But Malik Atan caught it.
He caught everything.
He stood three steps behind the Duke and Duchess as the ripple moved through the crowd like smoke: whispers, turned heads, tightening jaws behind velvet masks.
Trouble.
Real trouble.
Within moments, the Duke’s hand flicked — a motion sharper than any outward expression.
Verlone Praetorians, disciplined and silent, swept in like a living wall, parting the gilded floor with their presence.
Behind that human barricade of emerald-cloaked soldiers, the true court gathered — the Seven Stewards, select Elders, and the Blademasters of House Verlone.
Malik moved with them, his dark robe a modest shadow beside the jeweled sea of perfection.
He wore the face he always wore — respectful, watchful, unremarkable.
Inside, his mind cut with a colder blade.
The news came fast, under the breath of a trembling Praetorian officer:
Multiple bodies found.
Private guards.
A noble among the dead.
No alarm raised.
No witnesses.
No screams.
It was an execution, not a fight.
The Duke’s expression never shifted.
The Duchess’ emerald eyes glittered, sharp as daggers.
Malik studied them both.
He measured the stiffness of the First Steward’s jaw, the Second Steward’s barely concealed scowl.
The younger Stewards leaned forward like hounds scenting blood.
They were furious.
But more than that — they were afraid.
Afraid for the image.
Afraid for the legacy.
House Verlone could bleed all it liked in private, but no one — not the Side Branches, not the Outer Houses, not even the Emperor — could be allowed to see it stumble.
"Dante Saint," someone hissed.
The accusation came swift and sharp.
Malik kept his face still.
Of course they'd suspect him.
The Emperor’s envoy.
The cold, silent Blademaster whose every step reeked of unseen knives.
He turned his eyes slightly — enough to glimpse Saint across the room.
Still. Composed.
A glass of wine in his gloved hand, conversing idly with some lesser noble, as if unaware the ground trembled beneath him.
Impossible.
Malik knew the Blade Attendants too — cloaked and quiet, difficult to track even for trained eyes.
But none had left their posts.
None had broken formation.
The Stewards turned to the Blademasters.
Virelia spoke — her voice a soft iron:
"He has not moved."
The other Blademasters confirmed it.
Their quiet certainty was more damning to the accusation than any defense.
Saint was ruled out.
For now.
Malik folded that away carefully.
Not absolved.
Only deferred.
The conversation shifted — fast, sharp, ugly beneath the gilded manners.
Other Ducal Houses?
Minor noble lines, seeking chaos?
Foreign provocateurs?
The Fourth Steward spun political possibilities like silk, weaving alliances and betrayals in a voice polished by diplomacy.
Malik offered advice when appropriate — nothing bold, nothing rash.
Measured words.
Steady presence.
The perfect Steward.
Inside, his mind was already moving.
This... was a crack in the marble.
Not a collapse — not yet.
But a weakening of the image that House Verlone polished so ruthlessly.
And weakness, in a house like Verlone, meant opportunity.
The Duke spoke last.
"We clean this," he said, his voice as smooth as polished stone.
"Nothing leaves these walls. No stain reaches the Outer Ring. No whispers taint the blood."
The Duchess nodded once, her face the perfect mirror of serene command.
Malik bowed low, along with the other Stewards.
Outwardly compliant.
Inwardly sharp.
He already knew which whispers he would let slip later, quiet and controlled — just enough to stir suspicion among the Side Branches.
Just enough to make the foundations of House Verlone tremble... without ever pointing to him.
The ball resumed.
The music played.
The nobles danced.
And Malik Atan — the spider in the marble halls — smiled behind his mask.
The ballroom faded behind Malik like a perfumed dream rotting at the edges.
He stepped through the parted line of Verlone Praetorians, their emerald cloaks whispering against marble, and into the polished arteries of the Emerald Spire.
White and green marble underfoot.
Gold filigree climbing the walls.
Silver veins pulsing like trapped rivers just beneath the surface.
Beauty to conceal the blood.
Two Praetorians fell into step behind him, armor clinking quietly, trained to obey without questioning why a Steward abandoned a celebration at its peak.
Malik's hand slid into his robe, unclipping his communicator with the precision of ritual.
"This is Third Steward Malik Atan," he said, voice low and crisp into the device.
"Status reports. Surveillance feeds. All external and internal footage within the last two hours. Prioritize sectors Theta and Delta near the South Wing."
A crackle of acknowledgment answered.
Efficient. Good.
He didn't slow.
There would be no slowing now.
At the corner of the next hallway, Malik’s path was shadowed by a heavier figure:
Baylan de Verlone.
The Blademaster walked with a predator’s grace, armored but somehow noiseless, his emerald cloak flowing like a living thing.
His face was unreadable. Young enough to deceive fools.
Old enough, in Malik's trained mind, to smell of death professionally managed.
A weapon.
No less sharp than a scalpel, no more merciful than a mallet.
Baylan offered no words, and Malik gave none.
Their purposes overlapped for now: protect the House.
Or at least, appear to.
The communicator buzzed again, carrying information from the other Stewards with it.
The information flooded Malik’s mind in perfect order, slotting into branching possibilities.
Threads. Patterns.
Possible futures.
He replied sharply, efficiently:
"Cross-reference treasury anomalies with diplomatic correspondence timestamps."
"Track every noble whose bodyguards shifted position during the ball."
"Interrogate our criminal informants — discreetly. Focus on minor Houses’ servants. Find who moved first."
Orders dispatched.
The web tightened.
Malik’s boots whispered over gilded marble as he moved deeper into the South Wing, the air colder here.
Cleaners had already begun their work, scrubbing away blood as swiftly and invisibly as possible.
But blood had a scent.
And Malik Atan knew how to follow it.
Baylan Verlone walked silently behind him, a living verdict.
They reached the South Wing’s private corridor — restricted access, where noble blood was expected to tread freely without the stink of guards or slaves.
And there — faint and cold — the scent of blood.
Invisible to the revelers.
Unmistakable to those who knew what to smell for.
Malik motioned with two fingers.
One Praetorian peeled off without a word, jogging toward the nearest data terminal to pull surveillance feeds manually.
Baylan remained by his side, a dark constant.
Good.
If there were still threats lurking, Malik had no illusions about surviving them alone.
He slipped the communicator back into his sleeve and turned his gaze down the corridor, to where the blood trails had already been scrubbed.
Fast. Efficient.
But not perfect.
Nothing ever was.
House Verlone demanded perfection.
And tonight, Malik would either find it…
or find what had dared to tear it open.
He stepped forward, heart steady, mind razor-sharp.
The hunt had begun.
Malik tapped his communicator again, flipping to encrypted mode.
Personal contacts.
His own network.
Spies inside the Side Branches.
Contacts among the laborers, the servants, the overlooked.
"Report movement. Any movement. Unusual orders, unexpected absences, guards breaking pattern. Confirm if outsiders — or if the rot is our own."
Another flood of confirmations began to filter back.
