The cold night bit into Raizen's skin as he swung his sword under the ghostly gleam of a half-dead moon. The courtyard was still, save for the sound of metal slicing through air and the heavy breath escaping his lips. Past midnight, when the world slept and even the stars had vanished behind the clouds, Raizen trained alone.
His shirt clung to his back, drenched. His eyes, bloodshot, were brimmed with tears he didn't bother wiping away. The grief had long since settled inside his bones, but now it simmered at the surface, ready to boil over.
Slash. Step. Turn. Thrust.
Each movement was ritualistic. Muscle memory did most of the work, but something deeper—older—guided the rhythm now. He wasn't fighting an enemy.
He was fighting himself.
Fighting the helplessness, the regret, the echo of a scream he hadn't heard but knew had been real.
His legs gave out.
He fell to his knees, palms slamming against the cold stone. Sweat and tears hit the ground together. The world around him dimmed, the edges burned—not in flame, but in rage. Silent, suffocating rage.
Kezess said nothing.
That silence, more than anything, hurt. It meant something was shifting. Something inside him. Like a door that had stayed locked was slowly creaking open.
Raizen looked up.
Eyes steeled. Breathing ragged.
The tears still fell, but now they fell with purpose.
---
Flashback: Hours Ago
The cell was damp. Stone walls slick with condensation. The only light came from a flickering torch near the entrance. Shadows danced across Lira's face, hollow and worn. Ricardo stood with his arms around her, the protective stance of someone who'd already lost too much.
The bars between them and Raizen felt heavier than iron.
"You shouldn't try to do something reckless," Lira said softly. Her voice wasn't fearful. It was tired. The kind of tired that no amount of sleep could ever cure.
Raizen's jaw tightened. "How can I not? How can I sit and watch when—"
Lira stepped forward, her fingers brushing against the iron bars, cool and cruel. "We just have one thing to ask. Please… take Marvin to my sister's house."
Raizen's breath caught. His eyes dropped to the floor.
"The address," Lira continued, her voice barely a whisper, "should be in the annex. Hidden behind the medicine cabinet. I wrote it down."
He didn't respond. Couldn't.
Something sharp settled in his chest. A pain he couldn't reach. Like someone had carved into him and left the blade there, buried and twisting.
"Time's over. Get out," barked the guard at the end of the corridor, impatient.
The torch flared as if in protest, its flames snapping sharply. Raizen lingered a moment longer, then turned away. He didn't look back.
As he walked back through the corridors of stone and shadow, something shifted.
A tremor. A beat. A pulse from beneath the Manor.
The first Shard stirred.
---
The fire crackled in the lounge.
Ryan sat before it, knees bent, elbows on his thighs. The flickering light etched deep shadows under his eyes. The flames reflected in his gaze, but no warmth reached him.
"She did that?" he whispered, barely audible. "Lira was the only one who… who treated him like he mattered."
Silence answered.
His fingers clenched.
"She never cared," he said through gritted teeth. "Not for Rai. Not for anyone but her own damn legacy. And now…" His voice cracked.
His jaw locked.
The boy who had always tried to play mediator, to balance loyalties—he was gone now. What remained was raw and honest.
Hate.
---
In the upper floors, Rossain lounged near the window of the east study, cradling a glass filled with something thick and red. Wine, maybe. Maybe not.
He didn't sip. Just stared.
Beyond the glass, the night stretched endless. A starless sky cloaked in suffocating black. Not even the moon dared intrude.
The Viscount narrowed his eyes.
A sky like this always heralded change.
And blood.
–——
Below. Far below.
Beneath the Manor, hidden beneath years of stone, brick, and buried secrets, the Shard pulsed again.
It wasn't light.
It was memory.
A fragment of a scream. A flicker of a battlefield. A child crying out for someone long dead. The air around it thickened, reacting to Raizen's grief, echoing it.
It remembered his pain better than he did.
---
Back in the cell,
Ricardo held Lira close. She didn't sob. She just trembled, her fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt like she might drift away if she didn't.
"I should have seen it coming," she whispered.
Ricardo kissed her forehead, his hand stroking her back.
"You did nothing wrong," he said softly. "You did your duty. That's what they couldn't stand."
The words floated in the dark, soft and fierce.
---
Raizen sat in the room Marvin now slept in.
The boy was curled up against a pillow, hugging it like a lifeline. His chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm, ignorant of the weight crushing the world around him.
Raizen reached out, brushing a strand of hair from Marvin's forehead. His fingers lingered for a moment.
"I'll help them," he whispered. "No matter what it takes."
His voice cracked.
Maybe Marvin heard him. Maybe he was just dreaming.
But a small smile ghosted across the boy's lips, as if some part of him believed.
Raizen rose. His steps were silent. Like a shadow moving through dusk.
He walked to the window, staring out at the storm that hadn't yet broken.
---
The halls of Helios Manor were silent.
Not the peaceful kind of silence—but the strained, anticipatory kind. As if the very walls were holding their breath.
Maids had stopped whispering. Servants stopped scurrying.
The only sound was a grandfather clock ticking somewhere in the east wing. Tick. Tock. A countdown no one could see.
And below it all, that heartbeat.
The Shard.
---
Raizen stood outside his own room. His fingers grazed the door.
He didn't enter.
Instead, he turned. Left. Climbed the hidden stairwell behind the old tapestry, up toward the highest tower. No one ever went there anymore. Dust had claimed most of it.
But he needed air.
And answers.
When he reached the top, he threw open the window. The wind screamed in, cold and sharp. The entire estate lay beneath him—quiet, still.
Too still.
"I wasn't supposed to be here," he muttered.
The wind didn't answer.
But inside his head, something stirred.
Kezess.
Still silent.
But watching.
---
Raizen clenched his fists. "Say something."
Nothing.
He slammed his fist against the stone window ledge, a crack forming beneath his knuckles.
"Damn you."
Still nothing.
But he felt it.
Not words. Not yet.
A feeling.
Anticipation.
And then, finally, a whisper—distant, almost lost to the wind.
"It begins."