The night air was thick with the scent of the sea, and the streets of Treviso glistened faintly under the rising moon. In the safehouse, the atmosphere was electric, the worn table between them covered with rough maps, notes, and a few small tools Hirik had carefully packed.
"We know it's a funnel," Tai added, leaning in. "They don't house people there, just move supplies, weapons, documents."
Hirik adjusted a small gadget on the table, something that clicked and hissed quietly before stilling again. "I put together a few small explosives. It'll bring the building down, make sure no one's in there you don't want dead. Light them and go."
Evie nodded thoughtfully, her braid brushing her shoulder. "We'll steal whatever's useful and burn the rest." She caught Kieran's steady gaze and gave a half-smile. "You two stay here. Tai and I will handle the lift."
Kieran only nodded once, unbothered. He'd never been the field type, neither had Hirik if it didn't involve face-to-face open combat. Both knew their strengths, and neither tried to play at something they weren't. And the only reason they were even hitting this place was because Tai had won the coin toss. He wanted to blow something up, even if it was technically a controlled explosion.
"You know the signal if it goes wrong," Hirik said quietly.
"We'll be fine," Tai said, flashing a grin. "Old pros, remember?"
They geared up swiftly - dark clothes, light packs, minimal metal. In minutes, Tai and Evie were ghosts in the night, slipping from shadow to shadow, heading for the docks.
They crouched together in the lee of a worn stone wall, watching the warehouse they intended to hit. Two guards. One stationed lazily at the front, the other making rounds. Exactly as Kieran had said.
Evie touched Tai's arm and pointed. Tai nodded, slipping off to create the distraction. A small tossed rock clattered in a narrow alleyway; the patrolling guard immediately perked up, muttering as he wandered toward the noise.
Evie moved. Silent, swift, she picked the lock, it yielded under her hands with the whisper of a sigh. She slipped inside just as Tai rejoined her.
The interior was dense with crates and barrels, the scent of wood and damp canvas heavy in the air.
Together, they moved through the warehouse, identifying key targets. Crates of documents, barrels of preserved food, weapons racks. Evie darted to a shelf where a thick ledger sat - unguarded, stupidly - and slipped it into her pack. Maybe it would have something useful, maybe not.
Tai, meanwhile, worked quickly, planting Hirik's small charges at structural chokepoints. It wasn't enough to bring the building down, but enough to collapse key sections, destroy goods, and leave the Crows digging through rubble for days.
"Two minutes," Tai murmured.
Evie nodded. They grabbed what they could carry - ledgers, letters, a few precious-looking vials marked with Crow seals - and slipped back toward the door. The guard outside still hadn't returned.
They disappeared into the night just as the first muffled thumps shook the air behind them. By the time the guards noticed, the interior would be a choking, chaotic mess, goods ruined, documents burned, and no clear sign of who had done it.
Evie adjusted the strap of her pack as they ducked into an alleyway, blending into the dark. She caught Tai's eye and smiled, fierce, exhilarated, and a little breathless.
-
The old safehouse door creaked faintly as Tai slipped inside first, scanning for any sign of trouble. When he found only Kieran at the table and Hirik fiddling with one of his gadgets by the hearth, he gave a low whistle. Evie followed close behind, shrugging the strap of her pack off her shoulder and letting it fall to the floor with a satisfying thud.
"We're back," she announced softly.
Kieran looked up immediately, relief flickering across his usually guarded face. "No trouble?"
"None," Tai said with a grin, brushing soot from his sleeve. "Too easy, honestly. Starting to feel bad for them."
Hirik barked a quiet laugh. "You say that every time."
"One of these days I'll mean it."
Evie knelt by the table, already tugging free the loot they'd managed to snatch. "No blood. No bodies. We hit the right crates."
She produced the ledger first, thick and bound in cracked leather, the Crow seal pressed into its cover, and slid it across to Kieran. His eyes gleamed with interest as he opened it carefully, thumbing through the first few pages. Names. Numbers. Shipping manifests.
"This is good," he murmured. "Very good."
"Got these too," Evie added, pulling out a bundle of letters tied with an oilskin cord, and a pair of small vials clinking together in a cloth pouch. "I don't know what's in them, but anything with their seal has to be worth stealing."
Kieran took the letters, handing the vials off to Hirik, who began examining them with a jeweller's eye, turning them against the firelight.
"And," Tai said, plopping down heavily into a chair, "we left them a nice little parting gift. Should be chaos for a little while."
Kieran shut the ledger with a soft thud, glancing between them. "You two did good."
"Of course we did," Tai said lightly, but his smile was a little softer when he looked at Evie. He could see the lines of tension across her shoulders, the exhaustion buried just under her grin.
Hirik leaned back, arms crossing over his chest. "One more crack in the dam."
Kieran nodded, thoughtful. "They're starting to scramble. Every move we make weakens them a little more. With this-" he tapped the ledger, "-we can probably start mapping out their smaller suppliers. Maybe even cut off a few more fingers before they realise how bad the bleeding is."
There was a short, heavy silence as they all absorbed the small victory.
Finally, Tai spoke again, quieter. "Get some sleep first, yeah? We'll start tearing through that thing tomorrow."
Evie gave him a tired smile and hummed her agreement. They had earned a few hours' peace.
-
Lucanis stood near the hearth, arms crossed as Teia carefully laid the scorched remains of a ledger on the low table between them. Caterina leaned over it, lips pressed in a thin line, while Viago and Illario flanked her on either side, both looking equally grim.
"A clean hit," Teia said first, her voice clinical. "Controlled, precise. No unnecessary damage outside the target structure. Whoever they are, they're getting better."
Lucanis leaned in slightly, studying the blackened edges of the papers. There was almost a surgical neatness to the destruction; it was thorough but restrained. No wild fire damage spreading through the nearby stalls. No injured civilians. Just... their property, reduced to ash and splinters.