He moved.
The deeper he went, the stronger the stink of imperfection grew.
Somewhere behind the beauty, behind the green and white veils of marble, something had bled.
Not just bodies.
Control.
House Verlone had been scratched tonight.
And Malik Atan intended to make sure it never healed properly.
The blood smell was fainter here, masked by marble and perfume.
But it was there.
Malik Atan paused as a Praetorian officer hurried down the polished corridor, boots thudding too loud against the hush that now drowned the Emerald Spire.
The officer saluted — a tight, strained gesture.
"Third Steward," he said, voice low. "We have preliminary identifications."
Malik nodded once.
Continue.
"Six separate groups of dead, sir."
The officer's hand trembled slightly as he held out the slate.
Malik scanned it quickly. The first group was made up of an Elder, from the main Branch of the Verlone family dead, along with two Verlone Praetorians.
Then the second group, a minor noble from House Varanis from its Branch Family. The third, a merchant named Prince aligned with House Verlone's trade network. Then a Lesser noble from House Castren.
Another noble retainer, named Carrion. And finally, a Trader licensed through Verlone Black Markets. A,d all of them laid there, along with their respective bodyguards.
Malik’s mind sliced through the pattern immediately.
The officer's next words were predictable, desperate:
"Some of them... had conflicting interests, Steward. Perhaps rivalries, hidden feuds. It’s... difficult to establish motive at this stage."
A neat tangle.
Designed to confuse.
Malik knew better.
Someone had salted the field deliberately.
Kill a few enemies.
Kill a few distractions.
Mix them together until the water ran too muddy to see the bottom.
Professional work.
But rushed.
Messy in intent, not in execution.
"The Elder," Malik said, voice flat.
The officer stiffened.
"Confirmed. Elder Haldren. Sir, he..."
Malik closed his eyes for half a second.
One of the Council’s pillars — dead.
Not some decadent Side Branch peacock.
Not a merchant pawn.
A Verlone cornerstone.
The political consequences would be catastrophic when this got out.
Whispers would become accusations.
Accusations would become blood debts.
The Stewards could bury a scandal.
They could not bury a dead Elder.
He exhaled slowly, and turned to Baylan Verlone.
The Blademaster stood a few paces behind, his face carved from marble, unreadable.
"Baylan," Malik said. "Examine the bodies. Assess the nature of the attacks. Your expertise is required."
A small bow of the head.
Without a word, Baylan strode forward, his emerald cloak brushing faintly over the blood-slicked tiles.
The corpses were arrayed neatly now, behind hastily thrown privacy screens.
Baylan knelt beside the first — Elder Haldren — his movements precise, almost reverent.
Malik watched, cold, detached.
The Blademaster’s fingers hovered over the wounds without touching.
After a long moment, Baylan spoke:
"Clean."
"Efficient."
"Throat cuts — single stroke. Curved blade, thin, sharp."
"Minimal blood loss at point of death. Arterial compression immediately following incision."
He moved to the next body.
"Some stabbed through the heart — secondary strikes. Different angles. Multiple assailants, but similar technique."
Baylan rose, his face grim.
"Whoever did this, Steward... they were trained. Highly trained. Not common killers."
The words hung in the corridor like the scent of iron.
Malik’s skin tightened.
Multiple assassins.
Perfect coordination.
Strong enough to murder even Verlone Praetorians — elite fighters — without a struggle.
No alarms.
No struggle.
No witnesses.
"How many?" Malik asked, voice very soft.
Baylan considered, his green gaze distant.
"At least two. Possibly three. No more than four."
A small, ugly calculation flashed through Malik’s mind:
A handful of assassins strong enough to slaughter Praetorians.
Moving inside the Emerald Spire.
Vanishing without a trace.
He kept his face carefully neutral.
But inside, something cold unfurled.
This was not a simple vendetta.
Not a petty noble grudge.
This was a message —
sharp as a knife across the House's throat.
And somewhere behind the silence and the blood and the veiled perfection...
someone had sent it.
Someone inside.
Or someone allowed inside.
And if Malik didn’t find the truth fast enough,
House Verlone’s emerald fa?ade would shatter under its own rot.
Malik stood in the cold, blood-tinged air, feeling the wrongness settle deeper into his bones.
This should have pleased him.
A dead Elder.
A House weakened.
A facade cracking.
His years of careful patience should have been celebrating the blow.
But instead, Malik felt stripped raw.
Because this had not been his hand.
Someone else had moved.
Someone faster, quieter, more ruthless than his revolution had ever dreamed.
And that would not do.
He needed to be a player, not a pawn.
He needed to know.
He needed to see.
The Praetorian officer returned, slate in hand, breathless.
"Surveillance footage, Steward."
Malik took the device, fingers steady, and turned toward the nearest secured antechamber.
Baylan followed, silent.
Inside, the lights were clinical and harsh, throwing no forgiving shadows.
Perfect.
Malik slid the slate into the console, hands swift, bypassing the standard encryption with Steward authority.
The first images crackled into life — corridors rendered in pale overlays of green, white, and gold.
He watched.
And waited.
At first, everything looked normal.
Nobles moving between ballrooms and private quarters.
Servants hurrying with trays.
Guards patrolling.
Flawless.
Too flawless.
Malik’s eyes narrowed.
Shadows shifted where there should be none.
Movements — tiny, subtle — that bent away from the usual flow of light.
He slowed the feed, analyzing frame by frame.
There.
A flicker.
Two figures, low and fast, melting along a wall —
Verlone green cloaks briefly visible, then gone.
At the edges of the footage, where the light didn’t fully reach, the shadows seemed to… ripple.
Like silk stirred underwater.
They moved with the architecture.
Used it.
Blended into it.
And then —
Targets falling in corridors where no movement should have existed at all.
Nothing clear. No faces. No identifying marks.
The assassins hadn't just hidden themselves.
They had been prepared to erase themselves.
Malik felt a cold pressure building behind his eyes.
He tapped the sequence again, searching for manipulation artifacts.
Noise in the footage.
Artificial spikes.
Subtle interference — yes.
Someone had doctored the visual records.
But the movements themselves were genuine.
These assassins hadn't only hidden after the fact.
They had moved in ways that anticipated surveillance.
As if they'd known how the shadows themselves would fall.
Baylan, who had stood silently until now, stepped closer.
His voice, when it came, was very soft:
"This is not ordinary technique."
Malik turned slightly, the question in his silence.
Baylan pointed at the blurred figures.
"They moved with the shadows. Deliberately. As if they could predict the angles before the cameras even recorded them."
A pause.
"It would be difficult even for me."
The words hit harder than a blade.
Baylan de Verlone — a Blademaster, a born executioner — admitting difficulty.
This was no guild of street assassins.
No minor House vendetta.
This was something else.
Something that moved in darkness Malik had not mapped.
Something better prepared than House Verlone had ever been to defend against.
Malik stared at the flickering feed for a long, brittle moment.
