As the night dragged on, the inn slowly began to lose its vitality. One by one, patrons stood from their tables, coins clinking softly as they paid, before disappearing into the streets outside.
Laughter dulled, conversations thinned, and the heavy air of alcohol and smoke gradually settled into an uneasy quiet. Yet, despite the steady exodus, the group that had been observing Axiros never left. They remained seated, unmoving, their attention fixed on him with unsettling patience. No drinks were ordered. No conversations exchanged. They simply sat, still as furniture, and waited.
Axiros noticed. He had noticed for a long time now.
Ting.
The clock struck midnight.
Axiros finally rose from his seat. He had gathered what he could from the scattered conversations around him — fragmented details about the war, rumors of criminals and prisoners, whispers of instability creeping closer to the city. Nothing concrete about the nature of the world itself, but that knowledge could wait. Survival came first. Everything else was secondary.
He turned toward the staircase leading to the upper floors of the inn. As he took his first step, a voice called out behind him.
"So, you've decided to head upstairs and book a room?" the waitress asked.
"Yes," Axiros replied simply, not sparing her another word.
"Alright, sweetie," she said smoothly. "Tell Melinda — the manager upstairs — to give you the Sophia discount. A little gift from me."
As she spoke, her gaze briefly flicked to the sword strapped to his back. It lingered there just a moment longer than necessary — the kind of glance that wasn't really about the sword at all.
Axiros felt it immediately. An underlying intention hidden beneath her pleasant tone. A plan, layered and deliberate, already in motion. Whatever they were preparing, only time would reveal its shape. But it was already moving. That much he knew.
"Hm. Thanks," Axiros said. "And don't call me sweetie."
"Hm. Alright, sweetie," she replied, completely disregarding his words as she turned and headed back toward the kitchen.
That did it.
Axiros let out a quiet sigh and climbed the stairs without looking back, his senses sharpened. He could feel their eyes on him until he was out of sight — patient, quiet, following him to the edge of their reach. Whatever was waiting for him upstairs, he had no intention of being caught off guard.
The moment he disappeared from sight —
Sophia walked over to the table where the watching group sat. Without asking, she snatched a mug of beer from one man's hand and drained it in one go, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. The man whose drink she'd taken said nothing. None of them did.
"Boys," she said calmly, her earlier warmth gone entirely, "we've got new prey."
She set the empty mug down with a dull thud.
"The plan starts at three. Be ready. I'll notify you."
The group nodded in unison, their movements unnervingly synchronized — too uniform, too clean, the kind of coordination that didn't come from discipline alone.
"Yes, ma'am," they murmured softly.
Above them, unaware — or perhaps pretending to be — Axiros continued onward, every step carrying him deeper into the trap that had already begun to close.
---
"Can I get a room, please?" Axiros asked calmly.
"Yes, we have plenty available," Melinda replied after a brief glance at him. "A single-bed room will cost you ten Rox."
Axiros paused. He weighed the price carefully in his mind. It was cheap — suspiciously so. The food he had bought earlier had nearly cost the same amount. For an inn in a city this size, with furnishings this deliberate, it didn't add up. Things that were cheap always had a reason for being cheap. The reasons were rarely innocent.
Still, lingering here any longer would only raise more questions.
"Alright," he said at last. He deliberately chose not to mention Sophia's so-called discount. Whatever strings were attached to it, he wanted no part of them.
Melinda nodded, but then added casually, "Oh, and the waitress, Sophia, mentioned earlier that you'll be receiving a discount on her behalf."
'Fuck. Whatever man, I'll have to face it anyway.'
The realization hit him instantly. It had been planned from the start. The discount wasn't generosity. It was placement. A reason to route him somewhere specific, a particular room, a particular floor, a particular distance from whatever they intended. He'd declined to use the discount, and it had found him anyway.
Of course it had.
"…Alright. Sweet," Axiros replied, his expression perfectly neutral despite the frustration echoing somewhere behind his eyes.
"Very well," Melinda said. "You've been assigned room twenty-four. Here's your key."
Axiros took the key without hesitation and followed the direction she pointed out, his movements steady, controlled. Outwardly calm. Inwardly mapping every detail — the layout of the hallway, the distance between doors, the location of windows and stairwells. Old habit. Necessary habit.
---
The room was small, barely more than what was necessary for a single occupant. Still, it was clean, quiet, and, most importantly, isolated. The moment the door shut behind him, Axiros let himself fall onto the bed with a tired groan. For a moment, he simply lay there, staring up at the ceiling, letting his body acknowledge the weight it had been carrying all day.
Then he got up and inspected the room.
It didn't take long. While moving along the far wall, he noticed something off — a faint irregularity in the surface, subtle enough that an ordinary person would have overlooked it entirely. He ran his fingers along the edge, pressed lightly in two spots, and confirmed it. A hidden mechanism, carefully concealed, leading to some other chamber beyond the room. Old construction. Well maintained. Whoever built this had known exactly what they were doing, and had expected it to go unnoticed.
Under normal circumstances, he would have investigated immediately. He would have traced its purpose, its creator, and whatever danger or opportunity it concealed. He would have followed it to the end, catalogued every branch, every exit, every person waiting on the other side.
But now, he was exhausted.
His body had been pushed far beyond its limits, and his mind — though vast, though carrying the accumulated weight of more lifetimes than this world could comprehend — was dragged down by the strain of existing in a new vessel. Whatever lay beyond that hidden passage could wait. Tonight, rest was not a luxury. It was preparation. If conflict was coming, and it was, he needed what little recovery this body could manage before it arrived.
With that thought, Axiros turned away from the mechanism and lay back down, choosing to leave the secrets in the wall undisturbed — for now.
