Greywick was crueler in the daylight.
Night's shadows softened its edges, hiding rot beneath layers of smoke and torchlight. But the sun peeled it bare, and Blaze walked its veins with cold eyes, memorizing every crack in the town's armor.
The market square was a chaos of shouting voices. Human merchants in patched coats hawked cheap steel, salted meat, and dyed cloth. Beastfolk with bristled fur and wary eyes tried to sell pelts and herbs, keeping their tails curled tight whenever a human guard passed. The air stank of piss, spice, and horse dung baked into the mud.
Blaze moved among them cloaked, hood low, one hand brushing Kael's shoulder to keep the larger man from growling openly at every shove. To Greywick's people, he was just another faceless stranger. To Blaze, every face was another mark scratched into the ledger of his mind.
A drunk mercenary in a dented breastplate slumped against a wall, his purse tied carelessly at his hip. He waved his sword like a flag as he laughed with his fellows, boasting of a beast he'd slain in the forest. His voice carried loud, drawing attention, but Blaze noted how no one dared steal from him. The crest on his shoulder guard was a crude wolf's head—one of the mercenary guilds, then. Loud, careless, but feared.
Blaze filed the image away.
Across the square, a knot of boys no older than twelve scurried between stalls, nimble fingers tugging bread and apples from distracted vendors. They darted past a man in a crimson-handmarked coat—the same symbol Blaze had seen near the fighting pit. One boy stumbled too close. The man caught him by the wrist.
The child froze, pale as parchment.
The thug smiled wide, showing yellow teeth. He pulled a knife free with his other hand, made a slow show of balancing it on his fingertip. The boy whimpered. His friends scattered.
Then, laughing, the thug let him go with a shove. The boy bolted, nearly tripping in the mud.
Kael tensed at Blaze's side. "Pathetic," he muttered.
"Useful," Blaze corrected. "Every petty cruelty is a seed. Seeds grow roots."
He turned his head slightly. Two guards loitered by the square's fountain, chainmail loose, spears leaning on their shoulders instead of in their hands. They watched the exchange. Saw the crimson-marked thug torment the child. Did nothing.
Blaze studied their blank faces. Bought loyalty, or fear of reprisal? Either way, it meant the Crimson Hand had dug roots deeper than most gangs could in a border town.
The church made its presence known too, though faintly. A single priest walked through the crowd, robes gray with dust. He lifted his hand in benediction to a woman selling fish, murmured a prayer over a coughing child. His face was lean, eyes too sharp for a man resigned to poverty. Blaze marked the way he lingered, the way his gaze skimmed the square, not just the people but the walls, the symbols, the stains.
A man who saw too much. A problem.
Blaze's jaw tightened. His instincts hissed at him—paranoia gnawing the edges of his calm. Had the priest's eyes lingered on him? Had that hooded glance been just one moment too long?
"Master," Kael whispered, his teeth flashing. "You stare too much."
Blaze turned slightly, his cloak brushing. The spawn was right. Observation required invisibility. But it also required detail. If he did not stare, he did not see.
They moved on.
By the tannery, Blaze counted four guards passing in rotation—too loose in the morning, tighter at dusk. At the well, gossip ran like water. He caught whispers of nobles who hosted feasts in their manors but never left their gates. One man spat and muttered about a 'fat baron' who demanded tithes for protection but never sent soldiers when wolves raided farms. Another grumbled about mercenaries shaking down travelers at the west road.
Blaze stored each word. Each complaint was an opening, a crack in a wall.
Still, the paranoia stirred stronger. Every time a merchant's gaze brushed him, he felt the itch of suspicion. Every time a guard's boot scraped stone near him, he pictured a blade swinging. Even laughter felt edged, like a blade's whisper.
Kael noticed. "You hear ghosts," the spawn said when they ducked into an alley to avoid a crowd.
"Not ghosts. Patterns," Blaze answered. He leaned against the damp brick and shut his eyes briefly, replaying the morning in his head as if laying out a board of pieces. "Every motion leaves a trace. Every face, a weakness. You call it ghosts. I call it the web."
Kael tilted his head. "And you're the spider?"
Blaze opened his eyes. Pale irises caught the light. "What else would I be?"
They stepped back into the streets. The sun had climbed higher, gilding Greywick's rooftops in molten light, but the town itself remained dim. Here, life wasn't measured in coin or crops but in which throat you cut before yours was slit.
Blaze walked calmly, but his hunger gnawed deeper with each passing hour. Not just the thirst for blood—though that was there, pulsing under his tongue—but the hunger for control. For the town itself. To pull its strings until all the petty cruelties, all the corruption, all the fear, sang to his rhythm alone.
As the day lengthened, Blaze already had the beginnings of his song.
By twilight, Greywick's heartbeat shifted. The sun dipped behind the ridges to the west, painting the roofs in blood-red streaks before surrendering to shadow. The air grew colder, and with it came change: merchants shuttered stalls, guards tightened their patrols, and the beasts of Greywick—mercenaries, thieves, drunks, and worse—crawled from their holes.
