The shadowed man crept toward the guard who stood dozing at the dimly lit door. A yellow sphere on an iron bracket hung next to the guard’s head, casting the corridor in sickly light.
The man stepped into the light and the guard startled awake.
“Who goes–”
The man moved and there was a glint of light and a soft ring of metal. The guard’s eyes widened in surprise. He brought his hand up to his throat and looked down. He fell to the ground, staining the carpet red.
The door was locked. The man placed a bare hand on the cool stone brick that made up the wall and beckoned. The stone beneath his fingers stirred and rippled, as though it were coming alive. The man pushed, and the stone flexed in, and out, and swallowed the man.
It caressed him like a heavy chill, and moving through it was like moving through thick, glacial water. He stepped out the other side, and the wall settled back to its original form.
A single blue flame flickered in a gold brazier next to another door at the end of the corridor. Perfume and incense hung thick in the air, but it could not mask the edge of blood and fear that permeated this place.
The shadowed man strode forward, the stone tiles deforming beneath his bare feet like a soft membrane, silencing his every step. As he drew closer to the richly furnished door, he could hear the sound of a woman crying out in pain, accompanied by a snap.
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The shadowed man reached the end of the corridor and turned left into a dark, smaller passageway. He walked three steps, then stopped. His purpose lay here, behind this wall, eight feet to the left of the richly furnished door and blue flame.
He lay his hand against the wall. Here the stone had been carved directly from the earth, and it responded to his touch with little effort. The power within him was waning, but it would be enough. The stone rippled, and the man stepped into it.
That familiar heavy chill closed in around him, and he probed the stone. It responded, whispering through his fingertips, and through it he could sense the shape of the room beyond the wall and the placement of the items and trophies within it. The sounds inside the room were amplified by the stone, and the shadowed man worked to ignore them, focusing on finding what he came for.
It was easy enough; the dagger hung from a nail pounded into the wall on the far side of the room. The shadowed man strained and stretched his power out through the earth, coaxing the stone beneath the dagger to stretch out and swallow the blade.
If either occupant were to have looked up at that spot at that moment, they would have seen the stone bulge out and envelope the dagger. But neither of them saw.
The man pulled the dagger through the stone toward him, and as soon as he had it in his hand, he swam through the wall, and stepped back out into the corridor.
Inside the room, there was a sickening crack like that of a bone breaking, and a scream pierced the walls. The shadowed man grit his teeth and ignored it. The power within him was waning, and he had only a few mistleaf fruits in his hidden pouch to restore it. He concealed the emerald dagger inside his cloak, and hurried down the corridor with silent footsteps and made his escape.