"Seamless Flashback"
The ache beneath his ribs hadn't faded. Not from the fever, but from something deeper. The cut Killian had left shallow, yes, but vicious. And the way he moved... Elias closed his eyes, just for a moment.
And suddenly he was back there again
Killian grinned, sharp and wordless, the gleam of his blade catching the firelight. Elias didn't answer. He lunged instead, forcing Killian back, blade slicing through air where a neck had just been. A miss.
Killian twisted like smoke, dagger arcing upward a silver whip catching Elias along the ribs. A shallow cut, but deep enough to sting. Elias hissed, pivoted, and struck.
His fist cracked against Killian's jaw, the sound clean, brutal. The assassin stumbled.
But not falling. Never falling.
Killian recovered mid-motion, like a predator in wind back on his feet, lips bloodied now, but smile intact. Almost pleased.
Elias's stance shifted, breath heavy. The cut bled freely beneath his shirt, staining the fabric, but he didn't seem to notice. His eyes locked with Killian's green fire meeting pale frost.
"You hit harder than you look," Killian said, voice like broken silk.
"You bleed easier than you act," Elias shot back.
The memory passed like a wave breaking. Elias exhaled, jaw tight. That fight hadn't ended it had only paused.
August stood at the threshold of Khyronia's obsidian arch, pale dawn light casting his long shadow across the ancient stones. Beside him, Elias leaned against a broken column, gaze lost in the labyrinth of ruined streets below. Moss and ivy clung to every surface, as though the city itself grew over the scars of history.
August watched Elias's profile—jaw set, green eyes distant and felt a sharp tug of concern. He stepped forward, closing the small distance between them, and laid a hand on Elias's arm. Elias blinked, returning to the present, and August's voice cut through the hush like steel on stone.
"Snap out of your thoughts," August said, low but urgent. "We're not here to dream."
Elias shook himself as if from a trance. He straightened, planting both boots firmly on the cracked marble. "Sorry," he murmured, the roughness in his tone betraying lingering pain. "This place it gets into your head."
August nodded, eyes scanning the sprawling city before them. "It remembers everything. Not just walls and streets, but regrets, curses… the blood that ran through these veins long ago." He glanced at Elias's still-aching side, where the makeshift bandage strained against the fabric of his coat. "You're hurt. We need to keep moving before something remembers you."
Elias managed a crooked grin. "I'm tougher than these stones."
"Don't test it," August replied, voice gentler. He drew the folded map from his coat its lines now joined by new markings burned into the plaza floor: the path to the Sanctum. "This way," he said, pointing toward a narrow alley choked with vines and shadow.
They slipped through the arch and into the city's heart. Every footstep echoed off shattered columns and silent statues, and for a moment, neither spoke. Then Elias broke the stillness.
"Do you ever regret it?" he asked quietly. "Coming here?"
August paused, light filtering through the canopy of broken rooftops above. "Not for a second," he answered. "Whatever waits in that Sanctum answers, dangers, or the truth of who we really are it's what I've been chasing since I was four years old."
Elias fell in beside him, matching his stride. "Then let's finish the chase."
Above them, Khyronia watched in silent vigil, its ruined spires stretching toward a sky that remembered forgotten promises. And as the two men vanished into its winding streets, their shadows merged with the city's ancient ones, stepping ever closer to the secret waiting beneath the stones.
They moved like ghosts through Khyronia's veins August and Elias, silent save for the occasional crunch of rubble underfoot. The marble walls leaned inward as if eavesdropping, and overhead, the sky remained the color of bruised pewter, heavy with more than rain.
Twisting alleys led them past cracked fountains and wind-choked courtyards. Vines hung like drapery from the windows of once-grand halls. And always, the feeling deepened that they were not alone. That the city was watching.
Then, as they stepped through a narrow gate flanked by statues of faceless kings, the air changed.
A footfall that wasn't theirs.
A breath too close.
And a voice, smooth as silk drawn through a blade.
"We welcome you… to Khyronia."
Both August and Elias froze.
The speaker stood just ahead, half-shadowed beneath a fallen arch. A figure robed in layered grey, with a veil of transparent black netting obscuring their face. Neither tall nor short. Neither young nor old. Ageless in a way that unsettled.
August's eyes narrowed. "You knew we were coming."
The figure tilted their head slowly. "This city does not forget. And neither do we."
Elias stepped forward, hand brushing the edge of his coat near his pistol. "Who are you?"
The figure did not flinch. "A keeper. A voice. A shard of memory given flesh. Names are fragile here. Best left untouched."
August moved beside Elias, steady even as the pain in his limbs lingered. "We followed the map."
"Of course you did," the figure said. "It was meant for you. The sanctum waits."
Elias's fingers twitched, but he didn't reach for his weapon. "And why are you so eager for us to find it?"
The figure gave the smallest incline of their head. "Because Khyronia has slept too long. And your arrival is… a bell tolling."
The wind stirred. Somewhere far off, a chime echoed—though no tower stood high enough to carry it.
August stared hard at the stranger. "Who else is here?"
The figure didn't answer directly. Instead, they turned and began walking away, their steps so light they barely stirred dust. "Follow. Or don't. But know this if you seek the truth, it will cut deeper than any blade."
Elias glanced at August.
August nodded. "We're already bleeding."
And they followed the stranger deeper into the city of ruin and memory toward the sanctum, and the secrets waiting inside.
The man turned away from the hidden chamber, not even glancing at the book.
"This is not your destination," he said.
Elias tensed. "Then where are you taking us?"
The stranger looked over his shoulder, and in the flickering light, his eyes gleamed like cut amber. "To the one who called you."
August's hand dropped to his side, fingers grazing the edge of his coat. "You're not him?"
"No," the man said. "I am only the door. He is the key."
With that, he walked on. The path narrowed archways crumbled with age, walls draped in ivy even beneath the ground. Strange murals watched them from the stone, some so old their paint had turned to dust.
They descended a spiral of stairs carved into solid rock, until the sound of wind no longer reached them. Only the silence of time.
And then a faint light.
It was not firelight. Nor lanterns.
It came from the end of a long, sloping hall golden and cold, like sunlight trapped in water. The stranger stopped before a door carved with the same symbols from the map August had been given.
He looked at them both.
"He has waited."
With a press of his hand, the door groaned open.
Inside was a circular chamber vast as a cathedral, its domed ceiling etched with constellations that moved slowly in the dark above. Columns rose like trees of bone and gold, and at the center stood a single figure cloaked in black robes that shimmered like oil beneath starlight.
His face was veiled.
But August felt it instantly that weight. That power. It pressed against the air like a storm held still.
August stepped forward, but Elias caught his arm.
The figure turned his head toward them.
"You've grown," he said softly. His voice was deep, ageless, calm.
August froze.
"You know me," he said.
"I've known you both," the figure replied. "Long before either of you knew yourselves."
Elias's jaw tensed. "Who are you?"
The figure did not answer.
Instead, he raised his hand and the chamber lit up. The walls were covered in maps, drawings, and records of the Eclipse Elite. Their history, their ranks. And in the center: an image of the assassin who had murdered August's parents.
But scrawled beside the assassin's likeness was a name neither of them expected.
Elias.
August's breath caught.
He turned sharply to Elias who stepped forward, pale, stunned.
"That was the target," the veiled man said. "That night. The assassin came not for your parents, August… but for the boy hidden in the wardrobe."
The room spun.
August stared at Elias.
Elias stared at the wall.
The stranger bowed his head slightly behind them.
And the master of this hidden place, standing beneath the stars he'd carved himself, spoke once more:
"So… he survived after all."