The alley, known as the Bone-Splitter to those who feared it, was a damp, narrow cut in the city’s underbelly.
Kael, the special Enforcer of the Veridian city special investigation department, the special unit of the city watch, moved with the quiet efficiency of a man who dealt in blunt facts and sharp steel.
His young colleague, Roric, a mage fresh from the same department, walked half a pace behind, his eyes constantly scanning the oppressive shadows.
The only business operating in that alley, was the Antiquarian’s Pen, a single-story bookshop nestled like a broken tooth between two boarded-up warehouses.
The scent of rain-soaked decay and old paper was overpowering.
Kael kicked the door open without ceremony.
A small, bronze bell attached to the frame gave a pathetic, echoing chime.
Inside, the world was composed entirely of dust and ink.
The air was thick, and the shelves, impossibly deep, created dark, claustrophobic canyons.
At a desk heaped with precarious piles of scrolls and tomes, sat a man so old his spine seemed to have collapsed inward, leaving him a brittle, hunched figure of frayed cloth and papery skin.
He didn’t look up, merely scratched at an indecipherable script with a quill.
"City Watch, old man," Kael announced, his voice carrying the cold weight of the Guild. "We’re here about the missing children that have vanished, last seen coming inside this alley."
The man’s hand froze. He raised his head slowly, his face a map of liver spots, his eyes weak and milky.
"Missing? I sell knowledge, good sirs. I don’t follow the squabbles of street folk."
Kael leaned heavily on the counter, making the wood creak. "They vanished right outside your door, and you’re the only living thing down this row. Tell me what you saw. Dates, faces, shadows—anything unusual."
While Kael pressed, Roric moved away, ostensibly examining a shelf of leather-bound poetry.
He positioned himself where he could see both the hunched man and the perimeter of the room.
Without shifting his posture or moving his lips, he began the silent internal work of the Revelation Spell.
Roric saw the anomalies, a powerful violet and invisible layer surrounding the whole shop, laid over the walls, and faint, glowing silver bands, residual magical constraint, tightly wrapped around the man’s throat and wrists.
The old man’s eyes glinted. He knew the young Enforcer has seen something.
"Nothing," the old man rasped, his voice tight, betraying the magical constriction Roric now perceived.
"I... I saw nothing, Enforcer. Only the coming of the night and the turning of pages."
"I’m an old man. My eyes have gone bad, I can’t even see your faces properly." The old man said with a sigh, his tone mixed with sadness and helplessness.
Roric moved swiftly, a sudden, precise shift that brought him flush against Kael’s side.
He leaned in, his mouth close to Kael’s ear, letting the creak of the floorboards mask his voice. "Kael," he breathed, the whisper a rush of urgent air.
"He’s bound. Magical constraint, silver bands on his throat. He can’t speak. And there is a violet layer surrounding the whole space, he is definitely hiding something."
Kael’s broad shoulders tightened instantly. His casual posture vanished, and his eyes, which had been fixed on the old man in bored skepticism, snapped wide with lethal realization.
His gaze sharpened, focusing on the proprietor with the menace of a drawn blade, no longer seeing a senile shopkeeper, but the helpless key to a hidden door.
The old man, already trembling, seemed to physically shrink under this new, knowing scrutiny.
The silver constraint around his throat visibly pulsed.
With a sudden, desperate, rattling cough, he pressed a trembling, liver-spotted hand hard against the desk, accidentally upsetting his pot of ink.
As the black liquid spread across the brittle paper, the old man forced out one final, raw word, pushing past the magical barrier with a last burst of will:
"Shit.."
The word was a trigger. The man’s decrepit posture exploded into violent action.
His reflexes, instantly shed off eighty years, were terrifyingly sharp.
Two long, barbed blades, black as obsidian and slick with ichor, pierced outward from the flesh of his palms, tearing through skin and sleeve.
He didn’t wait. With a high, maniacal shriek, he whipped his arms forward, projecting the two blades at Kael and Roric.
"DOWN!" Kael roared, shunting Roric sideways with a powerful hip-check.
The blades sliced through the air where their heads had been, burying themselves deep into the shelving behind them, causing a cascade of ancient tomes.
