Chapter 6
XAVIAN
The warehouse air hung thick with the scent of rust and decay, a familiar rot that had seep delved into every corner of this forsaken place over the years.
I had slipped out before dawn, after securing her in the room, carving fresh wards into the doorframe as she slept.
The symbols were simple enough, drawn from the fading remnants of my old knowledge, designed to hold back anyone without the power or understanding to counter them.
They would repel force with force, a barrier invisible to mortal eyes but solid as stone to anyone who tried to cross without permission.
It was a test, as much as a cage. If she was what I suspected, some agent sent from Velrith to draw me out, she would recognize the wards immediately, perhaps even dismantle them with a touch or a word.
If she was something else, something tied to the blade's unnatural reaction without knowing it, her ignorance would show.
Either way, I needed to see her response without my presence clouding it.
So I had left her alone and taken up position in the narrow corridor next to the room she was in, pressed against the wall where a jagged crack in the plaster allowed me a view into the room.
The split was wide enough to watch through, hidden by shadows and the angle, my breath slow and controlled to avoid any sound that might give me away.
Exhaustion clawed at me, a constant companion these days, my body heavy from the night's exertions and the blade's lingering demands.
Virelya rested at my side, its presence a low hum in my veins, not the insistent hunger of before.
The silence it had granted since encountering her ebbed and flowed without reason I could discern, a fragile reprieve that left my thoughts clearer but no less burdened—her presence still seemed to quiet it at times, yet it didn't satiate the blade entirely, the craving to feed still gnawing beneath the surface.
I could feel the black threads under my skin retreating slightly, the tremors easing, but I trusted none of it.
Trust was a luxury stripped from me long ago, along with everything else.
Nyra's betrayal had taught me that much, her face flashing in my mind, cold and calculating.
If this woman was her doing, a lure dressed in mortal innocence to pull me back into Velrith's grasp and kill me, I would end it here.
But the blade's recognition complicated everything, turning suspicion into a tangled web I could not yet cut through.
She stirred on the cot, her movements abrupt, as if yanked from sleep by the weight of memory.
I watched her sit up, rubbing at her eyes, the faint light catching the lines of tension in her face.
She was disheveled from the struggle, her hair escaping its tie in loose strands, her coat rumpled and stained with alley grime.
There was a cut on her palm, the one from the glass shard last night, crusted over but still raw, and she flexed her hand absently, wincing.
Her gaze swept the room, taking it in with a sharpness that surprised me, not the wide-eyed panic of someone truly broken but a calculated assessment, eyes lingering on the debris, the mirror, the scattered remnants of my existence.
She stood slowly, testing her weight, and I noted the way she favored one side, a bruise likely blooming from where I had pinned her.
Yet she moved with purpose, not crumbling under the ache, her posture straightening as if defiance alone could hold her together.
It irritated me, that resilience, a quiet strength that made her seem less like prey and more like an adversary I had not asked for.
Her features came into clearer focus in the gray light: high cheekbones, a mouth set in a determined line, eyes dark and expressive, holding a fire that burned through the fear.
She was striking, in a way that cut through the haze of my exhaustion, the kind of mortal beauty that might have turned heads in another life, before exile reduced everything to survival.
I resented noticing it, the unwelcome pull of attention that had no place here, amid the rot and the wards.
She was a problem, not a person, and allowing even that much awareness felt like a weakness, a crack in the control I clung to.
She padded across the floor, her steps cautious, ears straining for any sign of me.
The absence must have registered, because a flicker of hope crossed her face, quick and unguarded, before she masked it.
She approached the door, her hand hovering near the bolt, and I leaned closer to the crack, my pulse steady but alert.
This was the moment. If she knew wards, she would sense them, perhaps trace the symbols with a finger and whisper a counter.
If she was from Velrith, even a lowborn with basic training would recognize the energy humming in the air, the faint distortion that rippled like heat over flame.
She slid the bolt back, the scrape echoing through the corridor, and pulled the door open a fraction. Then she stepped forward.
The ward activated with a silent force, slamming into her like an unseen fist. She flew back, crashing to the floor in a heap, her breath escaping in a sharp gasp.
I watched her lie there, stunned, chest heaving as she tried to make sense of it.
No recognition in her eyes, just confusion, raw and unfeigned.
She pushed up on her elbows, staring at the open doorway as if it had betrayed her, her brow furrowed in disbelief.
