The walk to the docks took longer than I’d expected. They weren’t part of Lampis proper—no stone-paved road or market stalls guiding the way. The port had been built on the far end of the island, deliberately separated, like an unwanted limb still attached to the body.

  It was an hour’s walk. Felt like four.

  Manach and Leliana talked most of the way. Something about Coldian politics, trade negotiations, ancient rivalries—words that bounced off me like dull pebbles on armor. My mind drifted elsewhere, into the haze where my thoughts had been lingering for days now. Maybe weeks.

  Dreams.

  Vivid. Recurring. Uneasy.

  Not dreams, really—more like shadows slipping between the folds of sleep. Unfamiliar faces. Names I didn’t recognize. Figures that felt like they should mean something. Athion, once cryptic and clever, mentioned the name Konneus—and it hadn’t left me since. It clung to my thoughts like a thorn, buried just deep enough that you can’t pull it free.

  Laach’s unwavering support lingered too. He backed me, no matter what I did. Unnerving. I didn’t trust loyalty without reason.

  Then there was Nauenna. A woman who felt like she knew me—truly knew me. As if she'd walked beside me through memories I hadn't lived yet.

  The conversation with Athion echoed again: Aurelia. An important development. One that would shake your world.

  Each piece of this puzzle only made it clearer: I was part of something. Something layered and old. But I didn’t know what, or why. That uncertainty, that gap in the center of it all, twisted in my gut like a slow poison.

  So, I fell back on the only lead that was real—Sioh. A Coldian, supposedly lost, who bore Aurelia’s seal. Maybe not lost at all. Maybe he’d discovered something. Something that kept him away. That much made sense. My gut told me he wasn’t gone—he was hiding.

  And then, out of nowhere, something cut through my thoughts.

  Not a voice. A whisper—quiet, invasive. Like it had crawled out of the bones of my mind and spoken through me.

  “Think. Answer.”

  Two words. No source. No shape. Like my subconscious clawing its way to the surface.

  I blinked, disoriented. Asked the question aloud in my head—Where did that come from?

  And the answer, immediate and uninvited: Dullness.

  I stopped walking for a second. My hand shifted instinctively to the hilt at my hip.

  Was it the blade? Was it actually speaking to me? Or had I finally broken something inside my skull?

  Maybe both.

  I asked more questions—desperately now—but got nothing back. The silence that followed was more painful than the whisper. It chewed at me, left me raw. Irritated, angry even. I slipped out of the world and into myself, walking without seeing.

  Didn’t even notice when I passed Manach and Leliana, who had stopped behind me.

  “Koch!” Manach called, loud enough to snap the haze.

  I blinked hard.

  “What?” I answered sharply.

  He pointed past me. “Stop daydreaming. Look.”

  We were standing on a ridge. A soft hill that sloped downward, giving us full view of the port below.

  It wasn’t what I expected.

  Not like the docks back at the Citadel—those were monoliths of stone and steel, towering over the sea with cranes and warships stacked like sentinels. This place was different. Fortress-like. Built for danger, not commerce.

  Four towers ringed the perimeter, each topped with siege engines—ballistae or something larger—and beacons burning at full flame. Not decorative. Alarm beacons.

  The walls were low, but ominous, sheathed in thick, dark ice. Black veins spread through the frost, like infection in stone.

  Inside, I spotted the layout: a fishing quay, a scattering of warehouses, a few residential blocks—an entire village built into the port. Small, functional, compact.

  But something was off. Wrong in the bones.

  There were no ships.

  Not the big kind, not trade vessels. Just small silhouettes bobbing on the waves—sailboats or dinghies. Barely visible.

  And all four of those alarm beacons?

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  Lit.

  The flames licked at the morning sky like raised fists. Silent warnings, ready to scream.

  “Something’s wrong,” I said.

  And this time, no one disagreed.

  “Yeah, something’s wrong. But also the village… I don’t remember it having walls. Or towers,” Manach muttered, eyes scanning the strange silhouette below.

  “Oh, those were built earlier this year,” Leliana replied, offhandedly. “Some bandit or pirate raid pushed the council into funding defenses.”

  “Great,” I said flatly. “So now it looks like a fort. Doesn’t explain the beacons, though.”

  “Trouble,” Manach grinned, voice carrying that dangerous spark he only got when things were about to go wrong. “Finally.”

  Leliana’s voice cracked into the tension, soft and wary. “Can’t we… go around it?”

  “No,” I said, already reaching for my weapons.

  The Coldian blade slid free with a dry hiss. Then I drew Dullness, feeling its strange weight settle into my left hand like a whisper of frost. No more waiting.

  I started jogging downhill, toward the docks.

  “And here I thought you’d pussy out,” Manach laughed, right behind me, matching my pace.

  “Wait—what about me!?” Leliana called out behind us, alarm rising.

  “Hide somewhere!” I shouted without looking back.

  “I can do that!” she muttered, relieved, ducking away into the brush.

  The wind picked up as we descended. Not storm wind, not sea wind—just a heavy, dragging breath that seemed to roll off the walls of the dock village like exhaled grief. It took us a few minutes to reach the outer gate.

  It was open.

  No guards. No voices. No movement.

  No blood.

  No bodies.

  Not even the scent of death.

  Everything intact—but wrong. Market stalls still full, carts loaded, a box of lemons left half-open. It looked as though people had just... left, all at once.

