[POV: Silas]
Silas once again woke with the Shank already in his hand.
He didn't remember drawing it. Somewhere in the night, between the thin sleep and the thinner dreams, his fingers had found the hilt and stayed there. The leather grip was warm from his body heat, the edge a familiar cold against his palm. Seven days of this. Seven days of sleeping like a soldier in enemy country.
The tannery cellar was dim—pale gray light seeping through cracks in the shutters, painting bars across the stone floor like the ribs of some great beast. The air tasted like lye and ammonia, a chemical burn that had settled into the back of his throat and refused to leave. Under it, the earthier rot of tanning hides and the mineral dust that coated everything in Stoneveil. He'd stopped noticing the smell on day three. Now it was just air.
Jessa sat on an overturned crate near the far wall, arms crossed, watching him. Her posture said she'd been there for hours. Her eyes said she hadn't slept at all. Taren was a dark shape under a blanket in the corner, still asleep—or pretending to be. The kid had learned fast. In this city, no one wanted to be awake for the conversations that mattered.
This is it. The final morning.
Silas sat up slowly, letting the Shank catch the weak light. The edge glinted. Jessa didn't flinch. She'd seen the blade before.
Distant harbor bells marked the hour. Three tolls, echoing across the rooftops. Too early for the crowds, too late to pretend he might stay another day. He swung his legs off the makeshift cot—a plank balanced on two crates, a nest of rags that smelled like someone else's sweat—and pulled on his coat. The Shank went into his belt, settling against his hip like an old friend.
Noon at the plaza. Varis makes his speech. The Regent loves his crowds.
The rasp of fabric filled the silence as he adjusted his coat. His own breathing. Jessa's stillness was louder than words—the deliberate quiet of someone who had things to say and no way to say them.
"Are you going to the plaza?" she asked. "The Regent's summons?"
He stopped at the door. The wood was warped, swollen with damp, and it stuck in the frame like it didn't want him to leave either. He didn't turn.
"Are you coming back?"
I don't know.
The honest answer sat heavy in his chest like a stone he couldn't spit out. If this worked—if his plan worked, if everything aligned in the narrow window the Citadel had given him—he'd vanish. Pulled back to whatever this Void Hub was, mission complete, his first world behind him. Arlen Mora would cease to exist, and the people who'd known him would perhaps only remember that he'd left.
If it failed, he'd rot for a day. Stoneveil's cells or Stoneveil's pit—the end was the same. A body no one claimed, a name no one remembered, a mission no one would complete. Or perhaps the Citadel would end him before he could rot.
If this works, I vanish. If it fails, I rot.
She was asking for hope. He didn't have any to spare. Hope was a resource, and he'd spent it all on planning.
"I'll try," he said. It wasn't a lie. It wasn't the truth either. It was the only thing he could offer that wouldn't taste like goodbye.
He pushed the door open. The hinges screamed.
The street outside was empty.
Stoneveil's smog hung low, rolling off the harbor in slow waves, turning the morning light a sickly yellow-gray. The cobblestones were slick with overnight condensation, dark patches where the gutters had overflowed. No carts yet. No vendors. No guards on patrol. The city was waking, stretching, unaware that noon would change everything.
Silas walked.
His footsteps echoed off the close-set buildings—two stories of weathered stone and timber, windows shuttered against the morning cold, doorways deep and dark. Someone was cooking somewhere. The smell of burnt grain cut through the tannery stink, a reminder that ordinary life continued even here. People woke. People ate. People went to work. They didn't know a tyrant had to die today.
Seven days to kill a regent. Today's the last.
He kept his hood low, his pace steady. Not too fast—that drew attention. Not too slow—that invited questions. Just another worker heading toward the docks, or the market, or whatever labor his work demanded. He'd practiced this walk. He'd counted every step.
The air tasted like stillstone dust and harbor salt—the same choking mixture that had filled his lungs since he'd arrived. Stillstone from the mines outside the city, ground fine and carried on the wind. Harbor salt from the East Sea, brine and rot and the decay of everything the ocean touched. He thought of Seattle. The rain there was cleaner than this. The sky was real.
