The fog hung thick in the streets, swallowing the light from the iron gas lamps until they were nothing but dull halos in the distance. Evelyn adjusted her coat against the bite of the air, her boots clicking steady on the uneven cobblestones. The shadows pressed close tonight, tighter than usual, alive with faint murmurs that prickled the back of her neck. She ignored them. But still, her grip tightened on the knife beneath her coat, her thumb tracing its hilt as if testing reality.

Somewhere above, a gargoyle's stone face loomed out of the gloom above her, its mouth twisted into a perpetual snarl. She could’ve sworn its eyes followed her.

"Keep walking," she muttered under her breath. Her own voice felt brittle in the empty street. The shadows answered with a low hiss that could have been wind—or not. She hated when they got chatty.

Ahead, Thornwood’s workshop loomed, a silhouette carved from the city's darker dreams. The wrought-iron gate, that should have been pulsing with protective enchantments, hung slightly ajar, its runes dulled to faint scars in the metal. The building's gothic spires pierced through the heavy fog, their gargoyle guardians glaring into the abyss.

Evelyn exhaled sharply, her breath curling in the icy air. Rune breaches didn’t happen by accident. Thornwood’s defenses were the stuff of legend! Not some novice whos enchantments would stop working if left unattended for a night. She tightened her grip on the knife and approached the gate, her eyes flicking to the door beyond. The telltale shimmer of protective wards there was also fractured—broken like glass struck too hard but not shattered.

"Sloppy," she muttered, her voice just loud enough to cut through the murmurs of the fog.

A sound behind her—a scrape of something shifting. Evelyn twisted, her knife slipping free in a clean arc. Nothing. Only the usual suspects of the arcane district: spectral traces shimmering faintly on the air, a flicker of movement that was more suggestion than form.

She let the blade lower slightly but didn’t sheath it. Her eyes darted back to the door, narrowing. Someone—or something—had come in the front. No subtlety. The kind of breach that said whoever had done it either didn’t fear the consequences.

"Bad sign," she murmured, her breath visible in the cold. Her eyes then turned to scanned the workshop. The windows, tall and narrow, glowed faintly from within, their stained-glass windows looking like dozens of lighthouses as sea.

She slipped a cigarette from its battered case, struck a match, and let the ritual calm her. The first drag stung her lungs but her exhale was slow and deliberate. The smoke lazily drifted towards the iron bars, with a little help from her magic. As the smoke was about the cross the threshold it stopped and scattering to the sides, reveling a second invisible wall that coated the gates like a second skin.

Evelyn slid her knife back into its sheath. She didn’t bother for flair, slipping into the shadows pooling at the base of the gate. She shoved the cigarette between her teeth and slid deeper into the shadows, crossing the threshold. The sensation was immediate—an icy pressure along her ribs, as though the air had decided it didn’t care much for her presence. Definitely on the verge of failing she thought mindlessly.

“Nice to meet you, too,” she said under her breath.

Once past the gate and its defenses, she reemerged inside the courtyard. An uneasy silence moving in to replace the pressure she felt earlier. The gargoyles perched above seemed to leer down at her, their chipped faces casting grotesque shadows in the faint light from the runes. One of them had a new crack along its wing, dust and stone shards scattered at the base of its pedestal. She kicked a piece experimentally. No sound. That, more than the runes, made her skin prickle.

Closer now, she could see the scorch marks around the ward. Whoever did this knew just enough to break in, but not enough to do it cleanly. Amateurs with more confidence than skill. It didn’t make her feel better.

Before stepping through, Evelyn paused to test the shadows by the wall. She slipped into them like sliding into cool water, her body melding with the darkness until she could listen without being seen. No voices, no clumsy footsteps, but the air buzzed faintly—traces of something left behind.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

She stepped out again and gave a low whistle. "Well, they weren’t planning on keeping it subtle."

Her fingers flexed around the knife, and she leaned on the door, testing its give. It creaked open slightly, and she let herself grin. Whoever broke the wards didn’t even bother with the lock. Sloppy didn’t begin to cover it.

Evelyn drew a deep breath, the fog curling into her lungs. The whispers in the air grew louder again, unintelligible but somehow closer. She stepped inside, knife first, eyes sharp. Whatever mess waited for her beyond Thornwood’s door wasn’t going to explain itself.

