Syra's silver flames still glimmer in my mind as I slip away from the clearing. The pact forged under moonlight remains unspoken but unbreakable—yet tonight, I move alone.
I follow the worn trail toward the east ridge, where Thane's note spoke of four smuggler carriages waiting at dawn. My boots crunch over frost-hardened leaves as mist coils around the trees. I keep low, mask pressed tight, stormlight flickering behind my eyes.
By the time I crest the ridge, first light is bleeding across the horizon. Below, four carts stand in a loose semicircle, guards idling beside them—soldiers and bone-thread enforcers both. The smugglers' loads are hidden beneath tarps: shadowsteel, vials of smoke essence, coils of bone-sealed cord.
I crouch behind a boulder and watch. Each guard shifts position every few breaths; the enforcers whisper curses I don't yet understand. Thane's intel was precise.
I draw a thin thread of stormlight from the ring, testing its reach. It trails from my fingertip like a wisp of purple smoke, touching the nearest guard's boot. He freezes, confusion flickering across his face, but his partner shakes him loose before I can strike. They move on.
Time tightens. I can't delay the rival's moving pieces—this smuggler train must be disrupted. I pick my target: the second guard, a lanky man with a scar across his cheek. I slip forward, silent as rehearsed.
A single strike—stormlight coiling like a serpent around my fist—snaps his knee. He drops, eyes wide. I press the rune-etched haft of my recovered blade to his throat.
"Stay down," I whisper.
He nods, stunned. I bind him with silver thread—rough, narrow, but strong. Then I move on.
The second enforcer—a woman steeped in bone-thread—watches with disdain. I catch her attention and toss a crude smoke orb from my satchel. It bursts at her feet, smoke roaring up. She snarls and leaps toward me.
I sidestep, drive my blade's butt into her ribs, and bind her leg with stormlight thread. She collapses, hissing.
By now the other men are alerted. I duck behind the nearest cart, slide around its wheel, and slit the tarp binding with a flick of my blade. Shadowsteel glints.
Three guards converge. I lift my hand and unleash a pulse of captive stormlight—silent, dense—that slams them into the ground. Their weapons clatter. I stomp the blade into the dirt and tear down the cart's tarp.
Three more bone-thread vials. Enough to feed an undercity gang.
I toss them over the ridge, into the mist, where they shatter harmlessly on stone. Their curses echo back.
When I withdraw, the guards groan on the ground, bound and unable to raise alarm. The remaining smuggler huddles behind an upturned crate, terror in his eyes.
I lean close. "Tell your masters the roads belong to no one," I whisper. "Especially not those who traffic in death."
He nods, frantic, and I vanish into the fog before he can scream.
My blade and mask return to the hidden chest beneath Marga's floorboards. I leave no trace but broken ground and bound bodies.
As I slip back through the forest, dawn's gold warming the trees, I feel the ring's pulse steady beneath my sleeve. One victory. One warning sent. Alone, I have begun to shift the rival's chessboard.
And somewhere, unnoticed, Syra waits—her flame ready to join mine when the time comes.