The owner's private office sat at the top of the administrative building like a crown jewel, its windows commanding a view of the entire quarry operation. Torchlight flickered through expensive glass panes as Aiden picked the lock with stolen tools, his movements silent as death itself.
Inside, Merchant Prince Aldric hunched over his mahogany desk, surrounded by ledgers and documents that represented years of profit extracted from human misery. Even at this late hour, with his compound in chaos and his property escaping into the night, the man who had bought Aiden at auction six years ago continued working his calculations.
Still counting coins while his world burns around him, Aiden thought, slipping through the door with misdirection wrapped around him like shadow. Some things never change.
Aldric was older than Aiden remembered—his hair had gone completely white, and deep lines carved his face into a map of avarice and cruelty. But his movements remained sharp as he worked his way through columns of numbers, tallying the cost of escaped property against insurance payments and replacement expenses.
"I said not to disturb me, Matthias," Aldric muttered without looking up from his ledgers. "Whatever new entertainment you've found can wait until morning. I need to calculate our losses from tonight's... difficulties."
Aiden stepped fully into the lamplight, letting his concealment drop. "Your son won't be disturbing anyone ever again."
Aldric's head snapped up, his pale eyes widening as they took in the blood-spattered slave standing in his private sanctum. For a moment, his expression showed nothing but confusion—as if his mind couldn't process the impossibility of what he was seeing.
Then recognition dawned, and his face twisted with rage.
"You," he snarled, surging to his feet with surprising agility for his age. "I remember you now. One of the Valdris brats we acquired during the liquidation. You should have died with the rest of your treasonous family!"
Power blazed around Aldric like visible heat as his awakened abilities came online. This wasn't some partially trained torturer like his son—this was a man who had spent decades honing his skills in the cutthroat world of merchant politics.
The first spell came without warning—a lance of pure force that would have punched through Aiden's chest if he hadn't thrown himself sideways at the last possible moment. The energy beam scorched the air where he'd been standing and blasted a hole through the stone wall behind him.
"Six years!" Aldric roared, his hands already weaving another spell. "Six years of feeding you, housing you, keeping you alive out of the goodness of my heart! And this is how you repay my generosity?"
A second force-lance erupted from his palms, followed immediately by a third. Aiden rolled behind a heavy bookshelf, feeling the magical energy sear the air inches from his face. Leather-bound volumes exploded in showers of paper and binding, filling the air with the smell of burning parchment.
He's strong, Aiden realized with growing alarm. Much stronger than anyone I've faced before.
But strength wasn't everything. Aldric was powerful, experienced, and filled with righteous fury—but he was also decades removed from real combat. His techniques were flashy but inefficient, designed more for intimidating business rivals than killing desperate opponents.
Aiden activated his Armaments of Frost, feeling supernatural cold flow into his dagger's blade. The weapon began to gleam with crystalline ice as he prepared to engage at close range.
"Impossible," Aldric breathed, his spell-casting faltering as he recognized the ice magic. "That's Matthias's ability. How could a slave—"
He cut himself off, understanding flooding his features. "You killed him. You murdered my son and stole his power."
"Among others," Aiden replied, stepping out from behind his cover with an icicle spear materializing in his free hand.
Aldric's face went through several interesting colors before settling on a purple that suggested apoplectic rage. "Leech! Vampire! I know what you are now—one of those abominations that feeds on the cores of others!"
The merchant's hands moved in complex patterns, weaving what looked like a defensive barrier around himself. But instead of the familiar glow of protective magic, silver light began to coalesce around his fingers.
Silver, Aiden realized with confusion. Why would he—
The answer came as Aldric hurled the silvery energy at him like a net. Aiden dodged, but the magical construct seemed to track his movement, wrapping around his arm and sending lines of burning pain through his nervous system.
"Silver disrupts vampiric abilities!" Aldric laughed with manic glee. "Learned that during my travels through the Shadowlands. Creatures like you can't stand the touch of pure silver!"
But the pain faded quickly, and Aiden's abilities remained intact. Whatever Aldric thought he was fighting, it wasn't what Aiden had actually become.
He thinks I'm some kind of undead, Aiden realized. A vampire or wraith that feeds on life force. He has no idea what essence absorption really is.
The merchant's mistake gave Aiden the opening he needed. While Aldric was preparing another silver-based attack, Aiden downed one of his stolen mana potions in a single gulp. Energy flooded back into his depleted reserves, washing away the exhaustion from his earlier battles.
Now we're more evenly matched.
Misdirection flowed out like invisible fog, causing Aldric's next spell to go wide as his perception of Aiden's location became uncertain. The force-lance shattered a window instead of finding its target, sending glass cascading into the courtyard below.
Aiden's icicle spear caught the merchant in the shoulder, spinning him around and sending him crashing into his desk. Ledgers and documents scattered across the floor as blood began to pool beneath expensive wood.
"You want to know about revenge?" Aiden asked conversationally, advancing with his frost-enchanted dagger gleaming in the lamplight. "Let me tell you about a five-year-old boy who watched his family get slaughtered. Who was sold like livestock to feed the greed of men like you."
