The undercity devoured light.
Kaelen's torch flickered against walls slick with condensation, the flame straining as if reluctant to burn in air so heavy with rot. His boots struck puddles with muted splashes, the sound swallowed before it could carry far.
Behind him, five men marched in uneasy silence. Their armor was stripped of its gleam, dulled with soot to keep it from catching stray light. Still, the faint clink of metal echoed louder than Kaelen liked.
"Steady," he murmured, voice low. "Shadows are not your enemy until they move."
The men nodded, adjusting grips on spears and blades. But Kaelen felt the tremor in them—the subtle shift of weight, the shallow breaths. These weren't green recruits. They were soldiers, men who'd bled for Solara. And yet the tunnels stripped them raw, turning hardened warriors into restless prey.
A soldier muttered a prayer under his breath. Kaelen let it pass.
The stench worsened as they pressed deeper. Rot. Mold. And beneath it, the acrid bite of charred flesh. Kaelen knew the smell. Too well.
"Sir," said Jorren, the youngest of the unit. His voice cracked, barely more than a whisper. "Do you… hear that?"
Kaelen lifted a hand. The squad halted.
At first there was nothing. Just the familiar drip, drip, drip.
Then—another sound.
Wet. Ragged. Like meat tearing from bone.
Kaelen's jaw tightened. He raised two fingers, signaling forward. They advanced with blades drawn, torches low.
The tunnel widened into a half-collapsed chamber. Dust and mildew clung to broken pillars. And at the center—
The remains of three men lay scattered like discarded dolls. Gang marks were carved into their skin—fangs inked into one's cheek, teeth burned into another's arm. Their eyes stared wide, mouths frozen in screams that had never finished.
But it wasn't steel that had undone them.
Their chests were hollowed. Organs seared black. Flesh curled inward, charred as though fire had burst out from within. One body still smoldered faintly, skin crackling in the torchlight.
"By the stars," Jorren whispered, gagging.
Another soldier muttered, "This isn't natural."
"No." Kaelen's voice was flat, controlled. But his stomach churned. He'd seen slaughter. War left corpses broken, yes, but in ways a man could understand. This… was something else.
The boy.
Elian.
Kaelen stepped closer, crouching beside the nearest corpse. He touched the burned flesh with a gloved hand. Still warm.
"They were killed recently," he said. "Hours at most."
"By him?" Jorren asked, voice trembling.
Kaelen rose, torchlight casting sharp shadows across his face. "Who else?"
The squad exchanged uneasy glances. One crossed himself. Another muttered another prayer.
Kaelen silenced them with a glare. "Remember your oaths. Fear will not protect Solara. Steel will."
Still, as he turned, his chest tightened. The boy's face rose unbidden in his mind—pale, terrified, eyes wide with the kind of horror only the damned carried. He had not looked like a killer then. He had looked like a victim.
But this chamber… these corpses…
Did you choose this, scholar? Or did it choose you?
Kaelen shoved the thought aside. Duty first. Questions later.
"Forward," he ordered.
Hours passed in stifling dark. They wound through tunnels that twisted like veins, deeper into the city's rotting bones. Rats skittered past, bold enough to brush against their boots before vanishing.
Every corner carried threat. Gang symbols etched in chalk. A crude shrine of bones and rusted chains. A corpse nailed upright against a wall, blood smeared into a starburst across its chest.
Signs of desperation. Signs of belief.
The undercity was restless, stirred by fear. And at its heart was the boy.
Kaelen felt it like a pulse beneath his feet.
When they finally stopped to rest in a widening of the passage, the men were pale and sweat-slicked despite the chill.
Jorren crouched by the wall, torch trembling in his grip. "Sir… what if the whispers are true?"
Kaelen's eyes narrowed. "What whispers?"
"That he's not just… cursed. That he's carrying something. A star's death, some say. That he's…" Jorren swallowed hard. "That he's not human anymore."
The others shifted uncomfortably.
Kaelen studied the young man. He could have scolded him, silenced him. But the question lingered in Kaelen's own mind, gnawing like a hidden wound.
He sat beside the men, his armor whispering against stone. "Do you know what separates us from shadows, Jorren?"
The boy shook his head.
"Discipline. Not strength. Not fear. Discipline." Kaelen's gaze swept the unit. "You will hear many whispers in the dark. That is the undercity's way. If you give them weight, they become chains. If you master them, they become nothing. Do you understand?"
The men nodded, some more firmly than others.
Kaelen rose. "Good. Then remember your creed. By light, all shadows fall. That is not hope. That is certainty."
The words steadied them, as they had steadied him countless times before. Yet even as he spoke, the doubt coiled tighter in his chest.
They pressed onward.
It was Jorren again who spotted it first—a smear of blood across the stones, half-hidden by grime. Not old. Fresh.
Kaelen crouched, running his fingers through it. The blood was dark, tacky. He raised it to his nose.
Human.
But not just blood. Beneath it was another scent—acrid, metallic, sharp as lightning.
Elian.
Kaelen's pulse quickened. He gestured sharply. "He's close."
The men tensed, adjusting their weapons. Torches dipped low, shadows crawling higher across the walls.
Kaelen's focus narrowed to a single thought, a single certainty.
The hunt was nearly over.
They reached another chamber, this one half-collapsed. Old crates lay shattered, tools rusted to nothing.
Kaelen crouched again, torch sweeping the ground. Scuff marks. Dust disturbed.
And there—an impression of knees against stone.
A place where someone had rested.
"Here," Kaelen murmured. His voice was quiet, reverent. As though he were in a temple, not a tomb.
The boy had been here.
Close enough that Kaelen could almost hear his ragged breath.
He straightened slowly, eyes narrowing. "He's near. We move carefully. Spread your torches wide. No mistakes."
The men obeyed, fear replaced by sharpened focus.
Kaelen's heart beat like a war drum.
Each step carried him closer to the moment where his sword would decide the boy's fate.
Yet beneath the certainty, a question still lingered.
Would he see terror in those eyes again? Or something else?
They moved into another narrow passage. Torchlight stretched long and thin, shadows lapping at the edges of vision.
Somewhere ahead, Kaelen thought he heard it—soft footsteps, faint, retreating into the dark.
His lips curved into a grim line.
"Elian."
The name echoed off the stone, swallowed by the dark.
But he knew.
The net was tightening.
And soon, the chase would end.