Caterina's mouth tightened further. "They wanted the manifests."
"And they have them now," Viago said with a low growl. "Names. Suppliers. Routes."
Lucanis nodded slowly. "They'll be able to start connecting dots. Map out secondary networks, hit supply lines."
A soft curse from Illario. "Smart little bastards."
Teia straightened, brushing ash from her fingers. "Notice anything else?"
Lucanis hesitated, then said, "No jokes. No pranks. No black lotus smoke. No petty insults pinned to the walls."
Illario snorted. "You almost sound disappointed."
He ignored him. "The pattern broke. This hit was different."
Caterina tapped a finger thoughtfully against the table. "Is it the same group, adapting? Maturing? Or are we facing someone else entirely?"
"They seemed to know exactly what they wanted," Lucanis said. "And they took it without leaving a mess. If it is the same crew, they're refining their tactics."
"And if it's not," Viago muttered, "then the game just got a lot more complicated."
There was a brief pause.
"Speaking of complications," Teia added, "we're picking up whispers of another faction stirring in the mess."
Lucanis glanced at her, frowning. "Not our pranksters?"
And calling them that felt almost like a disservice. Pranksters they may be, but they were worse than that too.
She shook her head. "No. Cruder. Louder. Bloodier. They've killed a few minor operatives already. They're opportunists, trying to carve out space while we're distracted."
Viago's hand curled into a fist against his thigh. "Amateurs."
"Amateurs with sharp knives," Caterina said coldly. "If they continue unchecked, they could destabilise more than just us."
Lucanis exhaled slowly, the beginnings of a headache tightening behind his eyes. One fire was manageable. Two, burning in opposite directions could tear everything apart before they even knew the full extent of the damage.
He pushed off the hearth and turned toward the others. "We'll divide attention carefully. Prioritise identifying the... pranksters. They're the real threat to our infrastructure. This new faction is noise. Dangerous, but less strategic."
Illario lifted a brow. "And if they start targeting the same resources?"
Lucanis met his gaze evenly. "Then we'll cut them down."
Caterina gave a slight nod of approval, her sharp gaze unreadable. "We move carefully. Quietly. We cannot afford to lose control of the narrative."
The room seemed to grow heavier with the weight of it, the knowledge that they were now being hunted as much as they hunted.
Lucanis's fingers brushed the ledger's burned edge as he turned away, mind already working several steps ahead. Whoever was playing this game against them - whether one group or two - they were growing bolder.
And that meant the Crows would have to grow crueller.
Lucanis tapped his knuckles lightly against the edge of the table, the charred remains of the ledger still smouldering in his mind.
"We've been reacting," he said, voice low. "Letting them choose the timing. How is the new bait coming along?"
Teia lifted a brow. "Subtly."
"We can't just dangle something obvious again," he said, voice low. "Last time they saw it coming."
"They mocked us for it," Illario muttered, looking personally offended.
Teia smiled slightly, brushing a loose curl back from her face. "To be fair, it was obvious. They started acting like children, we started treating them as such."
Lucanis ignored them both and leaned forward, thinking. This time, it was real. A real transfer. Guarded. Fast-moving. Worded like an urgent reroute — one they didn't want anyone to know about.
Viago rubbed a hand over his jaw. "Less 'pile of treasure left in an alley,' more 'this was a mistake we have to cover.'"
"We're seeding the rumours carefully, a few dockworkers, a few market hands. Nothing official. Nothing too clean. The kind of whispers you only hear if you're listening closely." Teia's eyes sharpened. "Natural bait. The kind you have to bite on, or miss a rare opportunity."
"And the materials we're moving?" Caterina asked, voice mild but expectant.
"Enough real goods to sell the story," Lucanis said. "Some contacts. Some information. Some coin. All of it expendable."
Caterina steepled her fingers. "The trick will be the guards. Too strong, and they'll never try. Too weak, and they'll know it's wrong."
Lucanis gave a thin smile. "We let a few key pieces slip. A shipment moved fast because of a security breach. Nervous handlers. Delays. Guards spread thin."
"And we don't catch them in the act," Viago added, warming to the idea. "We follow them. See where they go."
Teia hummed under her breath, thoughtful. "If they're as good as they have been, they'll leave false trails."
"We'll be ready," Lucanis said. He felt the old fire lighting in his blood, the one he hadn't felt since this quiet war had begun.
Illario grinned. "What if it doesn't work?"
Lucanis tilted his head. "Then we'll just make it harder for them to sleep at night."
The others nodded. None of them pressed for details. They all knew what he meant.
Lucanis lingered a moment longer, hands clasped behind his back, gaze fixed outside the window.
If you couldn't corner a rat, you didn't give it peace. You flooded its tunnels. You cut off its food. You poisoned its air.
They'd been generous until now, cautious and patient. Letting the little saboteurs play their games. But there were other ways to break a cunning opponent. Starve them of safety. Drown them in uncertainty. Make them doubt every shadow. Lucanis didn't particularly enjoy that kind of work. But he'd learned a long time ago that sometimes it wasn't about the blade. It was about what happened before the blade ever came out.
He finally turned away, the motion smooth and unhurried. "Double patrols. Rotate the routes daily. I want merchant rumours tracked too - if they've got supplies coming in, I want to know about it."
"We've already got people watching the engineers," Teia added, brushing dust from her gloves. "Waiting to spot these little thieves who pay instead of steal."
Lucanis's mouth curved slightly, not a smile, exactly. "Good. If they keep buying odd parts instead of taking them properly, sooner or later someone will notice more than just the coin left behind."
If these saboteurs thought they could keep slipping between cracks, they'd soon find the ground shifting beneath their feet.
Everyone stumbled eventually.