[POV: Silas (Flashback)]
Voss's office was silent at night. It was a silence deeper than the tannery, heavy with the smell of old paper and stagnant air.
Silas moved through the dark corridor, past the dead man's door. The latch was unlocked—Kessa had taken care of that hours ago. He slipped inside, and the moonlight from the window fell across a mahogany desk, a cold fireplace, and a portrait on the far wall.
He paused.
The man in the portrait had dark eyes. Familiar eyes. The same jawline, the same intensity he'd seen in Caia Calder's face when she'd watched him from across the courtyard on that terrace.
He filed the observation away and moved to the desk. Kessa was somewhere behind him—she had promised a distraction, a stumble, a dropped lantern, enough to pull the night watch away for sixty seconds. She had given him a minute. Maybe less.
He found the unsecured cabinet Kessa had described, pulled the drawer open, and grabbed a stack of blank parchment. It was the same size, the same heavy texture as the rejection scroll. Official Crown stock. The kind used for royal decrees and execution orders.
Fifty seconds.
He turned to leave—and froze.
A low growl vibrated through the floorboards.
In the corridor, a shadow detached itself from the wall—a warden-hound. Massive, muscle-bound, with jaws that could snap a femur like a twig.
It took a step forward, sniffing the air.
Silas stopped breathing. He couldn't fight this. One bark, and the building would wake up. One bite, and he was finished.
The hound sniffed again. It wrinkled its nose. Then it sneezed—a violent, wet sound—and shook its heavy head.
It doesn't recognize me. Too much tannery stink.
Silas sniffed himself then realized the reason.
I'm just chemical noise.
The beast turned away, padding back down the hall to find cleaner air.
Silas didn't wait. He slipped the parchment into his tunic and melted back into the shadows. He went out the window, down the alley, and was gone before the guards—or the dog—turned the corner.
Back at the tannery, the candlelight flickered as he worked. The quill scratched against the parchment. Line by line. Seal by seal.
He knew the format. He had processed these kinds of documents for Voss. He knew the exact spacing of the margins, the specific rhythm of Crown law.
Will Caia even accept it? She'll know it's fake. But she HAS to...
His hand was steady. His breathing was steady. Everything about him was calm except the voice in the back of his skull that whispered: You're about to frame yourself for treason. If this fails, there is no prison deep enough to hold you.
Maybe she doesn't care if it's real. Maybe she just needs the excuse. The permission.
He reached for the sealing wax. The stick of "Crown Red"—the specific blood-dark shade reserved for High Command—was broken. A stump.
He held it to the flame.
Enough for one seal. Maybe.
If he messed this up—if the wax pooled too thin, if the stamp slipped, if he hesitated—he couldn't try again. There was no more red wax in the cabinet. He'd checked.
His hand hovered. The wax began to drip. One drop. Two.
Steady now.
He pressed the seal into the hot wax. He held his breath, counting the seconds for it to cool, praying the stump had given enough coverage.
He lifted the stamp.
The Crown insignia formed—perfect, damning, false.
And if she doesn't need the excuse... I'm a dead man either way.
He held up the finished forgery. In the candlelight, it looked real. It felt real. The parchment even smelled right—dusty, official, important.
Tonight, I give Caia Calder permission to kill her father.
The only question is whether she's been waiting for it.
The corridor of the Regent's Terraces stretched before him, torchlight pooling on flagstones, long shadows reaching between sconces like fingers. Somewhere two corridors over, armor clanked—a patrol passing. The building settled around him with wood creaking, stone groaning, the slow exhale of a structure that had swallowed better men than him.
The Citadel gave me a week to kill a tyrant. I've got twelve hours left. Maybe a bit more...
Silas paused at a window. Through the glass, he saw the Stoneveil harbor, smog-choked, the moon a pale smear behind haze. No stars. Seattle's rain was cleaner than this. He missed the sound of traffic. He missed air that didn't coat his lungs like wet ash.
If she arrests me, the mission fails. The Citadel retrieves me or kills me. Either way, I might never breathe Seattle air again.
He moved on. Kessa's intel had been precise—service corridors, guard rotations, timing windows. He found the armory door without incident. Heavy oak, iron banding. Light bled from beneath it, flickering orange.
The rhythmic scrape of steel on stone drifted through the wood. Shhhhk. Shhhhk. Someone sharpening something.
Could be a guard. Could be a trap. Could be her.
Despite his hesitation, he turned the handle.
