The rain had dried by the time Caspian stepped into the shadows of the tower. The streets below still glistened with puddles, neon lights shimmering in distorted reflections. Above him loomed the monolith of glass and steel—an exclusive tower that clawed at the low-hanging clouds like the talons of a predator.
But hours before, the streets had been silent except for the murmur of grief and the hush of disbelief.
Twelve hours had passed since they'd found Gregory's body. Twelve hours since Caspian had stood frozen, staring at the grotesque mark carved into the corpses, the metallic stench of blood still fresh in the air. The symbol haunted him, gnawing at the back of his mind like an unanswered question that refused to be forgotten.
Beside him, Andrew had been kneeling silently, his face unreadable, hands clenched tight.
It was Camael who broke the tension, his voice unusually soft as he nudged Caspian with the edge of his boot. "Kid. You remember what I told you earlier? About keeping tabs on Layla?"
Caspian blinked, the words dragging him back from his spiral of thoughts. "Yeah... yeah, I remember."
Camael flicked a glance toward the alley where Layla's silhouette had vanished hours earlier, like smoke dissolving into the night. "I think now's as good a time as any," he muttered, his usual arrogance tempered by something heavier, almost reluctant. "She's already moving. Me and Andrew got... other matters to handle."
Andrew didn't say a word. He didn't have to. His eyes, hollow and rimmed with exhaustion, said enough.
Caspian sighed, running a hand through his damp hair. "What do you want me to do? Bring her back? Talk to her?"
Camael chuckled, but there was no humor in it. "Bring her back?" He shook his head. "Layla's not a stray pup, Caspian. You don't bring her anywhere she doesn't want to go."
"Then what?"
"Just follow. Watch. See what she's really up to." Camael's voice dropped lower, the smile fading from his face. "She's been keeping things from us. From her father especially. Find out what, and don't get yourself caught."
There was an unspoken weight in those words. Trust stretched thin. Loyalties fraying.
"Fine," Caspian muttered, already turning toward the rain-slick streets, his hood drawn low over his eyes. "I'll find out."
Camael clapped him once on the back, the gesture rough but familiar. "Atta boy."
The conversation stuck with him as he made his way through the wet underbelly of Nimerath, trailing Layla's shadow across the city's tangled web of alleys, rooftops, and forgotten subway lines. The path she took was winding, deliberate, always two steps ahead.
Until now.
He was doing what Camael had asked. Following Layla.
But she wasn't making it easy.
Layla moved with the precision of someone accustomed to being followed—and not wanting to be. She weaved through the arteries of Nimerath like the city itself bent to her will, her footsteps silent against cracked asphalt and rain-slicked alleyways. She knew the corners where the streetlights failed, where the security cameras pointed the other way, where the eyes of the desperate turned blind. Caspian struggled to keep pace, trailing her from a distance, careful not to draw her gaze.
She hopped fences with practiced ease, cutting through forgotten courtyards and abandoned service corridors. Twice, she ducked through the back doors of residential complexes, forcing Caspian to scale rusted fire escapes just to keep her in sight. At times, she disappeared entirely into the crowd, vanishing beneath the neon glow of noodle stalls and packed night markets, only to reappear blocks later, striding down empty boulevards like a phantom.
He pressed onward, sweat dampening his collar despite the chill in the air, his breath controlled, measured, lest he give himself away. The city seemed to twist itself around her, offering up pathways invisible to the average pedestrian, and Caspian wondered how many times she'd done this before, slipping into cracks most never saw.
But her destination became clear soon enough.
The Tower
It loomed at the heart of the entertainment district, an obsidian spire laced with chrome veins, towering above the lesser buildings like a sentinel. From its upper floors pulsed music and lights, a predator's lure for the rich and reckless. At its summit, the nightclub—a place whispered about in the underworld, a place few entered and fewer left unchanged.
Caspian drew his hood lower, blending into the sea of onlookers gathered at the foot of the tower. The line snaked down the block, filled with the city's glittering elite, their faces painted in synthetic glamor, their laughter sharp and hollow. Guards in sleek black suits patrolled the perimeter, eyes like razors, scanning the crowd for anyone who didn't fit.
