Chapter 751
At almost the same moment, two more cloaked figures appeared at either side of the opening as if the dark had spat them out.
Neither made any obvious threatening move, but both stood too still to be harmless. One was broad-shouldered, posture heavy and grounded. The other was thinner, one hand hidden beneath the folds of their cloak in a way that suggested a weapon already prepared.
The broader one spoke first.
“What seeks the coal beneath a moonless crown?”
The words came flat and practiced, too strange to be casual, too polished to be improvised. The newcomer did not hesitate.
“An ember with teeth,” he answered, “and a purse that still breathes.”
The thinner guard tilted his head slightly.
“For whose smoke?”
The cloaked figure shifted the weight on his shoulder and replied in the same coded cadence.
“For the name that refuses to cool.”
A stretch of silence followed. Then the broad guard asked the final question, voice lower now.
“And what does the fire buy?”
The answer came at once.
“A bounty.”
The darkness around the grove seemed to settle again after that, but the tension in the air changed. Not gone. Never gone. Just redirected. The two guards exchanged a brief glance beneath their hoods. Then the thinner one stepped aside first.
“Go below,” he said.
The newcomer dipped his head once and advanced toward the underground entrance, disappearing into the earth while the last traces of false darkness curled back into place behind him.
The cloaked figure stepped past the entrance and descended into the path below without slowing.
The underground passage was long, wide enough in some places for three men to walk abreast, and dark in the way only built places beneath the earth could be. Not natural darkness. Controlled darkness. The kind arranged on purpose. Sparse lamps burned behind iron cages fixed into the stone at irregular intervals, leaving just enough light to keep people from tripping while ensuring nobody ever saw too much too clearly. The air smelled of damp rock, old smoke, leather, and the faint metallic scent that clung to places where violence was treated as business.
His boots echoed softly as he crossed the tunnel.
The path eventually widened, then opened into a broad underground chamber carved out with more money and labor than anyone would have admitted on the surface. Thick pillars supported the ceiling. Tables were scattered across the space in uneven rows. Barrels lined one wall. A counter stood farther back under dim lanternlight. Several side passages disappeared deeper into the complex like veins.
There were people everywhere. Or at least enough to give that impression.
Cloaked figures sat at the tables in small groups or alone, silent and watchful. Some had cups in hand. Some appeared relaxed. None of them truly were. Their attention slid toward the newcomer one by one, not dramatic, not hurried, but sharp. Measuring. Weighing. Deciding whether he mattered.
No one moved to stop him. No one greeted him either. That kind of place didn’t waste words until words became necessary.
The cloaked figure kept walking until he reached one of the central tables. Then, with deliberate calm, he lowered the thing from his shoulder and placed it on the wood with a dull, heavy sound.
The shape under the cloak was unmistakably a body now. That changed the room. Not much. Just enough.
A few figures straightened slightly. A few others leaned back to get a better angle. One man near the left side of the chamber lowered his drink without taking his eyes off the table.
After a moment, another cloaked figure stepped forward from behind the counter area.
This one moved with the slow confidence of someone used to being obeyed inside that space. He approached the table without a word, glancing once at the newcomer before reaching out for the covering cloth. His fingers caught the edge of the cloak and pulled it back.
Then he flinched. Only slightly, but enough for everyone nearby to notice. Because lying there was Ludger. Or what looked like Ludger.
His skin was pale in a way that made him seem almost waxen, as if the blood had been drained from his body. Dark stains marked the clothes and the cloth beneath him, and the scent of blood coming off him was strong enough to cut through the stale underground air. His face was unmistakable even beneath the pallor. Young. Sharp-boned. Familiar to far too many people who had heard his description attached to trouble.
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The man staring down at him muttered before he seemed able to stop himself.
“Ludger…”
His voice tightened.
“Rebellious Duelist.”
That name hit the chamber like a pebble thrown into still water. Heads turned all across the room.
Several people who had only been half-looking now leaned or stood enough to see the body from a distance. A few exchanged low murmurs. Others just stared.
In the underworld, Ludger had once been known as the Young Duelist, a dangerous little title born from stories of a freakishly capable boy cutting through people who should have been far beyond him. But names changed as reputations grew stranger. And after the rumors of his openly antagonistic relationship with the Regent began spreading through the darker corners of the capital, the nickname had shifted.
Not just a young prodigy anymore. Not just a reckless fighter. The Rebellious Duelist. A boy apparently talented enough, and insane enough, to challenge powers that sensible men circled around.
Now that same figure lay silent on a table in front of them, pale as a corpse and soaked in the smell of blood. For the first time since the cloaked newcomer had entered, the chamber lost part of its stillness.
