"Names… they are chains. Some bind you to the past, others pull you toward a fate you cannot refuse."
⸻
The night air inside Dielora felt different from the outskirts—thicker, like it carried whispers in its weight.
Kaizlan moved through the narrow alleys, his cloak brushing against damp walls. Each step was soundless, but every shadow seemed to follow.
He had not killed the boy. Not yet.
That decision was a crack in the wall he had built over years, and cracks… always spread.
⸻
From the rooftop, he watched the house.
Raen was still inside, the boy asleep in the small room on the second floor. The dim candlelight revealed the faint rise and fall of his chest.
Kaizlan could have ended it there, but his gaze lingered—not on the boy's throat, but on his face.
The resemblance gnawed at him.
It wasn't just the mark. It was something in the way the boy's features held that quiet defiance, the kind that refused to bow, even in silence.
The memory of his own reflection, years ago in the training chambers of the Fallen Shadow Sect, bled into the present.
He remembered the moment he told his instructor, "I have no name," and how the man had smiled as if breaking a child's identity was an art.
⸻
A sudden noise snapped him back.
Footsteps—measured, deliberate—echoed in the alley behind him.
Kaizlan's hand went to his dagger before the figure emerged from the darkness.
A tall man, draped in a dark coat, his presence sharp like a drawn blade.
No mask. No visible weapon. But his eyes… they burned with the kind of calm that only killers carried.
"You hesitate," the man said, voice low, almost amused.
"Who sent you?" Kaizlan demanded.
The stranger stepped closer, his boots silent on the cobblestones.
"Not here for you. Not yet," he replied. "But you should remember—when you delay the strike, someone else might take it from you."
Before Kaizlan could respond, the man turned and vanished into the maze of streets, leaving only the faint scent of burnt metal in the air.
⸻
Kaizlan looked back toward the window.
The boy was still there, breathing softly, unaware of the storm that was circling him.
The whisper of his old instructor returned, colder than before:
"Hesitation is betrayal."
And yet, Kaizlan stayed rooted to the rooftop, the name Eliann heavy in his mind… heavier than any blade.