The silence that followed the battle in the ballroom of the Kladis mansion was not peace; it was the dull ringing that remains in the ears after an explosion.
The air was foul with the smoke of overturned candles, the metallic scent of fresh blood, and the sour stench of fear from three hundred high-society guests who had just been reminded that they were mortal.
Kael watched from his strategic position behind a fake marble column, his hands clasped behind his back and an expression of critical boredom on his face.
Gareth's mercenaries, who had acted under the guise of "guards restoring order," were already retreating, blending into the shadows and slipping out through the side doors before the true authorities arrived. They had done their job: eliminating Kladis' private security and sowing the necessary panic.
In the center of the room, Thorne stood, panting. His knuckles were raw, and his linen shirt was stained dark red. He looked around with the wild eyes of a man who has just woken from a fever dream and found the dream was real.
Nia was still on the dais, clinging to her older sister. Elara hugged her, shielding her, but her eyes searched frantically through the crowd.
And then, a dragging sound broke the guests' murmur.
Scrrrraaaatch.
From the service door, a figure emerged.
Aldric.
The knight walked with heavy steps, his mercenary armor dented and splattered with blood. His face was grim, a stone mask that revealed nothing.
And behind him, dragging his feet like a broken sack of potatoes, came Nikolas Kladis.
The usurer who had held Arven under his boot for a decade was now a human wreck. His right leg hung at an unnatural angle, the tendons severed. His right shoulder was bleeding profusely, soaking what remained of his expensive velvet suit.
He groaned with every step, a pathetic, gurgling sound.
"Look at him!" Aldric shouted, his voice echoing in the silent ballroom.
He threw Nikolas towards the center of the dance floor, right beneath the main chandelier. Nikolas' body hit the floor with a wet, flaccid thud.
"Here is your host!"
The crowd recoiled in a wave of horror and morbid fascination. No one came forward to help him. Not his business partners, nor the nobles who owed him money, nor the friends who had drunk his wine an hour ago.
Nikolas raised his head. His face was smeared with mud and blood. His eyes, once full of cunning and arrogance, were now glazed over with shock and pain.
"Help..." he croaked, extending his good hand towards the guests. "Please... I am Nikolas Kladis..."
No one moved. The smell of defeat was contagious, and no one wanted to be infected.
Kael watched the scene with cold satisfaction.
'The king has fallen. And it turns out that without his crown, he's just a scared, fat old man.'
At that moment, the main doors of the ballroom—the ones Thorne had opened initially—filled with new figures.
This time they were not mercenaries.
They were the Imperial Inspectors.
A squad of twenty men in silver armor, the Sun emblem. The real authority. The law that stood above the local Houses.
Leading them marched the Inspector, a man with a hawk-like face and eyes that knew neither pity nor bribery.
"No one move!" he ordered, his voice cutting like a whip. "This building is under Imperial control!"
The guests froze. The arrival of the Inspectors meant the game was over and the trial was beginning.
Nikolas saw the Imperials, and a spark of desperate hope ignited in his dying eyes.
'The law,' Nikolas thought through the fog of pain. 'The law will protect me. I have money. I have secrets. I can negotiate.'
He dragged himself towards the Inspector, leaving a trail of glistening blood on the white marble.
"Inspector!" Nikolas cried, his voice choked. "Inspector! I have been attacked! Assassins! Thieves!"
The Inspector looked down in disgust, observing the broken figure at his feet.
"Nikolas Kladis," the Inspector said coldly. "I have reports of serious disturbances, arms smuggling, and conspiracy. And now I find a massacre in your ballroom."
"It wasn't me!" Nikolas sobbed, grabbing the Inspector's boot. "It was Torren! It was all Torren! He forced me! He planned everything! I was just a pawn!"
Kael tensed in his corner.
'Careful, Nikolas. You're talking too much.'
Nikolas, in his delirium of pain and fear, began to vomit words as if they were bile.