If I die here, no one will know my name.
The thought should have bothered him more than it did. But he'd made his peace with anonymity last night, back when the final gambit had been executed. Names were for people who expected to be remembered. Silas Quinn was already a ghost in this world and Arlen Mora was just a mask.
He didn't look back. Looking back changed nothing. The tannery door was already closed, Jessa's question still hanging in the air like smoke. She'd find out soon enough. One way or another, the answer would come.
He walked toward the Plaza.
The guillotine was waiting.
It was time to go to work.
The Plaza at noon.
The guillotine gleamed bronze in the sunlight—cleaned and oiled, the blade a slash of polished steel against the sky. Someone had decorated the scaffold with Crown red bunting, as though the mechanism of death deserved ceremony. The wooden frame was dark with old stains that no amount of scrubbing would remove. Silas wondered how many necks had rested in that cradle. Dozens? Hundreds? Stoneveil kept meticulous records of everything except the things that mattered.
Varis's stage dominated the center of the plaza, a raised platform draped in Crown red and silver. The banners snapped in the harbor wind, each one stamped with the same hawk-crested seal. Behind the stage, the Beacon Tower rose—the lighthouse that gave the square its name, its lamp dark in the daylight, its shadow falling across the crowd like a finger pointing toward judgment.
A sea of faces surrounded the stage. Hundreds of citizens pressed shoulder to shoulder, heads bowed, mouths shut. There was no cheering. No chanting. Just the dull murmur of a crowd that had been summoned and knew better than to complain about it. The slow tolling bell marked the hour, each strike vibrating through the stone beneath Silas's boots.
He stood in the crowd, hood pulled low, one more body in the mass. The Shank was a cold weight against his hip. The exits were mapped: three alleys to the north, each one wide enough for a single cart and dark enough to hide a running man. Two gates to the south, iron-barred and guarded, but the guards would flee if things went wrong. One sewer grate behind the fountain, the cover loose from years of neglect. He'd confirmed with Kessa. If everything failed, he'd run.
She's here. She's armed.
Guards lined the stage—Hawk-Crest armor, halberds at rest. Twelve of them, arranged in pairs, their faces hidden behind cheek-guards that made them look like bronze statues come to life. Loyal to Varis? Or loyal to whoever paid them? Silas didn't know. He hadn't had time to turn any of them.
Caia stood behind Varis, stone-faced, hand on her sword. The blade was a longsword in the Thalorian style—narrow guard, weighted pommel, edge sharp enough to shave with. She'd worn it every time he'd seen her. It wasn't ceremonial. It was a promise.
The Shank is in my belt. One throw, and maybe...
His mind played the image: the dagger spinning through the air, the arc perfect, the blade catching sunlight as it crossed the twenty feet between him and the stage. Varis's hand rising. The same gesture Silas had heard about at the convoy riot—casual, almost lazy, like he was brushing away a fly.
And then the crushing. Blood from his nose, mouth, ears. His ribs collapsing inward. His body folding like wet paper, crushed under invisible force, dead before he hit the ground.
No. Wait.
Varis stepped to the podium. Dark red coat, silver buttons, every thread immaculate. He looked like a banker announcing quarterly losses—calm, practiced, cold. His voice carried across the square, amplified by some trick of acoustics or Mythic Heart pressure. It rolled over the crowd like fog.
"Citizens of Stoneveil. We gather today to celebrate order."
The crowd was silent. Silas could feel their fear pressing against him like heat—the cumulative weight of hundreds of people who knew they were in the presence of something they couldn't fight. Some of them had family in the resistance. Some of them had friends who'd disappeared. All of them had learned to bow their heads and hope they weren't noticed.
"The resistance leader called himself Sparkweave." Varis paused, letting the name hang. "He thought he could burn brighter than the Crown. But fire needs air." He gestured toward the guillotine, the motion elegant, almost theatrical. "And I have learned... to remove the air."
