The rain had returned, a hard, driving curtain that turned the city into a smeared watercolor. Kaelan moved through it like a blade through silk, a fluid darkness untroubled by the downpour. The brief, agonizing silence was gone, but the memory of it was a brand on his soul. The Shade, enraged and fearful, was a storm of razors in his veins, demanding retribution, demanding he crush the source of that unbearable peace. Its desire had shifted, warped from a predatory interest into a frantic, self-preserving need for annihilation. He could not allow such a vulnerability to exist.
He found the scent of the deliveryman first a cloying, fungal odor of wild magic that clung to the damp air in the alley behind her building. It was a trail, but a secondary one. The primary trail was hers. Elara. It wasn't a scent or a sound, but a distortion in the fabric of the Aethel, a wake of quiet she left behind her. To his senses, it was a hole in the world's constant noise, a void that pulled at him. He followed it from her apartment door, down the service stairs, and out into the slick, black streets. She was moving with a purpose now, a sharp, frantic energy that was different from her previous muted rhythms. The key had awakened something.
He tracked her to a decrepit parking garage, watching from the shadows as she wrestled with an ancient, rust-speckled sedan. The car was a pathetic shield, a tin can against the forces that were now circling her. He could feel the tremors in her aura, the fear a bright, sharp note that made the Shade coil in anticipation. She was a rabbit that had just realized it was being stalked. Part of him, the ghost of the man he had been, felt a flicker of pity. It was a distant, useless emotion, instantly cauterized by the Shade's corrosive presence. Pity was a luxury his curse had stripped from him centuries ago. His purpose was singular. He was the scalpel. She was the infection. The Conclave's order was the hand that wielded him.
She finally got the car started, its engine coughing a cloud of exhaust into the damp air. She pulled out of the garage, the tires hissing on the wet asphalt. Kaelan didn't need a vehicle. He moved across the city's rooftops, a phantom leaping between canyons of steel and glass. His form blurred, aided by the Shade's power, a concession it gladly gave for the promise of the hunt. He matched her pace easily, a shadow keeping parallel to her route. She was heading out of the city's core, toward the older, wealthier districts where the trees grew thick and the houses held their secrets behind high walls and iron gates. Toward the Vayne mansion. The Shade recognized the destination, its hunger spiking with a fresh, vicious intensity. It was all coming together. The lock and the key, converging. And he was there to ensure they were both broken beyond use.