The old man leapt over the counter with impossible agility, his limbs working like pistons.
He slammed the door open and bolted into the narrow, winding alleys of the Bone-Splitter.
"He’s fast!" Roric yelled, scrambling after Kael, who was already running, his heavy leather coat flapping behind him.
The chase was a brutal sprint through darkness and mud.
The old man knew the labyrinthine alleys perfectly, vaulting over refuse piles and cutting sharp corners.
Kael and Roric stayed tight on his heels, their footfalls echoing against the slick brick walls.
The chase ended abruptly as the old man slammed into a high, moss-covered stone wall, a true dead end.
Trapped, the old man turned, its breath coming in wet, frantic gasps.
"It’s over! You have nowhere to run." Kael commanded, drawing his massive, two-handed sword.
The steel was instantly swallowed by a flicker of pale, humming amber light—Kael’s battle aura, an enchantment that lent immense weight and sharpness to his strikes.
"Who are you? Who do you work for? Who is you master!?" Kael yelled out, furious.
Roric arrived right after, gasping for breath. But he immediately collected himself, staring at the old man in caution.
Mana flowed out of him, ready for the release of a spell anytime.
The old man’s skin began to wriggle, distorting like melting wax.
The mottled, liver-spotted facade dissolved, pulling taut and turning a wet, arterial crimson red.
His eyes vanished, replaced by vertical, ruby slits set in deeply sunken sockets.
His jaw unhinged, twisting into a long, angular maw from which impossibly sharp, needle-like teeth jutted out, covering half its face.
It was a twisted echo of a demon, born of binding magic and desperation.
It shrieked, a sound that was pure malice and pain, and launched itself at them, claws extended.
Kael held the line, blocking the first wild swipe with a jarring clang.
The creature was insanely strong, its crimson claws leaving deep gouges in the alley stone.
Roric backed up, chanting a protective barrier, the light of his defensive magic briefly illuminating the monster.
But the creature pressed its attack, aiming solely for Kael’s throat.
Kael saw his opportunity in the beast’s manic focus.
He ducked under a lunge, bringing the heavy, aurs-clad sword around in a low, terrifying arc.
The blade met the creature’s waist with a sound like shattering ceramic, cleaving the monster clean in two.
The demonic form immediately went limp, dissolving not into blood, but into a thick, black, oily smoke that was quickly absorbed by the alley floor, leaving behind only the husk of the brittle, broken clothes.
Silence rushed back into the Bone-Splitter, punctuated only by the ragged breathing of the two Enforcers.
Kael stood over the slick, dark residue, breathing hard, the amber aura of his blade slowly dissolving.
"Roric. Now," he commanded, gesturing with his sword.
"That thing wasn’t the master; it was the guard dog. A bound thrall, just like the old man hinted. Trace the binding. Find the trail back to the one who put those chains on him."
Roric, shaken but regaining his focus, nodded once. He stepped carefully over the remnants of the fight.
He didn’t need to touch the residue; the magic was still sizzling in the air. He closed his eyes and began to weave a complicated web of seeking energy.
The air around Roric grew cold and still. His eyes snapped open, no longer the clear blue of a young man, but two pure discs of pulsating gold.
They moved with frightening speed, darting back and forth, tracing an invisible, phantom wire, a thread of silver residue tied to the binding spells, high above the dark, twisting brick of the alley.
Kael watched, resting the tip of his heavy sword on the cobblestones.
The sheer intensity of the trace was unnerving.
Roric was following a trail that was meant to be invisible, leading to an impossible source.
After a few seconds that stretched into an eternity, the golden light in Roric’s eyes winked out, replaced instantly by his normal, worried blue.
His head stopped its frantic tracking motion. He slowly turned toward Kael, his expression heavy and grim, a look Kael hadn’t seen on the young mage before.
"Well? Talk, boy," Kael pressed, impatience overriding his exhaustion.
"Where does the leash lead? The Docks? The Undercity?"
Roric swallowed hard, the magnitude of the discovery clearly weighing him down.
He spoke the name of the most sacred, powerful institution in the city, the source of all recognized magic and authority.
"It leads to the Veridian Academy."