The man looked every bit as mysterious as his surroundings. His shoulder-length brown hair with strands of white mixed within hung free from the loose ponytail, covering the side of the face turned towards the cat.

He wore a dark blue shirt with intricate silver embroidery on the cuffs and collar and tailored black trousers that looked every bit as expensive as the shirt. An insignia of a snarling silver wolf’s head on a golden shield adorned his left shirt pocket. Refined clothes such as those weren’t common even among the aristocracies of the middle kingdoms and although the clothes looked as if they had seen better days, they were neat and ironed having no smudges or stains.His appearance was indicative of a man who took personal hygiene and looks seriously no matter where he lived.

He held the book in his left hand, an old archaic tome supporting it against his lap.He was reading it under the scant light coming from the window, as there were no lanterns or glowing rocks anywhere within the house. His posture was perfect and so was his composure that did not change even when the cat walked in.

Cats are prideful creatures, and that particular one was even more so. But it did not mind being ignored. There were not many existences in the world that would have made the cat to back down. Yet that man was exactly one of them. Even though it had been decades since it had last seen him, the memory was still fresh of the man who shook the continent. The man who made kings cower behind their thrones. The man whose adventures became stories which went on to become legends. The man who was more than just a man. 

But it was all in the past. The man sitting in front of it was nothing more than a shadow of the man he had been, having lost the one who made him what he was.

The cat didn’t want to disturb him. There was no doubt that he had known about it even before it had entered the cave. And if he chose to remain silent, it was better not to say anything.

The cat stretched its body, found a good spot near the door and laid down with its head lying on its front legs. Feeling bored it started to inspect the room.

The room in comparison to the rest of the house looked a lot cleaner, although it was just as disorganised with random objects, weird plants and a variety of books and parchments lying all over the place. Even Odd weapons with inlaid precious stones and gems, jewels the size of small rocks and lavish tapestries weren’t given any importance. In one of the corners of the room, there was a big bronze-coloured rectangular chest that had a slight tinge of red on its surface. The red sheen of the chest was not a trick of light. But a clear indication that the metal used to make it was an alloy of orichalcum, one of the strongest metals in the world. The chest was worth its weight in diamonds, being made up of a material rarer than any other.

A thick glass case was placed on top of the chest. Inside the case was a mask that was propped on a stand. At first glance, the mask appeared to be anything but extraordinary. Its colour was brown,  had two slits for eyes and a small indistinguishable symbol engraved just above the right slit. The size was small and only a kid could have worn it.. With wood as the material, shoddy craftsmanship that was apparent from even a distance and no decorations, it was surprising that the mask had been given importance enough to be placed in a glass case while all the other valuable things were haphazardly lying around.

But the cat did not find that peculiar as it knew what it was capable of, having witnessed its might firsthand and even though the mask had remained dormant for some time, its powers would not have diminished. The cat did not dare to stare too long and moved on.

Its eyes rested on the desk that separated the man and itself. The desk looked normal enough and seemed to be the most ordinary thing in the room. But that did not mean that it wasn’t worth much. In fact the black ironwood used to make the desk was a high grade wood that was only found in the evergreen forests of the far east. The desk was huge and took up nearly a quarter of the room. It was covered with books, scrolls and parchments. Only a small space near the edge closest to the man was clear where a quill and a blank piece of parchment had been placed and on the right was a stack of them arranged neatly. The man was clearly in the process of writing something but it could not see what it was.

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The cat ended its analysis, and it again looked at the man sitting in the chair. He read in silence. With the pipe in the right and book in the left hand, he had not moved a single inch in all that time except for smoking the pipe at regular intervals. Even the pages of the book turned of their own accord while he sat there looking like a statue.

It had gotten tired of waiting, but there was no point in rushing the man. So it just sat there looking bored while stifling its yawns. Two hours passed like that with only the sounds of turning pages resounding in the quiet room. Only when it seemed that he had run out of tobacco to smoke did the man close his book, angled his chair towards the cat and acknowledged its presence..

