I didn’t wake him immediately. First, I studied him.

  He was already half-broken. Bruised beneath his shimmering skin, blood crusted at the corners of his mouth. His pulse flickered weakly under the taut curve of his neck. Exhaustion weighed on his face like iron chains. His wounds weren’t superficial either—something inside was ruptured. Maybe ribs. Maybe worse.

  Pain wouldn’t break him. Not this one. Too far gone, too used to it. He’d grit his teeth and bleed out rather than offer a name. No, torture wasn’t the key.

  So I stood there in the ruin of a stone room, the air thick with soot and silence, watching him breathe. Thinking.

  And then it came to me—simple, elegant.

  Make him feel something he couldn’t rationalize. Make him question the laws of his world.

  I slapped him awake. Not hard. Just enough.

  He groaned, coughed, and blinked back into the light. His gaze met mine—glass-eyed and full of that weary hatred only the dying know.

  "Who are you?" I asked, tone neutral. Calm. The quiet before the thunder.

  He spat onto the stone beside him. Weak, but defiant.

  "I have no intention of prolonging this," I said. My smile was thin, cold. "You’ll answer, or you’ll beg for death."

  "I'm already dead," he rasped—and he smiled. A broken thing trying to wear the mask of dignity.

  "Not yet," I said, softly. "Now—what is your name?"

  "Drop dead," he hissed.

  I exhaled slowly through my nose, nodded once. "Remember. You did this to yourself. You chose this."

  He held my gaze. "You can’t do anything to me. Use your corruption. I’ll die anyway."

  He thought this was about pain. He still thought it was about the body.

  "No one said anything about you dying," I whispered, stepping back.

  I unslung Dullness from my back.

  The moment it left the scabbard, the atmosphere shifted. Not just the room, but the air itself. It turned thick. Wrong. The kind of wrong that made your skin itch and your heart stammer without knowing why.

  The elf flinched—only slightly at first. A tremor behind his eyes.

  I said nothing. Just walked slowly toward him, holding Dullness in both hands. I let the point hover closer and closer, inch by inch, like lowering poison into a wound.

  That was when the color drained from his face.

  His breath hitched. Eyes wide. He tried to slide back along the stone, away from the blade. His movements turned desperate, uncoordinated, like an animal trying to escape a fire it couldn’t see.

  "Get that thing away from me," he gasped, voice brittle with panic.

  I didn’t stop.

  I brought Dullness closer, so close he could feel the hum in his teeth. He clenched his eyes shut. His skin crawled. His whole body shuddered like it was being unraveled at the seams.

  He was drowning in dissonance. That was what it did—Dullness. It whispered untruths to the senses. Warped space and thought, spun reality into knots that broke the mind. To a being so closely attuned to magic, it was unmaking.

  "Please..." he choked.

  I let the moment stretch, then finally, finally, drew the blade back and slung it across my back once more.

  He collapsed sideways, breathing hard, skin pale as old snow.

  "I’ll tell you everything," he stammered. "Just... just kill me after."

  "What was that?" he asked, voice barely above a whisper.

  "I ask the questions," I said, voice low, measured. I crouched beside him. "You answer."

  He nodded—fast, eager, broken.

  Now we were getting somewhere.

  "Who are you?" I asked, crouched low beside him, my voice level. Calm in contrast to the tremble in his limbs.

  He worked his jaw, breath rasping.

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  "Lia’alas Nathanuusi. Arth Venadal," he murmured.

  The name caught in my ears like a blade unsheathing. Arth Venadal. The Arcane Siege. High Elven vanguard army. Elite. Efficient. Feared. If they were here, then this place had never stood a chance.

  "What are the Arth Venadal doing here?" I pressed.

  His eyes flicked open, barely, cloudy with pain and death circling just behind them. "We were ordered to destroy this village... as an aftermath of the war."

  War?

  "By who? And what war?" I demanded, harder now.

  He coughed—wet, something internal—and spit red.

  "Mistress Wene’al. It was the short war. Between coldians... and high elves..."

  I didn’t answer. The weight of it began to shift into place in my mind. This wasn’t the skirmish I thought it was. This wasn’t rogue action. This was sanctioned. Structured. Tactical.

  "Why are we at war?" I asked.

  "I don’t know," he exhaled. "Something... assassinations. Some dark manuscripts... stolen."

  Of course. Magic again. Always magic. Blood and frost, no one ever dies for something real anymore. It’s always some whisper in a vault, some ancient word written on cursed vellum.

  The war. The march south. The coldians leaving in regiments. It was all tied together.

  "It ended?" I asked, eyes narrowing.

  He nodded, slow, like even the motion was painful. "Yes. Some coldian... Rukh. Killed by someone. He was the assassin... the thief. The cause of it all. Whatever he stole... was never found."

  Rukh is dead.

  I kept my expression blank, but inside the realization hit like a hammer to the gut. Whatever he'd taken was serious enough to start a war.

  "But you surrendered," I said. "Why destroy the village after the surrender?"

  He coughed again, worse this time, chest rattling.