In his mind, the House crumbled.
Not from his careful seeds of rebellion.
But from an infection no one had even seen slip past the walls.
And Malik Atan — the man who thought he could orchestrate revolution —
stood now in the center of a stage already bloodstained by someone else's hand.
He closed the slate with a snap.
Straightened his robe.
And smiled — cold, sharp, and bitter.
"Find me the names of everyone who moved in these halls tonight," he said to the officer.
"Everyone."
This House had bled tonight.
He would find who had spilled it.
Or he would die beneath the same shadows.
The surveillance feed stuttered and died, folding into a black screen.
Malik stood in the sterile light of the antechamber, the silence heavy as iron.
Outside, the party still shuddered on — a hollow echo of music trying to deny the blood drying beneath its foundation.
Inside Malik's mind, the world reshaped itself into a different form.
A chessboard.
White and green marble squares.
Gold-veined pawns.
Emerald-robed knights.
Silver-tongued bishops.
And somewhere — unseen, untouched — the hands that moved them.
Not just the Duke and Duchess.
Not just the Stewards.
Not just the noble Branches or the grasping Outer Houses.
Other hands.
Hidden hands.
Hands that reached into the House of Verlone’s gilded core and tore loose a heart without leaving a fingerprint.
Malik could feel it now — the wrongness coiling behind every perfect smile tonight.
Someone was moving pieces.
Moving him.
He had thought he was the knife pressed against the Empire’s throat.
But perhaps he was just a blade another hand already gripped.
Perhaps he was already inside a game he had never agreed to play.
The feeling sickened him.
He, Malik Atan — who had survived the Harvest Worlds, who had learned to build networks from dust and despair —
was now being maneuvered.
He was no master here.
Not yet.
He set the slate down carefully.
Baylan stood like a statue near the door, a weapon sheathed in flesh and silence.
Malik's mind raced.
Pieces. Moves. Motivations.
And himself.
Malik Atan.
Third Steward.
Player... or pawn?
He clenched his hands behind his back, forcing stillness where a tremor threatened to betray him.
He could not allow himself to be moved.
He must move others.
He must see the next board before the pieces fell again.
His voice, when it broke the silence, was low. Controlled.
"Baylan."
The Blademaster inclined his head — not like a soldier receiving orders, but like a predator acknowledging another hunter.
Baylan was not here to fetch information.
He was here for when information gave way to violence.
For when words failed, and something had to die to restore the order of House Verlone.
Stolen story; please report.
A weapon, sheathed in patience, waiting for someone to point.
Good.
Malik needed that blade sharp.
But for now — silent.
He activated his communicator — secure line, triple-locked encryption.
"All Stewards. Immediate directive."
"Begin movement charts. Tag any noble, servant, or guard whose path deviated from assigned patrols or routes by more than thirty seconds."
"Cross-reference anomalies against commerce shifts — anyone who stands to gain economically or politically from Elder Haldren’s death."
"I want the compiled reports within the hour."
The acknowledgments came swiftly.
Crisp. Efficient.
The Stewards understood the stakes now.
They smelled the blood soaking into the marble, just as Malik did.
As he spoke, Malik’s mind churned faster.
Someone had guided the assassins through the Spire.
Someone had masked them from House Verlone’s omnipresent eyes.
Someone had killed a Verlone Elder at the heart of their power.
And Malik — who had spent his life preparing for betrayal —
had not seen it coming.
That would not be forgiven.
Not for the House.
And not for himself.
He turned, cloak whispering against his heels as he strode deeper into the Spire’s gilded arteries.
Baylan moved with him — a second shadow.
The Blademaster said nothing.
He didn't need to.
When Malik or the other Stewards found the trail — even a hint, a fingerprint, a whisper —
Baylan would be unleashed.
A living verdict in armor and emerald cloth.
The Spire’s beauty — its green and gold, its silver veils — would not save anyone tonight.
Not from Malik Atan.
Not from the Stewards.
And when the time came,
not from Baylan Verlone.
Malik Atan stepped away from the antechamber, boots soundless against the Spire’s gleaming marble.
The corridor stretched before him — white veined with green and gold — but it felt to him now like the bare bones of a carcass.
House Verlone.
Magnificent.
Rotting.
Baylan matched his pace, a silent emerald phantom at his shoulder.
Malik didn’t trust him.
Not really.
How could anyone trust a Blademaster?
Baylan wasn’t a man — he was an execution waiting for its command.
They turned down another hall, where a trio of Stewards' aides were hurriedly consulting slates and murmuring into comms.
Malik slowed.
Then spoke — not a suggestion, not a request. A command.
"Baylan."
The Blademaster stopped, head tilting fractionally.
"The Fourth Steward, Lady Merain, is coordinating external communications. Go to her. Assist her inquiries into diplomatic visitors."
Baylan said nothing.
Only bowed slightly — a breath of deference — and peeled away like a shadow dissolving into thicker darkness.
Good.
Malik didn’t need that living blade lingering at his back.
Not while he moved his real pieces.
Two Praetorians remained with him — ceremonial escorts more than true protection.
Malik ignored them.
His mind was already sliding deeper.
Lower.
Into the web that House Verlone could not see.
His true network.
The veins and nerves of betrayal, built cell by cell, whisper by whisper, over years of patient rot.
It was his greatest work.
Not the marble halls.
Not the titles.
Not the measured steps through court politics.
This.
Agents. Informants. Hidden assets embedded like cancer in House Verlone’s structure.
Invisible.
Trusted.
Poisonous.
They served now under the House’s banner.
But Malik knew the truth.
They served him.
And tonight, he would bleed them dry if necessary.
Because if Malik Atan was to stay a player at the board —
if he was to keep his hands, not just his throat, in the game —
he would need to wield every weapon, every whisper, every blade hidden under the marble.
He walked faster.
The Spire’s private quarters were ahead — his own rooms among them.
There, behind coded locks and silent wards, lay the heart of his unseen rebellion.
His mind sharpened with every step.
Objectives:
Immediate retrieval of all clandestine movements within the Spire in the last six hours.
Cross-referencing of noble alliances House Verlone had forgotten about — minor oaths, secret trade routes, quiet grudges.
Activation of ghost-list agents embedded in the servant class — cooks, tailors, archivists, engineers — unseen, overlooked.
If there was a crack —
if there was a whisper of the real architects behind tonight's butchery —
his network would find it.
Or he would burn it all down trying.
One of the Praetorians behind him spoke — stiff, formal:
"My lord Steward. Should we alert your quartermaster of your arrival?"
Malik smiled slightly — a cold, amused thing.
"No."
"I will handle it myself."
Inside, his heart beat faster.
But not from fear.
From clarity.
If tonight was the night the House bled,
then Malik Atan would make sure that when the marble finally cracked —
he would be the one standing in the rubble.
Not kneeling in it.
The doors to Malik’s private quarters whispered open under his biometric code.
The antechamber — silent, pristine — greeted him like a tomb.