Blaze moved among them as smoke moved among rafters, quiet and unseen. Kael stalked at his side, broad-shouldered and tense, his fists flexing like he longed to smash the first skull that met his gaze. But Blaze's hand rose once, slight, a signal. The spawn obeyed. Restraint was the leash Kael still needed.
Tonight was not for fighting. Tonight was for seeing.
---
The mercenaries came first.
Greywick's guildhouse squatted at the town's center like a drunk noble in a throne. Its doors yawned open, spilling laughter, curses, and torchlight onto the cobbles. Men and women clattered inside in armor half-polished, swords still wet with monster blood. The guild crest—crossed blades on a shield—hung above the door, painted so many times the wood beneath bulged with layers.
Blaze lingered by the edge of the square, pretending to study a notice board nailed to a wall. In truth, his ears caught everything.
Inside, a man shouted of coin lost in the pits, swearing vengeance on "those Crimson Hand bastards." Another muttered about the baron's latest tax on beast-pelts. A woman boasted of slaying a wyvern, only for her comrade to laugh and call her a liar.
Blaze's eyes drifted. Too much liquor. Too much pride. Loose tongues, loose discipline. Mercenaries were wolves, yes—but wolves that snapped at one another as often as prey. Their strength was real, but their cohesion? Weak. They served coin, not cause. That made them dangerous—but predictable.
He memorized faces, listening until their laughter blurred into one voice.
---
The gangs were trickier.
Greywick had many, each carving territory with knives and blood. But one name repeated in every whisper: **The Crimson Hand**. Blaze had already glimpsed them in the square earlier, and tonight he followed a pair who stumbled from a tavern, red-marked coats swaggering through the alleys.
He trailed them at a distance, moving roof to roof until they reached a crooked warehouse on the east side. Lanterns burned inside. Shouts echoed. Men with the red hand stitched on their sleeves played dice around a crate, knives flashing when bets soured. A woman with a scarred cheek collected coin, her eyes sharp as she scanned the room.
Blaze crouched in shadow, studying. The Crimson Hand was no rabble. They had a hierarchy, discipline sharpened by brutality. Where mercenaries were wolves, these were jackals—hungry, cunning, never satisfied. He watched one thug drag a boy into the warehouse, force him to his knees. The boy stammered excuses about debts unpaid. The scarred woman ordered his fingers broken.
Kael shifted beside him, fists clenched. "Why do we watch? We could slaughter them now."
Blaze did not look away. "And then what? Their corpses rot, another pack takes their place. Kill a beast, and the forest spawns another. But tame the beast, break its will—then it serves."
Kael bared his teeth. "Taming takes too long."
Blaze turned, finally meeting his spawn's eyes. His voice was low, cold. "So does building an empire. Would you prefer we starve in ditches instead?"
Kael grunted but fell silent.
Below, the boy screamed as bones cracked. Blaze only watched, committing every detail to memory.
---
The nobles lived differently.
Blaze and Kael drifted toward the west quarter, where crooked manors loomed behind high walls. Lanterns glowed in the windows. Laughter spilled faint through shutters. Carriages creaked up cobbled drives, bearing guests in silks while beggars froze at the gates.
They did not mingle with the town. They feasted while it rotted. And they paid mercenaries—or gangs—to keep it that way.
Blaze noted one manor in particular, its banners showing a stag with broken antlers. Servants carried crates inside—wine, fruit, silk, luxuries rare in Greywick. He caught a snatch of gossip from two passing maids: "The baron hosts another supper. All coin, no soldiers. If the beasts raid again, he'll hide like he always does."
So. Wealth without strength. Authority without respect. A hollow throne waiting to be cracked.
Blaze's mouth curved faintly at the thought.
---
But the church… the church was different.
The chapel was a squat stone building, its roof patched with tin, its bell cracked. Inside, candlelight flickered dim. Few worshippers came. A woman left with her child, both heads bowed, murmuring prayers too soft to catch.
Only the priest remained. The same one Blaze had seen earlier.
He knelt before the altar, lips moving, voice too faint to reach. His robes were worn, patched at the hem, but his posture was not weak. He rose after a long silence and walked the aisle, pausing to light a candle for the dead. His movements were deliberate, eyes sharp, as though every shadow was a threat.
Blaze watched through a gap in the wood, motionless.
The priest stopped. Slowly, he turned his head—toward the door. Toward Blaze.
The vampire froze. His hunger stirred, a gnawing need to silence that gaze forever. But he forced it down, retreating into the dark.
Kael frowned as they slipped into an alley. "He looked at you."
"Yes." Blaze's voice was low. "He sees too much."
---
When they returned to their rented loft that night, Kael's patience snapped. He slammed a fist against the rickety wall. "Days wasted! We skulk, we hide, you watch rats and priests and drunkards. Why not strike?"
