As Kael stood, he yanked hard—ripping the mana straight from the mage core in the mind mage’s trembling hands.

  It poured into him like fire and honey, sweet and alive, flooding every nerve with stolen power.

  Before Jorge could react, Kael's fist smashed into the beater’s jaw. Bone crunched. Teeth split lips. The big man dropped like a stone, kneeling at the edge of the desk, stunned.

  The mind mage just stared, eyes wide, lips parted in shock, staring at the dull, dead core in his palm—like a heart that had stopped beating.

  Thalor flinched back from behind his desk, pale with disbelief. He was a man used to issuing orders, not standing in the spray of their consequences.

  Kael turned his gaze on the mind mage—flat, merciless. “Don’t.”

  The word landed like a hammer, a command wrapped in iron certainty.

  Then he stepped forward, eyes scanning Thalor’s ornate desk. Letters. Coins. Trinkets.

  A letter opener—perfect.

  “This could’ve been simple,” Kael said, picking it up and testing its weight. “Clean. You’d be exiled, or if you played it smart, I’d have kept you in charge—under new terms.”

  Jorge groaned, trying to rise. Kael side-stepped his clumsy swing and, without ceremony, drove the letter opener into his kneecap. Bone cracked. Jorge howled and buckled.

  Kael kept talking, calm and cold, even as his eyes searched the desk again.

  A comb—ivory or bone. Good enough.

  “You’d keep your lieutenants. I’d run everything from the shadows. We'd pay the warehouse crews better. Cut the excess. Make the city efficient again.”

  Jorge tried to rise again, this time on adrenaline and rage. Kael stabbed the comb deep into the meat of his shoulder. He screamed.

  Then a paperweight caught his eye—smooth, solid, dense.

  “Nighty night,” he murmured, lifting it high—and slammed it down into Jorge’s temple.

  The big man slumped, unconscious and still breathing.

  Thalor was plastered against the wall behind the desk, frozen, eyes wide in disbelief.

  Kael turned to him—slow, deliberate—and knelt in front of the elf like a man offering confession.

  His scars flared with pain. Magic.

  The mind mage was trying again.

  Kael didn’t even glance—he just reached out and yanked the mage’s spell matrix, flooding it with raw, stolen power. As he grabbed Thalor’s head to make him watch.

  The result was cataclysmic.

  The mage spasmed. Eyes burst in his skull. Blood and cerebral fluid gushed from his nose, mouth, and ears. He collapsed mid-scream, a sack of twitching flesh, his brain turned to soup.

  Kael looked back at Thalor, still holding the elf’s head gently in one hand. “I told him not to.”

  He leaned in closer. “Just like I told you—this was supposed to be an easy night. No blood, if I could help it. But you backed me into a corner. Changed the game. Made me scramble.”

  He stood and rolled his shoulders, stretching with a slow, satisfied breath.

  “Now I’m improvising. And that always gets messy.”

  Thalor, shaking, managed to stammer, “W-Who are you?”

  Kael’s smile didn’t reach his eyes.

  “Wrong question.”

  His grip tightened. “Who was the mage?”

  Thalor broke quickly—literally. His screams rang against the privacy wards, torn from his throat in jagged bursts. Kael knelt beside him, unmoved.

  “The Black Ledger,” Thalor gasped.

  That was the name.

  “Contract sorcerers. Expelled from the Arcanium. Dangerous. Forbidden brokers of spells no sane mage would touch.” His voice was hoarse now, each word soaked in blood and fear.

  Kael didn’t need to press for more. The name was enough.

  But he asked anyway.

  “Their symbol?”

  Thalor choked, gagged, then whimpered the words: “A quill… writing on a skull…”

  Kael let go.

  Thalor collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut.

  He stood and exhaled slowly, gaze drifting across the walls. The anti-magic glyphs carved into the stone pulsed faintly—wards meant to keep power out. Now, they belonged to him.

  So did the Copper Teeth.

  They just didn’t know it yet.

