Karethor did not look like a city under siege.

  There was no smoke, no barricades, no corpses in the streets.

  There was order.

  The walls rose clean, and the gates remained open under constant watch. The symbol of the One hung above the main entrance, white against a pale background, with no ancient heraldry left to compete with it. The guards wore no heavy armor. They were dressed in reinforced robes, discreet, each marked with the same symbol on the chest.

  Ilian walked in.

  No one stopped him.

  No one asked his name.

  That troubled him more than any interrogation would have.

  The city breathed restraint.

  Merchants spoke in low voices. Eyes pulled away a second before they had lingered too long. The facades were clean, but some walls still bore scrape marks where something had been violently erased. Ilian did not know what had been there.

  But others did.

  He walked without seeming to choose a direction, listening to fragments of conversation.

  “Caravans to the north…”

  “Mages transferred…”

  “Don’t ask…”

  The Void remained still.

  That was good.

  Or so he hoped.

  He turned into a narrower street, moving away from the center. There the foot traffic thinned. The buildings were older, the wood darkened by time, the stone less polished.

  That was when he felt the presence.

  Not magic.

  Weight.

  A subtle displacement of air behind him.

  Ilian did not stop. He took two more steps.

  The shadow came first.

  An arm wrapped around him from behind, trying to pin his left shoulder. At the same time, a short blade appeared at his throat, cold and precise.

  Ilian twisted with controlled violence, using the momentum to break the hold. The blade brushed his skin without cutting.

  His own sword was already out when the second attacker came at him from the right.

  The clash was brief.

  Not a real fight.

  A test.

  A third body stepped in, blocking his advance with solid force.

  Taller.

  Heavier.

  “Enough.”

  Ilian stopped.

  The masked figures lowered their weapons. The one who had tried to restrain him stepped back and pulled off his mask.

  Edrik Vale looked at him without a smile.

  Thinner.

  More hollow-eyed.

  More restrained.

  But alive.

  At his side, the archer removed his mask with a tense motion.

  Cael.

  And behind them, the man who had blocked him like a wall of flesh and steel took off his face covering slowly.

  Varik Dorn.

  The tank.

  “You’re late,” Cael said without greeting.

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  Ilian did not lower his sword at once.

  “And you’re still alive.”

  “For now,” Edrik replied.

  The silence filled with everything they did not say.

  Ilian sheathed his sword.

  “Maelis?”

  “Alive,” Cael said through clenched teeth.

  That one word was enough to change the air.

  “Where?”

  “Inquisitorial laboratory. North of the city. Not public.”

  “How do you know?”

  Edrik made a small gesture toward the houses around them.

  “Karethor hasn’t forgotten everything.”

  Ilian did not understand the sentence, but he did not ask. Edrik tilted his head toward a barely visible side door hidden between two walls.

  They went in.

  Inside, it looked like an abandoned smithy. Old iron, hanging tools, dust layered everywhere. But behind a false wall, stairs led downward into a wide space lit by oil lamps.

  There were more people there.

  Civilians.

  Men and women who avoided looking directly at Ilian, but dipped their heads slightly toward Edrik.

  “The club no longer exists officially,” Varik said as they descended. “But the city remembers.”

  Ilian studied the space. It was not a barracks.

  It was a refuge.

  Hand-drawn maps. Routes pinned with markers. Lists of names.

  “Fourteen days,” Edrik said. “That’s how long we’ve been here since the temple.”

  Ilian did not react.

  “They chased us all the way to the gates,” Cael continued. “The inquisitors arrived before we could reorganize.”

  “They weren’t ordinary soldiers,” Varik added. “They were masters.”

  Ilian nodded once.

  “Sair.”

  Edrik looked at him sharply.

  “Then you’ve heard the name.”

  Ilian did not explain how.

  “Maelis was captured,” Cael said. “And Arven too.”

  Arven.

  The mage.

  Ilian’s fist tightened slightly.

  “They didn’t kill them.”

  “No,” Edrik said. “That would have been simple.”

  The silence thickened.

  “What are they doing there?”

  “Experimenting,” Edrik said.

  “It’s not torture. Not directly,” Cael added.

  “They’re trying to bring the dead back,” Varik said.

  The words were not dramatic.

  Just a fact.

  Ilian showed no reaction, but something inside him tightened.

  “Who ordered it?”

  “The One.”

  Not the High Priest.

  Not the old Church.

  The One.

  “And Sair?”

  “He’s the custodian,” Cael said. “The one of Silence.”

