City of Knives
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Elaren was built to impress.
White towers rose like frozen fire. Banners snapped in a wind that smelled of gold and judgment. The outer walls shimmered with embedded glyphs—wards layered over centuries, each newer than the last, trying to patch over the blood that had soaked this city again and again.
But cities, like people, remembered.
And Elaren remembered war.
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They entered through the East Gate under false names.
Liora handled the passage papers. Kael smuggled in their weapons piece by piece. Lyra kept her head down, hood drawn. And Riven… simply watched.
He'd been here once.
As a child.
Before the fire.
Before Seris.
Before everything.
---
Now, the city pulsed with quiet tension.
The nobles smiled too easily.
The guards watched too long.
Every rooftop was a question. Every alley whispered with wrongness.
"This place smells wrong," Kael muttered, scanning a row of nobleman estates.
"It smells watched," Lyra corrected.
Liora sighed. "Welcome to the capital. Where politics are magic and poison is cheaper than truth."
---
Their contact lived in the Hollow Quarter—a poorer district beneath the city's shadow towers.
An old monk named Therrin. Once a royal archivist.
Now a ghost among the books he couldn't forget.
They found him beneath a collapsed bell tower, where ivy strangled forgotten stone.
He didn't rise when they entered.
Didn't speak right away.
Just stared at Riven.
Then said, "Your eyes are his."
---
Riven didn't ask who.
He knew.
"Tell me about the Fourth Seal."
Therrin turned slowly, revealing a faded map inked with blood and ash. He pointed to a mark deep beneath the palace.
"The Fourth is buried under the throne itself. Locked by five ancestral glyphs… and one living sacrifice."
Lyra's voice shook. "A what?"
Therrin didn't flinch. "It feeds on lineage. One of royal blood must offer pain willingly… or the Seal does not break."
Kael turned. "You're saying Riven has to bleed for this?"
"No," Therrin said.
> "He has to remember everything."
---
Riven's hands clenched.
Visions rose—Seris's eyes. His mother's scream. The flames in Valenhold.
He had already remembered too much.
But if this was the price…
He'd pay it.
---
That night, they rented rooms above a smithy near the western market. It smelled of steel and coals, but no one complained.
Lyra sat beside Riven on the windowsill.
Below them, the city glowed.
And behind that glow… shadows crept.
"They're here," she whispered.
He nodded. "The Eclipse?"
"No. The ones who smile in court. Who drink with kings but answer to nothing."
"Assassins?"
"Worse," she said. "Patriots."
---
Before dawn, the knock came.
Kael opened the door blade-first—but the girl on the other side didn't flinch.
She was maybe fifteen. Street-dirt on her cheeks. Eyes too old for her face.
"I was told to find the boy with ghostfire eyes."
Riven stepped forward.
The girl bowed once.
"My name is Sera. I have a message for you."
"From who?"
She hesitated.
Then said a name none of them expected.
> "From your sister."
---
Everything stopped.
Riven's breath caught.
"Lyssa is dead."
Sera shook her head. "She's not."
Liora blinked. "You have a sister?"
"I had a sister," Riven said, voice hard.
Sera stepped back. "She said you'd say that. She told me to tell you… Don't trust the bell. The Eclipse walks with red hands now."
---
Then she dropped something into Riven's palm.
A pendant.
Small.
Burned at the edge.
And unmistakable.
It was his mother's.
The one she gave to Lyssa the night of the fire.
---
Sera vanished into the alleys before they could ask more.
Riven stared at the pendant for a long time.
Kael asked softly, "If your sister's alive… what does that change?"
"Everything."
---
Far beneath the city, behind seven locked gates and walls that bled shadow, Seris stood before the Fourth Seal's chamber.
Six Eclipse acolytes surrounded her, chanting with hollow voices.
She placed a new sigil on the ground—formed from Riven's blood, stolen during the Warden trial.
The door rumbled.
She smiled.
> "He's close now."
> "The pain will guide him home."
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