The rchant rubbed his eyes for the fourth ti in the last ten minutes.
His office, if one could call the cramped, cluttered room above a half-abandoned warehouse an “office” was lit only by the flicker of a single mana lantern that was running dangerously low. Shadows stretched over the stacks of parchnt on his desk, giving the numbers a warped, almost mocking look.
He leaned back in his rickety chair and exhaled through his nose.
Too late. Too many ledgers. Too little coin for the trouble. I suppose coin isn’t his goal…
The wooden boards above him creaked as the wind shifted outside. The whole building wasn’t in great shape, but it served its purpose, quiet enough for deals, out of the way enough for secrecy.
He tapped his quill against the latest ledger, the scratching sound loud in the silence.
“Shipnt 12, delayed again,” he muttered under his breath. “Shipnt 13. unconfird pickup. Shipnt 14, damn mushroom suppliers taking their sweet ti.”
He scowled. Purple mushrooms weren’t rare, not technically. But ones with the right concentration of toxin and hallucinogenic effect were. And the only people willing to cultivate and sell them in bulk were the sort that didn’t ask questions and didn’t keep books.
Which made them unreliable.
He scratched out a line and scribbled a new one. Every shipnt was worth more than ten gold coins once processed, sotis double, depending on which person placed the orders. The noble houses never bought them directly, of course. That would tarnish their immaculate reputations.
So they used people like him. And he used the idiots in the forests and fields.
He leaned forward again, elbows on the desk, eyes scanning the invoice. “They should’ve been here two nights ago,” he muttered. “What in the, did those fools go drinking again, or—”
He stopped.
No, they wouldn’t be that stupid. Not this close to a councilor’s personal order. He ran a hand through his thinning hair and pushed the ledger away.
Unless sothing happened.
He drumd his fingers on the desk, staring at the schedule pinned to the wall. Each column marked a shipnt. Each shipnt tied to a noble who’d never admit they needed a substance like this. And every delay risked everything.
“The master will not accept another excuse,” he growled. “Not after last month. Not after—”
The lantern flickered again, and he scowled harder.
If the mushroom runners didn’t arrive tonight… there would be consequences. Either for the runners, or for him. And between the two, he knew which the councilor would choose to punish.
He sighed heavily, pushing himself up from the chair with a grunt. His back popped loudly, these numbers and sleepless nights were killing him. He shuffled to the window and pushed it open a crack. Cool night air drifted in, carrying the tallic scent of Coria’s forges.
He stared toward the distant warehouses where his suppliers were supposed to deliver the goods. Only darkness. No movent. No signal lantern.
“Damn unreliable fools,” he muttered. “If they don’t show, I swear—”
A person driving a wagon approached the place. The hooded figure driving it didn’t look up at him, but sothing about the way it stood sent a cold shiver down his spine. Too calm. Too silent. Too intentional. His fingers tightened on the windowsill until his knuckles whitened.
“…Probably just a new worker of theirs,” he muttered, trying to reassure himself.
The cloaked figure stood beside a shabby transport wagon, one hand lifting the canvas flap to reveal the crates inside. With the other hand, he pointed toward the goods. slow, deliberate, allowing the guards hidden behind the warehouse gates to see exactly what he carried.
The two guards stationed behind the tal screen of the warehouse yard exchanged a look. Then, almost as one, they turned their eyes upward. toward the rchant’s window.
He felt the weight of their question.
Is this the shipnt?
He swallowed once and nodded. That was enough.
The guards imdiately turned the wheel on the gate chanism and began sliding the iron grate open with a loud tallic scrape that echoed through the alley.
The rchant kept watching, his pulse rising. He’d been expecting the shipnt, yes, but not from this wagon. He leaned farther out, squinting.
“…Wait. That’s wrong.”
The carriage was old. Certainly not the kind of transport his hired collectors were supposed to return in. He scowled deeper.
Where did they even get a runic engine? They couldn’t afford a tal screw, let alone a transport core.
Then his eyes widened.
“…There isn’t a runic engine.”
He leaned farther out, cold prickles running down the back of his neck.
The carriage was moving, but nothing was pulling it.
No horses.
No engine hum.
No glow of runes beneath the axles.
Just smooth, unnatural motion guided by—
He looked at the cloaked figure again. The hood was low, mask covering the lower face. The figure stood perfectly still, not even shifting its weight, gloved hand still resting on the edge of the canvas.
It was… unsettling. Too composed. Too silent. The rchant licked his lips.
No engine. No horses. And those idiots never even wore cloaks.
Had he hired this man? No. He’d hired a group of sloppy, loud, half-drunk forest-dwellers who barely knew how to count change. And this figure did not belong among them. The rchant’s brain ran through possibilities.
A thief trying to pass as his n? A councilor’s inspector? Or, His gaze returned to the crates inside the wagon.
Packed. Sealed. Ready for delivery.
But he didn’t recognize the cloaked figure. He didn’t recognize the thod of arrival.
And he certainly didn’t recognize the silence that followed him like a shadow.
The rchant suddenly felt very small in his office. He straightened, forcing his shoulders back.
“Whoever he is,” he muttered to himself, grabbing his ledger and coat, “he brought the goods. That’s all that matters. I am too tired for this nonsense…”
But as he moved toward the stairs, sothing gnawed at him, sharp, instinctive, warning.
Those footsteps outside… The way the wagon moved… The dark hood and mask…
Nothing about this delivery was right.