Aldric tried to cast another spell, but Aiden's Exploit Weakness ability guided his blade to the merchant's wrist, severing tendons and making complex hand gestures impossible.
"Let me tell you about six years of starvation, beatings, and humiliation," Aiden continued, methodically disabling his victim's ability to fight back. "About watching good people get broken for entertainment. About learning that the world is full of predators who think power gives them the right to destroy innocence."
Another cut, this one across the merchant's throat—not deep enough to kill immediately, but sufficient to reduce his protests to wet gurgles.
"But mostly, let me tell you about justice finally being served."
The killing took longer than it needed to. Aiden could have ended it quickly with a single thrust to the heart, but he wanted Aldric to understand exactly what was happening to him. Wanted the merchant to experience the helplessness his victims had felt, to know that all his wealth and power meant nothing when faced with someone willing to do whatever it took to collect what was owed.
When it was finally over, when Aldric's blood had soaked into ledgers that would never again calculate profit from human misery, Aiden began the essence absorption process.
[ESSENCE ABSORPTION COMPLETE]
[ABILITIES GAINED: Merchant's Eye (Uncommon), Sweet Revenge (Rare)]
[MERCHANT'S EYE: Instantly appraises the value and properties of objects]
[SWEET REVENGE: Increases damage dealt to targets who have personally wronged the user]
Perfect, Aiden thought as the new abilities settled into his consciousness. Sweet Revenge would make his future confrontations with his family's murderers even more devastating, while Merchant's Eye would help him identify valuable loot and resources.
He spent the next hour systematically stripping the office of anything useful. Aldric's personal safe contained enough gold and gemstones to fund a small army. His storage rings held emergency supplies, rare magical components, and documentation that revealed the full scope of the Consortium's operations.
But the real treasure was a letter bearing the Imperial seal—correspondence between Aldric and someone identified only as "Lord Commander V" regarding "the Valdris situation" and "ensuring no loose ends remain."
Lord Commander Voss, Aiden realized, his hands tightening on the parchment. The man who led the raid on my family's estate. He's still alive, still active, and apparently still worried about surviving members of the bloodline he tried to exterminate.
The letter went into his storage ring alongside everything else of value. Evidence for future use, when he was strong enough to confront the architect of his family's destruction.
Dawn was breaking over the mountains by the time Aiden finished his looting. The compound below was in chaos—guards running back and forth, overseers shouting contradictory orders, smoke rising from several buildings where fires had been set during the night's violence.
Time to leave.
The stable contained several horses, but Aiden had never learned to ride. Horses were for nobles and their retainers, not bastard children who were barely tolerated in their father's household. He would have to escape on foot and hope his head start was sufficient.
He was maybe two miles from the compound, following a game trail that led deeper into the mountains, when he heard the distinctive sound of hoofbeats behind him. His detect ability flared to life, scanning for threats, but what he found instead was familiar—the awakened signatures of Marcus, Willem, and Jon.
They crested a ridge just as he turned to face them, their horses breathing hard from what looked like a difficult climb. But all three men were smiling with the kind of fierce joy that came from striking back at oppressors.
"Thought you might need some help getting away," Marcus called out, dismounting from his horse with practiced ease.
"We circled back," Willem added, his eyes bright with excitement. "Couldn't resist the opportunity to give our former captors a farewell present."
As if summoned by his words, explosions bloomed across the distant compound. Fire magic, Aiden realized—Marcus's abilities turned toward destruction rather than the small flames he'd conjured in their hidden cave. The administrative building where he'd just killed Aldric was already beginning to burn, while secondary fires spread to the dormitories and storage areas.
"That should keep them busy for a while," Jon said with satisfaction. "Maybe give some of the other slaves a chance to escape in the confusion."
Marcus extended a hand toward Aiden. "Climb up. We've got a long ride ahead of us, and those horses won't stay distracted forever."
Aiden hesitated for only a moment before accepting the offered assistance. His business at the quarry was finished—Aldric dead, his resources claimed, his files looted for intelligence about bigger targets. The next phase of his revenge would require preparation, training, and careful planning.
Time to disappear and become something even more dangerous.
As they rode away from the burning compound, following mountain paths that would take them far from the Consortium's immediate reach, Aiden allowed himself a moment of satisfaction. Three names from his list were now crossed out permanently: Brennan, Matthias, Aldric. He felt a lot better already.
He was something else now. Something patient and cunning and absolutely ruthless in the pursuit of justice.
Something that whispered lies and made them into truth.
Behind them, smoke continued to rise from the quarry as six years of stored anger finally found expression in flame and destruction. But Aiden wasn't looking back anymore.
He was looking forward, toward the day when every debt would be paid in full.
The Path of Whispered Lies had taught him well. Now it was time to learn what other lessons the world might offer to someone willing to pay any price for power.
The mountains stretched ahead like promises of possibility, and Aiden rode toward them with the cold smile of a predator who had finally tasted blood.