The armory smelled of oil and leather and cold metal. Racks of swords gleamed dully in the candlelight—old blades, well-maintained, each one worth more than a common soldier earned in a year. A portrait of Varis Calder hung on the far wall with ceremonial armor and paternal eyes.
Caia sat at the whetstone. A sword rested across her lap. No armor tonight—just plain clothes, hair still pulled back in that tight warrior's knot. She didn't look up when he entered.
Then she did.
The sharpening stopped. Steel rang as she rose, blade in hand, and those dark eyes found his. The same eyes from the corridor outside Voss's office—the way she'd looked at him like she was analyzing a threat.
"You're not authorized here."
She remembers. Good. Wait.. it might be bad.
"You. The auditor." Her voice was flat. It was not a question. "Arlen Mora."
"I have something for you, Commander."
He held up the scroll but didn't approach. Let her see the Crown seal—the imperfect red wax, the slightly off-center stamp. She didn't move. He walked forward slowly, left it on the whetstone bench, and stepped back.
She picked it up. Unrolled it and began reading.
Silence filled the room.
"The seal is wrong."
She noticed. Of course she noticed. She's not Voss. She doesn't miss details. My forgery is nothing in the eyes of a professional. But I thought it was pretty good...
"I know."
There was more silence. Her eyes flicked to him with a calculating gaze.
"It's a forgery."
"Yes."
"You forged a Crown execution order. Do you understand what that means?"
It means treason. It means I die if this fails. It means I'm betting everything on a woman who kills for a living.
"It means I need Varis Calder dead." He met her gaze. "And I think you'll do too."
He played his real card—the intel Kessa had given him.
"I know who you are. Caia Voss. Not Calder. Your parents died in a purge fifteen years ago—the same night Varis consolidated power. He adopted you the next day."
She doesn't know. She can't know. Voss was the only one who knew, and he's dead.
But Caia's expression didn't crack.
"Halven Voss told me before I killed him." Her voice was ice. "He was my uncle."
She killed her uncle? Silas suppressed his surprise and recalculated. So she knows. She already knows. And she's still here. Still sharpening her weapon. Still waiting. For what?
"Then you understand."
"I understand that Varis killed my parents and raised me to kill his enemies."
He pushed. "The seal is wrong. Anyone who looks closely will know it's fake. But does it matter?"
There was a long pause.
Looks like she's thinking... Silas held his breath.
Then her expression shifted—not relief exactly, but something loosened behind her eyes. As though a weight she'd been carrying had just been set down. She looked at the portrait of Varis. Then at the sword in her hand.
"...No."
She pocketed the scroll without ceremony or handshake—just understanding.
"Noon tomorrow. The plaza speech. He'll be weak. I know when to act."
Silas nodded and turned to leave.
"Mora." He stopped at the door but didn't turn. "If this fails, I never saw you."
And if it works, she still might kill me. Or the Citadel will retrieve me from this world. Either way, that's tomorrow's problem.
"Neither did I."
He slipped back through the service corridor. Guards passed without noticing. The palace settled into night.
He looked back once. Caia's window—the armory—was dark now. She'd made her decision. So had he.
Tomorrow the board is set. Varis at the plaza. Caia with her blade. Me with nothing but a forged piece of paper and the hope I still have a world to return to—a place that belongs to me.
If I die here, no one will know my real name.
But if I live—if this actually works—I'll see a real sky again. Not this choking smog. Not this prison of stillstone and blood.
Silas's eyes closed. He took a deep breath.
Home.
[POV: Caia]
Gutter Row at dusk.
Narrow alleys led to crumbling walls and overflowing gutters that stank of fish guts, human waste, and something chemical that burned the back of the throat. This was the dregs of Stoneveil, where the light never quite reached and the guards never quite patrolled.
Caia moved through it like a ghost—plain clothes instead of armor, hood up, head down. Just another shadow in a city full of shadows. No one looked twice at a woman in a grey cloak. No one looked twice at anything in Gutter Row.
The apothecary's shop was cramped. Shelves stuffed with jars of powders and tinctures, their labels faded and peeling. Dust hung thick in the air, catching the faint light from a single oil lamp. Dried herbs dangled from the ceiling—bundles of lavender and sage and something darker that she didn't recognize—brushing against her cloak as she pushed through the doorway.
The old man behind the counter looked up. His eyes widened when he saw who stood in his doorway. His hands, gnarled with age and spotted with alchemical burns, went very still.
"Stillstone tincture," she said. Her voice was flat and cold, like the rest of her heart. It was the voice of a woman who had already made her choice. "Delayed action."