His rooms were nothing like the opulent quarters of the other Stewards.
No sprawling velvet couches.
No gold-threaded tapestries.
No indulgent displays of power.
Only steel and marble.
Pale stone walls.
Sparse furniture — sharp angles and utilitarian grace.
The centerpiece was a broad, black desk set against a tall mirrored wall — a relic of older architecture, not yet replaced by the Spire's endless renovations.
Malik’s reflection stared back at him.
For a moment, he stopped.
Studied himself.
A man of middle years, wearing the severe emerald robes of his station like a weapon rather than an ornament.
Sharp amber eyes.
Tanned skin lined with the faint, sunburnt memory of the Harvest Worlds.
No jewelry.
No family sigils.
Only a single obsidian clasp at his collar — black as the night between the stars.
A face carved by ambition, patience, and loss.
Player or pawn?
The question flickered again behind his gaze.
But now, a new answer simmered behind his pupils.
Both, perhaps.
But moving again.
Malik crossed the room swiftly.
He knelt at the far side of the desk, fingers finding a hidden panel beneath the stone.
The biometric lock hissed softly, disengaging.
Inside: a sleek console, darker than the shadows around it, lit only by faint pulse-lines of data streams running beneath its surface.
The true heart of Malik’s influence.
Not the Spire’s networks.
Not the House’s gilded surveillance.
His network.
He activated the console.
Coded channels flared to life — encrypted, ghosted, untraceable through any Verlone system.
Names whispered onto the screen — identifiers for agents Malik had spent decades embedding:
Tatterborn – Spy among the merchant houses.
Grey Ember – Information broker in the Pelegeion slums.
Hollow Crown – Embedded noble of minor branch blood.
Glass Rat – Deep mole inside one of the House’s private financial syndicates.
And more.
Dozens.
All unseen by House Verlone.
All bound to Malik alone.
Incoming packets awaited him.
Reports coded in dead-drops, invisible to Spire systems.
He opened them one by one.
At first, what he expected:
No direct sightings related to the Elder’s murder.
No whispers of obvious Imperial assassins.
No trails he could immediately seize.
Nothing that easy.
But then.
Movement.
Movements deep in the underworld.
Movements that predated tonight’s bloodbath — stretching back months, even years.
Patterns so deeply buried that they had only surfaced now, in the wake of Malik’s desperate summons.
Key underworld players — black-market financiers, slavers, arms brokers — quietly dead.
Each death surgical.
Silent.
Erasures, not murders.
And the effect?
Chaos. Confusion.
Some deaths helped House Verlone's grasp on the Spire's black arteries — removing rivals or enemies.
Others crippled Verlone trade, severed hidden alliances, and destabilized resource chains no one had even admitted existed.
Unreadable.
A blade cutting sometimes for them, sometimes against.
Not random.
Not chaotic.
Patterned.
Intelligent.
A game played invisible beneath the game Malik thought he controlled.
For a year or more.
He leaned back slowly, the cold weight of understanding sliding into his chest.
He was not at the beginning of this shadow war.
He was already inside it.
He had missed it the signs. And now, he was already surrounded.
Already breathing its poisoned air.
And now he had a choice.
Report the findings to the Duke and Duchess.
Confess how deep the rot went.
Let House Verlone try to defend itself against a phantom enemy with incomplete tools — handing over initiative, becoming a slave to appearances.
Or, he could conceal it.
Investigate alone.
Buy himself time — maybe just enough to find the real architect before the House realized how badly the game had shifted.
Dangerous.
Treasonous, even.
But Malik knew the truth.
Trust was a myth inside House Verlone.
Only leverage mattered.
If he played this right, he might survive this storm.
If he played it wrong…
He would be just another name erased from the shadows.
His fingers hovered over the console’s comm keys.
One message would bring the Stewards down on this like wolves.
Another would bury it — for now.
Buy him breathing space.
Buy him a blade to thrust when the moment came.
Ticking time bomb.
He could almost hear it.
In the marble.
In the circuits.
In his own blood.
And Malik Atan, Steward of Pelegeion, smiled very faintly.
Let the clock tick.
He would make it his weapon, or die trying.
The private console dimmed under Malik’s palm, its ghosted signals locked behind a dozen failsafe.
The information would remain his — for now.
But not all of it.
Not if he was to survive.
Not if he was to keep his hands on the real board, even as it shifted underfoot.
He rose, gathering his robes around him with a sharp, practiced movement, and strode back into the brighter corridors of the Spire.
The Praetorians fell into step behind him, silent and useless as statues.
He keyed his secure Steward channel.
"All Stewards. Immediate bulletin."
A pause.
He could almost feel the tension spike across the Spire’s secure lines — the minds of his peers snapping to alert.
Good.
They should be afraid.
His voice was calm, but inside him, ice seethed under his ribs.
"My operatives have detected secondary patterns beneath tonight’s attack."
"Multiple prior eliminations of key underworld assets, spanning the last year."
"Targets both beneficial and detrimental to House Verlone's interests."
He let that hang for a breath.
Let them taste the ambiguity.
The danger.
"This is not isolated."
"This is not opportunistic."
"We have been maneuvered onto a battlefield we did not know existed."
"Recommendations: All Stewards to re-audit their covert networks immediately. Priority alpha. Focus on unexplained shifts in economic holdings, political alliances, security breaches."
Another pause.
Then a deliberate knife between the ribs:
"Begin assuming that what we see — is what we were meant to see."
The acknowledgments came slower this time.
Sharper.
Weighted.
Malik could feel the minds moving now — some sharp, some sluggish — but all tasting the bitter truth:
They were behind.
And someone had been moving through their House’s veins long before tonight.
Within minutes, fresh reports began trickling back.
The Fifth Steward, keeper of criminal enterprises, found dead accounts — shell companies emptied with surgical precision months before.
The Sixth Steward, master of innovation and technology, identified gaps in research logs — tech projects scrubbed clean of records, as if they had never existed.
The Fourth Steward, in diplomacy, reported quiet shifts in minor House loyalties — oaths weakened, allegiances frayed — without any formal conflict.
Small things.
Easy to overlook individually.
But together?
A constellation of invisible knives pointed inward.
Malik said nothing further.
He let the Stewards swim in it.
Let them realize they had been bleeding for longer than they had known.
And none had seen it.
Not even him.
The cold fury in his chest sharpened.
Not rage.
Not panic.
Something cleaner.
Something harder.
The quiet, surgical hatred of a man who realized he was not merely under attack —
he was already deep inside the predator’s jaws.
And now, he would make himself poisonous to swallow.
He moved faster now, the Spire’s long corridors opening before him.
The music of the ball — polite, shallow, oblivious — crept back into hearing.
A blasphemy against the night’s true blood price.
Malik passed through the outer marble arches into the main ballroom once more.
The light was soft, gold and green — flattering, false.
The nobles of House Verlone danced and drank and whispered, the illusion of perfection barely rippling above the depths.