The wagon rolled over the warehouse threshold with an eerie smoothness, no jolts, no clatter, just a quiet glide that made the hairs on the back of the rchant’s neck stand up. Once it crossed fully inside, the massive iron gate slamd shut behind it with a heavy, echoing clang.
From the shadows of the storage hall, guards erged. Sixteen of them.
Each carrying runic weapons, daggers with glowing edges, short spears with etched sigils, and five n holding a rune-engraved crossbow humming faintly with stored mana. They fanned out around the carriage in a practiced formation, each one keeping their weapon trained on the silent cloaked figure sitting on the driver’s bench.
Still as stone. Still as the grave.
The rchant walked down the stairs from his office, gravel crunching under his boots, hands clasped neatly behind his back. He wore a polite smile, the kind he used when speaking with either idiots or explosives.
His underlings parted for him, stepping back to give him a clear path to the wagon. He stopped two ters from the carriage. The cloaked figure didn’t so much as twitch.
Not a shift. Not a breath. Not a whisper of fabric. It was like he wasn’t alive.
The rchant cleared his throat. “Quite the entrance,” he said lightly, though his voice carried a hard undertone. “I appreciate punctuality, but this shipnt was supposed to arrive two nights ago.”
No response. He stepped closer, brow tightening. “Where are the others? They were instructed to report back in groups of three, the suppliers, the escorts, the handlers.” Still nothing.
The cloaked figure remained hunched slightly forward, hands resting loosely on his knees, head lowered beneath the hood. His tattered robe made him look like one of the forest drifters, worn, dirt-stained, and forgettable.
Except he wasn’t. Because those drifters never sat this still.
Never moved this quietly. Never gave off the kind of suffocating presence that made trained guards keep their fingers trembling on their triggers. Still, that didn’t make sense, this place only operated by night and only a handful people knew of this location… The rchant also knew that those guys wouldn’t be caught by anyone from the league. They were small fries, but small fries that survived for years without being caught. The rchant’s voice sharpened.
“I’m asking you a question. What happened to the others?”
Not even a stir, not a shift of breath or tilt of the head.
The guards exchanged uneasy glances.
One whispered, “Sir… is he asleep?”
Another muttered back, “No one sleeps like that.”
The rchant forced a tight smile, stepping even closer. “Listen here, you—”
Then he stopped. A flicker of movent.
Not from the cloaked figure, but from the hood itself.
The faintest tilt upward. Just enough for the rchant to see two green eyes glowing faintly through the shadow, cold, sharp, and utterly inhuman in their stillness.
The rchant’s breath hitched. Suddenly, the silence wasn’t just silence.
It was a threat. The cloaked figure finally moved, just barely, lifting his head a fraction more.
But he still said not a single word. The warehouse felt colder. The guards tightened their grips. And the rchant realized, far too late: Whoever this was… It wasn’t one of his n.
The rchant snapped out of his hesitation with a surge of anger and fear.
“Kill him!”
The order cracked through the warehouse like a whip. Instantly, the guards reacted, six runic weapons raised, sigils flaring with sharp blue-white light as they unleashed a barrage of magic bolts straight at the unmoving cloaked figure.
They streaked through the air, only to vanish into a sudden explosion of mist.
A thick, choking wall of mist surged outward like a living wave, swallowing the wagon, the guards, and the warehouse in one breath. Visibility dropped to zero. The lanterns dimd under the dense fog, their light diffused into useless halos.
“W–What the—!?”
“Where is he!?”
“Keep firing!”
Bolts slamd blindly into the mist.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!
Not against flesh. Not against wood. Against sothing hard. Sothing like glass. Then ca the screams.
“ARGH—!”
“MY ARM—!”
“Behind you, BEHIND—!”
The wet crunch of bones shattering echoed in the fog. A guard’s body slamd into a stack of crates. Another thudded against the stone wall with a sickening snap. The rchant staggered back, nearly tripping over his own feet.
“Protect ! PROTECT AT ANY COST!” he shouted, voice cracking with panic.
No one ca. No footsteps answering his cry. No guards forming around him. Only pained gasps turning into gurgles… then silence.
The rchant spun, tried to run, but slamd into a wooden beam, falling hard onto his back. Fear flooded him so quickly he could barely breathe. He began to crawl, dragging himself on elbows and knees through the swirling fog.
“Help…! H-HELP —!”
No answer. The only sound was the faint drip of blood hitting the stone, sowhere beyond the mist.
Then, a step. A single footstep, soft, deliberate, impossibly loud in the hush.
Step.
Coming closer. The rchant’s lungs froze.
He clawed at the floor, nails splintering, scrambling blindly. Every instinct in him scread to flee, to hide, to vanish. But the footsteps followed.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Slow. thodical. Like the figure behind him had all the ti in the world.
The rchant finally reached the far wall. His back hit the cold stone. Nowhere left to run.
He wheezed, eyes wide and stinging from the mist. “S–Stay back! I—I’m a servant of master Verk and a friend of Lord Roderick! If you touch , you’ll—”
The footsteps stopped just outside the last curl of fog. A dark silhouette ford in the haze, tall cloak, hood drawn low, mask hiding everything but the cold, unblinking green eyes that stared directly into his. The rchant’s heartbeat pounded so loudly he could barely hear his own voice.
“W–Wait—please—I can tell you everything—just—just don’t—”
The figure took one final step forward. The mist curled around him like smoke bowing to its master. And the rchant finally understood:
He hadn’t called an assassin. He hadn’t hired a courier. He hadn’t even attracted a thief. He had summoned a reaper.
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