silk pulling taut again.

  He collapsed onto a cushioned bench, arms limp, too drained to hide it this time. His breath came short, and sweat dampened his shirt at the collarbone.

  “You’re doing that blind,” Gale said quietly. “No runes, no coordinates. Not even blood markers.”

  Daimon didn’t look up. “That’s how it’s always worked.”

  “And Ludmilla lets you?”

  “She told me never to open one without her permission.” A pause. “So no.”

  The faint creak of floorboards made them both freeze.

  “Well.” Ludmilla’s voice carried from the parlor doorway, dry as old parchment. “My youngest apprentice breaking the one rule I gave him. And bringing contraband into my house.”

  She stood with one hand on the doorframe, draped in dark crimson silk, her green eyes fixed on the crates stacked near her ornate woven rug—not furious, but very far from amused.

  “Tell me those aren’t what I think they are.”

  Gale straightened. “If you’re thinking illegally trafficked gemstones linked to a political conspiracy—”

  “Then yes,” she finished. “Of course they are.” She moved to the nearest crate with deliberate grace, knelt, and pulled back the tar-cloth. One look at the diamonds was enough.

  She was quiet for a long moment.

  “Ressan,” she murmured finally, and there was something almost fond in her voice. “What did you get yourself into?”

  Gale knelt by the crate, his eyes still on the raw diamonds, but his attention now fully on Ludmilla. “You knew him?”

  “We’ve known each other a few years.” She lifted a single raw diamond, turned it in her fingers. “We drank together sometimes. He had charming hands.”

  Gale’s jaw tightened. “And you said nothing?”

  “I say many things. When they’re useful.” She stood, brushing dust from her silk robe. “And I wasn’t sure until now what kind of game he was playing. Or who with.” She let the diamond drop back into the crate with a soft clink. “However, judging by what you brought, I’d say he played his last hand.”

  “How do you know he’s dead?” Gale’s voice sharpened.

  Ludmilla gave him a look. “Because you smell of blood. Both of you. And you wouldn’t be here, with stolen goods and desperate eyes, if Ressan were still breathing.” She glanced around the room. “He was smarter than most people gave him credit for. If he hid these here, he wanted someone specific to find them.”

  “Us?”

  Ludmilla’s smile was sharp. “That depends. How long before the people who killed him realize what you’ve taken?”

  The question hung in the air like smoke.

  Daimon pushed himself up from the bench, still breathing hard. “There are more documents.” His voice was hoarse. “Notes, ledgers. Some in code.” He gestured weakly toward the canvas sack. “Whatever Ressan was investigating... the answers might be in there.”

  Gale picked up the sack, feeling the weight of parchment and secrets. “We’ll need time to decode them properly.”

  “Time you may not have,” Ludmilla said quietly.

  Gale met her eyes. “Then we’d better work fast.”