Huff.
A young woman rose to her feet, wiping the sweat from her face with a towel. A wide smile spread across her face as she looked at the finished product.
These past few days, she had worked without rest, stopping only to eat or sleep. Even then, her thoughts had never fully left the task.
Now it was finally done.
She skipped out of the building and into another nearby, her steps light, almost bouncing with pride.
"Miss Feras, I'm finally done with the product you requested!"
An elderly woman paused in the middle of kneading dough and looked up at the young maiden, her hands dusted in flour.
"Good work. Just give me a second and I'll come take a look, alright?"
The young maiden nodded quickly and smiled brightly, her white front teeth catching the light.
She hugged the towel closer to her chest, still catching her breath, her eyes gleaming with satisfaction.
As she watched Miss Feras working tirelessly in the kitchen, her expression softened. That familiar feeling of gratitude returned, just as strong as the first time she had felt it, long ago.
When she was young, her parents and siblings had been murdered in cold blood, with no one ever held responsible.
After their deaths, she had been lost, a child wandering the streets without direction.
She had been forced to turn to stealing just to survive.
And the more worn and desperate she became, the more the adults around her turned away. Some chased her off. Others looked at her with silent contempt.
It continued like that for nearly a year, until, as if the world itself had taken pity on her, she crossed paths with Miss Feras.
Unlike the rest, Miss Feras had welcomed her with warm, open arms, never asking for anything in return.
So now, finally able to repay even if only a fraction of that kindness, the joy in the young maiden's chest felt too large to put into words.
The two of them stepped into the workshop.
Inside, resting on a desk, was a crude wooden box carved from a single piece of wood.
The young maiden quickened her pace, walking straight to the desk. She picked up the box and hurried back toward Miss Feras, holding it out with both hands.
"Here's the jewelry box you asked me to make."
Miss Feras accepted it gently, turning it over in her hands, examining every corner.
She looked up, ready to respond, but paused when she caught sight of the girl's proud expression and beaming smile.
A soft chuckle escaped her lips as she reached out and patted the maiden's shoulder.
"It's beautiful, sweetheart."
The young maiden's grin widened. She stood a little straighter, not just proud of her work, but truly happy to have given back even a small piece of the kindness she had once received.
She glanced at her wristwatch, then gave a slight bow.
"I'll need to take my leave for a while, Miss Feras."
Miss Feras smiled tenderly and nodded.
"Of course."
The young girl quickened her pace across the streets.
"Ohhh… I don't want to miss it."
Her dress fluttered in the wind as she moved, slipping between the morning crowds, her footsteps light but urgent.
Ever since Miss Feras had taken her in, life had begun to shift, bit by bit, the shadows that once clung to her days had started to lift. Miss Feras was her anchor, the reason she had made it this far. But even with warmth returning to her world, there was still a pain buried deep in her chest that refused to disappear.
She had been just a child when her family died, but she blamed herself all the same.
The memories were faded, fragmented, but the feeling remained.
She remembered their voices, their kindness, the weight of their love. And still, she asked herself the same questions every day.
Why was she the one who survived?
What gave her the right to see another sunrise when they couldn't?
She had done nothing. She had been powerless.
And still was.
But recently, a young man had begun preaching near the library. Every day, without fail, he stood atop the stone steps, speaking to anyone who would listen. His sister and her child had been murdered by the Eireindaile. Murdered just like hers.
He spoke with fire. Grief. Justice. Revenge.
It would never bring her family back.
But something about his presence made the pain a little more bearable.
Even if she was the only one who came, she would be there.
She wanted him to know his family hadn't been forgotten.
That their names, their lives, still mattered.
That someone, anyone, remembered.
The grand library slowly came into view, and as expected, a crowd had gathered, ready to hear the day's speech.
But something was different.
No voice echoed through the plaza. No passionate preaching filled the air.
The usually lively crowd stood in silence, broken only by hushed whispers weaving between the people.
The young girl's eyebrows lifted as confusion settled in.