Layla fit.
"Evenin', Miss Layla," the bouncer greeted her, his tone respectful, almost deferential.
"Don't waste my time, Elias," she replied curtly, brushing past him with barely a flicker of acknowledgment. The double doors swallowed her whole, leaving only the throb of music and a bitter trail of cigarette smoke in her wake.
Caspian approached the door moments later, keeping his head down, the hood obscuring his face in shadows.
The bouncer's gaze fixed on him instantly. There was no warmth now.
"You lost, kid?" Elias asked, folding his arms across his chest. His voice was a wall—thick, heavy, and immovable.
"Just looking for someone," Caspian replied evenly, keeping his tone casual, almost bored.
"Yeah? Well, they ain't lookin' for you," Elias snorted. "VIP only. That means Very Important People. You don't exactly scream Very Important."
Caspian held his stare for a moment longer than he should have, then gave a small, polite smile. "Fair enough."
He turned away without another word, slipping back into the crowd's outer edges. He lingered in the shadowed corners, watching the guards, the cameras, the rhythm of the patrols.
There would be no walking through the front. This place was locked down tight.
Which meant he'd have to make his own entrance.
And that was fine.
He always preferred it that way.
He considered pushing, but the cluster of guards lurking in the shadows—and the red-eye cameras—quickly dissuaded him. Forcing his way inside would be suicide. This place wasn't just exclusive. It was fortified.
So he did what he did best.
He vanished into the dark.
A narrow service alley hugged the back of the tower. Slick walls stretched into the sky, dotted with maintenance ledges and jutting steel beams. It was his only way in.
He unsheathed the small knives from his belt, testing their balance. The cold steel glinted briefly under the flickering light of a nearby lamppost. Not ideal, but they'd hold his weight if he was careful.
Caspian exhaled slowly, focusing. He jammed the first blade into the narrow seam between glass and steel. It held. He pulled himself up, drove the second one higher. His body moved with practiced ease, muscles coiled like springs.
But the climb wasn't going to be simple.
The tower was riddled with security systems. Cameras panned the exterior, their lenses cutting through the night with an eerie mechanical whine. Drones hovered nearby, scanning for anomalies. Worse, the reflective windows gave away everything. One mistake, one wrong angle, and someone inside could spot him.
He flattened himself against the wall, pausing beneath a maintenance balcony. A camera rotated lazily above him. He timed its sweep. Three seconds of blind spot.
He moved, hauling himself onto the ledge and crawling on his belly to stay hidden behind a steel vent. He could hear voices from inside. Laughter. Music. The hum of the city's wealthy, oblivious to the man clinging just beyond the glass.
"Easy," he whispered to himself.
From this angle, he could see partygoers mingling inside the brightly lit upper floors, their silhouettes dancing between cascading beams of light. A couple pressed up against the glass not ten feet from him. Caspian froze, breath stilling as the woman peered outside, face illuminated by the glow of her phone.
Seconds ticked by.
Finally, the woman turned back to her partner, distracted.
He continued climbing.
Higher now, the wind buffeted him, cold and sharp against his exposed face. His gloves slipped on the rain-slick steel, but he gritted his teeth, driving his knives deeper into the seams. His arms burned, but he pushed through it.
He stopped again at a protruding ledge where a pair of security drones hovered too close for comfort. Caspian waited, heart thundering in his ears, as they drifted past on their lazy patrol route. When they vanished into the dark, he moved quickly, leveraging his weight up and over the lip of the glass balcony.
He crouched low behind a towering potted tree near the shattered window, his breath measured, silent. The weight of the tower pressed down on him here, the ceiling a riot of low-hanging lights that cast long, deceptive shadows across the polished marble floor. The nightclub pulsed before him like a living organism, veins of gold and crimson snaking through its heart, shadows curling along the edges like tendrils reaching for him.
