Chapter 204: Shadows at the Gate III
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The servants bowed again, frantic. "Yes, my lord."
Dickoff’s eyes remained cold. Inside them, anger did not flare. It condensed.
Because Dickoff Iron did not rage like a boy. He planned like an experienced person.
Across the city, under different skies of intention, three half-god vampires walked toward the same stage.
And a cold Iron father prepared to sit in the audience.
Tomorrow’s auction was not just business. Tomorrow was a meeting point. A gathering of predators who had not yet recognized each other fully.
And somewhere under Dawn House’s roof, Sekhmet was still building his trap — unaware that the hunters could not sense him directly, but could already smell the footsteps of his creation.
Meanwhile... The tallest inn in Slik City was not truly the tallest. It was simply the one that mattered.
From the street it looked like a luxury hotel built for merchants who liked pretending they were nobles. Ten floors of polished stone and dark glass windows. Gold trim that caught sunlight. Guards at the entrance wearing armor that looked decorative until you noticed the runes stitched into every seam. Inside, the air smelled of warm tea, expensive wood, and quiet danger.
Because real power did not stay in palaces. It stayed where information passed through. It stayed where people came and went. It stayed where no one questioned why a stranger paid for the top floor and never entertained guests.
At the highest room, behind a balcony curtain that never fully opened, a woman stood with one hand resting lightly on the rail.
The wind moved her hair gently.
She did not look like someone who belonged in Slik’s lower domain. She looked like a mistake.
The kind of mistake that happened when gods grew bored and stepped into mortal cities without disguising their weight properly.
Her face was youthful, beautiful in a controlled way, as if time itself had decided not to touch her skin without permission. Her eyes were calm, but not soft. Calm like a lake that hid depth. A lake where things drowned quietly.
’Seraphiel’
That was the name she owns. A name that carried authority even before anyone knew it belonged to a god.
She had been watching Slik since Sekhmet returned.
Not openly.
Not like a guardian standing in front of a child’s door. From a distance. From above.
From the shadows of politics where favors became chains.
She had promised herself she would not interfere unless the boy’s life truly bent toward danger.
She had been keeping that promise. Until this morning. Seraphiel’s gaze narrowed slightly. She felt it. Not with sight.
With something deeper.
A ripple in the air that carried blood resonance.
Three presences crossed into the city like knives hidden under silk.
Half-gods. And not just half-gods. Vampires.
She knew instantly. Because she has another hidden identity which makes her deal with them often.
It was not the smell of blood alone. Many beings carried blood. Many fed. Many are cultivated through consumption.
This was different.
This was blood that had been changed. Blood that remembered an ancient source. Blood that carried the wrong kind of hunger.
Seraphiel’s fingers tightened faintly on the balcony rail.
"Three true vampire half-gods," she thought.
That was not common. That was a message. It was a hunting party.
Her mind moved quickly, faster than the wind.
"Why would three half-god vampires come to Slik City now?"
Why, of all places, would they step into the lower domain city on the eve of a Dawn House auction.
Her gaze drifted toward the east district where the Dawn shop and auction building stood behind walls and lanterns.
"Did they come for Dawn House?"
The thought settled coldly. It made too much sense. Slik was a hub. Auctions attracted attention. Attention attracts predators.
And Dawn House was rising again publicly. A rising house always attracted teeth.
Seraphiel exhaled slowly. Then her mind pulled in the other thread.
’Eyra Dawn.’ (Sekhmet’s father.)
The favor. The old promise.
The old debt she had never fully repaid.
"Did he send them," she wondered.
Not Eyra himself. Eyra was not that kind of man. He did not play with cursed blood powers like tools.
But others existed.
Others who remembered old names. Others who had once tried to steal what belonged to Dawn House. Others who would use a vampire hunter group to destabilize a region.
Her eyes narrowed further.
"Did Eyra know about them? Did he know something was coming, and that is why he asked me to watch his son."
That thought made her stomach tighten slightly, an emotion so rare for her that she noticed it immediately.
