Airtheim was not merely a city.
It was a stone memory of a world that no longer existed. Its buildings had not so much been constructed as carved — as though an invisible hand had seized time itself and shaped it into arches, columns, and corridors open to the sky. Its stones were dark, absorbing light rather than reflecting it, casting a heavy shadow over the streets that made walking through them feel like walking through the painting of an artist dead for centuries, his work left unfinished. Yet it was precisely this weight that drew people to it — from kingdoms near and far, carrying their curiosity and their gold, searching for something none of them could quite name.
In the markets, languages that could not understand one another became entangled. On the roads, garments told the story of an entire geography. This had always been Airtheim's nature — a city that gathered what wars had scattered, if only for a few hours.
But that particular morning was unlike any other.
At the heart of the city, the building known to Airtheim's residents as the House of Memory was alive with a restlessness it had never known.
In quieter days, the building was an architectural masterpiece — its façade adorned with carvings depicting kings whose names no one could recall, its six columns bearing a sculpted ceiling that seemed to shift when viewed from different angles. Its doors were meant to be open that morning, as they always were.
But the doors were sealed.
And the guards who had long stood proud in their leather armor with swords sheathed were now moving in every direction, hands refusing to leave their hilts, their faces wearing the expression of men who know they will be held accountable for a mistake they had no power to prevent.
Inside, visitors were being guided — with a firm gentleness — toward the center of the main hall. Merchants, travelers, nobles, and the merely curious, all with faces ranging from unease to indignation. One guard raised his hand in a gesture meant to invite calm while his voice communicated something else entirely.
A man caught near the entrance, his cloak suggesting comfortable but not extravagant wealth, turned to the guard:
— "What is happening here?"
The guard answered in a tone that permitted no debate:
— "The confession manuscript of King Ulis the Third was stolen last night. No one leaves until a full search has been conducted."
The voices rose at once.
A heavyset man stepped forward, his gold ornaments gleaming at his throat, and raised his voice beyond what the moment required:
— "I will not submit to any search. Do you hear me? I will not be treated as a suspect when I am a guest in this city."
— "The law makes no exceptions."
— "The law?" — the man let out a cold laugh — "When my lord hears what is happening here, there will be none of you left to speak of the law."
The guard opened his mouth to respond.
But the eastern wall spoke first.
The explosion struck like the earth had decided to end the argument. The columns shuddered, fragments of the sculpted ceiling rained down, and thick smoke erupted from the eastern side. For one suspended moment everything stopped — then panic broke all at once.
A guard shouted from the east:
— "We have him — he's heading for the eastern gate!"
The guards surged as one toward the east, leaving the chaos behind them to sort itself out.
But when they reached the eastern gate, there was nothing but smoke. They scattered through it, hands cutting blindly through the gray cloud, until one said quietly, turning in every direction:
— "Was it just a diversion?"
On the opposite side entirely, at the western gate, was the answer.
A young man came running at a striking pace, his gray cloak streaming behind him, its hood threatening to slip from his head. He stopped abruptly when he found two guards at the gate, swords drawn the moment their eyes fell on him.
*Damn. I thought the explosion would send them all east.*
He glanced behind him — voices closing in. He looked ahead — two guards, two blades.
*I have no choice but to push through.*
He did not slow down. He drove straight at the gate and drew his sword. The blade met one guard's and the blow deflected aside, but the second guard circled around him, driving a cut toward his neck. The young man struck him with his foot just below the gut — hard enough to bend him forward — then slipped between them, sidestepping the fight entirely.
*If this drags on, it will not go in my favor.*
The gate was sealed, but the glass panel above it was not. He leapt, caught the edge of the stone frame, and drove his sword into the glass with both hands. It shattered with a clean, decisive sound, and the way opened.
He came out the other side.
The outer temple guards stood before him, turning with faces that had not expected this.
*Damn. What a mess.*
He did not descend from the gate. He stood atop it for a moment, sweeping the surroundings with his eyes, then leapt toward the outer tower's column and climbed to its flat roof. From there he turned his gaze around the entire temple, searching for the lightest point of defense.
The northern side. Only two guards.
He reached into a small leather pouch bound around his waist beneath the cloak and drew out a stone that resembled a shell, dark brown in color. He weighed it in his palm for a moment, then threw it with everything he had.
The explosion was louder than he'd expected. Dense white smoke spread like a wall, blinding the two guards entirely.
*Now.*
He leapt from the roof and ran into the smoke cloud. He narrowed his one good eye — trying to see through the white blindness — when he sensed something cutting through the air from his right side. He could not calculate the path in time.
