When the man in the lab coat said my name, my stomach tried to climb out of my throat.
Cecil. Not a title, not some vague slur about pens, shadows, or monsters in velvet gloves. My real name, spoken as though it had always belonged to him, as though he had been waiting in the damp rot of this chamber just to deliver it.
I couldn't decide whether to be flattered or horrified, though judging by the cold sweat that instantly broke across my neck, horrified was winning by a landslide.
I wanted to ask him how he knew it. I wanted to ask him how he dared. I wanted to ask him why his smile looked like it had been carved from porcelain, fragile but sharp enough to slice an artery if you touched it.
But before my tongue could loosen into words, the robed figures around him moved. They moved fast—faster than I'd expected from cultists who looked like they'd spent the last decade scribbling suns onto sewer walls. Their chanting broke into shouts, their hands raised, daggers gleaming, and in an instant the room fractured into chaos.
I don't remember pulling my dagger, only that it was suddenly in my hand, glinting weakly against the filthy glow of the pods. Salem surged forward, silent as death, his blade singing arcs too precise to belong to anything human.
The knight roared, of course, because his only volume setting is 'battlefield opera,' and bodies flew like discarded laundry.
Nara steadied herself—magic flaring as more of her rabbits popped into existence. Dunny ducked, bless his heart, flapping around the edges of the fight like a terrified pigeon trying not to get caught in the gears of war.
The robed men didn't last long.
They weren't fighters; they were fodder, and even a blind man could have seen it. Within moments the chamber was quiet again—quiet, save for the wet sound of the heartbeat pulsing in the center of the room and the ragged breath of the man in the lab coat.
Salem had him by the collar, blade pressed so close to his throat that the faintest shift would have opened it wide. The man did not flinch. If anything, he looked amused. His lips curved in a way that made me want to punch him before Salem had the chance to slit his neck.
His eyes glittered with clinical detachment, as though he were observing a curious animal and taking notes.
"Well," he said lightly, as if we'd just sat down for tea. "You are quicker than I anticipated."
"Name," Salem rasped, his voice low, dangerous. "Now."
The man sighed, long and patient, as though explaining something to a child. "Doctor Adrien Callow. At your service, though service is such a tedious word. I prefer… partnership."
I laughed, sharp and ugly. "Forgive me, doctor, but I don't think 'partnership' is on the menu. Not unless you're volunteering to crawl into one of your own meat pods."
His smile only widened. "Ah. Witty. I rather expected that. You always were a sharp one, Cecil."
There it was again—that name, delivered with such casual ownership that it made my teeth grind. My fists clenched, and I very nearly lunged for him, but Salem's blade pushed harder against his skin, drawing the faintest line of red. "Talk," Salem said. "Why are you here?"
Doctor Callow's gaze flicked briefly toward Salem, then back to me, as though Salem were a scalpel and I was the patient worth studying.
"Research," he said simply. "Always research. The Southern Sun Cult offered me what others would not. Space. Subjects. Resources. And so here I am, doing what I do best—advancing knowledge, regardless of the… squeamishness of society."
Rodrick spat blood onto the floor, his voice rough. "You call this research? Sewing eyes shut? Stuffing men into pods like pigs?"
"Progress requires sacrifice," Callow replied smoothly.
"And their high priest?" I pressed, unable to stop myself. "Who gave you this stage to play butcher?"
His eyes lit with admiration. "Ah, a versatile man. Pragmatic. Visionary. A leader who understands that old boundaries must be torn apart if anything new is to rise. Unlike the last one." His nose wrinkled in distaste. "A sentimental fool, unfit for the weight of real power."
The words punched the air from my lungs. Lysaria. He was talking about Lysaria. My Lysaria—the one we were here to save, the one who had stood against the cult before betraying himself to them. Heat seared my throat before I even knew I was shouting.
"Don't you dare!" My voice cracked like glass, slicing through the chamber. "You don't get to spit on his name like that! You don't even deserve to speak it!"
Callow raised a brow, more intrigued than threatened. "Ah. Touched a nerve, did I? How quaint."
I lunged, but Rodrick's hand caught my shoulder, holding me back with the kind of ease that made me feel like a petulant child. His eyes burned into mine, calm but unyielding. "Not now," he whispered. "We need answers more than vengeance."
My teeth ached from the grind of restraint. Callow chuckled softly, like he'd just won a round in some private game. "You see? The calm one understands."
"Then explain," Salem said evenly. "Why do this? What is the purpose?"
"The purpose," Callow said, his tone suddenly grave, "is to prepare. To even the playing field for the war to come."
Rodrick coughed, his face twisting. "War? Against who? The other factions?"