  Outside, Yuri and the others were waiting for the signal. Thalor would be enough to get the message across. It wasn’t the clean solution Kael had planned, but he’d long learned that plans died quickly in the real world. You adapted. You countered. You pushed forward.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  For the first time in years—four, maybe five—his mind felt clear. The fog that had wrapped around his thoughts peeled away like old scabs. Buried ideas slithered forward, sharp and honed. Schemes shelved long ago stretched themselves awake.

  And for a moment, Kael smiled.

  Really smiled.

  Just him.

  He’d spent years walking a rope across a canyon, the wind of war and politics howling at his back. Ahead were lies he had to tell. Behind him, lies already told. He had to balance all of it—constantly. No faltering. No hesitation. Too many lives to protect. This was bigger than him, much bigger.

  The pressure had been relentless. Usually you would keep it up for a month, three months, just enough time to complete a mission, but here he was years later. But this wasn’t an operation, it was a cause, a dream.

  Now, seated in the heart of what had once been Thalor’s empire, Kael let himself breathe.

  But the smile didn’t last.

  Someone had leaked the plan.

  His crew? No… he didn’t want to believe that. He trusted them. Still, the mind mage’s probing had opened dangerous possibilities. Just a crack. Just enough.

  And mages—mages were always a risk.

  That wasn’t paranoia. That was experience.

  Kael had worked alone before—but never for this long. Never without the resources he once took for granted. No secure channels. No strike teams at his back. No family of brothers and sisters to call on when the shadows closed in.

  Back then, they had reach. A vast network. Eyes and blades in every corner of the world. And the threats they faced? They dwarfed the power of even the Triune Crown. They moved beyond borders, beyond politics. Even the Unified Holdings of Varenhall—the vast empire that claimed dominion over a third of the continent—knew better than to look too closely.

  To them, Brassreach was a speck on the map. A progressive curiosity. A place where humans, beast kin, dwarves, and elves mingled freely—rare, but not worth noticing. Too far from the royal courts. Too far from the war fronts. A perfect place to disappear.

  And so Kael had.

  But the silence was heavy.

  And he was feeling its weight. The self-assigned task was too much to bear.

  He rubbed a hand across his face, scars across his hand.

  That mind mage—what was he once? A boy, probably. Newly gifted. Maybe he’d used his power for something innocent. Wanted to know if the girl he liked returned his feelings. Maybe she’d held her breath too long. Maybe she fainted.

  And years later?

  Women were slicing their own throats. Gouging out their eyes. Killing themselves with a thought implanted by a whisper.

  Kael’s jaw tensed.

  His mind wandered—unbidden—to the Bone-Flayed Oracle of Ashmar.

  That’s how he started.

  Kael ended him.

  It was an early mission. He was still young—or younger, at least. But by the time he finally brought the bastard down, the damage was already done. An empire had been built in the shadows. Armies raised. Entire belief systems twisted into weapons. All of it in service to the Eclipsed.

  The Fell Kin. The Architects of Silence. They went by many names.

  But in the end, they were all mages—powerful, yes, but still mortal.

  Their goal was singular and apocalyptic: to overthrow the ruling powers, shatter the natural order, and bend the flow of mana itself to their will. They weren’t just playing gods.

  They were building a world where nothing else could survive.

  Kael fought them. Hunted them. Severed their false prophecies and shattered their illusions of godhood. They claimed to be immortals—gods wrapped in mortal skin.

  He knew their mark, even if no one else did.

  Candlehook.

  Iron Horizon.

  The Cataclysm of Elirn.

  Marrow Vale.

  Red Scar.

  Each one a catastrophe. Each one a scar carved into the world.

  Events buried beneath layers of silence, scrubbed from history books, shrouded in classified whispers.

  Cataclysm-level threats—suppressed not because they failed to matter, but because they mattered too much.

  But they bled like anyone else. With enough thorns, even “gods” drown in crimson.