The Duke and Duchess sat high on their marble thrones — regal, cold, watching.
Still untouched.
Still beautiful.
But Malik saw it now.
The cracks.
Hairline fractures beneath the marble.
They were bleeding.
They just didn't know where yet.
He approached the dais, cloak trailing silence behind him.
The guards shifted aside without question.
The Stewards — those not buried in fresh crisis — stood at respectful distance, waiting for their moment.
Malik knelt briefly — a formal nod to station — before rising to meet the gazes of Caelan and Vaelya de Verlone.
Emerald eyes — ancient, imperious.
Waiting.
He spoke smoothly, each word a calculated stone placed on the rising tower of lies and half-truths.
"Your Graces," he said, voice quiet enough for only the dais to hear, "my networks report evidence that tonight’s murders are not an isolated provocation."
"They are part of a long, hidden war moving beneath the surface of our dominions."
A murmur from nearby nobles — but muted.
The music carried on.
The illusion carried on.
Malik continued:
"We are being maneuvered.
Guided onto a battlefield that does not yet fully reveal itself."
He bowed his head slightly, the perfect image of loyalty.
"But we are not without advantage."
"They move in darkness.
We shall make the darkness ours."
The Duke and Duchess exchanged a glance — quick, razor-sharp.
Calculating.
They would not panic.
No.
But they would begin reacting.
Planning.
And in that plan, Malik Atan would ensure he was indispensable.
No matter what storm came next.
Back in his quarters, Malik peeled off the emerald Steward robes with sharp, efficient motions — shedding them like a snake's dead skin.
Underneath, simpler garments clung to his frame — fine fabrics, muted colors — reminders of the role he was supposed to play.
He stripped those away, too.
He would not bring even the smell of the Spire into the world he was about to walk again.
Not tonight.
From behind a hidden panel — set in the ancient stone by hands no longer living — he drew the garb of an older life:
A charcoal jacket, reinforced at the seams, flexible but armored underneath — cut for knife-fighting, not fashion.
A synth-silk shirt, dark grey and threadbare, smelling faintly of old oil and colder nights.
Worn black boots — boots that had run across scrap-fields and bloodstained alleys before ever touching polished marble.
A heavy belt with two sheathed blades, curved for speed, hidden for murder.
He masked his face subtly:
Ash-dark lines smeared across his cheekbones, under his jaw — breaking the aristocratic symmetry nobles prized.
His usually precise hair was roughed out, loose over his brow.
A low-tier biomask — designed to blur facial recognition and fool basic retinal scans — flickered like a scar across the side of his temple.
Malik Atan, Third Steward of House Verlone, was gone.
Only Malik remained.
The Malik who had once sold lies for food.
The Malik who had bargained with slum kings and bled in places no noble had ever dared look.
He moved.
Silent.
Through the Spire’s hidden arteries.
Down the disused maintenance shafts behind the ceremonial halls.
Down past the black stairwells where servants whispered prayers to no gods.
Past the old service elevators — rusted, grimy things that still smelled of oil and blood from eras even older than the Empire.
No guards stopped him.
No cameras tracked him.
They didn’t know he was leaving.
And if they did...
they knew better than to interfere.
At the final threshold — a forgotten arch choked by vines and cracked marble — the hovercar waited.
Black. Low to the ground. Matte to the point of vanishing into the darkness.
Inside: three of his agents.
Cloaked in street armor and synthweave.
No insignias. No voices. No doubts.
Predators, not soldiers.
The kind Malik trusted.
The kind he had made.
He slid into the backseat.
The doors sealed with a hiss.
He spoke just two words:
"Low Ward."
The woman at the controls — Grey Ember — gave a small nod and pulled the vehicle away into the bowels of the world.
The hovercar drifted out of the Emerald Spire’s shadow, merging with maintenance lanes invisible to the public eye.
The city peeled back around them — layer by layer — like rotten fruit.
Malik watched it all.
Silent.
Remembering.
First layer — The Vale:
Pale marble bridges over artificial rivers.
Golden pavilions crowned with flowering vines.
Nobles in gossamer silks, drifting between galas and dream palaces, their laughter almost convincing.
The air smelled like sandalwood and nothing real.
Every blossom chemically perfected.
Every face sculpted into a lie.
Second layer — Verdantae:
Towers of living crystal twisted into impossible shapes.
Art gardens bloomed midair — a riot of color over concrete veins.
Street performances: children dancing on stilts, android poets reciting odes to stars they would never see.
Music floated — broken, dissonant — through the warm air.
s screamed salvation:
New face in 30 minutes!
Eternal Youth for 12,000 credits!
Find your inner god today!
The scent here was a heady mix of synth-perfume and desperation.
Malik had played games here, once.
Smiled, lied, drank vintage wines laced with truth serums.
He hated it.
Third layer — The Merchant Rings:
Cramped avenues buzzing with low-tier hovercars.
Stalls selling everything from forbidden gene-maps to knockoff perfumes.
Minor nobles and petty lords fought over status with gaudy suits and surgically extended eyelashes.
The air grew thicker.
Heavier.
A sour stink of sweat, alcohol, cheap synthsilk rotting under humid lights.
Here, ambition rotted into corruption.
Then.
The descent truly began.
Grey Ember veered the car downward — into an unregistered shaft —
a concrete throat with no lights, no sensors, no laws.
The vehicle shook slightly as it entered the old underpasses — where the city's bones had begun to decay.
Water leaked from cracked walls, pooling over blackened gutters.
Somewhere in the dark, something screamed — mechanical, inhuman.
Malik’s fingers brushed the hilts of his hidden blades.
Reflexive.
Comforting.
The car touched down in Subvielle — the underworld’s rotting core.
And Malik stepped into another life.
The air hit like a hammer.
Rot and sweat and burning plastic, layered over the faint sweetness of counterfeit floral scents trying — and failing — to mask the decay.
The streets were slick — a mixture of rainwater, coolant fluid, blood, and Stardust runoff.
The lights:
Neon signs flickered violently overhead —
half-dead blues, radioactive greens, feverish pinks.
Holo-billboards stuttered, advertising cosmetic mods so cheap they left users blind or screaming.
Glowing graffiti spiraled along cracked walls:
- "BEAUTY IS BLOOD."
- "GROW STRONG OR GET BURIED."
- "HOUSE VERLONE SEES NOTHING."
The people:
A living tide of the broken, the beautiful, the monstrous.
Children with wide, gleaming eyes and faces warped by incomplete augmentations — running barefoot across cracked asphalt.
Junkies huddled in alleyways, their skin patchy with infection, Stardust leaking from their broken smiles.
Gangsters swaggering with holo-tattoos of dragons and roses, the light catching on gold teeth and weaponized piercings.
Black market surgeons called from crumbling stalls — offering illegal gene-splices, memory wipes, quick mods that burned out nerves.
Assassins and smugglers moved through the crowd like ghosts, invisible until it was too late.