The sword pierced his right shoulder.
He did not stop. He did not cry out. He clenched his teeth and ran faster, and inside his mind a single voice spoke with an unsettling calm:
*Damn. That explains why this side was lightly guarded — they placed their two strongest there. Seventh rank, at least.*
He pulled the sword from his shoulder in one swift motion, threw a second stone in the direction the strike had come from. Another explosion, sharper than the last. He seized the second it bought him and fled toward the narrow quarters that opened before him like a web of shadows.
Blood dripped from his hand, leaving a trail on the ground behind him.
*Another scar to add to the tally.*
He ran until the alleys swallowed him whole and the sound of his footsteps dissolved into the city's darkness, swearing to himself in a voice no one else could hear:
*I swear on my name — Kilan Yeld — that I will not die or be taken here.*
---
When the day contracts and night begins to assert its claim, Airtheim changes.
The markets shrink, curious faces disappear behind the doors of inns and taverns, and the air grows colder and less crowded. On the edge of the city, where the lights thin out and the distances between passersby grow wide, a wooden sign above a two-story building swayed gently in the evening breeze:
**Mizar Transport Company.**
Kilan pushed the door open and stepped inside.
Seconds before he entered, someone had left the building in quick strides — a slight frame, a cloak that concealed everything. Kilan paid him no attention, but filed him away somewhere behind his mind.
Inside, the reception hall was sized precisely between welcoming and cramped. A front desk faced the door directly, and behind it stood a man in his mid-thirties, his face carrying the kind of smile that grows from years of serving people. But when his eyes landed on the new arrival — on the white bandage covering his left eye, the burn mark on his right cheek, the sharp features that did not invite questions — the smile contracted slightly without disappearing.
— "Welcome. How can I help you?"
— "I need a one-way passage to the city of Iras."
The man's expression shifted in a way Kilan knew well.
— "Iras?" — the clerk said carefully, as if selecting his words — "Sir, we don't send trips there."
— "Why not?"
— "Because it is no longer the city you may have heard of. People call it Forgotten Iras now. For years it has been hollowing out — gangs, bandits, criminals who have nowhere else to go. No reputable company sends its carriages there."
— "I'm not asking you to come with me. I'm asking for a carriage."
— "A carriage needs a driver, and a driver needs to come back." — The man folded his hands on the desk with a note of finality — "I'm sorry. That is something we cannot provide."
Kilan had heard this in different words from at least seven companies since arriving on this side of the kingdom. Each time he had tried, persuaded, and run into the same wall. He tried once more — calmly at first, then with an insistence he didn't bother to hide. But the man kept producing the same apology in different words.
Kilan turned to leave.
— "Wait."
He stopped without turning fully around.
The clerk's eyes were on what showed beneath the cloak at the hip. The sword's hilt.
— "Are you a fighter?"
— "A traveler."
The man weighed the word, then looked at the desk as though consulting himself.
— "I have a proposition. Tomorrow morning we have a carriage heading to the Kildor forests. The client booked a short while ago, but we have no one to secure the road — we're a small company and can't afford a mercenary. If you agree to serve as protection for this trip, I'll arrange a private carriage for you afterward to wherever you want to go."
Kildor was in the opposite direction from Iras. He knew that. But he looked at his hand — the dried blood at his fingertips — and thought about the morning ahead, and the city guards who would not rest.
— "Agreed."
---
He found a small inn in an alley well removed from the main streets. On the way there he glanced behind him each time he heard footsteps, and pressed himself into the narrower passages when he saw a torch approaching. The city had quieted on the surface after the morning's chaos, but Airtheim's guards had not. He could see them moving in small groups, in a pattern that bore no resemblance to the usual evening patrols.
*Have they sensed traces of my spiritual energy?*
He quickened his pace.
The room held a bed, a table, and a window overlooking a deserted alley. That was enough.
He removed his cloak and layers of clothing in silence. In the still air, his body was exposed. The muscle was real — years of forced training had woven a hardness into his frame that the eye could not miss. But between it was another story, written in scars: long, faded lines that spoke of swords; small circles that spoke of blades; and one mark that did not speak at all — it burned on his right cheek.
He opened the leather pouch and removed a tightly wrapped cloth. He spread it on the table and drew from inside it something resembling dark, sticky clay. He applied it to the wound in his shoulder with the movement of someone long accustomed to dressing himself.
*Another scar to add to the tally.*
Next he produced an old book, its leather cover worn from countless openings and closings. Beside it, a paper manuscript with fraying edges, held together by a thin golden thread. He sat on the edge of the bed and untied the thread with fingers that knew this moment well.