The music wasn't just loud—it was suffocating. A relentless bassline that seemed to seep into the marrow of his bones, masking his footsteps but threatening to swallow him whole if he lost focus.
He adjusted the simple black mask over his face—a thin, matte veil that obscured his features but allowed his breath to flow silent and steady. Every movement had to be perfect. There was no margin for error here.
With deliberate precision, he slipped through the window he had carefully cut, the glass lowering soundlessly into the darkened alcove outside the lounge's perimeter. He moved like a flicker of smoke, the soles of his boots whisper-soft against the velvet shadows.
Inside, the air hit him hard—cloying perfume, curling cigarette smoke, the acidic tang of overpoured liquor—and beneath it all, the electric buzz of desperation and power. Every patron here carried the stench of influence, cloaked in silk and diamond smiles.
Caspian kept to the edges, where the red haze met darkness, where security's eyes grew lazy. He moved between columns and behind velvet curtains, blending into the architecture itself. Twice, a guard turned his head too close for comfort, and Caspian melted behind a gilded pillar, slowing his breath until it became almost nonexistent.
A woman in a silver dress brushed past him, her perfume a dagger to his senses. He pressed against the shadows, barely an inch from her sequined back, frozen. She never turned, too drunk on laughter and champagne to sense the phantom at her shoulder.
Every step was calculated, his muscles tight, coiled, but smooth—gliding from cover to cover. He memorized the patrols, the blind spots in the cameras, the clusters of oblivious patrons blocking security's line of sight.
He heard everything. Deals whispered over clinking glasses. Betrayals spoken in brittle, brittle promises. Names, places, secrets.
Then he saw her.
Layla.
She moved like a queen in enemy territory—chin high, steps liquid and sure, her coat catching the gold haze of the club's lights as she brushed past velvet ropes like they weren't even there. No hesitation. No glances back. She belonged, and everyone seemed to know it.
Trailing at her side was a man draped in a dark suit, his posture rigid, his face hidden beneath the folds of shadow and strobing neon. Caspian strained to catch a glimpse, shifting his position, but the man kept his back to him, a living wall of tailored black.
Layla leaned in, whispering into the man's ear, her lips close enough to brush his skin. Caspian caught nothing of it—the roar of the music drowned out even his thoughts—but the angle of her body, the tilt of her head, told him enough. This wasn't a chance encounter. This was arranged. Pre-meditated.
The man gestured with a curt nod toward a secluded VIP lounge, its frosted glass doors guarded by two men in matching suits. Without a word, Layla followed him inside.
Caspian pressed himself back against a golden pillar, the cold metal bleeding through his clothes. A guard scanned the crowd just meters away, his gaze sweeping the writhing sea of dancers with unsettling precision. These weren't street enforcers. Their eyes were trained to pick out the stray thread, the face that didn't belong.
And Caspian? He didn't belong.
He drew in a slow, measured breath, letting it settle deep into his chest as he tapped into that dangerous calm that always surfaced in the middle of the hunt. His knife remained sheathed at his side, but his senses sharpened to a fine, deliberate point, cataloging every exit, every route, every blind spot between him and that lounge.
He slid along the perimeter, blending into the shadows where the crimson lights met black velvet, where the drunken patrons blocked the view of the guards. Every step had to be precise. Every breath had to be silent.
A burst of laughter exploded beside him as a group of suits clinked glasses, and Caspian used the distraction to slip past, his shadow swallowed by the chaos.
But something gnawed at him. A tightness in his chest he couldn't shake.
This wasn't just a place for drinks and whispered secrets. There was something else pulsing beneath the surface of this nightclub, something darker. He felt it in the way Layla carried herself—shoulders tense beneath the calm mask, eyes too focused, too sharp.
She didn't want them to see this.
She didn't want him to see this.
And especially, she didn't want her father to see this.
Caspian narrowed his gaze, watching the last sliver of Layla vanish behind the frosted glass as the VIP door clicked shut.
He couldn't see the man's face. Not yet.
But he would.
And when he did… maybe he'd finally understand the game Layla was playing.
And why she was playing it behind their backs.