Night settled over Esgard softly.
The moon was a pale slit in a cloud-laced sky, thin and watching. Beneath it, the city breathed in slow, muffled gasps—torches guttered along bridges and archways, and shadows stretched long in alleyways choked with refuse, smoke, and silence.
And in those shadows, Fang moved.
Far from how a man would.
Not even like a ghost.
But like a decision made by the dark.
One blink—empty.
Next blink—there.
He stepped from a wall where no passage existed, a ripple of purple-black mist coiling from the hem of his robes. Soulbinders weren't bound by space the way mortals were.
And Fang was no ordinary soulbound.
He was once an Assayer.
He knew how they hunted.
He knew how they moved.
He knew what it ant when one of their leaders hadn't shown their face.
It ant the ga was still being played.
It ant the predator had not yet finished watching.
He drifted along the spine of Esgard's lower class district, his rod of erasure slung across his back, masked by a weave of runes that bent perception around him.
No guard noticed. No beggar stirred. He passed like a thought unspoken.
They'd searched all day.
Three squads of Ian's soulbound had been sent to sweep the slums and markets. Others had probed the noble quarters under glamoured illusion, and blackrat had even pulled strings with whisper networks.
Nothing.
No leader.
No flare of an Imperial city dog.
No sign of the Assayer who had dispatched the disposable squad that had bled and died swiftly.
But Fang… Fang knew better.
They didn't disappear.
They couldn't have.
He pressed a hand to the bricks of an abandoned slting kiln, old iron runes carved into the stone—faint, dead, but there.
His fingers glowed softly. He hissed. "Assayer markings. Layered."
He traced them.
First, the outer ring: Observation Tier: Passive. Standard surveillance rune.
Then, the inner one: Evaluation Pending. No Interference.
And beneath even that, etched like a scar within the stone itself: Assayer Pri: Active Field Test. The last word flickered, half-burned from the kiln's heat.
Fang's eyes narrowed. "You're still here."
He turned.
The city twisted around him again, and the shadows obeyed.
The rooftops of the old district slanted like broken teeth. He leapt from one to another, robes whispering against the wind.
Below him, couriers ran late ssages for nobles betting on the next Blood League match.
rcenaries drank away regrets in cracked taverns. No one looked up.
Only the dead ever saw the sky clearly.
He paused above a long-dead chapel.
There—movent.
He dropped silently behind the steeple, crouched, and narrowed his focus.
Two figures moved through the alley. Rushed steps, careful. Not Assayers.
But they led him sowhere.
He followed, unseen.
They approached an old armory buried in scaffolding and vine. One knocked three tis—pause—twice. The iron door groaned open.
Fang waited.
Counted ten breaths.
And dissolved into smoke.
---
Inside was dark.
Rotting wooden floors. Dust-choked air. But below, through the cracks, glowed faint blue runes.
So they are still using ancient fras, Fang thought. Good.
He seeped into the cracks.
Down, down, past layers of rusted tal and rune-warded stone, until he erged into a chamber lit by soulglass orbs and suspended sigils that rotated in silence.
A war room. An Assayer's Nest.
Dozens of diagrams floated mid-air. Arcane symbols flickered across mapped-out schematics—Esgard's Crucible, Velrosa's estate, Blackblood Forest, even overlays of Ian's previous movents during the Reach.
And at the far end of the chamber, atop a raised dais of white stone—
He stood.
A tall figure.
Thin, composed, robed in the silks of the Old Imperial Court, black trimd with duskwine red. A single dallion hung over his chest, etched with four symbols of power: Judgnt. Sacrifice. mory. Fla.
His face was not visible.
Only a mask—bone white, etched in tears of gold.
Fang knew him.
He had served under him once.
"…Rathen," Fang whispered.
The figure turned slowly. As though he had heard a na spoken not aloud, but in the marrow of the world.
Then ca the voice.
Not spoken. Not heard. Pressed into the mind.
"Whisperer's dog. I was wondering when he'd send you."
Fang straightened, drawing his rods into his hands. One shimred purple. The other pulsed a sickly black-red.
"I told him we'd find you eventually. But he should've known you'd co to first."
The figure descended the steps.
Graceful. Patient.
The air in the chamber thinned. The runes began to flicker.
Fang felt pressure building behind his eyes. The sa feeling he'd felt the first ti he stood before this man.
The weight of intellect sharpened into judgnt.
"You're not the only one who rembers how the Assayers worked," Fang said quietly. "We were taught ti to interfere. To observe. Record. Report."
The mask tilted.
"And yet here you are."
"I'm not one of you anymore."
"No," the voice whispered. "You are worse. Sothing bound. Hollow. Fed by scraps of soul."
Fang stepped forward. "You sent a squad to die. I buried them in sand. You've assessed Ian before—when I died. So why now?"
Silence.
Then the figure raised a single gloved hand.
The floating diagrams shifted.
Velrosa's face rose in flickering light, then Ian's. Then Lyra and Caelen. Lines connected them like threads of fate.
Then a sigil Fang didn't recognize pulsed at the center.
A red sun. Half-shattered. Bleeding fire.
"What is that?" Fang hissed.
The masked man didn't answer.
Instead, he turned fully—revealing the branded mark on his chest glowing beneath his robes:
The seal of the Fourth ancient Faction.
Faction Kyreth.
Fang's eyes widened.
"All things that disappear do so for a reason," the voice intoned. "So fade. Others… wait."
Fang spun his rods, preparing to strike.
"You're violating Imperial Law."
The mask turned back toward him. For the first ti, it tilted… upward.
Above them, dozens of spectral figures suddenly stepped from the walls, silent as mist.
Soulbound?
No.
Assayer Echoes—projections made from living mory and condensed spirit essence. They should be impossible. They should've died when the Fourth faction burned.
Fang's fingers gripped tighter. "You've rebuilt the nest."
"No," Rathen said calmly, stepping back. "We never left it."
The echoes began to converge.
Rod in each hand, Fang braced.
And then—the runes on the walls flared red.
He turned.
At the chamber entrance—another figure appeared.
Not cloaked.
Not masked.
But… familiar.
Fang's breath caught.
"…you."
The figure smiled.
"Hello, Fang."
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