The city slept uneasily that night.
Even in the hours before dawn, the air still felt like it was holding something back, as though the storm from earlier had left its weight behind. Isaiah had not slept. He sat at the small table by the window, the lamp's glow pulling his eyes toward the envelope lying beside his hand.
It had arrived without knock or sound. No footsteps on the wet street. No shadow at the door.
Just there -- when he opened it, the words inside seemed to burn themselves into his mind:
We have watched.
No name. No seal. Just a location, and a time that now loomed closer with every tick of the wall clock.
The address led to the old stone bridge at the edge of the city - the one people only crossed if they had nowhere else to go. Beyond it lay the districts where even the constables walked in pairs, and only in daylight. But tonight, it would be empty, swallowed by the mist.
Isaiah left before first light, the city's silence broken only by his footsteps and the whisper of wind through narrow alleys. The closer he came to the bridge, the more it felt as though the streets themselves were watching him. Windows were dark, doors shut. Even the rats kept their distance.
When he stepped onto the bridge, the fog thickened, curling low over the water below. The stones beneath his boots were slick. Halfway across, he stopped.
That was when he saw him.
A tall figure stood at the far end, outlined faintly against the fog - a man in a perfectly cut suit, leaning lightly on a black cane.
Isaiah recognized the posture before the face: Elian Saul.
"You came," Elian said, his voice steady, carrying through the mist as if it belonged there.
Isaiah said nothing. His mind was heavy, his chest tighter than he expected.
Elian stepped forward, cane tapping once against the stone. "The Covenant does not extend its hand to many. When it does… it is not a question of worth. It is a question of weight."
Isaiah frowned. "Weight?"
"The kind you carry here." Elian tapped his own chest. "The kind that bends a man without breaking him. I've seen it in you, Isaiah. Whether you've seen it yourself yet… that is why you are here."
The mist swirled between them, and for a moment Isaiah felt as though the bridge was no longer in the city at all - but suspended somewhere between the world he knew and something far older, far colder.
Elian extended the envelope Isaiah had already read, as if the gesture itself was part of some ritual.
"When you cross the rest of this bridge," he said, "you will not cross as the man you were. But once you do, you cannot return."
The water below churned softly, the sound almost like a whisper. Isaiah stood still, the air pressing down on him, the choice weighing heavier than the night itself.
And then… he stepped forward.