Silas did not startle.
The lighter in his hand had stopped mid-turn, the flame unlit, metal resting against his thumb as his gaze fixed on the figure beyond the window. The presence pressed faintly against his senses—not overwhelming, not hostile, but undeniable.
So this is you, he thought.
He did not rise. Did not reach for a spell. Sudden movement would reveal too much, and this was not an opponent who needed gestures to act.
The air in the room felt different now—denser, measured, as though something unseen had drawn a boundary neither of them had yet crossed.
"You've been looking for me."
The voice had come softly, almost without sound, yet it carried weight. Control. Intention. Not a threat… but not an invitation either.
Silas studied the shadowed figure in the glass.
Silas saw him clearly then.
Not a man in the ordinary sense.
A shape.
The outline of a person formed from shadow itself—upright, still, deliberate. No face. No eyes. No features to recognize or read. Only a suggestion of form where darkness had chosen to gather and remain.
He did not blur, did not shift, did not flicker like ordinary shadow. He stood with presence—solid, aware, watching.
This was not concealment in the ordinary sense.
It was form without identity.
As if the shadow had not hidden the man… but become him.
And despite the absence of eyes, Silas knew he was being observed.
No visible mana surge. No careless aura leak. No wasted motion. Whoever stood there concealed his presence at a level few ever reached.
Interesting.
Silas flicked the lighter once.
Click.
The small sound cut cleanly through the silence.
Silas' gaze shifted briefly toward the desk—toward the open file he had been studying moments before. The school. Faces. Names. Patterns.
Then—without sound, without motion—the file was gone.
Not moved. Not hidden. Erased.
Silas' eyes narrowed slightly.
So. That mattered.
The shadow had noticed it—and chosen to remove it.
"I was wondering," he said calmly, "when you would decide to stop watching from a distance."
No bluff. No aggression.
Observation meeting observation.
Outside the window, the figure did not move.
But the pressure shifted—subtle, deliberate.
Silas felt it immediately.
Not an attack.
A measurement.
He exhaled slowly, eyes narrowing, mind already working through possibilities, patterns, intent. This was the presence he had felt at the school—the same silent force that had brushed his mind and left without resistance.
And now it stood before him.
Close.
Watching.
The city beyond the glass remained quiet, unaware that two predators had just found one another.
Silas spoke again.
"You're not here to kill me," he said. "If you were, this conversation wouldn't exist."
The shadow shifted slightly.
And for the first time, Silas felt the faintest hint of something beneath that control—
Not hostility.
Not fear.
Purpose.
Silas felt it then—clearly.
Not just control.
Power.
The kind that did not flare or boast. The kind that did not need to. It was contained, compressed, resting beneath the surface like something vast choosing to remain small.
Silas had met ninth-circle mages before. Had stood in rooms where power pressed against the lungs.
This was different.
This felt… older.
"Who are you?" Silas asked, the question quieter now, stripped of accusation.
For a moment, the shadow did not answer.
Then, calmly—
"You may call me Shadow."
Then the air changed.
Just enough.
Silas' instincts sharpened instantly.
Something was about to happen.
In an instant, a manila file appeared on the desk near Silas.
"What's this?" he asked.
He hadn't expected this, but it was better than having to fight the powerful entity standing just meters away.
The shadow remained silent.
Silas opened the folder.
Inside were dozens of photographs. At first, they showed various men carrying crates into a warehouse. Then more photographs—those same men opening the crates. Large wooden containers filled with gemstones.
Stones capable of holding vast amounts of mana.
Something you would only need if preparing a powerful spell.
Something either reality-altering… or catastrophically destructive.
The men were clearly from House Blackthorne.
"What is this?" Silas demanded. "Is this why you've been killing their men?"
He looked toward the window.
"What house are you with? What authority do you have to be killing their magicians like this?"
The shadow stirred, and a calm voice answered.
"These men take what they want from this city and its people. They destroy lives. And they are planning something malevolent on a mass scale—and you ask about authority?"
The shadows deepened, enveloping the room and snuffing out Silas's flickering lighter.
"How easily you forget what they took from you."
Silas felt something tighten in his chest. Not shock—something deeper. A pressure he recognized but had long refused to examine. The shadow was not attacking him. It was reaching for something buried. And that alone made him wary.