Inside, the manuscript was filled with writing from no language he had ever learned. Symbols that resembled language and refused to be it. But the wall had been eroding — five years had done their work.
He opened the journal. Five pages written in his own hand, and a sixth, blank, waiting. He picked up the pen.
In the silence of the room, he said to himself in a voice lower than a whisper:
*One step. Five years and one step.*
Then he bent over the page.
He did not feel the night pass. He did not feel the candle melt. He was nearly finished with the sixth page when his eyes fell on the window.
Dawn.
And with the dawn, movement in the alley below. A group of city guards moving with slow, methodical purpose — searching the buildings one by one.
*Damn.*
He closed the journal, wrapped the manuscript, returned everything to the pouch in movements his hands had memorized. He dressed, put on his cloak, left ten silver coins on the table, and opened the window.
He left the inn the way he had never entered it.
---
Outside the Mizar Transport Company, the carriage was ready.
Two gray horses stood with trained stillness, and on the front seat sat a man in his fifties. His broad build had been made by labor and nothing else, his face dark and creased by long roads, his eyes reading the horizon with the quiet affection of someone who had traveled long enough to call the open road a companion.
The clerk stood on the ground beside him, his morning smile wider than the hour warranted.
— "This is Manuel — our finest driver and the lead on the journey." — He turned to the older man — "And Manuel, this is the person who will be securing your road."
Manuel studied Kilan with unhurried eyes that did not rush to judgment, then gave a single, uncomplicated nod.
Into that moment came the third figure.
She was walking toward the carriage in small, careful steps, wrapped in a cloak that disclosed nothing. Her frame was slight, her height shorter than expected. But the morning sun was slipping in without permission from the edges of her hood, revealing just enough — a soft face, and eyes the color of midday sky.
— "And this is our passenger," the clerk announced when he saw her.
When her eyes landed on Kilan's face — on the white bandage, the burn mark, the single eye that held its gaze with more steadiness than felt natural — something in her expression paused. It was not quite fear. But it was the kind of tension that does not arise from nothing.
Kilan noticed it. He noticed it the way one notices wind that changes before a storm — not necessarily with suspicion, but because years had taught him to register everything that shifted around him.
— "Let's move. Time doesn't wait."
Manuel's rough voice cut through the moment. The girl climbed inside the carriage, and Kilan took his place beside Manuel on the front seat.
The carriage moved.
Airtheim's walls fell behind them gradually, and the road opened onto an unbound expanse — scattered trees on either side, cold air carrying the scent of earth wet from the night's rain.
Kilan sat in silence — appearing, to anyone who didn't know him, to be simply contemplative — while his senses swept the trees, measured the distances, and listened for what lay beneath the sound of hooves.
— "How long have you been working as a fighter?"
Manuel asked without lifting his eyes from the road, in the tone of a man filling silence rather than interrogating.
— "I don't fight by choice," Kilan said after a moment. "It was imposed on me a long time ago."
Manuel nodded slowly, in the manner of someone who understood more than he showed, and asked nothing further.
Kilan thought of the sixth page. Of the final step. Of the cave that had, at last, entered the realm of the possible.
Manuel opened his mouth again, eyes still forward:
— "After this bend, the Airtheim bridge begins. It's old but it holds — the floods haven't done much to it."
Kilan looked at the stone bridge stretching before them over a small river swollen with rainwater. Its stones were dark, its pillars massive — as though built to carry a weight greater than anything that had ever crossed them.
The carriage entered the bridge.
The rhythm of hooves on stone filled the cold air with a steady beat. Then something else joined it — a faint rustling from behind the pillars on either side. Movement that only those who had learned to truly listen would catch.
Kilan heard it.
And before the carriage had crossed half the bridge, they emerged.
Four figures.
Their positioning was not random. Two at the front, blocking the road. Two on the flanks, eliminating any chance of turning back. Their weapons were drawn, and their faces carried the calculated blankness that precedes decided violence.
And at the front, held by a thick rope in the hand of the middle figure, was the wolf.
It was not stray, and it resembled no wolf Kilan had ever seen. Large, and quiet in a way that was unsettling — its yellow eyes fixed on the carriage with a focus that excluded everything else. It did not bark. It did not move. It only watched, in the way of a creature that knows it has no need for urgency.
The carriage stopped.
Everything stopped.
And in the silence that stretched between the two parties like a drawn thread on the verge of snapping, Kilan did not move. He did not reach for his sword. He did not say a word.
He only looked at them with that single, quiet eye — an eye that had seen enough of this world for fear to become a luxury he could no longer afford.
*End of Chapter.*