Laughter and sobbing tangled in the thick, wet air.
A woman sang — voice cracked, beautiful — atop a rusted vehicle, begging for credits between sobs.
A fight broke out — knives flashing neon under broken streetlights.
No one looked twice.
This was the true Pelegeion.
Not the marble gardens.
Not the perfumed lies.
Here.
There was no illusion.
Only survival.
Two of Malik’s agents flanked him as he stepped onto the cracked curb.
The third remained in the car — engine low, ready to bolt if the city tried to eat them.
Malik Atan — Third Steward, traitor-in-waiting, shadow player — inhaled the rot of Pelegeion deep into his lungs.
It filled his blood.
His bones.
His memory.
He had not been born to the Spire.
He had clawed his way there — over bodies, through backroom deals, across gang wars fought in gutter rivers.
The underworld wasn’t beneath him.
It was where he was forged.
His lips twisted into something that might almost have been a smile.
Cold.
Grim.
Familiar.
"You thought you buried me," he thought, looking out over the broken city.
"You built your paradise on my bones.
And now you wonder why the roots rot."
He adjusted the blades hidden under his jacket.
Eyes scanning the neon haze.
There were things moving down here.
Things even he hadn’t seen before.
Whispers.
Disappearances.
Predators, growing fat on the blind arrogance of the Houses.
Tonight, Malik was not here as a Steward.
He was here as a hunter.
And somewhere in this neon graveyard...
the real war was already bleeding through.
The deeper Malik walked, the more the city opened like a bleeding wound.
No guards here.
No glittering banners or chiseled odes to House Verlone.
Only the raw, broken truth of Pelegeion's gut.
The Subvielle.
The streets teemed like infected veins:
Steam hissed from broken vents, ghosting up through shattered grates.
Neon signs flickered, casting sickly green and purple over shattered statues and broken market stalls.
Half the lights buzzed as they died — like mechanical insects fighting the end.
Garbage — real and synthetic — formed hills between the buildings.
Rats with mechanical tails fought over human bones in the gutters.
Above it all, drones buzzed — not to protect, but to watch.
No one cared who lived or died here.
Only who paid.
The smells were an assault:
Rotting flesh.
Stardust smoke, thick and sweet, crawling into lungs like velvet death.
Boiled metal and rusted blood.
Cheap floral sprays, masking the stink with something even worse.
Malik moved like a shadow among shadows.
This was his world once.
Maybe it still was.
He had climbed into House Verlone not through birthright —
but by clawing his way up the sewage pipes of this damned place.
His bones remembered it.
The way the air tasted.
The way every glance could be a challenge.
Or a test.
Or a death sentence.
The first bazaar sprawled across an old courtyard, lit by flickering plasma-torches stuck into rusted oil drums.
Stalls piled high:
Black-market cybernetics still dripping lubricant.
Monster trophies from the Wildlife Worlds — claws, teeth, armored hides, twitching nerves.
Alien organs in preservation jars, glowing faintly under bio-light.
Patchwork weapons — blades hammered from spaceship hulls, pistols stripped from dead Forge World soldiers.
Children in scrapcloth hawked false relics from long-dead alien empires.
A man sold time-dilution narcotics from a rotting barrel — drugs that made a single hour feel like a week of bliss... or agony.
Nearby, a woman tattooed the faces of dead lovers onto the cheeks of junkies who could barely stand.
Prostitution thrived in hollowed-out temples:
Beautiful bodies, sculpted by cheap mods into obscene perfection.
Male, female, neither, both — every dream and nightmare for sale.
Eyes like glass, voices soft as knives.
Their laughter, when it came, was programmed.
A whispering soundtrack of despair.
Down another alley, a slave auction bloomed like a tumor.
Humans with hollow eyes and mangled gene-lines.
Aliens with twisted limbs, their cultures erased, their tongues silenced.
Bidding wars conducted in sterile low-gothic, hidden from official sensors by hacked signal dampeners.
A silver-haired noble in a Verlone side branch sigil laughed over a deal struck in flesh.
His bodyguards — hulking mercenaries with chrome bones and glitching subdermal ads — loomed like wolves.
Not everyone sold.
Some hunted.
Thieves darted like roaches, fingers faster than sight.
Assassins loitered in market corners, wearing faces that didn't quite match their bodies.
Spies in ragged suits "accidentally" brushed by Malik — passing encrypted microdata as easily as apologies.
Mercenaries stood in brutal little packs, selling muscle to anyone with credits.
Some bore House sigils half-burned off their armor.
Castoffs.
Ex-soldiers.
Traitors.
All wore weapons openly — knives, guns, shock-batons, viral grenades.
Here, you did not hide strength.
You advertised it.
Or you died.
Hover-carts floated past, loaded with crates stamped from Forge Worlds:
Compact railguns.
Collapsing pikes.
Nano-etched blades that could sever steel at a thought.
Illegal.
Deadly.
And yet, Malik knew — half these weapons were paid for by Verlone credits under the table.
The House bought order above.
Chaos below.
They didn't look twice at him.
Oh, they saw him.
Felt the weight of his presence.
The way he moved — not fast, not slow — but with the certainty of someone who would kill cleanly if touched.
Old slum rats.
New power-brokers.
The desperate and the damned.
They all recognized something in Malik Atan.
An apex player.
Not a king, no.
Kings were too loud here.
Malik was something worse:
A mind moving pieces no one else even knew existed.
A whisper that could erase debts — or names — with a single call.
The slum knew him.
And it respected what it feared.
He passed them all:
An old harpy-woman with crow's feet inked into her cheeks, selling prophecy in broken rhymes.
A gang boss with neon-threaded hair and a synthetic eye, arguing over a shipment of Stardust laced with something worse.
Street priests preaching that the Cadence of Crows would come soon, their mouths stained black with sacrament ash.
Body mod addicts lining alleyways, their skin glitching and flickering like broken holograms.
Everywhere —
fear.
hunger.
hope too —
but so small, so fragile, it barely flickered against the storm.
Malik paused at the lip of a plaza — paved in shattered tile mosaics of forgotten gods.
The neon from a dozen hovels painted the air in unnatural hues.
Pink light fell across a dying man, blood pooling from a gut wound.
No one stopped.
No one even slowed.
Survival was currency.
Compassion was death.
He breathed in.
The rot.
The Stardust.
The truth.
This was Pelegeion.
Not the garden of Verlone lies.
This.
The blood-mud cradle from which all their golden masks had risen.
And Malik knew it better than any noble who had ever sneered down from the Spire.
It beat in his blood.
It sang in his bones.
"You think you own the city," Malik thought, moving forward into the neon ruin.
"But the city will always own you."
The streets heaved like a diseased lung.
Overhead, fast hovercars screamed past —
thin black knives against the bruised neon sky,
their anti-grav engines tearing hot scars through the filthy air.
Each one sprayed turbulence so sharp Malik’s coat snapped against his legs.
The smell of scorched ozone layered itself over the rot and Stardust already coating the Subvielle like a second skin.
