Daggerhold rose from the grey plains like a wound stitched into the land. Its towers were jagged, its walls black with old ash and newer soot. The twin brothers stood atop a hill overlooking the city as dusk peeled away the last light. Beneath the haze of distance, oil-lanterns flickered along narrow streets. Crows circled the outer battlements, drawn to the promise of blood that always hung in the air.
It was not a city built to impress. It was built to endure. Chiseled from blackstone and reinforced with iron-ribbed gates, Daggerhold was less a capital and more a fortress. No domes. No gardens. Only steel, stone, and secrecy.
Raelith watched the gates with a hunter's eye. "Three checkpoints. Inner wall beyond the first. That's where the nobles crawl."
Kalen said nothing, his gaze fixed on the distant guard towers. Slits for archers. Ward runes scorched into the parapets. Cloaked sentries moved along the battlements in patterns—repeated but disciplined.
"Too many eyes," Raelith muttered.
"Too many blades," Kalen replied. "Good. Let them sharpen themselves against shadows."
They left their horses tethered in a grove a mile out, burying the saddle bags beneath thorn roots. The serpents coiled tighter around their shoulders, alert but silent. The twins moved through the tall grass, blending into the wind and dusk.
At the city's edge, a grim camp had sprawled beyond the walls—mud, rot, and desperate faces. Refugees, peddlers, mercenaries, and broken men all gathered under leaking tents and bent wooden stalls. Smoke choked the air. A funeral pyre burned in the distance.
Raelith pulled his hood lower. "Smells like a dying kingdom."
"They always smell like this," Kalen murmured.
They entered the outer sprawl as ghosts, weaving between the poor and the corrupt. No one paid them much mind. The city's scum were used to predators, and they looked away when they sensed ones they could not name.
At a cramped meat stall, Raelith slipped a blade under the ribs of a peddler and whispered, "Where's the Red Mouth?"
The man nodded without a word, eyes wide, and gestured toward a crooked alley near the blood-market. They left him alive. Just barely.
The Red Mouth was no place of leisure. It was a den for whispers and black coin, hidden beneath a ruinous shrine of some forgotten god. Inside, the air reeked of smokeleaf and rust. Eyes followed them—half-blind assassins, old killers, and failed spies drinking themselves into whispers.
A man in a bone mask sat behind a veil of silk chains. His fingers were stained with ink, his teeth gold and crooked. He did not flinch when the twins approached.
"You're not from here," he rasped.
"We're not here to be known," Kalen replied.
"You wouldn't last long if you were. Daggerhold eats the careless." The masked man poured a black liquid into a chipped cup. "What's your question?"
Raelith answered. "Thalen Veyron. His location."
The man chuckled. "You're not the first to ask. You won't be the last. He walks with death on either side of him—four bodyguards, all Masters or worse. Cloaks of obsidian. Masks shaped like wolves."
"Where is he?" Kalen asked again.
The man tapped a bony finger on the table. "Tonight? Daggerhold. East keep. Hosting a noble from the Ashen South. Rumor says he's signing a new trade pact. Not everyone's happy."
"Will the guard be with him?"
"Always."
Raelith dropped a silver fang onto the table. The man caught it midair, laughing softly. "Enjoy the city, shadows. Don't bleed in front of the dogs."
They left through a back tunnel and emerged into another alley. The night had grown teeth. Patrols in gold-stitched leather now roamed the main streets, and torchlight shimmered along the fog-choked rooftops.
The twins didn't take the roads. They climbed.
Scaling a tenement wall, Kalen vaulted over a chimney and landed silent atop a slanted roof. Raelith followed, his serpent slithering across the shingles like a streak of darkness. They crouched in silence, watching the east keep from afar. It was built of the same blackstone, but taller, with stained-glass windows like bleeding eyes.
Figures moved behind the windows. Laughter echoed faintly, distorted by distance.
Raelith's serpent hissed.
"I feel it too," Raelith muttered.
A presence.
Kalen rose. "We're being watched."
From below, something shifted in the shadows. A cloaked figure stood at the mouth of a nearby alley—tall, still, wrapped in gray-black robes. A wolf-shaped mask covered his face, but his aura was unmistakable.
Not just a Master.
High Master. At least.
He stepped forward, quiet as snowfall, and stopped directly beneath the rooftop where the twins crouched. His hand rested on the hilt of a curved blade. Not drawn. Not threatening. Just present.
Raelith narrowed his eyes. "Did he see us?"
Kalen's serpent stirred. "He knows we're here."
The figure tilted his head upward.
"Come down," he said, voice calm, oddly melodic. "Assassins don't loiter."
Kalen dropped down in one fluid motion. Raelith followed a heartbeat later. They landed in the alley, shadows around them twisting with tension.
The figure removed his mask slowly.
His face was pale, ageless, marred by a single scar that ran from lip to collarbone. His eyes were amber—serpent-like, but not clan-born. No emblem. No sigil. A stray wolf, perhaps.
"You came for Thalen," he said.
Kalen didn't answer.
"You're not the first. Most never make it to the walls. But you…" He studied them. "You're not from this realm. I smell coiled night on your skin."
"You serve him?" Raelith asked, stepping forward.
The man's smile didn't reach his eyes. "No one serves the prince. We orbit him. Like crows around a corpse."
Kalen moved his hand toward his blade. "Then move."
The man's blade was already out.
Steel met steel in a burst of sparks.
Kalen blocked, barely. The curved edge scraped across his vambrace. He twisted, deflected, kicked. The man slid back, boots silent against stone.
Raelith struck from behind—daggers in both hands.
The wolf-mask turned, met him mid-motion. Their blades clashed in a blur. Raelith's serpent struck—fangs snapping toward the throat.
The man vanished.
He reappeared behind them, his blade dragging across the wall in a hiss of shadow. A movement so fast, it bent the air.
"You're fast," he said. "But not fast enough."
Kalen bled from the forearm. Raelith's cheek was gashed. Shallow wounds—but warnings.
Raelith raised his hand.
The black serpent lunged.
The man didn't dodge. He caught the serpent mid-air. His hand sizzled with venom, but he didn't flinch. With a flick, he threw the beast aside and advanced.
Kalen bared his teeth. "This one dies now."
They moved in perfect tandem—twin lines of death.
The alley exploded into chaos.
Steel clashed. Serpent hissed. Blood sprayed.
And just as the battle reached its crescendo—
The city bells rang.
A deep, booming note that echoed through the stone.
The man froze.
He looked toward the east keep.
"They're calling the guard," he said softly. "I would not be here when they arrive."
Raelith lunged. The man caught the strike—but staggered.
"You're not ready for him," he said, bleeding now from the side. "You're not even ready for me."
Kalen drove his blade toward the man's gut.
But he was gone again. A flicker of shadow. A breath of wind.
Only blood remained, staining the alley floor.
The twins stood alone beneath the howl of bells.
The city pulsed with life, chaos awakening in its veins.
Raelith wiped his blade. "He wasn't lying. We're not ready."
Kalen turned toward the keep. "Then we become ready."
And the shadows closed in once more.