Because Seraphiel did not like being used as a piece on someone else’s board.
She did favors.
But she did not like discovering hidden strings after the fact.
She turned away from the balcony and walked back into her room.
The room was too luxurious for a city like this. A wide bed that no one slept in. A long couch she never sat on. A polished table that had not tasted food. Curtains that hung perfectly because no one touched them.
The only sign of life was a small arrangement of flowers in a glass vase by the window.
A servant had brought them without asking questions.
Seraphiel stared at them for a moment. Then she sat slowly in the chair beside the table. Her fingers touched the edge of the wood, and for a heartbeat the room felt old.
Not because of dust. Because memory had entered.
"Whatever the reason," she thought, "tomorrow is a big day for Dawn House."
She had not met Sekhmet properly.
She had seen him from afar. She had watched him move through the gate. She had felt his presence with the strange calm of a boy who had survived too much too early.
But she had not spoken to him.
She had not looked into his eyes close enough to confirm whether he carried Eyra’s reflection.
Tomorrow, she will go to the auction. Not only as an invisible guardian. As a witness.
As someone who owed a debt to a man who should have been her husband. That thought stirred the past like a hand stirring water.
Seraphiel closed her eyes. And the memory came. It was a field. Not in Slik. Not in the lower domain.
A field from long ago, when she and Eyra were young enough to believe promises were stronger than politics.
The grass had been soft.
The sky had been wide.
Flowers had filled the field in scattered colors — white and gold and pale purple, trembling gently as the wind passed like a whisper.
Eyra had been lying with his head on her lap.
His hair had been messy, not styled like a noble, not weighed down by responsibility yet. His eyes had been half closed, relaxed in a way he rarely allowed anyone to see.
Seraphiel had been younger too. Not younger in the face. She still looks young. Younger in heart.
She remembered her hand brushing through Eyra’s hair slowly, fingers moving with lazy affection.
Eyra looked up at her and smiled. Not a merchant’s smile. Not a strategic smile. A real one.
"We will stay together," Eyra had said.
Seraphiel had laughed softly.
"You say that like the world won’t allow it," she had replied.
Eyra’s gaze had sharpened, stubborn even then.
"I do not care what the world allows," he had said. "I will make my own world if I have to."
Seraphiel had looked down at him and felt something warm in her chest that she had mistaken for certainty.
She had lowered her face slightly and touched his forehead with her lips like sealing a vow.
Then she spoke the words too.
"I will stay," she had promised.
Eyra had closed his eyes and exhaled, content, like the promise itself was a shelter.
They stayed in that field until the sunlight shifted and the air cooled. They had talked about stupid things and important things without separating them, because youth made everything feel possible.
Then the other woman appeared. Not in the field. In their lives. A figure that moved like a knife through fate. And everything had changed.
Seraphiel’s eyes opened again. The luxurious inn room returned. The flowers sat in the vase, too bright, too alive. Her fingers tightened slightly.
She stared at the wall as if she could see the past through stone.
"It is all in the past," she murmured aloud.
The words felt like a command she had repeated for years. The words felt less convincing than they used to.
She stood up. She walked back to the balcony. Below, the city continued breathing in its usual dirty rhythm.
Somewhere out there, three half-god vampires were moving closer to Dawn House, even if they did not know it yet.
Somewhere out there, Iron House was sharpening its pride into violence.
Somewhere out there, a boy named Sekhmet Dawn was preparing an auction that would become a battlefield.
And Seraphiel, standing above the city like a quiet storm, finally admitted something she rarely allowed herself to admit.
She was not here just for a favor anymore. She was here because she wanted to see Eyra’s son with her own eyes.
She was here because tomorrow might force her to choose between staying a shadow and stepping into the light.
After her work here was done, she would leave. She would go meet Eyra again in that place.
Not the flower field. That time was gone. But somewhere else. Somewhere where old lovers could speak without the world listening.
She exhaled slowly. Then she whispered, softer this time.
"Just one more day."
And the wind carried her words away as if the city itself did not want to hear them.
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