Klaxons wailed from somewhere — a stolen patrol cruiser chasing ghosts no one would catch.
Or maybe not chasing anything at all.
Sometimes they just blared the alarms —
to remind the slums they were prey.
Malik kept walking.
Unhurried.
Each step carving through the chaos like a blade through silk.
Around him:
Vendors shrieked over crackling loudspeakers, selling water laced with tranquilizers.
A prostitute in flickering synth-lace offered him salvation for a handful of credits.
Gangs clashed in the side streets, plasma knives singing, fists breaking bone.
A group of children, barely clothed, picked over a corpse like crows, pocketing credits and anything sharp enough to matter.
The corruption wasn't hidden here.
It was the air.
It was the language.
It was Pelegeion’s second heartbeat —
uglier, truer than anything sung in the Spire above.
And still Malik walked.
Flanked by his two shadows.
Their boots made no sound.
Their hands hovered close to concealed weapons, just in case the rot grew teeth.
The stink.
The screams.
The broken neon and the broken people.
It wasn’t the smell of fear that turned Malik’s stomach.
It was familiarity.
He had seen this before.
Not just here — not just in the Subvielle.
He had seen it across the Verlone Domain:
The Harvest Worlds, where starving workers ate rats in the shadow of golden spires.
The Forge Worlds, where children soldered weapons they would never live long enough to use.
The Dead Worlds, where mining crews stripped planets to bone while corporate priests whispered sermons about sacrifice.
The Wildlife Worlds, where entire alien biomes were burned down for rare toxins or beautiful deaths.
He had filed reports.
Moved cargo.
Signed death warrants dressed as trade quotas.
He had done it all — clean, efficient, unseen.
A bureaucrat among monsters.
A cog in the Empire’s endless maw.
Until the day the cogs started screaming.
Until he saw a Harvest World priest bless a shipment of child corpses with prayers to Ménea, the Mother of Life.
Until he stood in a dead marketplace, watching a little girl pick up a melted neural implant from the ashes and smile because she thought it was candy.
Until he realized the Empire didn’t fall from corruption.
It thrived on it.
And House Verlone was no different.
Not in the Spire.
Not anywhere.
"Compassion," Malik thought grimly, stepping over a man half-dead with Stardust foam dripping from his mouth,
"is treason."
"So be it."
He remembered their faces.
The children.
The mothers.
The old miners with hands like splintered bone.
The aliens — butchered, flayed, sold as trophies.
No pretty words could bury the memories under marble and green silk.
He walked into the underworld not to conquer it.
But to understand it.
To use it.
To turn it back against the empire that created it.
The hovercar traffic shrieked overhead.
The klaxons wailed again.
Lights flashed in colors too sickly to name.
All around him, the slums boiled and wept and raged.
And Malik Atan walked calmly through it all —
the ghost of a revolution wrapped in a traitor’s skin.
Ahead, a sign flickered:
? VESTIGE ALLEYS — PRIVATE MARKET — NO GODS, NO KINGS ?
Good.
They were close.
His contact would be waiting.
A man who owed Malik too much to refuse him.
A man who had seen things stir in the shadows —
things even the crime lords whispered about now.
Malik adjusted the hidden blade strapped to his ribs.
Let his mind sharpen.
Let his anger cool into something cleaner.
More useful.
"I wasn't born to save this place," he thought, stepping through the archway into the deeper black.
"I was born to burn the ones who built it."
The Vestige Alleys swallowed Malik like a throat.
The passageways narrowed until the hover-lights couldn't reach —
only guttering wall-sconces and sputtering neon left to paint the way.
He brushed past broken walls, torn banners, drifting fumes that stank of burnt chemicals and cheap sugar.
Shoulders brushed him.
Eyes flickered past.
Soft voices murmured languages both ancient and crude.
His shadows followed — swift, ghost-footed — hands never straying far from the hidden blades beneath their coats.
The underworld’s breath pressed against Malik’s skin.
Alive.
Tense.
Waiting.
The bar appeared without fanfare.
Just a rusted metal door with peeling sigils and a cracked synth-glass window leaking purple light.
Inside:
Smoke like drowning silk.
Music like a broken clock singing.
Bodies slouched at tables, faces half-lit, half-lost.
A shrine to forgetting.
She was waiting — his contact.
A woman named Evara.
Tight-muscled, scar-marked, wrapped in a battered synth-leather coat.
Eyes sharp as broken glass, hair braided with chipped starlight beads.
Once, she’d run weapons for three different Houses simultaneously —
betraying none, serving none.
Malik trusted her.
Not with loyalty.
But with fear.
She was a survivor.
Survivors were reliable — if well paid.
They moved without speaking — through twisting back corridors —
past lovers fighting, dealers slicing Stardust bricks, a man quietly dying in a bathroom stall.
Into a private room sealed with manual locks — no electronics.
Good.
No leaks.
Only whispers.
They sat.
Evara poured cheap black whiskey into cracked cups.
Didn’t offer a toast.
Didn’t smile.
Just looked at him.
Hard.
The private room was lit only by a half-dead lumen-strand,
casting sickly light across the cracked synthwood walls.
The air smelled of old smoke, spilled blood, and desperation.
Malik sat still —
cloak draped over one knee, cup untouched beside him.
Evara leaned forward, elbows braced on the table —
all sharp bones and sharper eyes.
"You’ve been too long in the Spire, Malik."
Her voice wasn’t mocking.
It was... almost pitying.
"You forgot what real power feels like. It’s not silk robes and poetry contests."
"It’s the thing that guts you in an alley before you know you’re dead."
Malik said nothing.
Words were wasted when the world was already bleeding truth into the floorboards.
Evara tapped the table once — a harsh, deliberate sound.
"They’re here. Some kind of new outfit. Organized. Violent."
"Not just raiding and running. They're shaping turf. Controlling trade. Setting new rules."
"Winning."
Her eyes flickered to the door — even in private, even alone, still wary.
"You heard about Kade Vens?"
Malik inclined his head slightly.
An answer.
A permission.
Evara grimaced.
"Bodyguard to Lord Aros. Twenty confirmed duels. Two Blademaster kills to his name."
"He walked into a dispute down in Old Bastion two nights ago. Standard flex. Show of force."
"Didn’t walk out."
The words fell heavy.
Malik absorbed them without blinking.
Without breathing, almost.
"You’re thinking —" Evara’s voice dropped to a growl — "— Blademaster versus Blademaster, right? Some hidden ace. Some duel of gods."
She leaned in, close enough Malik could see the old scar that crossed her lip, the faint trembling of her hand as she gripped the whiskey cup.
"Wrong."
"Dozen shadows. Not one of them a Blademaster."
"They took him apart."
Malik’s chest tightened subtly.
Not fear.
Something colder.
Calculation reconfiguring itself.
Evara continued, voice ragged now:
"He didn’t kill a single one."
"Not one."
The silence that followed was heavier than gunmetal.