The cat felt a chill run down its spine as soon as their eyes met. The man had become paler and lost the healthy glow of his copper-coloured skin. Fine wrinkles and lines marked the skin but their number were not even close to account for his age. His disposition was serious even back then but now there was a hint of coldness in his countenance that had not been there before . The light that fell on his face from behind made the differences even more prominent. But the thing that made him stand out the most were his piercing blue eyes. They were the eyes of someone who had been to hell and back, seen the world beyond its lies and despised it for what it had done to him.

The face was of a man it once knew, but the man himself was nowhere to be seen.

“Wh….why have you c…c…come?”, he asked in a deep broken voice. Maybe all those years of isolation had taken a toll on his voice as he had difficulty forming words.

The cat’s upper right lip curled up, showing its canines as if amused.

“Dear ol Randell, Is that how you greet an old friend,?”, echoed a calm amiable voice from somewhere within the room. Surprisingly enough, the voice did not have a point of origin but tended to reverberate from all over the room. Now, most would have found this unsettling, weird and entirely impossible to believe, but without a doubt it could only have come from the cat. Meanwhile, the cat's snicker with the accompanying sarcastic stare only served to strengthen the notion.

Contrary to its expectation, the man named Randell did not reply or react but sat there glaring coldly at the cat. It took a small sigh, disappointed at having failed to garner an interesting response and again in its resounding voice, said “I have found one”.

“So s….soon?”, asked Randell with a hint of surprise.

“You are familiar with my methods. I am inclined to think that even you could not have done a better job. Do you remember the ti….”.

“Wh….which one is it?”, he croaked, cutting the cat in between.

“Hehehe……...The most promising of them all”, it answered still unperturbed. 

Randell was genuinely surprised now. His eyes softened for the first time in a long while and after thinking for some time, he said,“D…D...does he know wh...who he is?”   

“The boy will be of age in a few months, it’s only a matter of time before he awakens. But it might not even take that long, the boy is unusually brig………”

“I d….did not say wh….what, does he know WHO he is?”.

The meaning of the question dawned on the cat. "He has no idea”, it chortled.

Randell again went silent but curiosity got the better of the cat. “So, what do we do now”, it blurted out.

“Now, we pr...prepare. Because of y…..your discovery, events have been set in m….motion that cannot be stopped. If you could find him, then it means th….that others must be close too.

You go and k...keep an eye on him but remember d….don’t expose yourself”.

“What about you?”, the cat asked.

“I’ll have to take care of some things”.

“Okay, but before you get back to your dark place and start ignoring me, would you please be kind enough to provide me with the key to the enchantment that you have placed at this place. It’s not that i did not enjoy walking all the way here, i just think that it would be a tad faster for me to use my powers to get back”, the cat said in its annoyingly cheerful voice. 

The cat was getting on Randell’s nerves now. He opened a drawer at the side of the desk and fished out an old copper coin with a big dent on one side and tossed it to the cat.

“Oh and before i go i should probably tell you that she's still fine, not that anything could have happened to her”.

An intense emotion flickered in the man’s eyes as soon as he heard that. Trying to compose himself, he said through gritted teeth, “I d...did not ask about her”.

The cat gave him a genuine smile for the first time and replied, “You didn’t have to”.

As soon as it said that,  it placed its right paw on the coin. There was a brief moment when the entire room turned pitch-black from the shadows streaming out from the cat’s forehead. And then it was gone.

Randell sat heavily in the chair for some time, staring at the spot where the cat had disappeared. The cat had always been annoying, but this time it brought back memories that he had strived hard to forget.

Finally giving in, he opened the lowermost drawer of the desk. A plethora of objects were cluttered inside but ignoring all of them, he started feeling around the base. A small switch was concealed there and as soon as he flipped it, a smaller cleverly hidden drawer slid out just below the first one .He took out a small ornate jade box from within and opened it. There was drop-shaped pendant inside made of common glass and less than decent craftsmanship. Despite looking like that the pendant was important to him, even if it gave him pain to just look at it.

The pendant was a reminder of the promise he had made to the one he loved the most. A promise he could never fulfill.  

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