They found her in a storm drain behind House Dain—a girl curled into a tight ball, knees drawn to her chest, flinching at the drip of water from the ceiling. She was sixteen, maybe, with matted hair and bruises blooming like dark flowers on her arms. She'd tried to escape after the lord's heir used her. The guards had thrown her in the drain as punishment, leaving her to drown or starve.
"Go away," she whispered, her voice hoarse, eyes wide with animal fear. "You'll just hurt me too."
Kael didn't crouch. Didn't offer soft words. He stood tall, his silhouette blocking the dim light from the grate above. "We're going to kill Lord Dain," he said, flat and cold. "But we need to know his secrets. Where he hides his ledgers. Who he reports to. His weaknesses."
She laughed—a broken, hysterical sound that echoed in the narrow concrete tube. "He has Templars! He has Penitent Blades! You'll die before you reach his gate!"
"Maybe," Kael said. He took a step closer. The girl shrank back, pressing into the slimy wall. "But if you help us, you get to watch him die. You get his secrets to sell to his rivals. You get *power*." He leaned down, his voice dropping to a whisper that cut through her panic. "Or you can stay here. Wait for the next rainstorm to flood this drain. Hope the rats don't eat you first."
Her eyes narrowed. Not hope. *Calculation.* The fear was still there, but beneath it, a spark of something harder—**survival instinct honed to a razor's edge**.
She told them everything in a rushed, breathless whisper:
- The secret passage behind the wine cellar, used for smuggling contraband and stolen children.
- Lord Dain's affair with Bishop Torvin's wife—proof hidden in a false bottom of his desk.
- The hidden vault under his bed containing ledgers listing every child he'd sold to Church alchemists, complete with names, ages, and prices.
- His one weakness: **night terrors**. He slept with a dagger under his pillow, screaming about "the red-eyed child" he'd sold to the Church's soul-farms last moon.
Kael's plan was brutal. Not just assassination—**psychological annihilation**.
On the night of the new moon, the girl—**Elara**—disguised herself as a night-shift scullery maid, using Bastian's forged pass. She slipped into Dain's manor via the wine cellar passage, her steps silent, her breath steady despite the tremor in her hands.
She didn't go for the vault. She went for the bedroom.
Lord Dain slept fitfully, sheets tangled, muttering in his sleep. Elara stood in the corner, hidden by shadows. Then she mimicked the voice of **Lissa**, the eight-year-old girl Dain had sold last month—a voice she'd heard described in the ledgers, soft and slightly lisping.
*"Lord Dain… why did you sell me to the alchemists?"*
Dain jolted awake with a strangled cry. "Who's there?!"
Elara stepped into the moonlight streaming through the window, keeping her face in shadow, and repeated the voice—softer now, broken, haunting: *"They cut out my eyes, lord. But I can still see you."*
Dain's eyes widened in primal terror. He scrambled for the dagger under his pillow, slashing blindly at the darkness. "Lissa? No! It wasn't me! It was the Church!"
He stumbled back—straight into Kael, who'd phased through the shadow behind him using **Void Step II**.
Kael didn't stab him. He **snapped Dain's neck with a precise, brutal twist**, the sound like dry kindling breaking. Dain's body went limp.
Kael didn't stop. He dragged the corpse through the silent manor, down to the courtyard, and **hung him from the bell tower** with a rope Bastian had woven from Void-Forged fibers. He pinned Dain's ledger to the chest—open to the page listing Lissa's sale, her age circled in red ink.
The message was clear: **Even your nightmares betray you.**
Elara watched from the rooftops, tears streaming down her face—not of sadness, but of **release**. For the first time in years, she felt *safe*. Not because the monster was dead, but because *she had made him see his own evil*.
Only when Kael offered her a dry cloak and a seat by the fire in the Root Cellar did she whisper her name, her voice steady now, her eyes clear: "**Elara.**"
> **[BACKGROUND: ELARA MORN]**
> **AGE:** 16
> **ORIGIN:** Small farming village in Western Aethelgard (village name erased after Church "cleansing")
> **TRAUMA:** Sold into servitude at 12. Endured years of physical and sexual abuse. Thrown into storm drain after escape attempt.
> **SKILLS:** Perfect vocal mimicry, spatial memory, pressure sensitivity (detects footsteps through floors), emotional camouflage.
> **WEAKNESS:** Severe PTSD (triggers: bells, closed doors, raised male voices), hypervigilance, trust issues.
>
> **[STATUS SCREEN (ELARA)]**
> **STR: 3 | AGI: 9 | VIT: 5 | INT: 10 | WIS: 12 | CHA: 11 | VOD: 10**
>
> **[QUEST COMPLETE: AWAKEN THE MAID'S COURAGE.]**
> **[CRIMSON LOTUS: MEMBER #3 — "THE WHISPER."]**
> **[VOID ARTS UNLOCKED: VOID ECHO — CAN REPLICATE ANY VOICE/ACCENT WITH EMOTIONAL RESONANCE AFTER HEARING IT ONCE. EFFECTIVENESS INCREASES WITH TARGET'S FEAR OR GUILT.]**
That night, Elara practiced the voice of Bishop Torvin—smooth, pious, hiding rot beneath honeyed words. Bastian sharpened a new garrote. Lyra cross-referenced Dain's ledgers with Church shipping manifests.
Kael touched the obsidian lotus at his belt. The Crimson Lotus was no longer just a spark.
It was a **flame**.
And Veridia's tyrants would soon learn to fear the dark.
> **[SYSTEM NOTE: GUILD INTELLIGENCE NETWORK +50%. TRUST BOND FORMED. PUBLIC TRUST +4%.]**
> **[CRIMSON LOTUS: STATUS — FORMING. MEMBERS: 3. NEXT TARGET: HOUSE CORWIN.]**