The northern import city had stopped breathing.
Warehouses leaned like old teeth. Rope and timber along the docks looked half-burned, half-erased, as if heat had come without fire. The air tasted of iron and salt—like the sea tried to clean the wound and gave up.
Elira stepped over a fallen signboard. Mira kept close, sleeves hiding the faint hum of her rings. Kael rolled his shoulders; his gauntlets clicked into place, plates settling with dry, certain sounds.
"Smells wrong," he said.
"Everything does," Mira answered. "Even the wind."
They moved through the warehouse row. Dust lay thick as gray snow. Elira brushed a wall; stone felt smooth as glass.
"Melted," she said, low.
Kael crouched, knuckles to earth. "No scorch pattern. Not fire."
A creak travelled the street. All three froze.
On the roofline ahead, a black-cloaked figure stood against the pale sky. Not hiding. Not greeting. Just there.
"Traveler?" Mira breathed.
Kael shook his head. "Posture says lookout."
Wind nipped the cloak edge. He didn't move. Elira blinked—and the roofline was empty.
They kept going.
By midmorning they reached the old dock quarter. Broken glass glittered in seams. Deep drag marks ran parallel, like something heavy had been pulled—or had pulled itself.
"That direction," Mira said, pointing east.
A low growl boiled out of a side alley.
"Left!" Kael snapped.
Shadow poured toward them—three misshapen beasts, bodies half-smoke, half-meat.
Elira met the first head-on. Lumeveil's pale edge bit and parted the shape, pinning it long enough for Kael to crash through—one hammering hook, then an elbow; his gauntlets sparked where metal met dark. The thing folded without a scream.
Mira's rings flared—blue, then red—and a short spiral of frost-fire sealed the second creature to the cobbles until it shattered under Kael's follow-up.
The third sprang high, claws wide—
A silver line cut the air. The shadow landed in two clean halves.
They turned. Under a soot-stained eave stood the black-cloaked man. Close enough to see the edge of a chain at his throat. He didn't speak. His gloved fingers brushed the pendant once—an unthinking habit—then he stepped back into shade. Not gone; simply… nearby.
"He's following," Kael said.
"Helping," Mira said, not fully convinced.
Elira kept her blade low. "Eyes up. If he's here, he's watching for something bigger."
A narrow lane opened on their right. Two doors leaned inward, sealing nothing. Faint voices trembled underneath the noise of the city's emptiness.
Elira pushed. "Anyone alive?"
"Here! Please—" a hoarse voice answered.
They forced the door. Behind a fallen shelf, two adventurers crouched, gray with dust. One clutched a knife like a charm; the other's leg was bound tight with a torn cloak.
"It's safe enough," Elira said. The words felt thin.
Mira knelt, light flickering around her palm. "You're not bleeding out. Yet."
The injured woman tried a laugh and winced. "I'll take 'yet.'"
Kael checked the frame, then the street. "We can move them. The stone square we passed—low walls, a fountain."
They half-carried the pair out. As they crossed the lane, the man whispered, "Black coat… cut the thing clean. Didn't speak. Didn't take our packs. Just—left."
Elira glanced at the rooftops. Empty. But the air felt like it had ears.
The stone square sat buried up to the ankles in ash. A cracked fountain offered cover; a short wall, the shape of defense. They settled the two survivors, gave water, checked bandages.
"They'll live," Mira said, standing and stretching her back. "They'll complain about it later."
Kael scanned the roofline. "He's still here."
Opposite, on a low roof, the black-cloaked man stood again—closer now. Balanced stance. Hands loose. The chain at his throat caught a sliver of dull light.
Elira raised her voice just enough. "You watching us, or the street?"
No answer. His gaze slid to the deeper alley to their right—as if to point.
"Could be a trap," Kael said.
"Could be a warning," Mira answered.
They listened. The square held its breath. Somewhere beyond the alley-mouth, something shifted with a wet scrape.
"Not yet," Elira said. "We fortify first."
They turned the fountain bench into a barrier. Kael wedged a broken door into the gap and set a simple trip-line with cord and nails. Mira chalked three quick signs on the stones—silent, small, enough to irritate anything that crossed without eyes. Elira mapped sightlines: approach lanes, fallback angles, what they could see and what they couldn't.
One of the rescued adventurers watched with wide eyes. "You three soldiers?"
"No," Elira said.
"Worse," Mira muttered. "We're organized."
The woman huffed something like a laugh.
Elira looked up. The black-cloaked man hadn't moved on. He didn't look bored or tense—just present, like a fixed star that refused to blink. His hand found the pendant again and turned it once.
"Why stay?" Elira called. "If you're going to help, say so. If you're not—say that."
He didn't. He tilted his head a fraction, listening to a street the rest of them couldn't hear.
Kael flexed his fingers; the gauntlet plates rasped softly. "If he wanted trouble, he's missed a dozen chances."
"Or he's measuring us," Mira said. "Like we're the ones on a roof."
Elira didn't disagree.
They finished the quick work. Water skins refilled from the least-broken barrel. A blanket thrown over rubble to make a seat. Mira checked her chalk marks and blew the dust from her hands.
Silence settled again—wrong kind, stretched too tight.
Then it came: from the alley the man had pointed at, a long, damp drag. Another. The scrape of something learning how to move.
Mira's rings hummed under her sleeves. "That's—"
"Save it," Elira said. "Positions."
Kael took the gap, shoulders squared, knuckles low and ready. Mira slid to the right to cover the cross-angle. Elira kept center, blade tilted to catch any light that would show what moved.
Across the street, the black-cloaked man stepped off the roof and dropped to a lower ledge with a soft scrape of boot on stone. He didn't come closer. He didn't leave. He stood where he could see them and the alley—exactly the wrong distance for a teammate, exactly the right distance for someone who didn't want to get in their way.
The sound in the alley deepened, like tar dreaming of teeth.
Elira drew a slow breath. The square felt like a held note. Her palm found the familiar line of Lumeveil's hilt.
"Ready," Kael said.
"Ready," Mira echoed, a thread of nerves in the word.
Elira nodded once, a signal and a promise both. "On my mark."
The scrape became a crawl. Shadows began to thicken at the edge of the alley-mouth—
They did not rush. They did not look away. The second wave gathered just out of sight, like night deciding to walk.
Across from them, the black-cloaked figure kept watching, as if he'd already chosen to stay.
Some shadows leave. This one stays.