Part I : Lyra
The Guild's bathhouse was one of the few places Lyra ever felt truly alone. She sank into the steaming, herb-scented water, the heat a welcome shock to her aching muscles. For a moment, she let the day's grime and sweat—the tangible residue of the hunt—dissolve around her. But the grime on her soul was not so easily cleansed.
She leaned her head back against the cool stone, closing her eyes, but all she could see was her brother's face. Arthur. A ghost from a nursery rhyme, now made of flesh, terror, and a sorrow too big for his small frame. Up until tonight, she had been a free bird, a captain responsible only for a crew of competent, self-sufficient warriors who had chosen their own hard lives. They were her comrades, her family, but they were not her wards.
Now, suddenly, she was a sister again. A role she had fled years ago, a duty she had no idea how to perform. She knew how to lead adventurers, how to hunt monsters, how to manage the politics of a rowdy Guild. But how to be a sister to a boy who had lost his father, his uncle, his home, and his very name in the span of a few days? That was a knowledge she did not possess, and the thought of her own inadequacy was a cold, unfamiliar fear.
And what had been her first act as a sister? Her first instinct? To turn him into a weapon. A rumor. A ghost to haunt Vorlag's throne. A cold, pragmatic move she'd made without a moment's hesitation. Gods, he's just a boy, she thought, a wave of guilt washing over her, sharp and bitter. She had thrust upon his young shoulders the weight of a political game he wasn't ready to play, all for a strategic advantage in a war he hadn't yet agreed to fight.
Her thoughts then drifted to the other ghosts who had washed up on her shore. Faelan. The same haunted eyes she remembered from a decade ago, but now filled with a grief so profound it scared her. Her old friend, her old lover, returned to her not in triumph, but in tatters, seeking a vengeance she now felt bound to help him achieve.
And the girl, Ingrid. A shard of broken glass, all sharp edges and furious light. A prodigy, Sybill's disciple. Another child broken by this chaos. Now, both she and Arthur needed mentors, guides to teach them how to survive in a world that would chew them up and spit them out. And that responsibility, too, fell to her. Who could she trust to shape them? Maeve for strategy? Brimor for resilience? It was another layer of command, another weight.
Finally, she thought of her crew. The Dawnbreakers. Brimor would follow her into any hell; his loyalty was forged in the old fires alongside Fae and Alistair. But the others? Maeve, Edwin, Elwin, Thorgar… even Aeris. This wasn't their war. It wasn't a Guild contract for coin and glory. It was a blood-debt, a messy dynastic struggle wrapped in grief. They had earned the right to choose. She would not command their loyalty in this; she would have to ask for it.
Lyra sank deeper into the water, the steam rising around her like a shroud. A sister, a captain, a mentor, a conspirator, a friend. So many titles, all crashing down on her in a single, terrible night.
Part II : Arthur
Maeve had shown Arthur to a small, spartan room at the top of the Guild. The bed was hard, the blanket was scratchy, and the air smelled of old wood and stale ale. To Arthur, it was the most profound luxury he had ever known. He was safe. He was fed. And for the first time in five days, no one was trying to kill him.
He lay in the dark, listening to the muffled sounds of the city below, and waited for the grief to come. He thought of his lost home, his privileges, his inheritance. The loss had felt like a physical weight when he was starving in the woods, a phantom limb that ached with a cold fire. But now, with a full belly and a locked door between him and the world, the ache was gone. He missed the comforts, yes, but he realized with a pang of guilt that missing something was not the same as grieving for it.
He thought of his father. The King. He tried to summon a tear, a shred of the sorrow a son was supposed to feel. Nothing. There was only the cold, hard fact of a man he had never known, whose death had changed everything and yet, emotionally, had changed nothing at all.
He considered Barnaby, but the worry wouldn't stick. The Halflings were the veins of the world's commerce. To unjustly kill one was to invite a quiet, bloodless, but utterly devastating economic war. No, Barnaby, with his connections and his people's subtle power, would be fine.
With the false griefs and false worries stripped away, his mind was left with the two pains that were real.
A sharp, twisting fear for Tybalt. Now that he knew the secret of the Royal Treasury, he understood the true nature of his uncle's prison. Tybalt was not a political hostage. He was a key that Vorlag thought would open a lock. A key that didn't fit. The moment Vorlag realized his mistake, Tybalt would become useless. And Vorlag did not suffer the useless to live.
And in a way that was more confusing, was his sister. He had spent his entire desperate flight focused on her name as a beacon of hope. But now that he was here, the reunion felt hollow. He replayed the conversations at the table. She had talked about him, a problem to be managed, a strategic piece on the board. But she had barely talked to him. After nine years, he had met a legend, not a sister, and the silence between them was a chasm wider than the one he had crossed to reach her.
He was a boy who had lost a world he didn't truly want, to find a family he didn't truly know. The safety he had craved now felt like a different kind of prison, one of purposelessness.
Lost in his thoughts, Arthur mumbled into the darkness, one forearm resting over his eyes.
"I survived, Uncle... but to what end?"
