The city of Duskwatch never truly slept. It festered.
Fog clung to crooked alleys like a second skin. Gutters overflowed with ash-stained rain. Between the damp stone and flickering lanternlight, something always slithered-secrets, whispers, knives.
Veyne kept to the side paths, bootsteps light, cloak soaked to his ribs. He knew this part of the city like his own scars. The safe paths. The quiet ones. The ones the guards didn't walk anymore.
His hand never left the satchel slung across his chest. Leather-wrapped, bound tight with two arcane seals-black thread and faintly glowing wax. He didn't know what was inside. Didn't need to. The less he knew, the less they could carve out of him later.
But even without opening it, he knew one thing: this was no ordinary job.
The scroll-if that's what it was-felt... cold. Not cold like ice. Cold like the grave. It pulsed faintly when his fingers brushed the surface, like a heartbeat trapped in ink and parchment.
He didn't like it.
Didn't like how much they'd paid him upfront, either. A courier didn't earn a whole month's coin for one night's walk. Unless the walk ended with someone's throat slit,or yours.
He turned down a narrower street, one of those slum-born alleys that even city maps pretended didn't exist. Three stories of crumbling wood leaned in overhead like rotten teeth. Somewhere above, a drunk cursed the rain. Farther ahead, dogs barked. The fog swallowed the sound too quickly.
Too quiet.
Too empty.
Veyne stopped.
His eyes scanned the rooftops. No movement. No shadows flickering behind windows. Just the city breathing slow and low, like it knew something was coming.
Then he heard it-just a whisper of metal against stone.
He dropped low.
The bolt shot over his shoulder and thunked into the wall behind him with a thrum of burning sigils. Sanctum.
"Shit," Veyne muttered, drawing his blade.
Figures emerged from the fog. Three, No, four. Black robes. Hooded. Their masks gleamed faintly with silver lines. No emblems, no ranks, no voices. They didn't speak. They didn't warn.
Sanctum never did.
They just killed.
The first came fast, slashing low. Veyne parried on instinct, then spun with a fluid, practiced motion. His shortblade sliced a clean arc across the attacker's gut- too low to kill instantly, but deep enough that the man's entrails spilled out in a hot splash.
The second lunged.
Veyne stepped into the strike, inside the arc, and drove a hidden dagger up through the bottom of the attacker's chin. The blade punched into the skull, silencing the man mid-breath.
The third hesitated for half a second too long.
Veyne slammed the dying body into him, then opened the man's thigh with a brutal cross-cut,cutting deep into the artery. The Sanctum agent crumpled, already fading from blood loss.
Veyne didn't stop to watch them die.
He ran. Silent. Efficient. Cold.
The satchel bounced at his hip as he tore through the alleyways, ducking laundry lines and leaping over broken crates. Behind him, footsteps-bare, silent, deliberate.
He turned sharply and flung a vial from his belt.
It shattered midair. Smoke hissed up, tinged with purple. He didn't stop to check if it worked. Just kept moving.
His lungs burned. His shoulder throbbed from an old wound. The scroll pulsed again, colder now. He didn't know why they wanted it,but if Sanctum was chasing it, it meant one thing:
He'd stumbled into something he never should've touched.
The Buried Quarter was close. Just a few more turns. That's where he was told to go. Drop off the scroll at the edge of the old church ruins, in a hollow behind a fallen statue. No contact. No words. Just leave it and vanish.
He wasn't sure if he'd make it.
Another bolt whizzed past, slicing his cloak. He dove behind a low wall, crouching, gasping. One of them landed nearby with barely a sound.
Veyne moved first.
Shortblade out, he swept low, slicing tendons behind the man's knee. The attacker dropped. Veyne buried the blade in his throat before he could scream.
Another came.Wild. Desperate. A mistake.
Veyne crushed his windpipe with a swift elbow, then twisted the man's head hard enough to hear the crack. He left the body twitching in a puddle.
No time to fight. Just survive.
Blood ran from his lip. A graze burned along his ribs. He couldn't tell how bad it was. Everything was starting to feel cold.
He was slowing.
The world blurred around the edges. He hit a stairwell, half-collapsed, and scrambled over it. His breath came in ragged bursts.
Down one more alley. Left at the moss-covered post. Over the fence with the chain link. Through a drainage tunnel.
He slid into the Buried Quarter like a ghost fleeing its grave.
Ruins loomed in the mist. Old churches. Collapsed stone temples. Forgotten relics of older times, sealed and broken. Even thieves avoided this place,too cursed, too silent.
He staggered toward the statue; a headless angel, long since defiled. Beneath it, a hollow in the stone.
He dropped the satchel inside.
"I don't know what the hell you are," he said to the scroll, voice rough, "but you're not my problem anymore."
He turned. A shape moved in the fog.
His knees gave out.
He collapsed beside the statue, vision narrowing, blood pooling beneath him. The cold seeped in deeper. Not just from the scroll now, but from inside.
He thought he heard voices. Maybe it was the fog whispering. Or the city saying goodbye.
Then,,,nothing.
Darkness closed in like a hand.