The spear felt familiar, terrifyingly so. The balance and the cold, oiled ash wood against his palm felt as familiar as his own ribs. Tiraz’s form shifted, the unique posture of the Whispering Blade flowing through his borrowed muscles, making them sing with an ancient power. The killers, wrapped in obsidian silk, converged with drawn glass daggers.
He wasted no breath. The lead blade skittered off the spear tip. Tiraz deflected the thrust aside, driving the iron collar upward to splinter the attacker's jaw. The man collapsed in silence.
The second, a female with braided hair, lunged from his left, her movements precise, honed over years of deadly practice. Tiraz spun, the spear a dazzling arc of polished wood and steel. He yielded, knocked her edge wide, and hooked the crook behind her knee. She stumbled, off-balance, and the spear’s butt-end connected with the base of her skull. Her neck snapped back, and she slumped unmoving across the tiles.
The remaining three hesitated, their practiced coordination momentarily fractured by the sheer, impossible speed of their target.
Tiraz gave no warning. He stepped beneath the flanking strike to take the flank. The spear slid through the seam under the brute's armpit, piercing the lung and heart. The man dropped, a gurgle of blood the only sound.
The last two, panicked, finally understood their mistake. They broke formation, one scrambling for an escape hatch, the other flinging a volley of venom-coated throwing stars. Tiraz merely tilted his head, the stars whistling past his ear by a hair's breadth. He moved with a quiet finality, a blur of motion. The spear-tip found the throat of the fleeing assassin, pinning him to the wall. His companion, still fumbling for more projectiles, found a foot connect with his temple, a soft *thud* as his world went dark.
Five corpses in eight heartbeats. The room held only the drip of blood and Miyara's shallow rattle.
Tiraz exhaled, easing the rigid set of his shoulders. His borrowed body throbbed, every tear from Zandir's spike burning red. He staggered, dropping the spear with a clatter, then fell to his knees beside Miyara. Her skin was clammy, a faint green tint spreading from the dart wound.
He placed his hands on her neck, above the dart wound. His aura, normally suppressed by the brass ring, surged, a pure, healing current. It wasn't the flashy, high-impact spells of the offensive class, but a deep, intricate weave of restorative energy, purging the glass-toxin from her bloodstream, dissolving the paralysis, calming her racing heart.
He felt the last of the poison recede, her muscles twitching back to life. But that wasn’t enough. He could not risk what she might recall. Kneeling, he threaded a dulling pulse across her temples, smudging the immediate impressions of his footwork and slaughter into a muddled haze.
Miyara gasped, eyelids fluttering as she drew breath. She blinked several times, pushing herself up weakly. “What… what happened?” Her hand went to her neck, tracing the faint red mark where the dart had been. “The… the dart. I couldn't move.” She looked around the blood-spattered room, her gaze sweeping over the crumpled forms. Her gaze shifted from Tiraz to her spear, then over the inert figures. A frown creased her brow. “They… they attacked us. How…?”
Tiraz offered her a tired, reassuring smile, his voice soft. “They did. But you fought bravely, Miyara. Even paralyzed, you bought me time.” He pointed vaguely at one of the inert figures. “I used the last of my aural energy to disorient them. They seemed to… fall over each other. Pure luck, I assure you.” It was a clumsy lie, designed to be unbelievable enough to confuse, but vague enough to offer no solid truth. The blurred memories would do the rest.
Miyara stared at him, her lips parting as if to question, then closing again. Her brow furrowed, a flicker of deep suspicion in her gaze, but the details remained stubbornly out of reach. “Pure luck,” she echoed, her tone flat. “Right. We need to go. The banquet. Zandir… he’ll be there.”
Tiraz nodded, pushing himself to his feet. Torn sinew burned along his ribs, yet his smile remained steady. “Indeed. We have an appointment.”
They moved through the winding passages of the citadel, the hushed elegance of the stone walls a stark contrast to the violence they’d just escaped. The sounds of distant festivity grew louder—music, laughter, the clink of glasses. The Autumn Banquet. A celebration of Xanaj’s bounty, hosted in the Grand Hall of Stars, where the ceiling itself was an enchanted replica of the night sky.
As they neared the grand hall, the revelry swelled to a crescendo, then abruptly fractured. A shrill cry rang out, drowned by a chaotic clamor of shouts. Miyara and Tiraz exchanged a glance, their pace quickening.
They burst into the antechamber just as the reinforced doors of the Grand Hall of Stars shuddered, then slammed shut from the outside. A moment later, the heavy *thunk* of massive locking mechanisms echoed through the stone. A figure, recognizable even from his arrogant swagger, stood on the other side, his face a mask of terror. Zandir. He was shouting something, his voice shrill, but the heavy doors muffled his words.
“No!” Miyara slammed her shoulder into the bronze relief. The panels held fast. “He threw the deadbolts. He sealed them in!”
From within came the split of cedar beams, the roar of panic, and the shrill scrape of mineral claws on marble. Above it all, a sound like a mountain crumbling. Tiraz looked up, not at the doors, but at the enchanted ceiling of the antechamber, which now began to crack with sickening speed. The illusion of stars shattered, replaced by a jagged, luminous tear in reality.
Through the newly formed rupture, a shimmering, multi-tiered Glass-Rift yawned open directly into the Grand Hall of Stars. It was impossibly vast, far larger, far more violent than the localized rifts of the previous timeline. Through the rupture tumbled a pack of hounds and flickering stalkers, followed by a multi-limbed behemoth whose mineral limbs shattered the decorative pillars.
The elite offensive royals, trained to fight in neat formations, were scattered, their flashy single-target spells useless against the sheer numbers and raw power of the invading horde. Their shouts were swallowed by the din of the stampede. Tiraz’s gaze swept across the carnage, pinpointing a small cluster of figures huddling near a collapsed dessert table. Niravi. And her entire support squad.
Zandir's shrill voice cut through the chaos from beyond the locked doors. “Seal it! The Gilded Citadel must be protected! The sacrifice is… necessary!”
His sister was going to die. Again. The thought ripped through Tiraz, raw and furious. He reached the massive, reinforced vault doors, his hand pressing against the cold, unyielding metal. The vault was built to withstand a siege. Forcing it open meant releasing the full, undisguised weight of his ancient art, instantly blowing apart the identity he used to hunt Zandir.
He stood before the bronze barrier while Niravi's terror rose through the vents, his palm glowing with the lethal edge that would unmask him.