Not the reaction of someone versed in relic magic or veil workings.
A true agent would have cursed, perhaps laughed at the simplicity of my trap, and set about unraveling it.
Instead, she looked lost, rubbing at her chest where the impact had struck, her expression shifting from shock to something angrier, more determined.
It unsettled me, that ignorance, because it did not fit.
If she was not sent, not trained, then what explained the blade's silence?
What tied her to Virelya in a way that defied everything I knew?
Nyra's reach was long, her deceptions layered; this could still be a ploy, a performance to lower my guard.
But the confusion on her face gnawed at my suspicions, planting doubts I could not afford.
She got to her feet, slower this time, brushing dust from her clothes with hands that trembled slightly.
Not from fear alone, I thought, but from the pain, the way she rolled her shoulder as if testing for damage.
Still, she did not crumble, did not curl into a ball or scream for help that would not come.
Instead, she approached the door again, eyes narrowing on the frame, finally spotting the carvings I had etched there.
Here we go…
She traced them with a finger, hesitant, as if they were some puzzle to solve rather than a barrier of power.
No spark of understanding, no flare of energy responding to her touch.
She reached out, pressing against the empty air, and the ward pushed back, gentler this time but firm, sending her stumbling a step.
Panic flashed in her eyes, brief but real, before anger overtook it, her jaw clenching as she shoved harder.
The barrier held, repelling her with equal force, and she backed away, breathing heavily.
I could see her mind working, rationalizing it away—perhaps thinking of tricks, illusions, anything but the truth of magic she clearly did not grasp.
It puzzled me further, this persistence without knowledge.
Anyone with even the barest exposure to Velrith's ways would have stopped after the first impact, recognizing the ward for what it was and conserving strength for a better escape.
But she kept testing, kept pushing, as if brute will could overcome what she could not see.
It made her seem truly adrift, ignorant of the hidden world pressing against her, and that only deepened the mystery.
If not Nyra's pawn, then what? Some anomaly, an echo from a long-extinct bloodline, unaware of her own distant heritage?
A cursed vessel for a dark, ancient magic?
The blade thrummed faintly at my side, its silence a mocking answer I could not decipher.
She retreated to the far wall then, her chest rising and falling with quick breaths, eyes fixed on the doorway with a focus that bordered on fury.
I knew what was coming, could see it in the set of her shoulders, the way she braced herself.
Foolish, I thought, irritation flaring alongside the confusion.
She was going to charge it, throw her full weight against something designed to amplify force back at her.
Part of me wanted to intervene, to spare the damage, but I held back, needing to see how far her ignorance went, how deep her denial ran.
She ran, shoulder lowered, feet pounding the concrete in a desperate sprint.
The impact was brutal, the ward flinging her back with a violence that cracked the opposite wall, plaster crumbling in a shower of dust as she slammed into it.
She slid down, a groan escaping her, blood trickling from a fresh cut on her forehead.
The force of it echoed through the corridor, vibrating in my chest, and I felt a twinge of something unwelcome— not pity, but a reluctant acknowledgment of her tenacity.
She had gotten back up after the first hit, and even now, sprawled and hurt, she pushed onto her hands and knees, wiping blood from her eyes with a sleeve, her face a mask of pain and unyielding anger.
It was that refusal to break that struck me hardest, the way she kept rising, body battered but spirit unbroken.
Striking, yes, in her resilience, the fire that kept her moving when fear should have pinned her down.
I resented it all the more for how it drew my gaze, lingering on the curve of her neck as she tilted her head back, the determined line of her mouth, the way her hands clenched into fists against the floor.
Such details had no place in my thoughts, distractions in a life pared to essentials, but they intruded anyway, sharp and unwelcome, stirring echoes of a humanity I had buried long ago.
The blade's hum intensified slightly, pulling my focus back to the test. She had proven her ignorance, at least on the surface, her actions those of someone blind to magic, not feigning it.
But suspicion lingered, dark and insistent.
Nyra had twisted truths before, crafting illusions that mimicked innocence to devastating effect.
This could be another layer, a deeper deception, or perhaps something worse, a tie to the blade's origins that predated even my family's fall.
Exhaustion pressed harder now, the clarity from Virelya's silence fraying at the edges, whispers threatening to return.
I had seen enough. Prolonging this would only risk more questions I could not answer.
I stepped from the shadows, pushing the door wider, my voice rough from disuse as I broke the silence.
"Are you done yet?"