They didn't scream. They didn't shout. The Whisper Blades didn't even breathe loud enough to hear.
They just moved — fast, clean, and murderously.
Cairen barely ducked as the first blade sliced through the air where his neck had been. Sparks flew as it met the wall behind him. Tessia was already moving, flipping a table into the path of another assassin.
"You just had to touch the creepy glowing wall!" she shouted, slicing through a falling bottle midair as if it insulted her family.
"To be fair," Cairen said, rolling over the floor and narrowly avoiding a dagger to the ribs, "you told me to!"
"Exactly! That's why it's your fault!"
The tavern exploded into chaos.
Patrons screamed and scrambled. One passed out cold before anyone even touched him. A bard ducked behind his harp with a shriek that could probably summon the dead. Plates shattered. Magic sparked. The air tasted like copper and adrenaline.
Whist, to their credit, was already gone. Just a shimmer of air where they'd been sitting. Coward. Smart coward.
Cairen dodged left, felt a blade graze his arm — and then something clicked.
The rune.
It was glowing again, flaring like liquid fire across his forearm.
"Draw it."
The voice. The same one from the wall. Deep, ancient, and currently yelling in his brain.
"Draw the blade. Burn them."
"What blade?" he growled, grabbing a stool and throwing it with very little hope. It bounced off one assassin like a pillow.
"Your back. Ignite the pact."
He reached instinctively behind him — and his fingers touched something he hadn't worn when he walked in: a hilt.
A sword?
He pulled.
And fire erupted.
Not from steel, but from air, from blood. A blade forged from red light and molten heat hissed into being, dragging ember-like sigils through the air as he swung.
The assassin who lunged at him didn't have time to scream. The sword caught their chest and carved through shadow, splitting the magic like silk.
They vanished into smoke.
Cairen stood blinking.
"Okay," he said. "That's new."
Tessia, mid-duel with two Whisper Blades at once, glanced his way. "Where the hell did you get a dragon sword?!"
"Apparently from my back?!"
She ducked a strike and hurled a dagger between the eyes of another attacker. "Remind me to never sleep near you again."
"Noted."
Cairen turned to the final assassin, who hesitated. The blade in Cairen's hand pulsed with draconic heat — alive, like it was breathing with him.
"This one fears. Good. Let him carry word."
"Go," Cairen said, voice deeper than his own. "Tell whoever sent you that I'm not theirs."
The assassin vanished in smoke. Not retreat — teleportation. But Cairen could feel it: fear. The rune in his blood had awakened something ancient.
And now it was watching.
Later, Somewhere Less On Fire…
They ran. Of course they ran. Through the back alleys of Velmora, beneath sewer gates and dead stairwells and through doorways that shouldn't exist but did if you knocked with the right kind of lie.
Tessia slumped beside him against a cold stone wall, panting, covered in ash and a few impressive bruises. "So… that was a great first date."
Cairen wiped blood off his chin. "We are never going to a tavern again."
"I vote we go back and burn it down."
"You always vote that."
"Because it's always valid."
They looked at each other and laughed — exhausted, broken, alive. The kind of laugh that only people who had survived assassins and magic swords in one night could have.
But the moment broke.
Because Whist was standing in the shadows ahead of them again. Cloaked. Calm. Uncomfortably clean.
"You've bonded," they said, voice flat.
"No hello?" Tessia said. "We almost died for your stupid seal thing."
Whist ignored her. "That sword is not ordinary. It's a Drakeblade. A pact weapon. Forged when a dragon soul fuses to a human through Bloodbinding."
Cairen blinked. "So… what, I've got a dragon stuck in my bloodstream?"
"In a way. You've made a pact with something ancient. Dangerous. Likely volatile."
"Well," Tessia said, "that explains his charming personality."
Whist stepped forward and knelt beside Cairen. "Has it spoken to you yet?"
"It won't shut up," Cairen muttered.
"Rude."
Whist's eyes narrowed. "Then the pact is deeper than I thought. You're not just Marked… You're Chosen."
"Chosen for what?"
"To die. Or to save us all. Possibly both."
Meanwhile, Deep Below Velmora…
In a chamber sealed by ten thousand runes, a figure stirred.
Long fingers traced a dusty tome. A single candle flickered. The scent of old scales and forgotten war hung heavy in the air.
A whisper rippled through the dark:
"A seal has broken."
"The boy lives."
"Then the pacts will awaken again."
The figure turned, revealing a face half-human, half-dragon, twisted and regal.
"Let him awaken," she said, voice like silk over coals. "The blood owes me a reckoning."
And in the farthest prison of the world, something massive exhaled — for the first time in a thousand years.