Chapter 11 – Poking Shadows with a Stick
"Alright," Cyrus muttered, crouched behind a stack of rotting crates near the magistrate's estate. "It's night, we're under-equipped, outnumbered, and underpaid… classic infiltration conditions."
Yura, beside him, tilted her head. "Do you ever take anything seriously?"
"Yeah," he whispered. "My skincare routine. And maybe this cult thing."
She gave him a side glance, deadpan. "You're lucky your face is covered. I'd punch it."
"See? That's flirting."
She rolled her eyes, but didn't move away.
Across the alley, Calen gave a low signal—two fingers up, one swipe to the side. The side door of the estate, where the cloaked figures had entered the night before, creaked open just a sliver.
Cyrus's mind clicked through the plan. Elric had offered them a "back route" he once used as a guard, but something about his directions had rubbed Cyrus wrong. The man's story was a little too clean, his timing a little too perfect. But he hadn't said anything—yet.
He was waiting for the right moment.
"Ready?" Calen asked, returning to them.
"As I'll ever be," Cyrus replied. "Let's go annoy some cultists."
The interior of the estate was silent… too silent.
No guards. No servants. Just long hallways lined with half-burned candles and tapestries that looked expensive enough to fence for a kingdom's ransom.
They moved carefully, one room at a time.
Calen led, sword drawn but silent. Yura walked light, barefoot again, despite Cyrus's dramatic begging earlier about hygiene. Cyrus followed behind, mask gleaming faintly in the candlelight, eyes scanning everything.
It wasn't long before they reached the hall Elric had mentioned.
And sure enough, behind a false cabinet, there was a staircase—spiraling down into the dark.
"Okay," Cyrus muttered. "Let me guess: death pit, cursed stairway, gateway to hell?"
Yura leaned over the edge. "It's dark."
"Thank you, Captain Observation."
They descended.
The air below shifted. It was colder, damper, and laced with that faint smell of blood and burnt incense.
Strange markings adorned the walls—jagged, looping runes Cyrus recognized from the system's brief glimpses of the failed timeline. These were not just cult symbols—they were anchors. Magic seals. Ritual designs meant to bind something in place… or let it loose.
Calen crouched beside one and frowned. "These weren't here during my time."
Cyrus narrowed his eyes. "Of course they weren't. They're recent. That's the point."
The deeper they went, the more warped the stone became. The walls began to pulse faintly, as if alive. At the end of the tunnel stood a door—wooden, but carved with the symbol of a single closed eye.
Yura stepped forward. "I can break it."
"No," Cyrus said suddenly, raising a hand. "We're not here to pick fights. Not yet."
She looked at him. "Then why are we here?"
"To send a message."
He pulled out a red-stained thread—the one from his robe that had torn in the forest days ago. Quietly, he tied it to the base of the door handle.
"I want them to know someone's watching," he said.
Yura blinked. "That's creepy."
"That's branding."
As they slipped out the same way they came in, Cyrus's thoughts swirled.
Elric's directions had been too precise. The guard placements he warned about hadn't been there. The cabinet had no sign of prior tampering, despite Elric saying he'd opened it before.
But Cyrus said nothing.
Because sometimes, it was better to let a traitor think you trusted them.
Keep your enemies close—and all that.
He'd deal with Elric later.
Later that night, back at the smithy, the three of them sat in relative silence.
Calen leaned against the wall, arms crossed, while Yura tried to toast bread over a flickering flame. It wasn't going well.
Yura raised an eyebrow. "You really think they'll notice the string?"
"They'll notice," Cyrus said confidently. "Cultists are dramatic. They love their little rituals. Now they've got a mystery to chew on."
She leaned back. "You're kinda weird, you know that?"
Cyrus grinned beneath his mask. "That's what all future legends sound like in chapter one."
Yura gave him a look, but he just kept going.
"I'm walking in Aizen's footsteps," he declared.
"Aizen?"
"Oh. Right. Cultural barrier." He cleared his throat. "Imagine thats super smart,handsome, and always 5 steps ahead of everything. Anything that happens is part of his plan, even you failing to make whatever you are is part of his plan. That's Aizen. Doesnt that remind you of me. thats literally how I am."
Yura scrunched her eyebrows when she heard the part of her cooking before she sighed and said "…You wanna be like him?"
Cyrus leaned back dramatically. "What, I already am like him, Im Mysterious. Brilliant and unfairly good-looking—mask included."
Yura rolled her eyes. "Whatever keeps you asleep at night"