His body screamed for rest. The day had drained what little strength this vessel possessed, and he knew what was coming later tonight. If conflict was inevitable, he needed every shred of energy he could gather now.
He stared at the ceiling for a moment, thoughts racing. He knew almost nothing about this world — its laws, its power systems, its hidden dangers — everything was unknown. But if they intended to make a move against him, then information would be extracted directly from them. That sat firmly at the top of his priorities. Everything else could wait.
Suddenly, his eyes sharpened.
"Wait… I need to check if the connection is still there," Axiros muttered.
It was something he always did at the beginning of every new life. A ritual born not from habit but from necessity — because connection to the soul space was never guaranteed, and arriving in a new body with that thread severed meant starting blind, stripped of everything he'd carried across the void.
He sat upright and crossed his legs into a lotus position, slowly drawing his focus inward. His awareness sank deeper, bypassing surface thoughts and sensations, reaching for the familiar pathway that led to his soul.
To his surprise, he found it almost instantly.
The connection was there — clear, stable, unbroken.
That had never happened before.
He entered his unawakened soul space cautiously, examining it for abnormalities. What he found left him stunned. It wasn't damaged. It wasn't diminished. If anything, it was… better than before.
Every perfection. Every law. Every imprint. Everything was intact and in perfect condition, maybe even improved from their original bounds. As if whatever had happened in the void, whatever that long darkness had done to him, had somehow pressed everything tighter, denser, more completely into place.
"How…?" Axiros whispered. "How is this even possible?"
Confusion gnawed at him — and genuine confusion was rare enough that he noticed it, turned it over, examined it the way he examined everything. A single reincarnation shouldn't have resulted in improvement. Was it the void perfections? The light? Something else entirely — something about this world, this body, this particular transmigration that had introduced variables he had no framework for yet?
He exhaled slowly.
"No. I can't afford to dig into this now," he decided. "Later."
With that, Axiros withdrew his consciousness from his soul space and returned fully to the physical world, his eyes opening once more in the dimly lit room. The ceiling was the same. The walls were the same. But something felt different now — a quiet shift in the weight of things, the sense of a foundation more solid than he'd expected.
"Quite the surprise my vessel gave me," he muttered, genuine surprise flickering through his otherwise calm voice. "A direct connection to the soul space — and deeper — without any hindrances? That's a first."
He was quiet for a moment, turning it over again.
"Now that I think about it… I haven't received this vessel's memories yet. That's never happened before either." He frowned slightly. "This transmigration is truly a wonder. Too many new variables have been introduced this time."
He let out a quiet sigh.
"Anyway. I'll survive once again."
It wasn't bravado. It wasn't optimism. It was simply the flattest truth he knew — stripped of feeling, stripped of uncertainty, the kind of certainty that only came from having done something so many times that doubt had long since stopped trying to find purchase.
With that, Axiros lay down to rest, his hand never leaving the hilt of his sword. He slipped into sleep — but not truly. He never did. Even unconscious, a part of him remained alert, a thin layer of awareness spread thin and invisible across his surroundings like a film over still water.
It was instinct now. A habit carved into his soul by countless deaths and countless rebirths. Not something he chose. Something he simply was.
---
The clock struck three.
The sound was dull and distant, barely noticeable beneath the heavy silence of the inn. For most of the guests, it meant nothing. Just another hour slipping by in the dark. But for some, it was the signal they had been waiting for.
Sophia and the others were already gathered.
There were no masks, no disguises, no need to hide their faces. They looked relaxed, almost bored, like people going through a task they had performed far too many times to feel anything about anymore. The kind of ease that came not from confidence but from repetition — from doing this so often that the weight of it had long since worn smooth. Tonight was supposed to be simple. Another lone traveler. Another quiet job.
They were confident. Too confident.
They stood inside a hidden chamber buried deep within the inn. The space was narrow and cold, with stone walls that had absorbed years of whispered voices and muffled struggles. Stains on the floor that no one had bothered to explain. The room sat at the very center of the building, carefully placed so that every hidden path led back to it — the heart of a design that had nothing to do with hospitality.
Not every passage had been built the same. Some were longer, twisting through tight corridors and false turns meant to confuse anyone unfamiliar with them. Others were far more direct — short, efficient routes designed for quick entry and even quicker extraction. Built for people who needed to move fast and leave nothing behind.
Room 24 happened to be connected to one of the latter. Its hidden path was wide, simple, and alarmingly fast to navigate.
From this chamber, several narrow passages branched out, snaking through the walls and floors. Each one led to a concealed opening inside a guest room — behind a loose panel, beneath a sliding board, or hidden behind furniture deliberately chosen and positioned to conceal it. The passages were cramped, uncomfortable, but efficient. They were never meant to be used for long. Only long enough.
The mechanisms were old but well maintained. Silent. Reliable. Built by people who had understood their purpose completely and felt no need to pretend otherwise.
This inn was never meant to be a place of rest.
From the beginning, it had been designed as a trap. A place to catch travelers who came alone, who had no one waiting for them, no one to ask questions when they disappeared. Merchants, drifters, mercenaries passing through — people who could vanish without causing too much noise. The Light Bloom Inn had swallowed many of them. It expected to swallow another tonight.
A quiet boy. Armed, but clearly exhausted. New to the city. No connections, no allies, no one who knew his name.
They had chosen well, they believed.
They had no idea that he was already awake, lying perfectly still in the dark with his hand resting on the hilt of his sword, listening to the faint sounds moving through the wall beside him with the patience of something that had outlasted entire civilizations.
And they certainly didn't know that he was anything but prey.