1 — Offer

Ash slicked the soles of her boots.

Eirwen stumbled through the smoke-thick metro tunnel, one hand pressed tight against the burn on her ribs, the other gripping a cracked phone. The screen pulsed with emergency alerts and static, the reception fractured—just enough to load a single headline:

INDUSTRIAL FIRE KILLS 43 — SUSPECT UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE.

Below it, a blurred image: her. Caught mid-run, face half-shielded by a trembling hand, hair soaked and clinging to her cheek. Someone had filmed her fleeing the warehouse, and someone else had uploaded it before the explosion hit.

She killed the screen with a hiss and ducked into a collapsed maintenance alcove.

The air reeked of melted copper and scorched circuits. Rainwater from the surface sluiced down cracked concrete, dripping steadily from exposed pipes above. Eirwen knelt, unzipping her jacket just far enough to assess the wound — raw, angry skin along her left side. Not deep, but enough to slow her.

She tore a strip of fabric from her sleeve and wrapped it tight.

“I was never here,” she whispered to the wall. “No footage. No name.”

Then, quieter: “They’ll come.”

She dropped her phone to the floor and watched the footage playback one last time. The building's silhouette just before it blew. The fire ripping through the roof. The soundless flicker of her reflection in a passing car window.

She deleted it.

A second later, the tunnel filled with light.

Her head snapped up—a train screeched down the dead tracks, the rails shrieking like metal dragged across bone. But the grid had no power. The metro line had been shut down since the fire.

The train shouldn’t exist.

She stepped back into the shadow.

The doors hissed open.

Only one man stepped out. Tailored black coat. Gloves. His hair slick from rain, though he hadn’t arrived in it. No badge. No weapon.

Just eyes like mirrors—and the voice of someone who didn’t ask questions.

“Eirwen Cayde.”

She froze.

He smiled like someone already holding the answer.

⟅━━━━━⟆ ⚜ ⟅━━━━━⟆

They walked in silence until the tunnel opened into a storm-dripped alley, the night above rippling with broken neon. The city’s light spilled across the puddles like oil, every color distorted, refracted. Somewhere distant, a police siren cut the sky in half.

Eirwen stopped. “Who sent you?”

The man offered a small, perfect smile. “My name is Marsel Dáinn. I serve a client with an interest in your survival.”

He handed her a card — thin as bone, black with a shimmer of silver. It bore no title. Just a crest: half lion, half mirror.

She didn’t touch it.

“Laev Industries doesn’t rescue fugitives,” she said.

He cocked his head. “Rescue is such a... charitable word.”

“Then what is this?”

“Insurance. My employer believes your continued existence is... useful. He would like to offer you shelter. Temporary, of course. Confidential, absolutely.”

She stared at him. “Everyone tied to Laev ends up dead.”

His smile widened. “Then you’ll fit in perfectly.”

She took the card.

⟅━━━━━⟆ ⚜ ⟅━━━━━⟆

Rain struck the glass like static.

High above the city, Domenik Laev stood with his back to the storm, watching the surveillance playback through a curved screen built into his office wall. Smoke drifted through the room—not from fire, but from a single incense line burning in a bowl shaped like a lion’s mouth.

The footage showed Marsel handing Eirwen the card.

She didn’t flinch. She took it like a dare.

Behind Domenik, a man stepped forward. Clean lines, cold posture, one obsidian ring marking his allegiance.

“Why her?” asked Triarch Vigil. “Why now?”

Domenik didn’t turn. “A variable keeps systems honest.”

“She could ruin you.”

“Only if I lose control.”

“You already did. The moment you spared her.”

Domenik raised a hand — silencing the video. The final frame hung in frozen grayscale: Eirwen looking straight into the lens, defiant.

In the reflection of the glass, another face hovered — one no screen had captured.

Lucianus Laev.

“You’re playing with ghosts,” Vigil warned.

Domenik smiled faintly. “Then let them watch.”

The Marked Invitation

The motel room smelled like rust and motel soap.

Eirwen lay on the stiff mattress, clothes still damp, the burn on her ribs dulling beneath cheap painkillers. Her cracked phone was charging beside the sink. On the muted TV, news anchors speculated about “terroristic interference” and “cyber-warfare”—as if tragedy needed a neat word to be real.

A knock.

She rose, silent.

When she opened the door, no one was there. Just a black envelope, damp from rain.

Its seal was wax — twin lions, facing each other. One crowned. One broken.

Inside was a single card.

Midnight — Tower Spire 32.

That was all.

She stared at the note.

Then reached for her lighter.

The paper caught flame immediately—but the wax seal refused to melt. It hissed instead, searing into her palm before falling to the floor, unburned.

She watched it.

Then, low and dangerous, she whispered:

“Then come and take me.”

⟅━━━━━⟆ ⚜ ⟅━━━━━⟆

Next:

Will she climb the tower… or be pulled in?