  Back then, he hadn’t been alone. He’d had his family. Brothers and sisters in arms supporting him, and he had his edge. Where others died, he lived. It was brother Thomas that first called it that after he survived his first battle.

  And a mind mage of that caliber… even one less seasoned than those he’d faced before… was still dangerous. With enough power, one could comb through the thoughts of an entire city. And if they were willing to dip into forbidden arts—black sigils, blood-bound amplifiers—they could even reach beyond containment barriers.

  Kael had made it this far by playing it careful. By knowing when to strike, and more importantly, when not to. A skilled mind mage didn’t need interrogations. They didn’t need you to speak. Just time. Time to lurk in your mind’s quiet corners. Time to collect stray thoughts and puzzle pieces from months of forgettable moments.

  Now his movements were making waves. The kind people noticed. Not just the common folk. The real players. The ones always watching.

  Too much success always brought attention.

  Too much attention always brought risk.

  He was close—so close he could taste it. Brassreach was nearly in his hands. The Iron District would stand strong, with or without him. That was always the plan.

  But the human in him? The part that bled and broke and longed to be known?

  That part was beginning to crack under the weight.

  He was letting a Shadow Fang into his room.

  Kael slapped himself—once, then again—both hands cracking across his cheeks.

  Don’t relax.

  Not now. Not yet. The anti-magic glyphs were a luxury, but luxury made you soft.

  The leak.

  Where did it come from?

  Grum? No. Too invested in the Blister Rats’ future. The old bastard saw the long game.

  The Ironbound? No again. Kael had trained them too well. Loyalty, discipline, silence. Coin, ego, vice—none of that cracked his inner circle. Not easily.

  The Princess? Valeria? Not her style. She struck loud, proud, and political. This was surgical.

  Her father? Adrast? No, he would just raze the city instead of bleeding it dry.

  Another city? Unlikely. Too far. Not enough motive to reach this deep into Brassreach.

  Unless… the teleport array.

  He grimaced.

  Possible. But unlikely. He'd run the cost—almost two thousand gold a use, even on a good day. Not to mention the heavy restrictions the Triune Crown had placed on arcane gate use in this quadrant of the realm.

  That left The Black Ledger.

  His jaw tensed.

  Yes. They were in it. Deep.

  Shame the mind mage was dead.

  But if Kael hadn’t redirected that spell, it would’ve been his blood and brain matter decorating the floor instead.

  So someone’s spending coin. A lot of it.

  Paying mages with no morals, mercenaries without banners—out-of-towners, judging by the tactics. Hitting trader caravans. Avoiding the migrant routes coming in for Fadefall. Why?

  Bodies stack up. Supplies run thin.

  But for what? What’s the angle?

  You don’t burn that much gold for chaos alone—coin for mercs, coin for mages, coin for food, travel, lodging. Even if they’re scavenging from the caravans they hit, it’s not enough. There’d need to be multiple crews working simultaneously, hitting multiple roads. That takes coordination. Planning. Funding.

  So what’s the goal?

  Just destabilize the districts?

  No—that’s not big enough.

  Brassreach?

  Maybe.

  But it still doesn’t make sense. Brassreach isn’t a capital. It's a frontier city, sure—independent, fortified, resilient. Not worth this level of expenditure unless...

  Unless it’s not about the city.

  Maybe It’s about what’s inside it? What?

  If not that, can it do with about what’s coming.

  Fadefall. The timing all about confirms it, but why?

  Not enough to see the full picture—yet.

  But the board was crowded. Too many new pieces.

  Too many shadows moving in tandem.

  He’d need to make preparations.

  Extra contingencies.

  Because something was coming.

  And when it hit, he needed to be ready.

  The thought had barely settled when the world shuddered.

  A series of thunderous explosions ripped through the city.

  Shockwaves rolled like crashing waves. Dust plumed into the air.

  Somewhere far below, people screamed.

  Kael didn’t flinch.

  Instead, he glanced at the ornate clock on Thalor’s desk.

  Tick. Tick. Boom.

  A slow smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

  “Right on time.”