Chapter 12: What was left behind

The ruined chapel loomed like a half-swallowed tooth in the jawbone of the Blackthorn Slums, crooked and forgotten, yet somehow defiant in its silence. The last remnants of what once might've been a bell tower canted to the side like a man mid-collapse. Ivy choked its spine, and the stained glass was shattered completely, turning the morning's grey into kaleidoscopic ruin.

Lucian moved slowly.

There was something off about the way the chapel sat in the dirt, like it had sunken deeper over time, as if the weight of secrets within it had pulled it closer to the grave.

His boots crunched through broken glass and old bones. The front doors hung ajar, and inside, the air was heavier. It was not rot, but the scent of charred parchment, metallic blood, and old spell residue.

Something had happened here.

And it had not gone quietly.

Lucian's eyes swept across the interior, pews turned to splinters, hymnals shredded and left to bleed ink across the floor. The altar at the far end was cracked straight through the center, forming a jagged line like a blade had cleaved it from top to base.

And there he was, beside it.

A figure, slumped.

Dried blood pooled beneath him in a perfect sunburst. Lucian approached cautiously, drawing Mourne carefully. It glowed faintly.

There was no heartbeat. No breath. No heat.

He knelt, fingers brushing the ragged edge of the man's coat. Torn near the shoulder. Blood caked around his neck.

The man's face was contorted in a half-snarl, half-plea. Lucian knew him, from the fragments of his Remnant Sight. Even with the couple of days he had been dead, his hollow skin, turning into something else with decay.

Darius Vale.

He wasn't holding anything now, but his hands had once gripped something tightly. They were stiff, fingers curled like he had tried to protect whatever it was with his last breath.

Lucian closed the man's eyes. Not out of reverence, but so he could think clearly. Something scratched at the back of his skull. Hegaze fell on the space beyond the altar, the base stone was disturbed, a tile crooked just slightly.

Lucian pried it open, and it came undone.

Inside was a bundle of paper, hastily wrapped in torn cloth, edges curled from blood and heat. He took it gently and unwrapped it piece by piece.

Most of it was coded language, glyph diagrams, and scribbled coordinates. But one page stood out. Drawn in dark ink, surrounded by blood-smudged runes, was a symbol. A broken crown bisected by a hollow circle.

Lucian's jaw tightened.

He had seen it before, in old Dominion archives, always redacted. Always scratched out.

The mark of the Greymish King.

And beneath the sigil, in Darius's handwriting: "She must be hidden from the Eye. She remembers more than she should."

Lucian's eyes narrowed.

She?

He stood. Scanned the room.

That kind of desperation didn't come from protecting a relic. It came from guarding something else. And then, just at the edge of hearing, he felt it.

It was not a sound, no voice but a presence. Like the world held its breath. Something moved in the shadows of the far wall. It was small. Careful.

Lucian turned, dagger half-lifted and suddenly he paused. Still. The breath caught in his throat.

There, crouched in the dark, half-hidden behind the remains of a broken confession booth, was a child.

A girl.

No more than ten or eleven.

White hair tangled and clinging to her face. The coat was too large for her frame. Eyes wide, and silver. Not pale, not blue. Silver, like moonlight caught in still water.

Lucian lowered Mourne just slightly. This wasn't what he came for. The girl stared back. And the world pulsed, just once, like a heartbeat echoing backwards.

A ripple in reality.

His Remnant Sight flared without him calling it. Not vision. Not memory. But something old remembering its shape. No… not a relic. Not a witness. A key, turning on its own.

She didn't speak. She didn't even cry. She simply watched. In her eyes, there was no fear, only emptiness.

Half-wrapped in shadow, her knees pulled up to her chest and her coat swallowing her arms, she sat like a statue no god had claimed. Her eyes reflected no fear, only observation. She looked at Lucian like one might study a clock, ticking, mechanical, inevitable.

Lucian lowered Mourne fully. Now if the situation was different, that would have been his first mistake.

He had learned long ago never to drop his guard. Not for old men, not for orphans, not for royalty. Children had knives just like anyone else, they were only better at hiding them, with their innocence.

But still…

His instincts screamed. Not with fear, no, but with something like fate.

For a long moment, the chapel remained silent except for the dust shifting in the air, disturbed only by his own breath. A fractured beam of grey light fell across the floor, touching Darius Vale's blood and trailing toward her like a thread.

Lucian didn't move closer. Instead, he asked, quietly and very carefully, "What's your name?"

The child blinked, as if she didn't expect him to ask.

Then, after a pause, "...I don't know if I should tell you."

Lucian blinked too. That wasn't fear. That was caution. As if she'd been warned.

By Darius?

By something else?