Forty-three dead. Seventeen with Sparkweave. Twenty-six associates. The youngest was fourteen.
Silas had heard the records. He'd counted the names. Varis hadn't just killed the resistance—he'd killed their families, their friends, anyone who'd ever shared a meal with them or given them a place to sleep. The Regent called it "necessary sanitation." The records would've called it "spoilage." The dead called it nothing at all.
And no one can stop him. Except maybe...
Varis paused. His eyes drifted to Caia. The crowd followed his gaze.
The murmuring stopped. Silence pressed down like a weight, thick enough to feel. Even the wind seemed to still.
"Even my own daughter doubts me." Varis smiled. It was the smile of a man who'd already won, who was just playing out the final moves for entertainment. "Don't you, Caia?"
Caia's mask-like face cracked slightly. Her hand tightened on her sword. The leather of her grip creaked. The crowd held its breath.
He's testing her. In public. In front of everyone.
Silas's hand moved to his belt. The Shank was there, warm from his body, ready. If she didn't move, he'd have to. It would be suicide, but the mission demanded completion. The Citadel didn't accept excuses.
She could back down. She could play the loyal daughter. But she's not his daughter. She never was.
Caia stepped forward.
The guards shifted—uncertain, hands drifting toward weapons. They knew something was happening. They didn't know what. She reached into her tunic and pulled out a scroll, the wax seal the color of old blood.
The crack of wax breaking. Paper unrolling, stiff and official. Her clear and cold voice cut through the silence:
"By authority of the Crown Belt, Regent Varis Calder is hereby sentenced to death for treason, theft, and murder."
The crowd pressed forward. Silas was swept along, shoulders and elbows pushing him toward the stage. Someone gasped. Someone was crying. The collective weight of the crowd shifted, tilted, like a wave beginning to crest.
Varis laughed. It was a rich sound, genuine amusement, the kind of laugh that came from someone who found the situation genuinely funny. "That order is fake. I paid to have it cancelled."
Caia replied, "I know."
Of course she does.
The forgery was never about legal permission. It was about giving her an excuse. A fig leaf. A public lie. The scroll said "Crown authority" and the crowd heard "legitimacy," and that was all she needed. Just enough cover to act.
Varis's smile faltered. His eyes narrowed, calculating. "You would kill your own father on a forgery?"
Caia replied, "You're not my father."
She said it. In front of everyone.
The words hung in the air like smoke. Halven Voss had told her. The dying words of a man she killed—her own uncle, bleeding out in his office, confessing the truth with his last breath. Varis had made her a weapon. And now the weapon turned against its wielder.
Varis raised his hand.
Silas knew the gesture. It was the same at the convoy riot—the casual wave, the air itself becoming a fist. The same motion that crushed forty people making their bones snap like dry twigs.
Nothing happened.
A faint crackle appeared. His Mythic Heart called the Anchor Heart should have been roaring. The air should have pressed down like a vice, flattening everything in range. But there was no pressure. No grip. Just the sound of wind and the distant cry of gulls.
Varis's hand trembled. His face went white.
"What...?"
What did she do to him?
His ability should have crushed her where she stood. But nothing is happening.
Whatever it was, it worked. The monster who crushed forty people with a thought... can't lift a finger without his Heart.
Caia moved.
It was fast, even fluid. Years of training in one stroke, every hour of practice compressed into a single arc of steel. The blade caught noon light.
The sound was wet—steel through flesh, a butcher's noise that should have belonged in a slaughterhouse. Varis screamed for perhaps the first time in his life.
She severed both his arms at the elbow.
He fell to his knees.
"Your reign ends."
Blood sprayed across the stage, arterial red painting the Crown red bunting, spattering the guards who were too shocked to move. The crowd recoiled. Somewhere, a woman screamed. Somewhere else, a man broke out laughing.
Silas didn't look away.
Why the arms? Why not his head?
The crowd expects a beheading. For his end to be clean, quick, and final.