  “He cages memory,” Ilian murmured.

  Varik studied him.

  “You know.”

  “I suspect.”

  Edrik placed both hands on the table.

  “He has several mages working there. Not willingly. He controls them.”

  “How?”

  “We don’t fully know,” Cael said. “But when we saw them, they didn’t remember why they were there. They didn’t remember who they were.”

  A faint tension ran through the back of Ilian’s neck. The Void did not speak.

  But the idea was enough.

  “Where exactly?”

  Edrik spread out a map.

  “Two days north. An old agricultural site turned into a sealed facility. The animals you see in the caravans aren’t supplies. They’re test material.”

  Ilian remembered the carriage.

  “Tests for what?”

  “To understand how to return what has left,” Varik said.

  Silence.

  “If you hadn’t entered the temple…” Cael began.

  Ilian held his gaze.

  He did not answer.

  The accusation stayed hanging in the room.

  “That doesn’t matter now,” Edrik cut in.

  “I’m going there,” Ilian said.

  “So are we,” Varik replied.

  “I’m not leading.”

  “We’re not asking for leadership.”

  Silence.

  “But we’re after the same thing.”

  Ilian studied them.

  They were not allies.

  They were not enemies.

  They were necessity.

  “If you get in my way, I leave you.”

  Cael said nothing. Edrik nodded.

  “We move at nightfall.”

  Above the city, the white banners did not stir.

  But beneath the surface, something had begun to move.

  Death had entered Karethor.

  And this time, it was not alone.

  The food was simple.

  Hard bread soaked in broth. A thick stew with more vegetables than meat. No luxury. No excess.

  The people in the refuge sat in a wide circle, with no head of the table and no visible hierarchy. The club might have been officially dissolved, but the habit of gathering before action remained intact.

  They did not speak loudly.

  They did not laugh.

  They ate.

  Ilian took his bowl and sat beside Cael. The archer did not look at him at first. He broke bread with tense fingers and dipped it into the broth with rigid concentration.

  Ilian wanted to speak.

  He found no sentence worth using.

  “Carmilla disappeared,” Cael said.

  “I know.”

  “No. You don’t.”

  He finally looked at him.

  “After you entered the temple, everything fell apart. The ground split open. The inquisitors arrived. She… wasn’t herself. We saw her kill. And then we didn’t see her anymore. Maelis tried to reach her. They captured her.”

  Ilian tightened his grip on the bowl.

  “I didn’t force her to follow me.”

  “No. You never force anyone.”

  “I warned you. There’s a reason they call me Death.”

  “And we followed you anyway.”

  There was no answer.

  The silence turned heavy.

  Then a sound broke the stillness.

  Not a bell.

  A deep, sustained siren that vibrated through stone and wood.

  Bowls stopped moving.

  No one asked.

  They already knew.

  “Purge,” Edrik said when the third siren passed through the city.

  Above them, boots began to move.

  The siren did not sound again.

  It didn’t need to.

  The boots echoed like a second heartbeat beneath the city.

  They were not running.

  They were marching.

  Coordinated.

  Precise.

  The purge was not a hunt.

  It was procedure.

  At the head of the squad walked one man alone.

  A fitted white robe.

  Discreet plates.

  The symbol of the One engraved in polished metal.

  Eiren.

  The Marked.

  He did not shout.

  He did not perform.

  He stopped in front of each marked house.

  “Name.”

  “Extend your hand.”

  A dark ring gleamed on his index finger. When it touched skin, the air pulsed faintly. A black mark appeared on the wrist—a broken circle.

  “Suspicion confirmed.”

  The marked did not always understand why.

  Eiren did not explain.

  The mark was sentence enough.

  On a side street, one woman tried to shut her door. Eiren pressed his palm to the wood. The surface blackened in a circular shape.

  “Seal it.”

  The house was marked.

  From the refuge below, the sounds came muted.

  “Eiren doesn’t execute,” Varik whispered. “He marks. Then they collect.”

  “What does it mean?” Ilian asked.

  “That they no longer belong to themselves,” Cael replied.

  A hard knock sounded too close.

  Footsteps outside the smithy.

  Silence.

  “Inspection.”

  No one drew a deep breath.

  Ilian felt the rune of Space vibrate—not as warning, but as tension.

  The boots crossed the threshold.

  And Eiren, the Marked, advanced into the darkness where the city hid what it still refused to surrender.

  The purge was not massacre.

  It was selection.

  And that night, Karethor would learn who had been watched from the beginning.