Chapter 633 – Masked Clues
Morning ca with pale winter light and a sll of smoke that clung to everything.
After a night raid, sunrise was not romantic. It was not beautiful. It was inspection ti. It was counting ti. It was the mont people looked at what had tried to steal their lives and confird stubbornly that it failed.
Outside the west wall, the village males dragged the bodies in with long ropes. They didn’t touch the corpses with their bare hands unless they had to. Even in the Beast World, people didn’t enjoy touching dead strangers, especially dead strangers who ca wearing masks like cowards.
The bodies were laid out in a line on the outer yard ground, far enough from the main pathways so the children wouldn’t see. A few curious kids still tried to peek from behind corners, only to be shooed away by their mothers with sharp scolding.
"Do you want nightmares," one woman snapped. "Go inside. If you insist on looking, I will show you your father’s belt and teach you what discipline is."
The children ran.
Isabella stood at the edge of the yard with a thick cloak around her shoulders. Her face looked calm, but her eyes were sharp. She scanned the bodies the way a person scanned rotten at at a market, searching for clues, searching for patterns.
These n were not random bandits. Their steps had been organized, their retreat too clean, their coordination too smooth. They moved like trained groups, not like hungry idiots.
Kian stood a few steps away, his posture straight, his expression cold. Several guards and hunters surrounded him, waiting for orders. The village had grown used to this side of Kian, the side that made his presence feel like a wall even when he wasn’t fighting.
"Search them," Kian said. "Weapons, belts, wrist bindings, any markings. Anything unusual cos to ."
The hunters obeyed imdiately.
They cut away outer furs, checked boots, pulled off belts. They found bone knives, stone blades, rope hooks, small pouches of dried herbs ant for stamina. Normal tools for trained fighters.
Then one man held up a strip of cloth from a dead attacker’s sleeve and sucked in a sharp breath.
"Your Majesty," he said, voice tense. "Look."
Kian stepped forward and took the cloth. His golden eyes narrowed.
There were markings stitched into it with dark thread. They were faint, hidden under layers of fur and gri, but they weren’t decorative. They were coded.
A pattern used by Fifth City’s elite enforcers.
Kian’s fingers tightened.
He had seen those markings years ago, when Fifth City’s people had tried to force trade routes through nearby tribes. Those enforcers always acted like the world belonged to them.
They wore insignias hidden not because they were ashad, but because they liked being able to deny everything while still showing off to those who understood.
"This is Fifth City," Kian thought, his chest tightening. "So this was not just a random test. This is a hand reaching out."
His gaze swept across the bodies again. "This is not random," he said aloud. "This was organized."
So of the hunters shifted uneasily. Fifth City carried weight. Even strong tribes disliked being dragged into city matters, because cities didn’t fight fairly. Cities bought people. Cities traded people. Cities sent trained enforcers and called it law.
Isabella listened quietly. Her expression didn’t change much, but her stomach twisted.
Fifth City.
She rembered the poachers ntioning Duskspire and Fangridge, and now this city na was being added to the list of places that treated lives like items.
She felt disgust. She also felt a strange cold anger rising slowly, the kind that made her want to smile.
If these cities wanted to put a hand on her village, she would bite that hand off.
Cyrus stood slightly apart from the group. He tried to look calm, tried to look like the gentle snake everyone trusted, but his eyes kept drifting down to the corpses, scanning their wrists like soone searching for a ghost.
He saw it.
A thin binding charm tied under one attacker’s sleeve. A cord woven from strange fiber, with a bead carved with a faint rune.
To others, it looked like decoration.
To Cyrus, it looked like a noose.
His breath hitched.
He could almost feel it on his own skin again. He rembered the old tracker charm he had once worn, the one that made escape impossible until he ripped it off and broke it. He rembered the pain, the burning, the helpless rage.
His fingers curled unconsciously.
"So they found it," he thought, heart sinking. "Fifth City found my trail."
His first thought wasn’t even about himself.
It was about Isabella.
Without realizing it, Cyrus’ gaze shifted.
Across the yard, Isabella stood with the thick cloak wrapped around her shoulders, pale winter light brushing over her dark hair. The cold air made her breath visible in faint white clouds.
She looked calm on the surface, but he knew her too well now. Her fingers were tucked inside the cloak not just for warmth, but because she was thinking.
Planning.
Calculating.
Even surrounded by hunters and corpses and the lingering sll of blood, she still stood there like soone who refused to bend.
His chest tightened.
The wind moved through the yard again, carrying another wave of cold.
Before he even consciously decided to move, Cyrus had already stepped closer to her.
He stopped beside her and lifted a hand, brushing a small patch of frost from the edge of her cloak sleeve.
His fingers lingered there a mont longer than necessary.
"You should stand a little farther back," he murmured softly.
His voice was calm, gentle as always, but there was sothing deeper under it now. Sothing restless. Sothing protective.
Isabella glanced up at him.
Cyrus t her gaze and then, almost unconsciously, adjusted the cloak around her shoulders, pulling the fur collar slightly closer to her neck so the winter air would not slip inside.
His knuckles brushed the side of her jaw when he finished.
The contact was brief.
Yet his fingers hesitated as if reluctant to leave.
The cold wind bit at his skin, but the warmth of her presence so close made sothing inside him ache in a strange, quiet way.
His eyes drifted over the yard again, watching the hunters, watching the corpses.
But every few seconds, his gaze returned to her.
As if making sure she was still there.
If Fifth City was involved, it ant bigger eyes were watching. Bigger hands were reaching. It ant soone might co not just for rare beasts, but for a pregnant female who was turning a small tribe into sothing dangerous.
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