Blaze sat on the floor, calm, hands steepled. His pale eyes glowed faint in the dark.
"Because every throat you cut too early robs you of leverage. Every enemy you kill in haste blinds you to their connections. A fool strikes fast. A king strikes last."
Kael snarled, restless. "And if someone strikes us first?"
Blaze's lips curled, almost a smile. "Then they learn who truly hunts here."
---
That night, Blaze lay still while Kael's heavy breaths filled the loft. He replayed every sight, every sound, every whispered name. Mercenaries, gangs, nobles, church. Four pillars of Greywick. Four pieces on the board.
The paranoia gnawed deeper. He pictured the priest's sharp eyes, the scarred woman's knife, the baron's soft laughter, the mercenaries' drunken boasts. All of them threats. All of them prey.
He whispered into the dark, words only he could hear.
"Soon."
Greywick slept badly.
Blaze learned that quickly. Its nights were alive with dogs barking, shutters slamming, drunken shouts turning to sobs or screams. Coin traded hands in alleys, and blades followed soon after.
It was the perfect cover.
---
Blaze moved through the streets like smoke, Kael a hulking shadow a pace behind. Neither drew attention. Their cloaks blended with the dark, their boots muffled against damp cobbles.
But Blaze did not walk aimlessly. Each turn, each pause was chosen. He drifted toward familiar corners: the guildhouse, the Crimson Hand's warehouse, the noble quarter, the chapel. He traced paths between them, testing which alleys gave cover, which rooftops offered sightlines, which gutters echoed with too much noise.
By dawn he had a map not on parchment, but in memory—Greywick's veins and arteries, the lifeblood of its factions.
---
Midway through that patrol, Blaze stopped at a narrow alley where two figures argued over dice. Their voices were low, tense, but Blaze's hearing picked every word.
"…you still owe the Hand. If you don't pay, you'll end up fingerless."
The second man stammered excuses, his hand clutching at a pouch that jingled too lightly.
Blaze stepped forward.
The two froze. His presence was not loud, but it was *felt*. Kael's bulk loomed behind, silent and dangerous.
The first man swallowed. "This—this ain't your business, stranger."
Blaze's pale eyes glinted in the dark. "It is now."
He reached not with hand, but with will. His gaze sharpened, sliding into the man's mind like a knife into butter. The thug stiffened. His breath hitched. His dice clattered from his hand, forgotten.
Blaze spoke softly, almost kindly. "What you fear most… picture it."
The man's pupils widened. His lips trembled. Then he screamed, collapsing to his knees, clutching his head as though invisible claws tore through his skull.
Kael chuckled low, cruel.
The second man fled, stumbling, too terrified to shout.
Blaze leaned closer to the kneeling one, voice calm as ever. "You belong to the Crimson Hand, yes? Then take them a message."
The man whimpered.
Blaze's whisper was silk on steel. "Tell them a shadow watches. Tell them death waits if they displease me."
Then, with a flick of will, he released the man. The thug staggered to his feet, eyes wide with madness, and fled down the alley.
Kael's grin split wide. "You toyed with him."
"No," Blaze murmured, stepping back into shadow. "I planted a seed."
---
The next night, he tested again.
A drunk mercenary stumbled from the guildhouse, armor clinking, sword dragging on the cobbles. Blaze caught him in a side street, one pale hand pressing lightly against the man's chest.
"Stop."
The mercenary froze. Not because he wanted to—because Blaze's voice curled around his will like chains.
"Drop the sword."
The blade clattered to stone.
Kael's breath hissed with delight. "Can I break him?"
"Not yet." Blaze studied the man's slack expression. His control held—shaky, but steady enough for a command or two. Not perfect. Not yet. But enough.
He let the man walk away alive, dazed, missing only memory. Kael growled in disappointment, but Blaze's hunger was for more than blood.
Power tested, refined, sharpened.
---
By the third night, Blaze no longer walked the streets to watch. He walked them to weave.
Every corner, every faction, every whispered name became a thread. He pulled them together in his mind, a pattern forming. The mercenaries—fractured, strong but greedy. The Crimson Hand—organized, brutal, feared. The nobles—fat and hollow. The church—small, yet sharp, a knife hidden in rags.
He was not yet their master. But he had seen enough to know how they moved, where they cracked.
Kael saw him staring down from a rooftop at Greywick sprawled beneath, its lanterns like dying stars in the mist.
"You look like you own it already," the spawn said.
Blaze's lips twitched, the barest ghost of a smile. "Not yet."
"Soon, then."
Blaze's eyes narrowed, hunger burning faint behind his calm. "Soon."
---
But paranoia did not sleep.
He thought of the thug screaming in the alley, of the mercenary's slack obedience, of the priest's sharp eyes turning toward him in the chapel. The town was a board, yes, but every piece might strike back if moved too quickly.
And so he waited, coiled like a predator in grass, patient as stone.
The web was not ready. But it tightened.
And Blaze Carter was its spider.