The apothecary's tongue darted across his lips. "For a Heart user?"
"For a Regent."
The apothecary's face went pale. He looked between Caia and the door behind her.
Finally, he nodded. He didn't ask more questions. He didn't need to. His hands shook as he prepared the vial—measuring powder from a jar with a black label, mixing it with something that smelled of copper and burnt sugar, sealing it with wax that hissed when it touched the glass.
Caia's hands were steady as she paid three Gild for it.
By noon tomorrow, he'll reach for the Anchor Heart and find it won't obey. He'll try to crush my bones, and nothing will happen. He'll be weak. Powerless. Finally... human.
And I'll be waiting.
She took the vial and slipped it into the pocket of her cloak.
I don't need permission. I don't need an order. I don't need anyone to tell me this is right.
I just need him to be weak.
Fifteen years of training. All of it to kill for him. Now I use it to kill him.
She left without a word. The apothecary watched her go, his face the color of old parchment. He wouldn't talk, couldn't talk. Nobody talked about the Steel Warden. Not even in Gutter Row.
The dining hall was grand.
Long table of polished mahogany, thirty feet from end to end. Crystal chandeliers hanging from the vaulted ceiling, their facets catching the candlelight and scattering it across the walls in patterns of gold and silver. Tapestries depicting Calder victories. Portraits of Calder ancestors. Everything in this room was designed to remind visitors of power—the power of the family, the power of the name, the power of the man who sat at the head of the table.
Varis sat alone, signing execution orders for anyone connected to the convoy riot by candlelight. His quill scratched against parchment in a steady rhythm—the sound of bureaucratic murder, one name at a time.
They were names she didn't recognize; names she'd stopped caring about long ago.
The wine was Calder vintage—deep red, almost black in the candlelight. The kind of wine that cost more than most families earned in a month. Caia's fingers were cold around the decanter.
Varis didn't look up. His quill scratched against parchment, adding another name to the list. His back was half-turned, his attention fixed on the execution orders as though she wasn't even there.
Fifteen years. He's never once watched what I poured.
She tilted the vial. One drop. Two. The stillstone tincture slid into the wine like oil into water, then vanished. The tincture dissolved without a trace.
She set the vial back in her sleeve with the same hand that had killed his enemies for over a decade. He didn't notice. He never noticed.
"Forty of my people." Varis's voice was tired, angry underneath the exhaustion, the way it always was when things didn't go according to plan. "Crushed in the street because Sparkweave and his rabble got lucky with a gate." He swirled his wine, watching the liquid coat the sides of the glass. "I'll find out who helped them. Eventually."
He looked at the parchment, his eyes narrowing. "For now, I'll be satisfied with everyone connected to the riot."
Caia poured him another glass and set the decanter down carefully, precisely, the way she did everything. He drank without hesitation.
"You did well today." He looked up from his papers. Almost smiled—the closest thing to warmth she had ever seen from him. "Voss was a liability. You handled it cleanly."
He set down the quill. For a moment, he looked almost... fond.
"You've exceeded everything I hoped for when I took you in. A scared child, surrounded by blood." He swirled his wine again, gazing at the dark liquid like it held memories. "Now the Steel Warden. My greatest success."
Caia's jaw tightened. She forced it to relax. Forced her face to remain neutral. Forced her voice to remain steady.
"Thank you, Father."
The word tasted like ash for the first time.
Varis drank deep. The wine stained his lips red—almost black in the candlelight. Caia watched. The poison was already inside him now. Already working its way through his blood. Already beginning the slow, subtle process of disconnecting him from the Mythic Heart that gave him power.
He doesn't know. He can't know.
By noon tomorrow, you'll be powerless. And I'll be ready.
He signed more execution orders. More names. More dead. The quill scratched against parchment. The sound filled the silence between them.
"Thank you, Father." Every time I say it, I want to vomit. Every time I say it, I remember my real father—the one whose bones you shattered, whose blood you spilled, whose daughter you stole.
She poured more wine. He drank more wine. The poison was already working—slow, subtle, unstoppable. By morning, he would feel tired. By noon, he would reach for the Anchor Heart and find only silence.
He signs more execution orders. More names. More dead. By tomorrow, his name will be on the list.
Fifteen years of "Father." Fifteen years of lies.
It all ends tomorrow.
He dismissed her with a wave—a casual gesture, the wave of a man who had never doubted his own safety. She bowed. She turned and left.
The dining hall doors closed behind her. The corridor stretched out ahead, long and empty and silent.
She felt nothing.