Even Malik — who had seen Harvest Worlds crumble, Forge Worlds burn —
felt a thin thread of unease coil around his spine.
Blademasters were not supposed to die like that.
Not without leaving corpses stacked like cordwood around them.
Not without ending legends in blood.
A Blademaster failing — utterly — meant something was wrong with the world itself.
"You understand now, don’t you?" Evara rasped.
"This isn’t just another power shift. This isn’t rival gangs flexing muscle."
"This is a culling."
Malik exhaled slowly.
Measured.
Weighing.
He had seen war.
He had seen revolutions.
He had seen the architecture of oppression rot from the inside.
But this?
This smelled like something else.
Like predators no longer content to pick at scraps.
Like a kingdom being devoured from beneath.
"You got lazy," Evara said, voice sharper now — the old anger bubbling.
"Hiding in marble towers. Playing steward."
"You forgot what the streets are."
"You forgot what the dirt feels like when you bleed into it."
Malik took the blow without flinching.
Because she was right.
Because he needed the reminder.
Because he wasn’t just here to survive.
He was here to win.
"And you're telling me," Malik said finally, voice smooth as ice sliding over a blade,
"to listen again."
Evara smirked — not kindly.
"Listen. Watch. Run if you have to."
She slid a small encrypted drive across the table with two fingers.
"Maps. Rumors. Sightings. Names too dead to matter now."
"It’s not everything."
"But it’s enough to get you killed if you're stupid."
She stood.
Shoulders tight.
Ready to vanish into the smog of Subvielle again.
But she hesitated.
Just long enough to say:
"If you want more, find someone braver."
"Someone suicidal."
"I’m out."
And then she was gone.
A whisper swallowed by the neon haze.
For a long moment, Malik sat alone.
Listening to the bar outside:
Laughter jagged as broken glass.
Screams muffled by walls.
The hiss of old pipes weeping rust.
The heartbeat of the true Pelegeion.
No anger now.
No blind rage.
Only a fierce, icy clarity.
He had needed this slap.
He had needed to taste the rot again.
The real world was never golden or green.
It was bloodstained neon.
It was shadows devouring gods.
And he still had weapons.
The Verlone Blademasters were not the gilded peacocks of other Houses, or preening mercenaries.
They were killers, polished and restrained, but sharpened on older, darker stones.
Virelia alone could have bled half a world if unleashed.
Baylan too — cold, brutal, dangerous in a way few could comprehend.
And the last one was more... even quieter. Even stranger.
Three Blademasters.
Three monsters on his leash.
For now.
He could still win.
Still steer the game.
Still move.
He would need the shadows now.
Not just power — not just strength.
Information.
Truth.
The slum's lowest whispers.
The gutter prayers.
The dying curses.
He would listen to it all.
From princes to prostitutes.
Because the revolution didn't grow from marble palaces.
It grew from the rot beneath them.
Malik pocketed the drive.
Stood.
Straightened his coat.
"The game has changed," he thought, stepping into the sick light of the Vestige Alleys once more.
"Good."
"I will change faster."
The next hours dissolved into speed.
Not a clock.
Not a heartbeat.
Only motion.
The streets of Subvielle bled past him —
hovercars streaking like dying comets overhead,
sirens screaming into the oil-thick air,
the gutter-stink of Stardust and rot clawing at his senses.
None of it touched him.
He was the storm inside the storm.
His two shadows stayed close —
blades hidden, movements liquid.
They moved from sector to sector,
district to district,
through collapsing tenements, neon-burned plazas,
filth-choked alleyways stinking of cheap mod-ink and counterfeit blood.
He met contacts face-to-face, one after another:
A gene-jacked smuggler near the collapsed basilica of New Elarin.
A Stardust broker with silver veins and spiderweb eyes.
An old woman with mechanical lungs who ran a shrine hidden beneath a brothel.
Each whispered different truths —
scattered pieces of a puzzle painted in blood and coin.
Every meeting was a risk.
But Malik thrived on risk.
Thrived on the heat of it.
The way the world narrowed to decision points, split-second calculations, whispered lies and half-truths traded like knives.
His mind ran faster than his body.
Mapping names.
Alliances.
Movements.
Patterns where others would see chaos.
He set up listening nodes at key crossroads — invisible things, organic micro-spies that fed into his private channels.
He activated hidden caches: weapons, money, fake IDs, kill-switch drones.
He triggered sleeping contacts — old agents buried deep in underworld guilds — low-tier, high-survivability rats.
His own networks.
His own resources.
The foundation of the true revolution he built, brick by bloody brick.
Through secure channels, Malik activated his private militia —
not the official guards under Verlone banners,
but loyal shadows hidden among mercenaries, slumlords, traders.
They began to move:
Reinforcing safehouses.
Scrubbing archives.
Burning cover trails.
No trace would point back to him.
Not now.
Not ever.
He triggered the encrypted summons.
A simple phrase.
A simple location.
Within minutes, he received confirmation:
Blademaster Ardan.
Activated.
Standing by for assignment.
Ardan:
A quiet killer, lean as a dagger —
trained not in ceremony but in death.
His weapon was not for display.
It was for silence.
Malik allowed himself one breath of relief.
A thin one.
A dangerous one.
Because he knew:
activating Ardan meant the shadows were close enough to feel.
He had one final task tonight:
Contacting mercenaries.
But not any mercenaries.
Blademasters for hire.
The rarest, most dangerous currency in the Outer Ring.
Through encrypted, black-channel lines, Malik reached out:
Offers sent to four known mercenary Blademasters.
Work offered subtly — security contracts, clandestine protection gigs.
Payment promised: obscene sums. Weapons. Freedom.
Not all would answer.
Some would smell blood and refuse.
But some...
some would come.
And Malik needed every blade he could gather.
Because if Blademasters were already dying in the streets without killing even one attacker —
then war was not coming.
It was already here.
Through it all —
the racing streets, the hurried whispers, the knife-slice meetings —
Malik stayed calm.
Focused.
Sharpened.
This was his element.
Not the marble courts.
Not the golden Spire.
Here.
In the rot and smoke and starlight reflected in puddles slick with blood.
He belonged here.
Among shadows.
Among lies.
Among whispered deals made over dead men's bodies.
Every move he made now wasn’t survival.
It was control.
Every contact, every surveillance spike, every reinforcement wasn’t fear.
It was preparation.
Because Malik wasn’t trying to outrun the unknown.
He was trying to catch it.
The other Stewards would play catch-up.
The Duke and Duchess would posture.
House Verlone would wrap itself in silk and perfection.
But Malik Atan?
Malik was already here.
Boots wet with the real truth.
Knives drawn in the dark.
He whispered under his breath —
a memory from an old, broken prayer he had once heard in the Harvest Worlds:
"In the garden of the damned, I sow knives and reap thrones."
He smiled.
A cold, dangerous thing.
The night wasn't over yet.
And Malik Atan was no one's pawn.