The question hung in the stale air, unanswered. For a split second, so brief it was almost unnoticed, a different image flashed in the darkness behind his eyes: a sad, pale face, framed by silky white hair and eyes the color of a frozen sky.
And then, despite the maelstrom of worries in his mind, his body's profound exhaustion finally claimed its due, and he fell into a deep, heavy slumber.
Part III : Ingrid
Ingrid's room was a fortress of quiet, a stark contrast to the storm raging inside Ingrid's mind. She lay on the bed, staring at the unfamiliar ceiling, the heavy, strategic talk from the table echoing in her thoughts. Vorlag. The Phoenix. Tybalt. A secret treasury. It was the language of a world she had only ever read about, a grand, terrible game played by kings and noble men.
And in that moment, she felt small. Crushingly, insignificantly small.
Her grief, which had been her entire world—a universe of fire and loss—was, on their grand map of politics, a mere footnote. The destruction of her home, the murder of her parents, the abduction of her siblings… it was just a "conveniently timed" raid, a minor variable in Vorlag's sprawling, cynical equation to steal a throne. Her pain was not even a pebble in the river of their history. The thought was a new and profound kind of insignificance. The brightest star of the small sky of Frostpines' End ,now, lost in a galaxy of intrigue, her personal supernova of grief merely a flicker, she felt her light being swallowed by the vastness of the dark.
A cold dread began to seep into the cracks of her anger. If the Dawnbreakers, these legendary heroes, were now taking up her hunt, what purpose was left for her? Her own path to vengeance—the tournament, the University of Lumina—suddenly seemed impossibly slow, a child's fantasy. It would be five years, at least, before she was strong enough to even dare to attempt the kind of hunt they were now setting in motion. By then, what would be left? Would Faelan and the others have already delivered justice, leaving her with a cold, empty victory that was not her own?
The target of her hatred, once a single, burning point, began to fracture and multiply. Who was the true enemy? Was it the savage warrior who had held the spear? Or was it the incompetent king who had let his kingdom rot to the point that such an attack was possible? Was it Vorlag, who had played with her family's lives as if they were pieces on a game board? Or was it bigger than that? Was the enemy the society that accepted slavery, the quiet evil that had created a market for children like her siblings, for women like Lilia at the counter? Was the enemy the very culture that allowed such things to exist?
The questions spiraled, threatening to drown her in a sea of confusion, her rage losing its focus, its terrible, clarifying heat.
But then, an image flashed in the darkness behind her eyes, sharp and visceral. The face of the Beastfolk warrior. The predatory smile. The amber eyes. The whisper of "you look tasty."
The confusion vanished, incinerated by a fresh surge of pure, undiluted hatred. The grand, complex politics of the world didn't matter. The philosophy of evil could wait. The face of her enemy was real, and the memory of it was an anchor.
Regardless of who the "true" enemy was, regardless of who else joined the hunt, one thing remained an undeniable, absolute truth. The night her world ended, she had been weak.
She would never be weak again. She wanted power. That, at least, was still simple.
Part IV: Faelan
Faelan could have walked through the front gate of the Greyoak manor. Alistair's command would have seen him welcomed with all the deference due to a friend of the house. But that was not his way. Not their way.
The decade in the army had been a life of rigid order and announced arrivals. This—the silent scaling of a wall, the whisper of Aura on his boots as he moved like a ghost through the moonlit gardens—this was a return to the man he used to be. It was a familiar, thrilling game, a secret language he shared with the people in the room above.
He landed on the balcony as silently as a moth. The glass doors were unlatched. As he slipped inside, his boot caught the edge of a porcelain vase on a low table. It wobbled, tipping over with a soft clink against the stone floor.
From the great bed, a figure shot upright. "Who's there…?" Helena's voice was a sharp, terrified whisper.
Before she could scream, Faelan was across the room, his hand gently but firmly covering her mouth. In the moonlight filtering through the balcony doors, she saw his face, and her fear melted into a mixture of relief and playful exasperation.
"For a man with so many enemies," Faelan whispered, his lips close to her ear, "your lord husband sleeps very soundly."
Helena relaxed under his touch, her eyes sparkling. "You're back," she murmured as he removed his hand. "How did it go? Did you find Lyra?"
"It went as well as can be expected," he sighed, the day's exhaustion settling back onto him. "I'm an adventurer again. And yes, Lyra's here. She joins the hunt." He added, with a faint, weary smile, "She sends her warm regards and her apologies for not visiting."
Helena's lips curled into a seductive smile. "A pity. Her warm regards are a poor substitute for her warm body."
Next to her, Alistair mumbled something incoherent in his sleep and rolled over, completely oblivious. A shared, silent laugh passed between Faelan and Helena.
"Forgive him," she whispered. "He spent the day wrestling with ministers and merchants." She patted the empty space on Faelan's side of the bed. "Come. You look exhausted. The details can wait for the morning. For now, just sleep."
Faelan nodded, the weariness of the world pressing down on him. He shed his clothes in the quiet of the room and slid into the bed's warmth, Helena a comforting presence in the middle. He was a man with a ghost to hunt and a world to defy, but for tonight, wrapped in the familiar comfort of the two people who knew him best, he was simply home.