Not into panic. Into attention. Real attention. Hroth didn’t so much as glance at the others.
“I want my money,” he said.
The man standing over the table looked up from Ludger’s pale face, his eyes narrowing beneath the hood.
“That depends,” he said. “How did you kill him?”
Hroth’s expression flattened.
“That’s none of your business.”
The answer clearly didn’t satisfy the man. His gaze moved back to Ludger’s body, then down toward the blood staining the cloth. Slowly, cautiously, he reached out as if intending to check for a pulse himself.
Then a laugh echoed across the chamber. It wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be.
It was the kind of laugh that carried wrong, thin, sharp, almost amused, but with something broken underneath it, like a crack running through heated glass. The sound slid through the room and made several of the cloaked figures go a little stiller than before.
Hroth clicked his tongue the moment he heard it.
Of course.
A figure stepped forward from one of the side tables, drawing eyes without even trying. He was in his early forties, broad-shouldered but lean in the wiry way of a man who spent more time burning others than lifting steel. A handful of ruby rings gleamed on his fingers whenever the lanternlight caught them, little flashes of blood-red set against the dark. In one hand he carried a wand the color of fresh embers, polished red wood veined with darker lines as if heat had seeped into it years ago and never really left.
Hans.
The mad pyromancer. Even before he spoke, there was something wrong about the way he moved. Too relaxed. Too entertained. Like the sight of a bloodied body on a table was not merely useful, but fun. He stopped near enough to inspect Ludger without needing to touch him, then smiled.
“Well,” he said, voice smooth and bright in a way that only made it worse, “this is a surprising kill, Hroth.”
His eyes shifted upward.
“Even more so when you lost to the brat a year ago.”
That made a few low murmurs stir in the room. Hroth moved his hood back just enough for his glare to show properly. Hans grinned wider at that. Then the pyromancer inhaled once through his nose and tilted his head, studying Hroth the way a butcher might study a cut of meat before deciding where to carve.
“You don’t smell like a fight,” Hans said.
His ruby rings clicked softly against the red wand as his fingers adjusted around it. Then his grin sharpened.
“Did you poison the brat?”
He gave a soft, delighted chuckle.
“You are a lot nastier than I gave you credit for.”
Hroth’s stare stayed hard and cold, but inside, every instinct was already tightening. Because Hans was exactly the sort of man Torvares had described. Not merely dangerous. Not merely cruel.
The kind of madman who treated murder like a curiosity and violence like a private joke. And now he was close enough to touch Ludger’s body.
Hans let out another soft laugh and looked down at Ludger’s pale face with open disappointment.
“You know,” he said, “I’d been waiting for a chance to fight the brat myself.”
He twirled the red wand once between his fingers, the ruby rings on his hand glinting in the low light.
“I was even considering heading north for the bounty.” His grin widened. “But the cold doesn’t agree with me for some reason.”
He paused there and glanced around the chamber as if expecting the room to reward him. Silence. A few men shifted. One woman near the wall looked away. Nobody laughed. Hans shrugged with exaggerated patience.
“It seems my humor is too advanced for the cutthroats of the underworld.”
That earned him nothing but more silence. Hroth let the quiet linger for a few moments before speaking. Hroth’s expression remained flat.
“After he asked for help investigating the guild, I didn’t expect him to make progress this fast.” He tilted his head slightly. “He found some clues about incidents from decades ago.”
Hans’s smile thinned. Hroth kept going.
“Clues that led him to you.”
For the first time since approaching the table, Hans frowned.
“He did that?”
There was no laughter in his voice now. Just sharp curiosity. Then his mouth curled again, though not quite as broadly as before.
“He was smarter than I expected.”
Hroth didn’t move. Hans looked down at Ludger once more, almost thoughtfully now, and then spoke in a tone so casual it made the words far worse.
“It does make me wonder,” he said, “how he figured out that I was hired to kill the parents and sister of his father when he was just a brat.”
The effect on the room was immediate. The air changed. Not metaphorically. Not only.
It was as if something invisible had tightened all at once, drawing the chamber inward around that sentence. Conversations died before they could begin. Even the men who understood only half of what had just been said felt the shift. A cold shiver ran down spines all across the room, primal and instinctive, as though some part of the underground hall had suddenly realized it was sharing space with a truth that should never have been spoken aloud.
No one laughed now. No one moved. Because Hans had just said it too easily. Too openly. Like burning a family alive was no more meaningful than discussing an old contract over drinks.
And on the table in front of him, the dead-looking body of Ludger lay perfectly still, blood-scented and pale, while every killer in the room stared at the pyromancer who had just confessed to slaughter spanning generations.