Each step felt like wringing out a wet cloth.
Arthur kept walking. The citadel road was loud and full of people who had no idea a hooded figure was standing somewhere two streets over in a shadow, watching him move like he was something to be collected later.
He wiped the side of his face with his sleeve.
"Master Roz." His voice came out lower than usual. "What do I do? Am I genuinely screwed again?"
"Calm down brat." Roz was steady on his shoulder. His voice had the specific flatness of someone reviewing a mildly inconvenient situation. "You felt him. You already have the leverage. You just don't know what to do with it yet."
"I have never been this stressed in my entire life." Arthur's voice climbed a little. "Not once. Not on a single exam. Not on a single deadline. Nothing comes close to this—"
A woman stopped walking nearby. She had a basket of fruit balanced on one arm and was looking at Arthur the way people look at someone talking loudly to themselves in public.
'Arthur.' Vexis appeared at his left, voice dropping low. 'Your volume. People are looking.'
Arthur pressed his lips together.
How am I supposed to be calm right now. There is a person out there following me. With a blade. Who has already used it on this body once.
'I know.' Vexis drifted closer. 'I'm also in this body. Don't forget that part.'
He exhaled through his nose and kept walking.
He dropped his field outward, quiet and low, the same way he'd been doing it for days without thinking too hard about it. Just feeling the shadows around him. Checking.
There.
Same breath. Same patience. The figure had moved when he moved and stopped when he stopped and was sitting right now at about fifty meters back, not a step closer or further, like the distance was deliberate. Measured. Someone who knew exactly how much gap to keep.
That's not reactive. That's trained.
Arthur kept his pace normal. Looked at the road ahead.
Should I run. He turned the thought over and let it die on its own. No. I'd exhaust myself before I made any real distance and then he'd just walk up to whatever was left.
Should I lose him in the crowd. Possible. But not guaranteed. And then I'd just be waiting for him again somewhere I wasn't ready.
Think. You have the information. He doesn't know you have it. That's the whole thing. That's every advantage you have right now and you're about to sweat it away on a public road.
'If we hadn't lost the credits or—'
"Let's attack him instead."
Arthur's head turned.
Roz was sitting on his shoulder with his front paws crossed and his bow tie straight and his red eyes forward and his voice carrying exactly the same energy it had when he ordered the second round of pork legs.
"What?"
"You heard me." Roz didn't repeat himself with any extra weight. Just waited.
Arthur stared at him for a second.
"I can't just—" He caught the look from a man passing with a cart and dropped his voice to something closer to a hiss. "I can't just kill someone."
"Then don't kill him." Roz hopped from one shoulder to the other in a single neat movement. "But stop waiting for the inevitable and use what you have. He doesn't know you can feel him. He thinks he has the element of surprise." The ancient red eyes moved to Arthur's face. "He doesn't. So take it from him."
Arthur's right hand started shaking.
He noticed it before he could stop it. The feeling came with the shaking, the specific cold memory of a wall against his back and something at his throat and eleven seconds of being dead on a Tuesday morning that he still wasn't over and probably never would be.
He pressed his thumb against the scar above his collar and held it there.
Vexis materialized directly in front of him. He had both fists raised, which from a ghost was functionally meaningless, but he did it anyway.
'Use the shadow thing. Whatever you called it.' He bumped his knuckles together once. 'Let's teach him that a Lestilaut is not something you touch twice and walk away from.'
Arthur breathed in.
Then out.
He opened his eyes.
"Alright." His voice came out steady. He was still sweating. But steady. "Let's go get this asshole."
The plan was simple enough to explain in one sentence.
Lure him into an alley. Use the shadows. Don't get stabbed again.
Arthur turned off the main road.
"When I go in," he said quietly, "I just keep walking?"
"Like it's a shortcut." Roz was still on his shoulder, completely unbothered. "Don't run. Don't look back. Just walk."
Arthur stepped into the alley.
It was dark. The kind of dark that built itself from two tall walls cutting the sky into a thin strip above and the sun nowhere near the right angle to reach the ground. Shadows covered the stones flat and full, wall to wall, the whole length of it.
He felt his aetheric field settle the moment he crossed in.
He extended it slow. Not all the way. Just enough to feel the anchor points scattered along the walls, the low dark under the lip of each building, the long shadow stretching from the far end.
There.
The figure had moved. Closing distance. That specific feeling of something with weight coming through the air, the way a storm front sits in the atmosphere before the weather changes.
Arthur slowed his steps.
I can do this.
He kept his shoulders even and his head forward.
I can actually do this.
40 meters.
He breathed.
30.
He compressed his field inward and felt the shadow under his feet respond.
25.
26.
His palms were damp. His heart was not being helpful.
10.
'Arthur.' Vexis's voice came in sharp. 'He's right—'
Arthur opened his mouth.
"Having fun trailing me?"
The movement behind him stopped.
He turned around.
The figure was tall. All black, hood up, standing at the entrance of the alley like he'd been poured into the space and set there. The dagger was already in his right hand. Small. The same kind of blade you could walk through a gate with and nobody would check.
A short laugh came from under the hood.
"Honestly." The voice was unhurried. Lightly amused, the way people sound when something has mildly surprised them and they're deciding whether it's worth being impressed about. "I had a hard time believing that other idiot failed. I really did."
Arthur tilted his head back.
His hand came up and pulled his collar to the side.
The scar sat above the collarbone, raised and pale and permanent.
His mouth moved on its own. He let it.
"As you can see." The corner of his mouth came up slightly. "I'm not dead."
A beat of silence.
The dagger caught a thin line of light from the strip of sky above.
"Fucking asshole," Arthur said.