The Hollow Masquerade

The dead should stay dead.



Kael Arvid repeated the words like a prayer as he adjusted the raven mask over his scarred face. The carved beak pressed cold against the bridge of his nose, the eyeholes narrowing his vision to slits of flickering torchlight. Beneath him, the ballroom of House Dain shimmered—a grotesque painting of gold and rot. Nobles laughed behind ivory masks, their gloved hands clutching goblets of wine dark as clotting blood. The air reeked of clove and something fouler beneath, like meat left too long in the sun.



He hadn't come for wine.



The dagger at his belt was hungry. It had waited seven years for this night. Seven years since House Dain's soldiers kicked in the door of his family's cottage. Seven years since he'd watched from the treeline as the flames turned his sister's screams to smoke. Seven years of imagining this moment—the moment he'd slide steel between Lord Dain's ribs and whisper his family's names as the light