Dawn came slowly to Port Royal, not in light but in ash and bruised clouds. The sea was grey as tarnished steel, and the air had the brittle hush of something left unsaid.
Smoke still curled from the broken windows of the safehouse. What had once been walls of shelter now stood blackened and clawed by violence. Shards of glass littered the floor like forgotten teeth.
August sat propped against the far wall, his breathing shallow, the fever not yet gone. His skin was pale, sweat-slicked, but his eyes those grey, stormglass eyes were alert. Watching. Weighing.
Elias moved through the ruins with careful steps. He was inspecting the scorched remains of the fight, searching not for weapons or gold, but answers.
He crouched near the doorway, brushing soot away from a scorched beam. That's when he saw it a mark, etched just above the doorframe. Barely visible unless you knew where to look.
Three lines.
One vertical.
Two horizontal slashes through it, like a wound stitched shut.
It hadn't been there before.
"Elias," August called, his voice low and dry.
He turned. "You need rest."
"You found something."
He hesitated. Then nodded once. "A mark. Burned into the wood."
August tried to rise, grimaced, and leaned back again. "Describe it."
"Looks... deliberate. Like a symbol. Three cuts. The kind of thing gangs use to send messages."
"Or warnings," August murmured.
The room fell still again.
Outside, the bells from the harbor had stopped.
But in their absence, something else stirred a silence too deep to be natural. The kind that came before the weight of history returned, not as memory, but as consequence.
Elias stood and moved to the window. The street below was mostly quiet. Locals shuffled along the edges of debris, pretending not to notice the splinters of violence left behind. A beggar near the docks was mumbling a lullaby to himself in a language neither of them recognized.
And then—just for a moment—Elias spotted it.
A man watching from across the square.
Dark coat. Hooded. Standing utterly still while the world moved around him.
Elias blinked, and he was gone.
"There's something wrong with this place," Elias muttered.
"It's not the place," August said hoarsely. "It's the history."
He pressed a hand to the old pendant now hanging around his neck the one that had fallen during the fight and was still faintly warm.
Elias returned to his side. "I meant what I said last night. We leave today."
August didn't speak.
His body was weak, still trembling beneath the fever's weight. But his mind… his mind was a blade now. Sharpened by dream and memory.
He looked up at Elias, eyes unreadable. "There's more here. I feel it."
"August"
"No." His voice was soft but certain. "We ran into something last night that wasn't meant for us to survive. Those weren't just mercenaries. They didn't fight like men with orders. They moved like..." He faltered, searching for a word. "...like ritual."
Elias didn't argue. He only sat beside him in the ruinous hush, hands resting on his knees, jaw tight with thought.
And just outside, past the burnt beams and shattered glass, a scrap of cloth fluttered against the rubble black silk, singed at the edge, embroidered with red thread in the same pattern as the mark above the door.
August saw it. He said nothing.
But his fingers curled tighter around the pendant.
Somewhere in the deepest parts of him, a memory stirred.
Not of faces.
Not of names.
But of a feeling.
That long ago, he had seen this shape.
In the firelight of his parents' room.
In blood.
In the stillness before their deaths.
By noon, the skies had begun to clear, but not the mood.
August moved slowly, his legs unsteady, each breath drawn like a thread through cloth worn thin. But he insisted on dressing himself. On walking with his own feet. He refused the idea of being carried not out of pride, but because the feeling of weakness terrified him more than the danger ahead.
Elias watched him in silence. He said nothing when August's hand trembled trying to button his coat, nor when he staggered against the doorway before catching himself. But his gaze never left him.
At the edge of the ruined safehouse, a slip of parchment had been wedged into the crack of the broken door.
It hadn't been there the night before.
August turned it over with gloved fingers. No words only a map, inked in a spidery hand, marked with an unfamiliar symbol. A circle cleaved by a crescent blade.
There was no name on it. "That's "khyronia"
"Then why is someone inviting us there?" August asked.
Neither of them had an answer.
They packed what they could. August took a cane, not for display, but support. Elias strapped a pair of pistols beneath his coat, along with the dagger's August had used to slash through the assassin's cloak. Blood still stained the hilt.
By the time they reached the harbor, the wind had changed direction. Sea birds circled low. The few sailors remaining kept their eyes down, muttering about strange weather and red lightning spotted in the distance.
Their passage inland was not by carriage, but on horseback faster, quieter. The map had warned: "Do not come by roads built by kings."
So they rode through wild hills and whispering sugarcane fields, where the air shimmered with heat and something more: the breath of old magics and dead wars, unseen but never absent.
That night, they camped beneath a skeletal banyan tree, its limbs twisted like a creature reaching for something just out of reach.
Elias built the fire. August rested against his saddle, cloak wrapped tightly around him. His fever had lessened, but not vanished. He was quiet. Not from fatigue but thought.
"They wore the same cloak," he said suddenly.
Elias looked up. "What?"
"The one I saw in the dream," August murmured. "The night my parents died. The man standing in the doorway... he wore that same fabric. Black silk. Golden silver thread. I never remembered that part before."
"You think it's the same man?"
August shook his head slowly. "No. Not the same. But... connected. The same way smoke is born from different fires."
Elias went still. "Then this isn't just about spies or sabotage. This is personal."
August looked at the fire, his eyes distant. "No. It's never been personal. That's what makes it worse."
The fire cracked.
Far in the dark woods, something moved.
Not close. Not yet. But watching.
"Khyronia" was still days away, tucked in the folds of cliffs where shadows fell deeper than dusk. But already, the threads were pulling tighter. August could feel them coiling around his ribs. Not fear. Not yet.
Just the quiet certainty that they were stepping into a story much older than their own.
And someone—something—was waiting.
By morning, the terrain had changed. What began as soft, whispering fields gave way to craggy slopes and crooked paths, each one older than the last. The sun didn't reach these ridges fully. Even in daylight, the stones cast long, thin shadows that seemed to move slightly when no one looked.
Elias rode ahead, guiding his horse with one hand and scanning the horizon. He'd been quiet for hours now, a weight in his posture that wasn't just exhaustion.
Behind him, August rode with his head bowed slightly, the fever having dulled but not disappeared. His cloak was drawn tight, his gloved hand curled around the worn reins. But his eyes were awake—searching the trees, the cliffs, the cracks between time.
They reached a ridge overlooking a valley by noon. And there it was.
Khyronia.
Sprawled below them like the remains of a dream. A city built into the bones of the earth. Towers of white stone, chipped by centuries, still rose above the trees. The streets were labyrinths of marble and moss. And at the center, half-swallowed by vines and silence, loomed an archway of obsidian carved with runes neither man could name.
Elias let out a low breath. "It's real."
August said nothing. But his eyes had gone wide not with awe, but with a strange, almost painful familiarity.
"I've seen this," he whispered.
Elias turned. "When?"
"In the dream," August said slowly. "But not like this. Not ruined. Not asleep."
He dismounted, legs unsteady but refusing help. He walked to the edge of the cliff, boots crunching dry stone.
"Khyronia wasn't always forgotten," he murmured. "It was buried. On purpose."
Elias came to stand beside him. "By who?"
August's voice dropped. "By those afraid of what it would become."
A pause passed between them, long and full of the wind.
Then Elias spoke. "We'll stay low. Keep quiet. See what that map was leading us to."
But even as he said it, something strange moved across the valley floor like heat ripple, like breath. The city seemed to shift slightly in the light. As though parts of it didn't exist entirely in this world.
August didn't move. He stared down at Khyronia, lips slightly parted.
"I think," he said softly, "we're not the only ones arriving."