The third day arrived like a slow pulse under the city — steady, inevitable, something felt in the bones before it was seen by the eyes.
Assassination attempts had become the new music of Aiden's nights: knives clinking against stone, whisper-steps, the soft, betrayed sigh of a ward breaking. Each attempt brought the same lesson: the world would not wait for plans to be neat. It would rush in wild and hungry.
He had learned to drink that rush like some do wine. Not with reverence, but with taste.
There was an old line, a proverb passed down from Aiden's memories of another life, a sermon he once heard and turned into a private joke: "Drink my blood, eat my flesh." In its original, it was sacrament and unity; in his mouth it had become a tool and a truth. If a god's symbol could bind people, why not the man who wore the shadow of a prophet?
Blood, as he liked to remind himself in the dark hours, had always been the quietest currency.
