Yet his eyes lock with mine, and something deeper coils within them. Not calm. Not serenity. Resolve.
Saliva burns down my throat as I swallow, but the fire in my chest does not ease. My gaze drops, but his does not falter. His eyes burn like embers, like flames starved for air. They burn with the same light I abandoned a century ago, flames that once swallowed everything I loved.
Flames that took my daughter and my wife.
No. Not now. Do not see their faces here. Do not see them in the shadow of this night.
Arthur’s voice breaks the silence. “What now?”
The words fall heavy; his tone stripped of the certainty I’ve always known in him. It is not plea, nor weakness, nor fear. It is grief, rising raw from the gut, torn from somewhere so deep that it feels as though he is bleeding from the inside.
Amber stays silent. Her fury is in her eyes, fixed not on the false god but on Harmon, demanding his command.
“We will stick to the plan.”
The words cut like steel, steady and measured. The exact words I gave Aston not long ago, though mine had faltered the moment the connection severed. Harmon does not falter.
Ravens shift above, their wings rustling over the rooftops, their croaks rolling through the fog as if echoing some unspoken dread. The golden mist thickens, wrapping the night in its suffocating glow.
Harmon leans forward, his balance precarious, body tilting toward the ten-meter fall below. Yet he does not fall. He teeters on the edge of the world, and still, his voice carries steadily.
“The plan continues. Aston will assassinate the King in his chambers. The man will seek solitude with his daughter at night—Aston will strike then. With the new complication, there will be no changes, save one. If he is discovered, the false god’s presence will only hasten the King’s death. But if the yellow-blooded remains near, their senses will betray him, and we will require a distraction. Something to draw their focus elsewhere. Something even a false god cannot ignore.”
His breath grows rough; each word is carried on the weight of his lungs.
“I have one thing,” he continues. “One thing that can compel a false god to move, to abandon everything else, even if he is obligated under a blood oath.”
Slowly, he reaches into his pocket.
And when he draws it forth, my stomach twists, my mind staggering at the sight.
A Death Crawler whistle.
Not brass or silver, not a soldier’s tool or child’s trinket. But a circle, deep violet in hue, its pearl-matte surface shimmering beneath the moonlight.
The Death Crawler. The whistle for a Death Crawler. Even thinking the words tastes like rust in my mouth. We have used it only once—in the great fall of Empire Delora—but its true origin lies far from here, across the continent of the Violet Seas.
The violet-blooded were the first to forge such whistles, using them not against men, but against the false gods themselves. They called upon creatures older than empires—Death Crawlers, colossal worms that once served as shafts to forgotten temples and as living veins toward their holy powder.
However, the whistle bends their nature. Once such a beast hears the sound, it erupts from the depths and devours everything within a radius of a thousand meters in a single bite. Everything. Not even the mightiest high blood of an imperial war can withstand a tooth grazing their naked flesh.
Most who speak of it only know the stories. I, however, have seen their aftermath. I remember the faces of those false gods during the war for Delora—their expressions twisted not with fury, but with fear. Even though they towered above us, even though their blood was purer, they trembled when the sound was blown. And that is what terrifies me most.
I gasp, breath catching, as realization sinks in. Arthur stands apart, silent as ever, but Amber swallows a heartbeat after me. A bead of sweat slides down my temple, falls, and collides with the rooftop tile beneath us. The night wind howls, and for an instant, it feels like an echo of both past and future colliding at once.
“You cannot mean this.” My voice is sharp, yet slowed, weighed by disbelief.
“Who?” Amber asks, her brows drawn so tightly together they resemble molten rock cooling into hardened lava, like the forges of Elitra blacksmiths.
Harmon does not answer at once. He curls his hands into fists, his hunched frame straightening as if pulled by some invisible string. His presence expands with the motion, his bent form turning into something more challenging, sharper, like steel pulled taut.
Never has the golden moon felt so close, so oppressive, so superior and vast above us. The stars are absent, distant candles blown out by some unseen breath. Only the cratered face of the moon looks back at us, hollow-eyed, as though a gaze from above has fixed itself onto our gathering.