  “Say,” Manach whispered, eyes flicking between doorways and rooftops, “what were we at war against again?”

  “No idea,” I said honestly.

  My mind went back to the Citadel—those regiments marching south in perfect formation. Armor gleaming. Purpose on their backs. Whatever had happened here? It wasn’t that war.

  “This is something different,” I said, low, biting the air.

  Manach had already peeled off, moving along the wall like a shadow.

  “Let’s find out what throats we can slit,” he smirked, disappearing into the dark alleys.

  I took the opposite route. Slower. Blade in hand, back to the stone, eyes on everything. I moved through the gates and into the heart of the settlement.

  Empty.

  Utterly, painfully empty.

  The kind of empty that screamed.

  Stalls abandoned mid-sale. Fish still on hooks, warm from the sun. A kettle boiled somewhere nearby, hissing softly.

  Manach reappeared beside me, emerging from a narrow side street. His smirk was gone.

  “Nothing,” he said, voice unsteady. “Not a single soul. What the hell is this?”

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.

  We spread out again, half-hoping to find something. Anything. A corpse. A sign. A scream.

  But there was nothing.

  And that’s when the thought came—not mine. Not entirely. A whisper.

  “Illusion.”

  I stopped walking. My grip on Dullness tightened.

  Arcane.

  I raised the blade and drove it into the ground. Not hard—just enough to cut.

  It was like severing a thread stitched into the very air.

  The world shivered.

  And peeled.

  Like a curtain pulled back by invisible hands, the illusion unraveled in ripples of violet light. What stood behind it was the truth—and it hit like a punch to the chest.

  The docks were burning.

  Stalls in flames. Smoke boiling from the warehouses—most already collapsed. The stronghold’s walls were cracked and scorched. The homes? Gone. Obliterated. Walls ripped apart, stone melted.

  Even the outer defenses had crumbled. Only the towers still stood, barely.

  And now... bodies.

  Everywhere.

  Strewn across the blackened streets like broken toys. Humans. Elves. Dwarves. Coldians.

  Blood soaked the dirt, dry in places, still wet in others. A massacre. A slaughter.

  And then—movement.

  In the smoke. In the firelight.

  Tall shapes gliding through the ruins like specters. Slim-bodied. Graceful. Almost… beautiful. Too beautiful.

  Perfect armor, elegant and deadly, etched with runes that pulsed faintly. Robes of silver-thread and starlight. Blades that shimmered like moonlight on water. Eyes aglow. Faces smooth and flawless—and soulless.

  High Elves.

  They stood among the wreckage like gods surveying the failure of man. Unbothered. Clean.

  Ominous.

  Beautiful.

  And deadly.

  “High Elves,” I whispered.

  Manach didn’t smirk this time.

  I started counting.

  Twenty. Thirty. Forty. Somewhere past sixty, I lost the thread. They weren’t a strike team. Not a scouting party.

  They were a battalion.

  Then one stepped forward—alone.

  An elven woman.

  She moved with a poise that made the rest of them seem like statues. Silver hair bound neatly behind her head, flowing down her back in a smooth, shining sheet. Every strand in its place. Ears long, sharp, proud. Her skin was pale marble, untouched by sun or scar. Arcane-blue eyes glimmered beneath shadowed lids, rimmed in red velvet makeup. No crown. No medals.

  Just power.

  Her robe was pure black. No sigils, no embroidery. No runes to scream her station. It cloaked her from neck to toe, hiding every inch of skin, a blank silhouette.

  But even in that stillness… you could feel it. Authority. Strength. The weight of command wrapped in silence.

  I raised Dullness instinctively, the cold iron already thrumming in my grip. Manach flanked me, his daggers drawn, body low and ready to launch.

  “Stand your weapons,” she said.

  Her voice was razor-edged. Cold steel. No effort to charm. Just command.

  “Give up your head,” Manach hissed.

  I stayed quiet. Eyes locked. Dullness pulsed again, the hum deepening. I’d need it for her. For any mage—especially a High Elf. Even the lowest of them knew the basics of arcane warfare.

  But this one wasn’t low.

  She didn’t flinch. Didn’t even blink.

  “The war is over,” she said. “We have surrendered.”

  I blinked.

  What?

  “What war? Surrendered?” I asked, confused.

  One of her eyebrows arched ever so slightly.

  “You do not know of the war?” she asked, voice now tinged with disbelief.

  “Stop talking,” Manach growled. “Let’s just kill her.”

  “What war!?” I shouted, cutting over him.

  “How pathetic,” she muttered.

  Then she tilted her head slightly, like she was done with us. “We will take our leave. Will you make trouble?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  That made her pause.

  “Unfortunate,” she said.

  Then she vanished.

  No shimmer. No puff of smoke. Just gone. Like she was never there at all.

  Immediately after, four High Elven soldiers emerged from the shadows. No robes. No flair. Plate armor, sleek and fitted, polished to a muted sheen. They moved like water and steel—silent, fluid, deadly.

  Their eyes locked onto us.

  The others—those further back—were already leaving. Melting away into the treeline, over the ridge, into the sea mist. Whoever was left… these four were here for us.

  A distraction.

  Or an execution.

  Manach cracked his neck.

  “Warm-up,” he growled.

  Then he moved.

  Two of them came at me. Fast. Perfect synchronicity. Not a wasted step.

  I brought my blade up, ready. Dullness whispered in my hand.

  Time to see if we could bleed perfection.