"Torren wanted the routes! He wanted the monopoly! He made me hire the mercenaries! He made me buy the crossbows! I have proof! I have..."
His frantic gaze swept the room and stopped on Kael.
The boy was half-hidden behind the column, looking at him.
Nikolas' eyes widened abnormally. Recognition cut through the pain.
"And him!" Nikolas shouted, raising a trembling finger toward Kael. "That boy! Drayvar's son! He... he planned everything! He robbed me! He ordered this monster to cut me!"
He pointed at Aldric.
The Inspector frowned, following the direction of the finger.
"A boy?"
Aldric stood next to Nikolas, his sword still in hand, dripping blood.
Kael sighed internally.
'Time to close the curtain.'
He made an almost imperceptible gesture with his head. A movement of millimeters.
Aldric saw it.
The knight moved. It didn't look like an attack. It looked like a stumble, an accident caused by battle weariness.
His boot "slipped" on a pool of blood. His body leaned forward. And his knee, protected by a metal greave, fell with the full weight of a hundred-kilo man directly onto Nikolas Kladis' chest.
CRACK.
The sound of ribs breaking and piercing vital organs was dull, definitive.
Nikolas' cry of accusation was cut short, replaced by a dark gush of blood that poured from his mouth. His eyes rolled back. His body had a violent convulsion and then went limp.
Dead.
Aldric "recovered" from the stumble, rising with feigned difficulty.
"Damn blood," the knight grumbled, looking at the corpse indifferently. "It slips like oil."
The Inspector backed away to avoid getting stained, looking at the body with annoyance.
"It seems his wounds were more serious than they appeared," Valerius said, either not suspecting or deciding not to suspect the timely accident. "The internal trauma must have been severe."
He looked toward where Nikolas had pointed.
There was only a column and a group of frightened guests. Kael was no longer there. He had moved with the fluidity of a shadow the moment Aldric fell.
"Who was he pointing at?" the Inspector asked his lieutenant.
"No one, sir. Delusions of a dying man. Blood loss causes hallucinations."
"Clean this up. Interrogate the witnesses. I want to know where Boros Torren is. If what this corpse was shouting is true, we have a business war on our hands."
In an upper gallery, hidden behind a velvet curtain, a figure watched the scene.
Daemon Kladis.
The heir. The groom.
He was trembling, his broken nose throbbing with pain and his pants stained with urine. He had seen everything. He had seen Aldric drag his father like garbage. He had seen him "accidentally" crush him. He had seen the man he believed to be untouchable die.
And he had seen Kael Drayvar's look.
That boy. That damned demon child.
Pure terror flooded Daemon's veins, replacing any thought of revenge or inheritance.
'He's going to kill me. If I stay, he's going to kill me too.'
Daemon turned and ran. He ran through the empty halls of the upper floor, toward a window overlooking the stable roof.
He jumped, rolled across the tiles, fell onto a pile of hay, and kept running into the night, leaving behind his name, his fortune, and his dignity.
He was a coward. But he was a living coward.
Downstairs, in the ballroom, the Voss family had gathered in a corner, far from the Imperials and the corpses.
Donal hugged Martha, who sobbed on his shoulder. Elara held Nia, stroking her hair.
"It's over," Elara whispered, looking at the covered body of Nikolas Kladis being carried away by the Imperial guards. "It's really over."
Nia pulled away slightly and looked around. Her large eyes searched the shadows, the corners, behind the columns.
"Where is he?" the girl asked.
"Who?"
"Kael. I don't see him."
Elara followed her gaze. The boy was nowhere to be found. Aldric either. They had disappeared as if they had never existed, leaving behind only the result of their work.
"He's gone, Nia," Elara said, with a mixture of relief and a strange shiver. "He did what he said he would do. And now he's gone."
Nia pressed her lips together.
"He's not gone,"
"He's just waiting for the next move."
Meanwhile, on the other side of the city, the night sky was stained orange.
The mansion of House Torren was not hosting a party. It was hosting an anticipated Viking funeral.