The words clicked in my skull like tumblers in a lock. I straightened, my smile bitter. "No. Not the factions. Against me. Isn't that right, Doctor?"
Callow merely shook his head, his expression maddeningly serene. "Not you. Not everything revolves around you, Cecil, however much you might like to believe it."
Confusion knotted my insides. If not me, then who? My thoughts churned, clawing for sense, but no answer surfaced. My voice broke rough. "Then why the Northern Cathedral? Why align yourselves with those sanctimonious bastards if not to put me down?"
At that, Callow laughed. He laughed so hard his body shook, the sound echoing grotesquely off the sewer walls. "The cathedral? Oh, Cecil. You really don't know, do you? The Southern Sun has never been working with the Northern Cathedral."
The air went still. My blood ran cold. "Then who?" I asked, though my mouth already knew the answer.
The smile that split his face confirmed it as he spoke, "Japeth."
The floor tilted beneath me. Japeth. Always Japeth, slithering through the cracks of memory, the mentor whose face I could never quite recall, the ghost threading through every revelation. Rage and dread battled in my chest. I bombarded Callow with questions, a barrage of words that snapped like whips—what was Japeth's aim, what did he want, how deep did his claws run?
But Callow only tilted his head, serene, refusing to answer. My fury drained into a sigh, ragged and bitter, echoing louder than I intended.
And then, without warning, Callow's expression changed.
It was like a mask sliding off. Gone was the amusement, the serenity. In its place came a twisted rage, sudden and sharp. His eyes snapped to Nara. She froze, ears quivering, backing away as though distance could shield her from the sudden violence in his stare.
"They're here," he hissed. "The Lady of Fangs. She's tracked you. She's tracked her."
Nara whimpered, retreating another step. My dagger rose instinctively, but before I could move, a sound cut through the chamber—a low, obnoxious whistle, lazy and sharp, bouncing down the tunnels.
Every head in the room turned. The heartbeat-pulse seemed to stutter a fraction. My chest tightened, breath caught halfway. I braced for the Lady herself to emerge from the shadows, a vision of teeth and terror.
Instead, a boy walked in.
He couldn't have been older than fifteen. Shaggy brown hair tumbled over hazel eyes that glinted with mischief far too old for his face. His step was casual, his hands tucked into the pockets of his worn trousers, as if he were simply strolling into a tavern instead of a chamber painted with blood and bile.
Salem's blade angled toward him, sharp as a question. "Who are you?"
The boy smiled. "Fitch." Nothing more, nothing less. Fitch, like the name should mean something, like the world ought to tremble just to hear it. My dagger lifted, instincts howling. But the boy raised his hands slowly, palms open, his voice calm. "No harm. I've no interest in fighting. I'm only here to recollect what belongs to the Lady."
His gaze flicked to Nara, and his smile softened in a way that made bile rise in my throat. "Come along now. Time to go home."
"I don't—" Nara's voice cracked. "I don't want to go back!" Panic laced every syllable. Her ears twitched frantically, her hands clutching at the air as if she could anchor herself to us by sheer desperation.
Fitch only smiled wider. "You don't have a choice." He stepped closer.
It was then that the knight, to his credit—or perhaps to his idiocy—stepped between them. Naked, defiant, broad shoulders blocking Fitch's path. For a moment the air sizzled with tension, a duel without weapons, only the weight of will. My hand clenched tighter around my dagger, ready for whatever madness came next.
Confusion lashed me like a whip, raw and stinging, leaving my thoughts unraveling in its wake. My eyes darted between them, snapping like a cornered animal, searching for logic in the knight's sudden surrender.
Why would he yield now, of all times—when every instinct of his absurd bravado had always been to laugh in the face of death?
But then I saw it. The tremor. Small at first, almost ignorable, yet there all the same. His bare shoulders quivered, not with strain, not with fatigue, but with something colder, something deeper. The faint, undeniable shaking of a man who feared nothing inthis world… except this.
I turned, desperate for an anchor, only to find Salem's eyes. They were blown wide, so much so the color had drowned in blackness. His jaw clenched hard enough to crack bone, but even that rigid steel couldn't hide the tremor at the edge of his stance, a tiny falter that spoke louder than words. Salem—the one who could smell death before it even decided whose door to knock on—was rattled. And that was all the warning I needed.
I looked back at Fitch. I peered closer before I saw it. His armband—tattered a dark green. The mark of a Bishop-class mage.
The world seemed to tilt beneath my feet, the ground suddenly too narrow to hold me. My breath caught in my throat, every instinct screaming at once, begging me to move, to flee, to run before that smile cracked wider and swallowed us whole.
A boy. Just a boy. And yet we were all standing in his shadow.