The darkness pressed in around him. There was nowhere to retreat. This presence had already brushed against his mind once before, and now it was reaching toward something he had spent years trying to bury.
It was that memory that kept him awake most nights, chasing cases long after exhaustion should have forced him to stop.
A past he had worked desperately to forget. He did not like where this was going. Memories could be weapons, and whoever stood in that shadow knew exactly where to press.
Fear gave way to confusion.
What the shadow was implying was not something he could dismiss.
"Are you saying the Blackthornes…" His voice faltered. "That the Blackthornes are the ones who—"
His throat tightened—not from magic, but from the bitterness rising within him. From thoughts he had tried so hard to seal away.
The voice finished for him.
"Took your family. Yes."
Silas did not move. He had imagined this answer for years, in countless forms, none of them ever confirmed. Now, hearing it spoken aloud felt less like revelation and more like reopening a wound that had never truly healed.
Silas looked down at the file, his face tightening with anger and grief as though the loss were happening all over again.
Anger came first—sharp, familiar, grounding. Grief followed more slowly, quieter but heavier. And beneath both, something unsettled him: doubt. Truth discovered too easily is rarely simple.
The shadows eased slightly around the desk.
"Do not avert your gaze any longer."
Silas hesitated—not out of fear of what he would see, but of what believing it might demand from him.
The file flipped open.
A new photograph lay exposed.
A creature unlike anything Silas had ever seen—a grotesque amalgamation of humanoid form, orcish mass, lupine structure, and bat-like wings. Something stitched together through immense magical manipulation. The amount of mana required to create such a thing would have been staggering.
Beneath the image was a name.
Alistair Blackthorne.
The name carried weight. Power. Influence. And now—possibility. If this was deception, it was crafted with precision. If it was truth, then everything he had been chasing had been pointing here all along.
The school. The shadow. The Blackthornes.
Separate paths had converged into one.
"I don't understand," Silas said, his composure cracking. "What are they trying to do? What are these things?" His voice carried frustration, but beneath it lingered something quieter—a need for this to mean something, to lead somewhere real.
"Follow the thread," the voice whispered.
Silas searched the darkness for any trace of manipulation, any lingering push against his mind. There was nothing. Either the shadow had already said everything it intended to… or it had said exactly enough.
And then the shadows were gone.
But not entirely.
Silas' eyes shifted to the desk.
A small parchment now lay beside the open file—thin, deliberate, untouched by the disturbance of the room. It had not been there before.
He approached slowly and picked it up.
A spell was inscribed across its surface, elegant in construction, restrained in design. Not an attack. Not a trap.
A call.
One-way.
It required mana to activate—simple in function, precise in intent. A direct means of reaching the shadow. No searching. No chasing. No uncertainty.
Efficient. Controlled.
Silas studied the structure a moment longer, then lowered the parchment slightly. After a brief hesitation, he folded it once and slipped it into his coat. He did not yet know if he would use it—but he would not discard it.
A way to communicate. But also a reminder.
If he could reach the shadow, then the shadow could just as easily reach him.
Distance meant nothing.
And whatever stood behind that presence had just made it clear—Silas was never beyond its reach.
The room returned to stillness.
Silas stood alone in the quiet hotel room, the faint scent of smoke lingering in the air, the file resting open before him. The silence felt heavier now. Not empty—weighted. As if the room itself had shifted, leaving him standing between past and possibility.
He stared down at it.
And something in his expression darkened.
If this was truth, then his path forward had finally revealed itself. If it was a lie, then he had just been set in motion by something far more dangerous than ignorance.
Either way—he would follow it.
Silas was not naïve. The shadow had redirected him, placed something larger in his path, something meant to draw his focus away. He understood that much.
But understanding did not change his decision.
The trail before him was real—painfully, unmistakably real—and whatever waited at its end mattered more than the question of who had set him upon it.
The school had led him to the shadow. The shadow had led him to the Blackthornes.
He was not abandoning one investigation for another—he was following the same thread deeper.
Deep down, he knew.
And he chose not to care.
Silas closed the file slowly, committing every detail to memory.
Somewhere in the city, the next answer was waiting.
Silas reached for his lighter.
Click.
The flame steadied his thoughts.
Tomorrow, the hunt would begin.