Gareth walked through the main hall of the Torren residence. The floor was covered with broken glass, torn tapestries, and bodies of elite guards who had made the mistake of trying to stop professionals motivated by gold.
The air was hot, suffocating. Smoke was beginning to descend from the ceiling.
"Boss!" shouted Len, the young hunter, emerging from a side room with a heavy linen sack on his shoulder. "The safe in the study! It was full!"
Gareth smiled. His sword rested on his shoulder, stained with blood up to the hilt.
"Gold?"
"Gold, jewels and... this."
Len tossed him a smaller leather pouch. Gareth caught it and opened it.
Documents. Promissory notes. Letters sealed with the Imperial emblem. And receipts. Receipts for the purchase of illegal military weaponry. Heavy crossbows. Alchemical poisons.
"Well, well," Gareth muttered. "Torren was playing dirty at Imperial levels."
"What do we do with the old man?" asked another mercenary, pointing towards the main office.
Lord Boros Torren was tied to his own desk chair. He was beaten, bleeding from an eyebrow, but his eyes still distilled venom. He watched the fire growing in the curtains with impotent fury.
Gareth entered the office.
"Lord Torren," he greeted with a mocking bow. "I'm afraid your fire insurance has just expired."
"They are animals!" Torren spat. "When the Inspector arrives—"
"When the Inspector arrives," Gareth interrupted, stepping closer, "he will find this."
He pulled a dagger from his pocket. It wasn't just any dagger. It had the emblem of House Kladis engraved on the handle. A piece Kael had "recovered" from the Voss house days earlier, an unwanted gift from Daemon.
Gareth plunged the dagger into the desk, right in front of Torren's nose.
"A message from your discontented partners," Gareth said. "It seems the alliance broke violently. What a tragedy."
Torren looked at the dagger. He understood the move.
"They're going to blame me... and Kladis... they're going to say it was an internal war."
"Exactly,"
He turned to his men.
"Let's go! The fire is getting greedy!"
They left the mansion, loaded with sacks of loot.
Gareth was the last to leave. He paused at the main door and looked back, at Boros Torren tied to his chair, surrounded by growing flames.
"Don't worry, Lord Torren," Gareth shouted over the roar of the fire. "The guards will arrive soon. Or maybe not. Arven has terrible service at night."
He closed the door.
Five minutes later, when Gareth and his men had vanished into the dark alleys of the lower city, a carriage with the imperial emblem screeched to a halt in front of the blazing mansion.
The Inspector, who had just left the Kladis mansion, stepped down from the vehicle, staring in disbelief at the inferno before him.
"By the Eternal Sun!" he exclaimed. "What madness has possessed this city tonight?"
A city guard, sooty and coughing, ran towards him.
"Inspector! It was an attack! Armed men! They were shouting that they came for Kladis' debt!"
Valerius looked at the fire. Then he looked toward the direction of the Kladis mansion.
"Kladis attacks Torren. Torren conspires with Kladis. And both end up in ruins on the same night."
The Inspector adjusted his clothes, his face hardening.
"This is no coincidence."
He took out his notebook and began to write, dictating the sentence of two businesses without knowing that the pen that had truly written the story belonged to a ten-year-old boy who, at that moment, watched the glow of the fire from a distant rooftop.
Kael, watching the flames lick the night sky.
Aldric was behind him, in the shadow of a chimney.
"Are we finished?"
"With this, yes," Kael replied. "But Daemon escaped."
"Aren't you worried about Gareth?"
"No. I'm worried about what Gareth can teach me that I don't know yet."
Kael began to descend the building's maintenance ladder.
"Come on. We have to go back to the Voss. Say goodbye to my partners and collect my share."
"What is your share?"
"Their eternal silence," Kael said. "And their absolute loyalty."
The night in Arven continued, illuminated by the fire of a boy's ambition who had just discovered that burning the world was much more fun, and much more profitable, than trying to save it.