The world had become smoke and steel.
August's blade was slick with blood not his own. Shadows bent around the firelight, curling like serpents as he lunged once more, driving Elysian Nevan back step by step. The archer's face, usually impassive, now showed a crack one twitch near his eye, the tension of pain.
"You're bleeding," August said, voice low.
Elysian smiled, calm even in retreat. "So are you."
Outside, thunder boomed again, and the rain began first soft, then sharp as needles. Wind screamed through the broken windows. The storm, real and metaphysical, had arrived.
In the corridor, Elias struck and struck again. His blade moved on fury alone now, dragging fire from the walls as it clashed with Killian's dagger. Sparks lit their faces one grim with rage, the other eerily serene. Killian flowed between strikes like a specter in silk, cloak trailing behind him in unnatural folds. His eyes glinted crimson for a breathless instant. Not entirely human.
"You fight like a man who's already lost," he whispered.
Elias roared, deflecting a strike that would've sliced his throat. "You talk like a corpse."
Killian's grin sharpened. "Not yet."
He vanished truly vanished dissolving into mist. Elias's eyes widened. A second too late.
Steel pierced his thigh.
He stumbled.
Killian reappeared behind him, close enough to whisper, "Try harder."
But Elias dropped his weight, slammed his elbow back into the assassin's chest, and twisted blade cutting upward in a brutal arc. Killian moved again, too fast to follow, but blood sprayed across the wall.
Back in the main room, the smoke turned gold.
August blinked.
For a second just a second he saw through it. As if the world had thinned, and something beyond the veil had peeled through. Elysian shimmered like a reflection on water. His outline wavered, revealing shapes beneath the skin arcane tattoos, runes carved in silver along his collarbone, glowing dimly through his shirt.
Not just a man.
A marked one.
A chosen blade of something older.
August's breath caught. He didn't falter. Instead, he moved faster.
"You're not the only one who sees ghosts," he muttered, surging forward.
They met again.
Daggers hissed. Arrows sliced the air too close. August ducked, rolled, struck with a blade low and fast. Elysian blocked, countered, but August was already gone moving like smoke himself now, driven not by strength but by the clarity of pain and rage. Fever flared behind his eyes, yet his hand didn't shake.
A whisper behind him Elysian had vanished.
No sound.
Only wind.
August spun
Too slow.
The arrowhead kissed the back of his neck.
But didn't pierce.
A hand caught Elysian's wrist mid-draw.
Elias.
Bleeding. Livid. Alive.
Killian reeled behind him, staggering through the smoke with a ragged breath. His cloak was torn. His cheek bled.
Elias didn't wait. He shoved Elysian back against the wall, blade pressing to his throat. "You missed."
Elysian's calm cracked for the first time.
August limped forward, dagger in hand.
"You came for ghosts," he said quietly. "You found fire."
Outside, lightning danced across the sky.
The storm raged.
And for the first time, the two assassins did not look certain.
Elysian raised his hands slowly, the bow dropping to the floor with a soft clatter.
Killian's voice, low and sharp, cut through the quiet. "Enough."
His eyes met Elias's. "We've seen what we came to see."
Elias barked a bitter laugh. "You think you're walking away?"
"You're not ready for what's next," Killian said, tone colder than steel. "But you will be."
And then
Wind.
A sudden rush of sound, unnatural and thunderous.
A burst of light, silver-white, erupted through the broken window.
August shielded his eyes
And when he looked again…
They were gone.
Only the storm remained.
And blood.
Ash settled like snowfall over the ruined room.
Elias slumped against the doorframe, breathing hard. "They could've killed us."
"They will try again," August murmured.
Then he collapsed.
The smoke still danced above them, echoing with the memory of cloaks in the dark.
The fire had burned low, casting long shadows that danced over the wreckage of the room. A table was overturned, splinters scattered like teeth across the floor. Blood stained the edge of the carpet. Not fresh. Not dried. That strange, pulsing in-between.
August sat cross-legged, face lit by the dying hearth, a blanket wrapped loosely around his shoulders. Elias knelt nearby, tying off the bandage around his thigh with grim efficiency. His hands were rough, but steady.
"We should have died," Elias muttered. Not in fear. Just fact.
August didn't answer immediately. He stared into the fire, where a single coal glowed like an eye.
"They were testing us," he said at last. "Feeling out the shape of our resistance."
Elias's jaw clenched. "Why would assassins bother with games?"
August looked up.
"They weren't just assassins."
There was silence then heavy, full of the things they weren't ready to say.
August rose unsteadily and crossed the room to the broken window. Rain had slowed to a whisper. He pulled the curtain aside.
Beyond the glass: Port Royal lay quiet, shrouded in damp fog. But something was wrong. The lamps down on the dock usually amber, warm flickered blue for a breath. Then gold. Then normal again.
He turned. "Did you see that?"
Elias stood, hand on his sword. "See what?"
"The light. It changed color."
Elias frowned. "Probably just the storm."
"No," August said. "It was too deliberate. Like... someone wanted us to notice."
His voice trailed off.
Because now, glinting in the ash near the hearth, he saw something he hadn't before.
A sliver of metal.
August crouched and picked it up between two fingers.
It was a pendant. Small. Smooth. Blackened by heat, but not burned. An unfamiliar symbol was etched into it twin serpents coiled around an inverted star. The lines were impossibly fine, cut into the metal with some tool he couldn't imagine.
He turned it over.
No chain.
Just a single word engraved on the back, in tiny, jagged script:
"Nosterra."
Elias stepped beside him, brow furrowed. "You recognize that?"
August shook his head.
But something about it clawed at the edges of memory. Not knowledge—instinct. Like a dream trying to be remembered.
"Nosterra," Elias repeated slowly. "Sounds like a place."
"Or a name," August said.
They stood there, the pendant between them, the storm easing outside like an old beast settling its bones.
Then Elias said, "Why did he say it wasn't him?"
August blinked. "What?"
"Killian. When you told him you saw him in your dream—he didn't deny the dream itself. Just said he wasn't the one in it."
August's fingers closed around the pendant.
"Because someone else was," he whispered. "Someone like him. From the same... order, maybe. Wearing the same cloak."
"But not him."
"No." August met Elias's gaze. "And I think he doesn't even know who it was. Or why I remember it."
A beat of silence. Then Elias said, "Then we're not just fighting assassins. We're fighting something older."
August's voice was very quiet. "Something deeper."
Lightning flashed again. Farther away now.
And behind it came the sound—not thunder, this time.
A bell.
Low. Hollow. Faint.
From far out in the harbor.
Elias went to the window. "There's no ship that size docked out there."
"I hear it too," August said.
Another bell. Clearer now.
A slow toll, as if from underwater.
And something stirred deep in August's memory. Not a sound. Not a name.
But a feeling.
Like a voice on the edge of hearing. Something that had once been whispered in the dark by his mother, perhaps—a warning disguised as a fairy tale.
"Nosterra," he repeated again.
And this time, the word tasted ancient.
Like ash and salt and blood. Elias exhaled slowly, jaw set. "We leave tomorrow. You're still burning, and this place isn't safe anymore."
August didn't respond immediately. His eyes were on the pendant, fingers tightening around it.
"There's something else here," he murmured. "Something we haven't seen yet."
Elias frowned. "August, you're not well."
"I know." He looked up at him, tired but unwavering. "But this place… it remembers things. So do I."
And outside, the bell tolled again.
Closer now.
As if something was waking beneath the sea.