But she chose this. She wants him to bleed. To feel his inevitable demise.
Varis knelt in his own blood, stumps of his arms pouring red onto the bronze stage. The fabric of his coat was soaked, clinging to his chest. His face was a rictus—pain, fury, disbelief. And then, impossibly, he laughed.
It was a sound that felt broken, wet, and wrong.
"You think this is justice?" Blood bubbled at the corners of his mouth, staining his teeth red. "I MADE you. Do you know what you were before me? A crying child hiding under a table while my men cleaned up your family!"
Caia froze.
"The Voss estate was in my way. Your father refused to sell. So I had him removed." Varis's laughter turned ragged, gurgling. Blood was pooling beneath him, spreading across the stage. "You were supposed to die with them, but you survived. And I thought—why waste good material?"
Silas looked at her face. It was a barely-maintained mask. But he could feel some undercurrents.
She didn't know. Not all of it.
Voss told her he was her uncle. He didn't tell her Varis ordered the purge.
She thought she was avenging her parents. She was. She just didn't know why.
Caia raised her sword. The killing blow—
A stone cracked against Varis's face.
Silas instantly turned to see who threw it: a child. Thin as a rail, pale skin with gray dust crusted on his cheeks and arms—stillstone deposits. A miner, or a miner's orphan. Pressed into the pits young, lungs already filling with the dust that would kill him before he saw thirty. The kid's hand was already reaching for another stone.
A woman threw the second stone, tears streaming down her face. The laughter of a man grew louder. The crowd surged. Years of fear, breaking.
Stones rained down on Varis. Cobblestones pried from the street. Bits of broken tile. Things pulled from pockets and pouches. The crowd's roar swelled—not cheering, not yet, but something rawer. Relief. Rage. The sound of people who'd been afraid so long they'd forgotten what courage felt like.
Varis tried to rise.
He got one knee under him, the stumps of his arms dripping red, and something cracked against his temple. His head snapped sideways. Another stone caught his shoulder—the crack of bone audible even from where Silas stood. Varis's mouth opened, trying to speak, trying to issue some final command, but only blood came out. A stone the size of a fist slammed into his chest and he doubled over, coughing, wheezing, his body folding in on itself like a man who'd forgotten how to breathe.
He's trying to use the Heart again.
Silas could see it—the tremor in Varis's jaw, the way his eyes kept widening and narrowing as he reached for a power that wouldn't answer. Whatever Caia had done to him, it was still working. The Anchor Heart was silent. The tyrant was just a man.
A man getting beaten to death by his own people.
Silas had a stone in his hand. He didn't remember picking it up.
The people he terrorized are taking back what he stole.
Lives. Courage. Hopes. Dreams. Freedom.
Caia paused. She watched the crowd. The stones kept coming.
"Let them have you."
She lowered her sword. She turned away.
She could have finished him clean. Given him a soldier's death.
She gave him to the mob instead. A monster's death. A tyrant's death.
That's the difference between justice and revenge. She chose revenge.
So would I.
Silas stepped forward. The crowd didn't notice him—just another body in the chaos. The wet thud of stones. Varis's gurgling breaths. The Shank was cold in his hand. He felt it ready.
He's already dead. Why add to it?
The mission isn't done until he stops breathing.
This is my kill. My mission. My responsibility.
He didn't speak. Dagger Mastery settled into his arm—the passive skill working without conscious thought, guiding his grip, adjusting his angle, calculating the release. It was a clean movement.
The dagger tore through air, spun once, and buried itself in Varis's chest.
Varis screamed. His grunts after getting stoned turned into a raw, animal sound. His body jerked, blood pouring from the stumps of his arms, and he collapsed forward onto the stage. His legs twitched once.
Then nothing moved.
Seven days. Three kills on my hands. Four now.
But this one? This one I wanted.
He killed forty-three people. Hundreds or thousands over the years. He raised a weapon out of an orphan. He thought he was untouchable.
He was wrong.