  "Our southern force was annihilated. The peace offering came after. It included... a clause. One act of war aggression allowed. A substitute for the lost scripts."

  I didn’t speak. I let that rot in the air between us.

  "How do you know all this?" I asked.

  He actually smirked. The kind of smile only soldiers make when they know they’ve lost. "The Arth Venadal... we do not move unless all information is clear."

  I glanced at the puddle of blood under him, at his shaking hands, at the pale blue of his lips. He was close.

  I leaned in. One last question.

  "Who gave you the peace offering?"

  He met my gaze—what was left of it. "Your champion," he whispered. "The masked one."

  Laach.

  His name didn’t need to be spoken. It was already there, coiled in my gut like a frozen viper. Somehow, he was behind this too. Just like everything else. Like always. At this pace, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out he’d been involved in the forging of the gods themselves.

  My eyes dropped to the elf again. He was trembling.

  "Who led your assault?" I asked.

  He shivered, blood bubbling at the edge of his mouth. "Lia—" he began.

  But the word died with him.

  His eyes went wide. A final breath shuddered in his chest. And then, silence.

  Dead.

  I stood over him for a long moment, pulse still steady, brain spinning. The word lingered—Lia—unfinished. Unanswered.

  But what he gave me... was already too much.

  Rukh was dead.

  And Laach—Laach—was behind the annihilation of this village.

  I stood alone in the half-crushed ruin, letting that truth settle in my chest like a stone in still water. It was heavy, final. Dangerous.

  This couldn’t be shared. Not with the wrong people. Especially not when the coldian regiments answered my distress signal and arrived here. If they knew Laach was responsible, chaos would follow. Mutiny, perhaps. Worse.

  But Manach?

  He had to know.

  So I waited.

  Twenty minutes later, he appeared, stepping out of the smoke and ash like he'd just taken a stroll through someone's nightmare. Leliana was with him—her face was streaked with fresh tears, her breath catching in little trembles. Her eyes swept the devastation like she couldn't quite believe any of it was real.

  "You good?" I asked, voice low.

  She didn’t answer. Just stood there, silent and hollow-eyed.

  Manach stepped closer, glancing around. “You find anything about that earthquake? Or what the hell actually happened here?”

  Shit. The quake. I'd forgotten to even ask the elf about it.

  "Nothing on the quake," I said, shaking my head. "But everything else? I know now."

  I told him.

  I told him everything.

  Leliana didn’t say a word—she barely looked at us. Whatever strength she'd held onto in the city was gone now, hollowed out by the ruins around her. But she stayed close. Some part of her still wanted to feel safe.

  “Rukh’s dead?” Manach said. “And Laach did all this?”

  “Yeah.”

  He didn’t look surprised. Just... bitter.

  “Well,” he sighed, “first off—Rukh being dead means we don’t need to carry out that assassination. Stonepeak’s off the mission list. Still...” He scratched at the back of his neck. “We need money. So we go to Stonepeak. Just not to kill anyone. We find coin.”

  I smirked. “Guess we failed a mission by succeeding.”

  “This thing about Laach...” Manach’s tone shifted. He clenched his fists. “It eats at me. He sacrificed a coldian village. Our own. For peace. I know he’s playing a bigger game, I know that, but how the hell does he explain the blood on his hands?”

  “Don’t,” I said sharply. “Don’t say that. He’ll know we’re talking.”

  “I know.” He spat into the dust. “That’s what pisses me off.”

  Leliana blinked back into focus. “What do we do now?”

  Manach and I looked at each other.

  “We go,” he said without hesitation. “Immediately.”

  “What? What about your distress signal?” I asked.

  “Let ‘em figure this mess out. If we stay, we’re stuck in endless questions, endless forms, stuck explaining corpses and counting body parts for days. You want that?”

  I didn’t.

  He was right.

  “But we need a ship.”

  We headed toward the ruined docks. The air still stank of burned timber and blood. Ash coated everything in a thin, grey veil.

  The sea waited beyond, cruel and indifferent.

  We searched the remnants of the pier. Most ships were just shattered skeletons now, broken hulls and scorched sails. All except two.

  A fishing boat.

  And a longboat.

  Manach grinned like a child handed a weapon. “We’ve got a boat.”

  “A toy,” I said, flat.

  “One that floats.” He smirked.

  “Is it safe?” Leliana asked, arms folded.

  “No,” I answered.

  “But it’s fun,” Manach added, climbing in without a second thought.

  Leliana blinked, stunned. “You can’t be serious.”

  “C’mon,” he said. “Do you want to be interrogated by some frost-bearded commander or do you want to row into the unknown like a pair of bad decisions wearing boots?”

  I didn’t say anything. I just climbed in after him.

  Leliana sighed. It was long and tortured. “You’re both insane.”

  “Buckle up,” Manach laughed.

  She muttered something under her breath, but followed us into the longboat.

  We didn’t know how to handle the sail. But we knew how to row.

  So we rowed.

  Three shadows drifting out onto the cold grey water, into the morning mist, carrying blades, secrets, and the kind of questions that don’t have answers.