Her boots crunching on shards of glass and the fine dust of pulverized crystal. The air clung to her throat, thick with the tang of burnt sage and the acrid bite of something far less natural. She held her breath for a moment, listening. The room crackled with residual energy, like the static hum before a storm.

"Well, this isn’t sloppy work," she muttered, her sharp eyes sweeping over the chaos.

A body lay splayed in the center of the room—Alaric, his once-proud frame twisted unnaturally, as if he had been hit by a bolder. A broken vial dangled from his fingertips, its contents seeping into the cracks of the stone floor like blood seeking escape.

Evelyn crouched beside him, her ponytail falling over one shoulder as she examined the scene. No immediate signs of a struggle, but the magical residue etched into the air made her skin prickle. Whatever hit Alaric had been surgical—clean magic, deadly in its precision. The wards on the door, though? She glanced back at the runes carved into the archway. The damage was jagged, like someone using a hacksaw to cut paper, their glow sputtering out a final dying breath before falling into darkness. Someone had rushed this.

"You had a good run," she murmured, flicking a glance at Alaric’s weathered face. His expression was frozen halfway between defiance and disbelief.

Her fingers ghosted over the vial he clutched. It bore no markings, no hints of its contents. The liquid inside shimmered faintly, a sickly iridescence that made her stomach tighten. She set it aside on the edge of a workbench, careful not to disturb the other wreckage—a tangle of gears, glass tubing, and rune-inscribed components that once formed something ingenious. Or deadly. Maybe both.

Behind her, the faint hum of a failing enchantment grew louder. A bronze construct, incomplete and jagged, twitched on the floor nearby. Its gears spun in erratic fits before grinding to a halt with a final, pitiful screech. Evelyn shot it a glance.

"Don’t bother trying to come to life," she said, before turning back to the workbench. "Your maker clocked out early."

A flicker in the corner of her vision drew her attention. One of the wall’s protective sigils was fading in and out, the glow stuttering like a dying candle. Evelyn frowned. The building’s defenses were ancient, older than anyone who had worked within these walls for centuries. Breaking them was no small feat. Breaking them sloppily? That didn’t track.

Her shadow stretched, elongating unnaturally as she let it bleed into the dim corners. Within seconds, she was gone, absorbed into the labyrinth of flickering darkness that threaded through the room. From there, she moved silently, her perspective shifting as she reappeared in a darker pocket near the ceiling. Evelyn crouched in the shadows, taking a moment to give the facts a once over in her mind.

"Messy doors, perfect kill. Why rush the easy part?" she said aloud to the silence. Her voice echoed faintly off the vaulted ceiling, where shadows pooled in the crevices like ink spilled on parchment.

Stepping over Alaric’s body, Evelyn made her way toward another workbench. Her boots left faint smudges in the fine powder on the ground, traces of ingredients that might’ve been the man’s last experiment. The space was a graveyard of unfinished projects: a mechanical bird that made her think of Isabella, its wings frozen mid-flap; a stack of papers, their edges singed; a single enchanted crystal, glowing weakly in its brass cradle. She moved the papers aside, scanning for anything Alaric might’ve left behind—notes, a warning, a clue.

Instead, she found a ring of blackened scorch marks burned into the surface.

"Hell of a calling card," she muttered, running a thumb along the edge. It was too precise to be an accident, too deliberate to be anything but a message. She could practically feel the arrogance of whoever left it behind.

She straightened and turned back toward the body, her eyes narrowing. Whoever had done this was confident, sure they wouldn’t be caught. That kind of cockiness grated at her.

"Sloppy and smug," she muttered. "You’re making this too easy for me."

She moved toward the door, her gaze darting to the flickering sigils along the walls. The shadows here felt alive, shifting just beyond her peripheral vision. She let her own magic slip outward, brushing against the darkness, melding with it. If there were answers in this room, they’d be found in the secrets the shadows had swallowed.

Evelyn stepped back into the dim corridor, glancing once more at Alaric’s body. She lit a cigarette, giving her lungs something to breath other than singed iron and burnet alchemical herbs.

"Rest easy, Alaric," she muttered through the smoke, her tone clipped. "This is going to be a long night."