She approached the gathering and asked a few nearby what was going on, but no one responded, each person too absorbed in quiet conversations of their own.
Frowning, she began to push through the crowd, moving between shoulders and packed figures.
She sidestepped those who wouldn't move, slipping deeper into the mass of people until she finally reached the front.
She stumbled out of the crowd, her steps clumsy and unsteady. The noise around her seemed to fade into a dull hum as she brushed the dust from her dress and straightened herself out.
Then she looked up.
Her breath caught.
Everything in her body froze.
The color drained from her face as a sickening weight crashed into her chest.
"What—"
The word barely escaped before her voice collapsed in on itself. Her knees gave out, folding beneath her, and she fell hard onto the cobbled street. She didn't even feel the pain. Her eyes were locked forward.
The library loomed in front of her, grand as always, but everything about it had changed.
The towering structure that once spoke of wisdom, knowledge, and quiet strength now radiated something else.
The air around it was heavier.
Tighter.
Wrong.
It pulsed with something dark and bitter, a weight that pressed down on her shoulders.
Even the stone looked different. As if the building itself had aged a hundred years in a single night.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
A slow, sickening sound echoed through the plaza at uneven intervals.
Crimson drops landed on the topmost steps. Thick, heavy, unmistakable.
Blood.
The liquid smeared down the stone, drying in jagged patterns like veins. It ran in small streams, seeping into the cracks between the stairs, spreading like the roots of some grotesque, inverted tree.
She trembled violently, her hands clutched into the fabric of her skirt, but she forced herself to look up.
And when she did, her heart nearly stopped.
High above, just beneath the roof, four bodies hung suspended in the open air.
Their wrists were bound and stretched upward, tied to thick metal beams that jutted out from the archway.
Three men. One woman.
All of them swayed gently in the wind, their lifeless forms barely stirring.
Each one had a gaping wound in their chest. Deep, wide, and torn open with brutal force, as if someone had ripped straight through the ribs with bare hands.
Worse still, their eyes were gone. Hollow sockets stared out from each face, blood crusted in long trails down their cheeks.
The breeze picked up and the bodies shifted slightly, creaking against their restraints.
No one around her spoke.
No one moved.
Even the birds had gone silent.
She had only glanced at them, but that was enough.
One of the four bodies hanging from the roof was, without a doubt, Kerrin's.
Unable to stop it, the image of her bloodied family lying lifeless and sprawled across the ground surfaced in her mind.
And as if some defense mechanism had triggered, her thoughts collapsed in on themselves.
Everything went dark.
She had passed out.
—
In front of the rising sun, two silhouettes moved along the shoreline. Their figures stretched into long shadows behind them, each step left a soft crunch beneath their boots.
A quiet breeze drifted in from the water, brushing past them as they walked.
Syleena adjusted her coat, the hem swaying slightly with each step. Her ash-gray hair lifted gently in the wind, strands catching the light like faded silver. A streak of dried blood marked her face, crossing her cheek in a sharp, uneven line.
Kael walked beside her, silent. In one hand, he held four objects tied together with string, each one swinging faintly with his stride.
Unlike Syleena, he was drenched in blood, now dried and cracking at the edges. His coat had darkened to a shade deeper than black, tinted by the congealed red clinging to its surface. His face showed a single clean stripe across his eyes, the only place he had wiped clear with his sleeve.
The rest was a crusted mask.
His hair, once orderly, now hung in stiff clumps, matted together by the blood that had soaked into it.
Syleena turned to look at him.
"Was it really necessary to kill his wife too?"
A short silence followed before Kael replied.
"It was."
He shifted the four objects he was holding to his other hand, then swept his arm through the air in a sharp arc, flicking off the blood that hadn't yet dried.
"Kerrin's influence had grown too strong. If she was left alive, she could have stood on his shoulders and brought everything to light.
More importantly, us."
Syleena gave Kael a piercing look before turning her gaze forward again.
"I guess you're right."