He crouched, keeping a few paces between them, and tried to curve his lips into a forced smile. "Were you with him?" he asked, gesturing faintly toward the altar and the corpse behind it.

She nodded once. 

"Why?"

She shrugged. "I don't know...he asked me to hide."

Lucian exhaled through his nose. The pieces began to form, but nothing clicked into place. Not yet. What was Darius doing? 

She was too calm. Too knowing. Lucian tried to get closer, extending his foot. And then the world trembled.

Just slightly.

A flicker passed across the corner of Lucian's vision, the air itself stuttering like a failed memory. Dust froze mid-fall. The sound of the wind outside stopped.

Her eyes didn't change, but Lucian felt something uncoil around her, like a wire snapping free from an anchor point deep in time.

And then, just as it came, it was gone.

The chapel breathed again. Dust fell. Light returned. Lucian became too careful. That was power. But she didn't use it. She didn't seem to even know it was hers.

His first instinct was to turn around. To leave. This wasn't part of the contract. The Umbral Blade hadn't said anything about a child. And then he remembered, Just kill or bring back what he's guarding.

"Shit." 

Lucian stared at her for a long time. Mourne didn't react. It was as if the dagger, born for death, had no opinion on this child. And that meant something.

"You're here to kill me."

Lucian didn't flinch.

He had been in this world long enough to know that children sometimes saw things others couldn't. That some people were born knowing how their stories would end.

Still, it wasn't a question. It wasn't even fear. It was a statement.

Lucian let the silence sit for a moment, then exhaled. "Who told you that?"

She didn't answer. She just tilted her head slightly, studying him.

"Are you?"

Lucian held her gaze. Silver. Unblinking. Waiting. He should say yes. That was what the Dominion had sent him for. But the words didn't come.

Lucian had never hesitated before. The people he hunted were criminals, fugitives, threats. This was different. This wasn't a job. It was a test. Or at least he felt it to be one.

The child's small fingers curled around the edge of her coat, waiting. Lucian didn't answer.

She looked down at her hands. "He said they would come for me. That if I wasn't hidden right, the men in black masks would come."

Lucian said nothing.

"I don't want them to come."

Her voice wavered then, only barely. But it was enough.

Lucian remembered the mark on the page. The sigil of the Greymish King. The warning Darius left scrawled in a dying hand. "She remembers more than she should."

Darius had brought her here, beyond the shroud. Where the Dominion's hands reached everywhere, he knew they would have difficulty following him here. Lucian did not know it yet, who the child was or why was Darius keeping her. But he could guess, it was either to protect her or use her for his agenda.

Lucian stood.

She flinched, just slightly.

He extended his hand.

Lucian inhaled deeply, adjusting his stance, rolling his shoulders slightly. This changed things. Because if the Dominion wanted him to erase her? That meant they were afraid of her. And Lucian had learned long ago, when the powerful feared something, it was worth understanding.

"Not yet," he said. "I will not kill you."

She didn't smile. But something in her eased. She stared at his hand for a long moment. Then slowly, like a deer deciding not to bolt, she unfolded her legs and rose. Her coat brushed the floor like old paper. Her feet were bare.

She did not take his hand but was willing to follow him. He let out a breath that tasted like iron and regret.

"Do you know how to walk in silence?" he asked.

She nodded.

Lucian didn't ask how she knew that. Or where she'd learned. Or what it meant that she had been taught survival, not lullabies.

He simply nodded once and turned.

As they stepped into the ruined doorway of the chapel, Lucian gave the altar one last glance. "You bought her a little more time," he murmured to the corpse. "Now I'll see if that was worth anything."

The broken chapel let out a low groan behind them, like it mourned its last secret being taken.

Outside, the air had changed again, thicker, slower. Even the sky above the slums looked unsure of its place.

They didn't speak as they moved through the streets. Lucian's boots made no sound. Her bare feet padded along behind, the long sleeves of her coat dragging slightly against the ash-caked stone.

A man watched from under a broken arch, the whites of his eyes glowing slightly from illness or magic residue. He didn't speak either. He just watched them pass.

The world seemed to lean away from them. Like it already understood something was shifting.

Lucian tapped the satchel at his hip, the bundle of Darius's bloodied pages still inside. He would study them later. He needed Raine.

He needed clean water. Fire. Time.

The child stumbled once on a piece of rubble. She didn't make a sound. Just righted herself and kept moving.

Lucian didn't offer a hand this time. But he glanced at her — a flick of his eyes. She caught it.

And smiled. It was small. Crooked. But it was real.

He pace quickened as she tried to catch up to Lucian. And whe she did...

"Selene." Taking his hand, she said.

"What?" Lucian looked down at her.

"That is what they called me."

Unbeknowest to him, his lips curled up in a smile.