The meeting with Lord Eldric and the gathered dignitaries had ended hours ago, yet the weight of their gazes lingered in Aeren's mind. He had bowed, spoken little, and slipped away as soon as formality allowed.
Night draped House Verdan in silence. Inside his quarters, Aeren moved with practiced precision, exchanging his servant attire for the black, close-fitted garments he had prepared for this night. No ornament, no sound—only a small dagger at his belt and the cold gleam in his eyes.
He waited.
The candles burned low. The world slowed.
Midnight arrived.
With a deep breath, Aeren sat cross-legged in the center of the room and began absorbing mana—steady at first, pulling it into his core with all the control he had honed in secret. The familiar burn filled his veins, but he did not stop. He sped the flow. Faster. Harder. His skill screamed in protest.
The heat turned to fire. His organs writhed under the strain, tearing and mending, tearing again. Blood surged in his throat. Still he pushed, breaking past the rhythm his body could safely endure. Mana flooded him like a river in storm, and the structure of his body began to fail from the inside.
Aeren's eyes snapped open. His body blurred.
In a burst that cracked the still air, he was out the door, down the halls, and into the courtyard before any sentinel could react—moving with the speed of lightning and the echo of breaking sound.
The cold night wind bit into his sweat-drenched skin as he vaulted over the outer wall. Once clear of the mansion, his legs faltered. He stumbled into the shadow of a stone arch, coughing violently.
A splash of scarlet hit the cobblestones. His knees struck the ground.
For a full minute, he knelt there—breathing ragged, vision spinning—forcing his will to steady the chaos within him.
Aeren rose from the cold stone, his breathing steady now, though his body still thrummed with pain from the mana overload. He wiped the last trace of blood from his lips and turned toward his true destination.
At first, he walked, each step measured. But as the night deepened, his pace quickened—faster, faster—until the empty roads blurred past him. Hours passed beneath his feet like fleeting minutes. By the time the moon had begun its slow descent, he stood before it.
A laboratory.
Or what was left of one.
The surrounding air was still—unnaturally so—holding the kind of silence that seemed to swallow every sound. Before him rose a mansion-like structure, its once-proud frame now skeletal and shadowed. In the pale light, it looked less like a building and more like the lingering ghost of one.
Aeren approached slowly, his eyes scanning every angle. No movement. No guards. Only the whisper of the wind against the cracked walls. He slipped inside without a sound.
The interior was vast and hollow, the air heavy with the scent of dust and something faintly metallic. Each step stirred motes into the air, drifting lazily in the moonlight. He searched every corner—room after room, hall after hall—finding nothing but decay and emptiness.
Hours passed in quiet investigation.
Finally, in the farthest wing of the ground floor, his hand brushed against an uneven section of wall. A faint draft seeped through the crack. His eyes narrowed. With careful pressure, he found a hidden mechanism and slid the panel aside.
A stairway yawned before him, spiraling down into darkness.
The basement.
Without hesitation, Aeren stepped into the shadows.
The stairway groaned under his weight as Aeren descended. Darkness swallowed him whole, pressing close from all sides. The air was thick, damp, and cold—like the breath of something ancient and unseen.
He could barely see. Closing his eyes for a heartbeat, he willed mana into them, forcing the flow until it burned like molten glass in his skull. His vision sharpened, edges cutting through the black. The pain was sharp, but he ignored it.
Step by step, he advanced.
The basement was riddled with crude traps—wires, spikes, and trip mechanisms—but they were clumsy, almost insulting. He slipped past them without breaking stride.
Then the scent hit him.
Blood. Old, thick, and layered—so much that it seemed to seep from the very stones.
Shapes emerged ahead. People—dozens—moving aimlessly in the shadows, their eyes glazed, their steps unsteady. They hadn't noticed him. They couldn't.
Aeren's fingers brushed the hilt of his dagger. He drew it and began applying a thin layer of dark liquid from a small vial in his pocket. The poison was his own creation from his past life—fast, silent, merciless. Paralysis in an instant.
He moved through them like a shadow.
One by one, bodies crumpled to the floor. A few noticed too late; their limbs failed them before they could even scream.
Leaving the fallen behind, he reached a heavy iron door. The hinges groaned as he pushed it open.
Inside, a man worked over a stained table—hands buried in the open chest of a corpse, human and monster parts strewn together in grotesque piles. The man's head jerked up, eyes gleaming with fevered madness.
"Well, well… am I seeing things?" he rasped. "Can't sense a thing, yet here you stand."
His laughter echoed, sharp and wild.
Before the man could act, Aeren's fist crashed into his face, hurling him against the far wall. Blood sprayed, and the man collapsed with a groan.
Aeren exhaled, ready to move in—
—but pain like fire erupted in his chest.
A blade had pierced straight through his heart.
He fell forward, vision spinning, the world dimming. Footsteps echoed as a new figure emerged from the shadows, stepping over his body without a glance.
"So… just a rat that wandered too deep," the stranger muttered, turning to the first man.
Aeren's eyes snapped open—silent, unseen. His chest was soaked with blood, but his hand slipped into his pocket and closed around a small glass vial.
He drank the healing potion in one swallow, ignoring the incomplete mend it offered. In the same motion, his dagger lashed upward, slicing through the air and piercing the stranger's throat—not a killing blow, but deep enough to silence him.
"You should've gone for the neck," Aeren whispered coldly.