Gereon was inside his office, watching the mountains and puffing his cigar. "Ahh!" He raised his voice to give a satisfactory groan, "Life has never been better."
He put the cigar to his mouth once more and filled his mouth with the smoke, savoring the flavor. He let the thick, warm smoke fill his mouth, it tasted rich and earthy, with hints of cocoa and a touch of spice that remained on his tongue, leaving a comforting warmth behind.
A low, sweet voice behind him said in a tone that was almost too dry to be an advice.
"Eleyn!" He was surprised, she only came inside his office in case of emergencies. Like that time when they ran out of chocolates when Amber tried to sneak into the storeroom and used a principle meant for creating light, but she accidentally blew up the whole place.
"What brings you here?"
"They identified the assassin, it's a big merchant from Loserrado." She was leaning against the door, only a part of her feet was inside the office.
Gereon's sarcastic face, a face that never seemed to stop smiling, suddenly turned serious, but the smile remained, even though it had dropped a little. "Is he strong enough or is he just an idiot trying his luck?"
"To answer that question," She got inside his office and sat on the guest sofa, "The people whom I sent said that he appeared weak, but when I divined..." Her expression turned grim. "It said that he would succeed."
"I see..." Dereon's smile had dropped very low, it seemed as if he was trying his best to keep up his smile, "But divination can be interpreted wrong, and is not all-powerful. Did you inform Alex?"
"That's what I did first, he said it would be fine as long as he is there." She turned to face her father-in-law, "And yes divination is not all-powerful, the future has an infinite amount of possible ways it could take, and divination shows only the most likely path the future would take, and it could change depending on the situation, let's just see."
"what do you want?" Gereon crushed his cigar inside the ashtray on his table, "you won't go as far as coming into my office to report this. At most, you would just ask a servant to pass on the information."
Eleyn stood up and dusted her gown, "I want to head to Wistmere palace." She said with a dedicated face.
"Make sure things are safe before they get there... What! No?"
"Judge needs you Eleyn, you know it too." Gereon cleared his throat.
"What do you mean?! Amber is also my child. And there is some assassin after her who might kill her." Eleyn was now shouting.
"He won't kill her Eleyn, rest assured... And calm down."
Eleyn looked at him and said nothing, she wanted to refute his statement, but she knew Gereon wouldn't lie so confidently.
"I will take your word for it." She said and left the room, and silence came to the office to retake its rightful place. Only to be disturbed again by Gereon's loud sigh.
Noel looked up to the moon, the usual blue color had a hint of purple in his vision. He looked over to the big palace that had too big of a front yard, with an "Ah ... here we go again" energy, he took a leap of faith from the top of the clock tower's roof.
The man who fell from the tower quickly spread his own bat wings and flapping them, he quickly made his way toward the palace walls, his trajectory was like a siege missile homing in on the walls to destroy them.
But no matter how close to the walls he got, he never changed his path. Just before getting the walls, they got distorted and a dark portal seemingly leading to the abyss appeared. Noel quickly dived inside it.
There was a guard tower just close to where he entered the portal, but none seemed to notice. They were all fast asleep, which was unusual since they were not new and untrained knights who did not know how to stay awake during the night— they were veterans.
The shadow containing Noel moved toward the palace which was still lit despite the time. Avoiding all lights, he quickly reached the palace and phased his way inside into an empty room.
Dusting himself well, he looked around the room, but his gaze was not focused anywhere, it was as if he was looking at something beyond the opaque obstacles.
After a while of looking around, his gaze suddenly shifted and focused on a single point. He turned his entire body towards the point, and again turned into a shadow, sinking into the floor.
The shadow traveled upward on the vertical walls. Phasing through the ceiling and appearing inside the dark room above, but it did not stop there, it kept phasing through the walls and through the ceiling a last time.
Finally, it arrived inside a room with pink patterned walls and many decors made of gold on every corner and the study desk.
Noel paid them no mind as he moved towards the bed, he materialized into a human and took out his knife from his pouch. After unsheathing he went quietly towards the red-haired girl who was fast asleep.
He held up his knife above the girl's chest "I am sorry, little girl." His voice was nothing but a whisper, but before he finished, the knife came down and blood was splattered all over.
The killer, together with his knife had turned into a shadow. Leaving no trace of anyone ever stepping into the place. His shadow traveled even faster than he had come in, but he was not careless, he avoided any and all sources of light, treading carefully and exiting out of the palace.
And on that cold night, inside her room, the body of Amber Drakonis lay in her bed, lifeless.