The hallway was empty.
No footsteps. No cloak. No one.
Only Raizen’s breath, still a little too fast.
He stood there for a second, staring down the corridor, trying to make sense of how soone had just vanished.
He shut his eyes for half a heartbeat.
Okay. Think.
He replayed the last few seconds. The black cloak at the mouth of the corridor. The turn. The way it moved - calm, asured, never rushing. The ti it took him to get here.
Not enough ti for soone to disappear completely.
Sound. There should have been footsteps. A door. Sothing.
He opened his eyes again.
There.
The stairwell door at the end of the corridor. Slightly open. The tiniest gap. A thin line of darker shadow at the fra.
Raizen’s shoulder unclenched by a fraction.
"You didn’t just disappear, huh? You went up."
He ran toward the door.
Oh, but he didn’t slam into it like a panicked idiot, like you’d expect. Just moving with that tight, controlled but fast pace he was used to.
His hand touched the wood and pushed.
The stairwell air flowed out - cooler, carrying the faint scent of earth after rain.
And drifting up the center of the spiral, Raizen caught it.
The soft edge of a black cloak. Just visible, just vanishing around the next curve of the stairs.
He stepped through.
"Hold on!" he called, voice low but clear. "What you did back there - what was it?"
No answer.
Of course.
He started climbing.
The steps wrapped around the trunk in a smooth curve, the railing following that smooth curve of the wood. Lantern light painted narrow arcs on the walls.
Raizen’s boots were almost silent on the steps. The cloak above him barely made noise at all. Just the whisper of fabric, always one turn ahead.
He caught glimpses.
A heel. The corner of the cloak. A shift of weight as the figure turned another curve, never hurrying, never slowing down enough to be cornered.
"Why help ?" Raizen asked the stairs. "If you wanted the beast dead, you could have done it easily."
Nothing.
They reached the first level.
Portraits lined the wall here, sa as before. Raizen had walked this stairwell once already, with Atman’s joyful voice in his ear.
Now, the images flashed by quicker.
The woman on a dock, hand resting on the huge horn of an Eon narwhal rising from the water beside her. The other tar Raizen rembered, waist deep in the ocean with an eel-like serpent coiled around him. A rider standing on sothing like a stingray with jagged fins.
The plaques under the fras flickered past. Too fast for Raizen to care and read.
"Are you with Ukai?" Raizen called up. "Or soone else?"
The cloak turned another curve and disappeared from sight again.
He kept climbing.
The second floor ca and went.
Underground portraits.
The giant serpent in the cave. The spider whose legs looked like blades. A woman in front of a web of Eon threads.
Raizen’s hand skimd the railing as he passed them, fingers brushing the smooth wood. His ribs nudged him with every deeper breath, but they stayed in the back of his thoughts.
This was nothing compared to the Rust Room. Compared to the Mountain.
Compared to having a ghost Nyx hand around his throat.
"You cut a second before I did" he said quietly, more to himself than to the cloak. "You knew my strike was not enough. So you finished it!"
He could not see the figure, but he pictured it before:
Standing sowhere with a clear line of sight. Watching him climb the vine ceiling. Waiting. Then doing sothing he never saw.
A second cut right before his own.
It felt like sothing Kori once said in the Rust Room.
Soone will always be faster, Raizen. Assu they are watching. Assu they are bored and bloodthirsty. Fight like you want their respect anyway.
He reached the third floor.
Ground beasts.
The jaguar with three tails, frozen mid step. The armored bear. The porcupine wolf, its back full of quills that looked ready to fire.
The sll here was faintly different. Sothing like old wood and oil.
For a mont, Raizen thought of asking Atman if he knew anyone who wore black cloaks in Ukai. Then rembered Atman had been just as fooled by the replay as everyone else. That amused spark in his eye as he accepted the narrative the drones showed him.
But they climbed past the level where Atman’s office sat.
Past the door Raizen had walked through not long ago to almost get stabbed.
Past the floor where the bell’s ringing had felt closest.
Up.
Higher.
He caught another sliver of the cloak on the next curve.
"Who are you?" Raizen called this ti, voice sharper. "Vanguard? Council? The... Silent Hand?"
The last na tasted strange on his tongue. He still didn’t know what to do with Atman’s offer. His brain kept poking at it.
For a second, he thought he saw the hood tilt slightly, as if the person had heard that last na.
Then they vanished around the next turn.
Raizen clenched his jaw.
The staircase narrowed slightly as they climbed. The lanterns were spaced a little farther apart. The air was thinner, tinged with fresher sap, like the tree was breathing closer to the surface here.
"Why hide?" he asked. "If you ca to help, you could at least talk."
His boot scraped a little on the next step.
He slowed for a second, listening.
The cloak’s steps were gone.
No whisper of fabric. No soft pad of boots on wood.
He took the last few curves with more caution, eyes sharp.
The stairwell opened into a small landing.
A door stood there.
Different from the others.
The wood was darker, denser, and soone had carved gentle arcs into it - lines that suggested wings, clouds, arcs of flight. There was no brass naplate like Atman’s office. No rank. Just a small strip of tal near the handle with compact characters burned into it:
SKY DOMAIN
Raizen stopped.
His pulse was not racing from the climb. Not really. It jumped now anyway.
But below there were no other doors. No special plaque naming what was there.
The cloak had been one floor ahead of him at most.
There was nowhere else to go. The stairs ended there.
He straightened again.
The door to the Sky Domain sat in front of him, closed but not locked, as far as he could tell. The handle waited, dull tal catching a little of the outside light.
Soone didn’t want to be found.
Or soone knew exactly how to avoid leaving traces.
Raizen looked one last ti around the empty landing.
"Fine" he said under his breath. "Run, then."
His curiosity did not fade with the words.
If anything, it sharpened.
Whoever wore that cloak had read him mid fall, calculated his weakness and covered it without missing.
That ant skill. Experience. Mastery. Soone who either had power to throw around casually, or a very specific reason to hide what they had just done.
Either way, Raizen hated not knowing.
He turned back to the door.
Sky beasts, Atman had said once, almost offhand. Hybrids. The interesting ones.
No guest was ant to reach this floor.
Raizen wrapped his fingers around the handle.
The top floor.
The Sky Domain.
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