The Guardian Killer

Devyn Devourox.

If you could even call what he wielded "powers"—they existed far beyond the reach of ordinary magic. Beyond comprehension. He could erase memories, wholly and utterly. Not just from minds, but from time itself. A full wipe. Victims left behind as husks, not just forgotten by the world—but as if they'd never been.

But that was just the surface of his curse.

His origins? Older than mine. Older than record.

In the shadowed corners of lost fairy realms, I first heard his name spoken in whispers. A scholar once—a servant of balance—turned aberration. He had pledged himself to the ancient, the unspeakable. Sacrificial magic that consumed more than blood.

Magic that devoured guardians.

Yes, those guardians who were destined to protect the natural order of things.

Reduced to mere fuel for his abominable magic.

Their essence was the marrow of his rites—dark rituals that warped air and light, that made forests bend away and skies dull in warning. Their deaths were no accident. They were necessary.

One legend speaks of a mountain range he collapsed just to bury a mountain guardian alive beneath it.

Another says the stars dim when he walks beneath them.

But Devyn, for all his power, is still a fool.

He forgets what nature knows in its bones—

End a guardian, and another will rise.

I remember Juniper. Elis's mother. A forest guardian of the old ways. Fierce. Untamed. She protected nature and its animals. She stood her ground against Devyn—and she fell after a long and fierce battle. That day was one of his blackest triumphs.

But he didn't foresee what came next.

Elis was only a trembling fox cub when she died. Small. Shaking. Half-formed.

But grief... transforms.

Sorrow burned him open. Pain sculpted him into purpose. The boy cracked—and the next Forest Guardian was born. A mantle passed through blood and fire.

Nine tails. Unflinching eyes. A predator in silk skin.

I saw it early—that quiet, deadly rage. That potential. So I moved. I intervened before he hardened. I bound him to me while the wound still bled.

Not because I'm kind. Not because I wanted to be involved. I had to be.

I do not tolerate children being crushed beneath wars they never chose.

Especially not by things like Devyn.

Now, if Devyn is stirring again—if the silence of two decades is finally cracking—then he's hunting.

Devyn will want someone new—raw, unaware, and unguarded.

Then from a distance, I see a faint light flickering. Light Magic.

There must be a new Light Guardian.

How timely. Just before impending doom arrives.

After the last one fell ten years ago, the balance demands it. Only one remains who could tip the scales—against either of us.

So I dug.

And I found a copy of the Dawnbringer family tree.

Victor Dawnbringer—the first of his kind. A beacon etched into prophecy. Devyn spent decades butchering his line.

But not all of it.

One branch survived.

Gerlyn Dawnbringer.

A name whispered like a warning. They say her light can pierce through illusion, shadow—through beings like me.

And yet... I didn't fear her.

Because I don't fear threats.

I shape them.

I've never met her. Not yet. But I will. She will grow—yes. But not in the wild.

She'll grow within my hands, not as my equal.

Neither will I let her be Devyn's prey. Not with what is at stake. I needed her to wield the Baltimorean Emerald to destroy it.

Because I had a head start.

The Elimination Company just opened a new branch at the edge of Sommerville. It's at most a 10-minute drive from its neighboring town, Ashwood.

Fortunately for me, I am always a few steps ahead. Andrea—the Chief of the Elimination Company, that banshee—is bound to me. I already know where all her buttons are, and I will press them as time comes. The agency would make the perfect buffer to manipulate Gerlyn from afar, keeping me safe from her new light magic.

Gerlyn would walk straight into my web.

And never know she was already mine.

She needed to be.

I closed my eyes and let go.

My body dissolved into mist. Fog curled from my lungs and slid through the cracks of my office, seeping into the city like breath through broken lips.

Sommerville faded behind me.

I passed rooftops and silent windows, coasting through the skin of the world until I reached Ashwood—a town that always whispered.

Here, even the dead had opinions.

Lilacs bloomed without seeds. Headstones wept dew that wasn't rain.

And in the stillness, I passed the Elimination Company's newest outpost.

Too clean. Too hopeful.

A brochure fluttered on the breeze—bait on the hook.

March 13th.

The death anniversary of Derrick and Mavis Dawnbringer.

A car crash. Or so the report claimed.

I knew better.

Devyn made it look clean. Elegant. But I recognized the spellwork.

Gerlyn always visited their graves.

I found her there—alone, silent, staring at names etched in stone. Her fingers gripped a page, worn and soft—something sacred.

A letter. A memory.

"I will find out what happened to both of you," she whispered.

It wasn't vengeance she breathed.

It was justice.

The kind that almost earned my respect.

The fog curled at her boots. I let the wind deliver the brochure into her hands.

She caught it without looking.

"Elimination Company? Magical crime?" she murmured.

Her voice was soft. But her grip tightened.

"I have to do something."

And that was enough.

The mist dispersed. The wind died.

But the seed had been planted.

Gerlyn Dawnbringer would walk through the Elimination Company's doors.

She would be surrounded. Structured. Safe.

But always within my reach.

She would believe she was rising.

But I would know where she stood.

She was my centerpiece.

The one who would wield the Baltimorean Emerald.

My little light bug, locked in a box of fog.

And when the time came—

She would shine, yes.

But only where I let her.