The farewell was brief, though it carried the weight of unspoken things. Still, Jim and Jill did not depart without leaving well wishes upon those they had carried.
When their gazes turned on Lenko, the air grew taut. Their eyes flicked once toward Olga’s, then back at him, a silent urging, an almost paternal warning. They did not speak the curse aloud, such matters were never theirs to reveal, but the implication lingered in the space between them.
’Tell her’, their eyes seemed to say. ’Tell your sister what shadows hang over you, before it is too late.’
Then they drew Tyron aside. Their words were quiet, almost tender, yet they struck the boy like blows. ’Find a way to reclaim your necklace,’ they urged. ’Do not let it slip from you.’ The reminder shattered the fragile brightness that had carried Tyron through the night.
His hands trembled, pressing tightly against the fold of his tunic, the place where the vial once rested. It was an unconscious, desperate gesture, as though clutching at absence could call the thing back. Tyron’s lips wavered, pressed thin, but no tears fell, only the raw sadness of a boy robbed of something he had believed would always remain.
At last, they turned to Keiser. Their eyes softened, carrying something between reverence and recognition. For them, he was not only a someone who remains at their side, but a figure from whispers and old rumors, revealed in the flesh. They gave him no warning, no request, only a promise.
"We are glad you were in Hinnom when all that happened, your highness," one said, voice rasped with age but steady. "We will repay you in kind, when the road allows it."
Keiser met their gaze in silence. He did not answer, not out of pride, but because he knew there would be no road long enough for that promise to reach him. Only Tyron, and perhaps Lenko, though he tried to hide it beneath his usual indifference, allowed himself to feel the parting fully. Tyron’s face was red, his voice too thick to offer more than a clumsy ’thank you’. Lenko covered his with a careless grin, but the stiffness of his jaw betrayed that even he was not untouched.
Keiser, however, stood apart from it. For him, the farewell was not sorrow but inevitability. Better for the old men to leave now, he thought. Better for them to be far from the capital before it became a pit of fire and blood. He knew too well what awaited the capital in two days’ time. The wagon drivers would not survive what was coming, not with their frail bones and decent hearts.
And then, with the creak of wheels and the groan of new wood, the wagon rolled out of the capital grounds. Its sound faded quickly, swallowed by the morning bustle. But the silence it left behind weighed heavier than the noise had ever been.
Now it was the morning of the third day. The temple’s bells had rung at dawn, and already the great hall was brimming with devotees, their voices hushed as though the air itself was sanctified.
At the altar stood the princess, her hands folded in prayer, her presence radiant in the light that streamed through the colored glass. She was a vision of serenity, of divinity clothed in human flesh. To the faithful, she was the Saint who bridged mortals and gods.
Olga stood at her side, her bow slung across her back, every movement of her sharp eyes a reminder that though this was holy ground, no one here was safe.
And then there was the three of them, Keiser, Lenko, and Tyron, lingering near the entrances, their cloaks pulled tight around their shoulders, blending into the guise of mercenaries hired to guard the temple’s most precious treasure.
They stood in the shadows just a few paces from the knights, who watched them with thinly veiled suspicion. The tension between them was like oil on water, never mixing, always threatening to ignite if disturbed.
Keiser shifted his weight, deliberately stepping back into a pocket of shadow near the arching door. The knights’ eyes lingered on him once, but with the hood drawn low and his stance indifferent, they let him fade into the background. He had learned how to disappear even when standing in plain sight.
Then the princess raised her hand, her voice carrying through the vast chapel.
"A moment of silence," she declared.
Every head bowed. Every eye closed. The sound of breathing filled the air, a tide of reverent quiet that pressed down on the crowd. Even the knights lowered their gazes, armored fists resting against their chests. For one full minute, the world seemed to hold its breath.
And in that silence, Keiser’s isolation was complete. No eyes were upon him now. No one thought of him at all. The temple was still, and yet within that stillness, he felt the thrum of danger, the fragile calm before a storm.
Keiser drifted back step by step until his shoulders brushed against the cold stone of the arching gate wall. The carved frame loomed over him, etched with prayers in languages most of the temple’s worshippers no longer understood. He ignored the grandeur, lifting one hand and pressing his knuckles flat to the wall.
Slowly, deliberately, he began to tap.
The same rhythm, the same steady beat he had drummed against the rusted bars of their cell three nights ago, when all he had to measure time and sanity was the sound of his own knuckles on iron.
He let the silence stretch after the third tap, his breath held, his ears straining. Then it came. A faint stir against the air, a ripple where no breeze should be. Cold brushed his cheek like the draft of a door opening in a sealed room.
He didn’t turn. He didn’t have to. From the corner of his eye, he caught it, movement, shape, the suggestion of someone standing too close.
That same grin, sharp and knowing, stretched across a face he recognized instantly. Nᴇw novel chapters are publɪshed on n͟o͟v͟e͟l͟f͟i͟r͟e͟.net
The old man from the cell. The elven.
Except not quite the same. His hair was combed, his beard trimmed, his frame wrapped in clothes far cleaner, far finer than the rags he’d worn in the dungeon. Gone was the image of a beaten prisoner. In its place stood something more deliberate, a disguise once again.
The elf had shed one skin and stepped into another, and the memory of that dungeon, of the trick played on him, slid like a knife down Keiser’s spine.
The air was thick with foreboding, and he could feel the storm closing in.