CHAPTER 3: THREADS OF HOPE

“Despair is a luxury permitted only to those who have the time to wait. The rest of us have only action.”

— From the Journal of Lord-Archivist Helvik

“Look, Kai! See these lines in the stone? It’s a textbook mark of fossilized mollusks! This limestone plate is millions of years old!”

Kai couldn't care less about millions of years. He was sixteen, the sun was bathing his back, and the distant domes of the university library—where he was supposed to be escorting Elias—hovered on the horizon. Instead, he had spent the last three hours listening to his friend's ecstatic lectures on roadside geology.

“Breathtaking,” Kai had muttered, trying to trap a grasshopper in the high weeds. “Almost as thrilling as that time you found the fossilized dung of a prehistoric badger.”

“They are called coprolites, and they are a priceless well of data!” Elias had snapped, his eyes flashing with the righteous fury of a scholar behind his ink-stained spectacles. “And if you hadn't slathered honey inside the proctor's breeches, we wouldn't be stuck out here. We’d be studying pristine artifacts in the restricted vaults!”

Kai laughed, and soon they were both roaring, sitting right there in the dirt of the empty road. Elias dug into his satchel, pulling out two bruised, warm apples. “Here, eat. Before your stomach starts growling during Helvik’s quietest lecture.”

In that quiet moment, chewing on the sour fruit and listening to his friend's ramble, Elias felt a profound peace. What he wouldn't give to take just one more bite of that apple...

Elias flinched, the memory violently torn from his mind as the reality of the tavern rushed back. The air inside the cellar of The Swamp Lily hung dense and suffocating, a physical weight that matched the despair clawing at his throat. He was sitting at a greasy, stained table in the deepest, darkest corner, his trembling fingers clamped around a near-full tankard of cheap ale he couldn't bring himself to lift. The stench of stale beer, rotting fish, and bitter human sweat coiled into a sickening haze. Somewhere on the floor above, a patron was roaring a drunken ballad, the melody repeatedly shattered by a chorus of raucous cheers and the sharp smash of breaking glass.

Six days. Six days had vanished since Kai’s fingers slipped from his grip, vanishing into the black gullet of the mountain. Six days Elias had spent combing the jagged roots of Black Claw Volcano, frantically praying that Kai had somehow survived the drop and would crawl out. He had screamed into the abyss until his throat bled, dropped stones down the shaft just to listen to them fall into the endless dark. He had hunted for other entrances, hidden vents, circling the giant stone corpse until his boots tore. Nothing. Only a heavy, mocking silence.

Eventually, the cold truth broke him: alone, he was entirely powerless. He had dragged himself back to Alteria, straight to Kai’s father, Richard. But the Griffin estate was a storm of its own—worry over the lost expedition was tangled with the high-stakes preparations for Cassian’s first mission as an Arbiter. Richard, looking haggard and pale, had listened to his plea, nodding, promising to lodge official inquiries, to dispatch scouts... but Elias had caught the dead look in the lord’s eyes. The authorities were paralyzed, chalking the disappearance up to the simple, lethal hazards of the wild.

And then Elias remembered. He remembered the dark rumors breathed in whispers across the city. Stories of a shadow who found the things that could not be found. A man who demanded payment not in coin, but in something far more precious. He had spent the previous day rotting in portside taverns and tracking thin lines in hidden logs until a name surfaced—Black Gabriel. And a location where he anchored—The Swamp Lily.

For him, Elias chartered to himself, adjusting his spectacles, which had fogged up from the damp air. Everything for Kai. He wouldn't give up. He would do everything.

He shoved past a hulking brute with blackened teeth who caught his shoulder, clearly hunting for a reason to draw blood. Elias muttered an apology and lunged deeper into the gloom of the tavern, the man's mocking gaze drilling into his spine.

The tavern lived a grotesque life of its own. Wenches with faces hardened by a lifetime of rough hands neatly ducked slaps. One of them, a sharp-faced blonde bearing a heavy tray, cracked a patron so hard across the jaw that the man collapsed face-first into a bowl of clam shells. In a curtained alcove, a young noble with a wispy mustache was losing his mind over a pair of identical twins, whose nimble fingers were systematically emptying his coin purse. At the adjacent table, a holy father in a grease-stained habit devoured a slab of veal, tearing chunks of bread to mop up the thick gravy. Elias felt like a ghost walking through an asylum of scum.

He pushed forward, his eyes scanning the dim light until the sharp, violent crack of splitting oak gave him his target. Forcing his way through a wall of drunken spectators, he found the man he was hunting.

A match was underway at a heavy table in the center of the crowd. A young man with deathly pale skin and long, ink-black hair tied in a reckless knot was locked in an arm-wrestling bout with a massive brawler whose forearm was the size of Elias’s entire torso. Small, silver skulls gleamed in the pale youth's earlobes. The fight looked utterly suicidal, yet against all logic, they were deadlocked. The pale man's face was slick with sweat, his thin, near-aristocratic arm trembling violently under the brutal pressure of the brute's calloused fist. A single inch separated his knuckles from defeat.

Then, something shifted. The trembling vanished instantly. His arm froze, solid as cast iron. Thick veins bulged on the brawler's neck, his features twisting into a purpling mask of shock. He roared, spitting curses, but it was like pushing against a mountain. Without any visible strain, the pale youth's hand began to haul the giant's arm back. The violent slam of knuckles against the oak echoed like a pistol shot.

The crowd erupted into a primitive roar. The victor was hoisted into the air, cheered by the room. Elias waited, biding his time until the chaos drained and the champion of the night was left alone at the bar. He watched the victor claim his prize—free drink for the night—and saw the tavern mistress whisper something in his ear with a sharp, heavy smile. A moment later, the dark-haired man slipped out the back door. Elias, pretending to adjust his glasses, followed him into the dark.

The crisp night air felt like cold water after the suffocating heat of the cellar. Elias took a deep breath, looking up at the familiar stars that had always offered him comfort. In that exact second, a cold blade pressed firmly against his spine, and a heavy palm clamped down on his shoulder.

This is it, flashed through his mind. I don't have much coin. Let's pray it's enough. Let's pray he only wants gold...

“Hands where I can see them. Turn around. Slowly,” a calm, lazy drawl commanded from the dark behind him.

Elias obeyed. Standing before him was the youth from the tavern. Up close, his pallor looked borderline unnatural, and his eyes—the color of pale violets—tracked Elias with a cold, bored amusement.

“I caught you tracking me from across your ale tankard,” the youth said, twirling a slim dagger. “Troth, I’m half-dead from those starry-eyed looks, so I baited you out here. You have two minutes to convince me to leave your throat intact. Time starts now.”

Elias’s tongue glued itself to the roof of his mouth, his throat bone-dry. Get a grip. You hunted for this. This is for Kai.

“Yes, I... I was tracking you. I was looking for you.”

A sharp smile sliced across the youth's face, sending a cold shiver straight down Elias’s spine.

“Looking for me, you say? How flattering. Troth, I was beginning to think my modest name had been entirely forgotten in these dreary parts. What, have you been listening to ghost stories? Heard of the Bone Lord, perhaps?” He paused, looking at Elias expectantly, but seeing no spark of recognition in the scholar's eyes, he let out a disappointed sigh. “Don't tell me my legend hasn't breached this backwater yet? Tragic. Well, go on then. To what do I owe such dedication?”

“You have to help me,” Elias forced out.

The movement was too fast for the human eye to track. The blade materialized against Elias's throat, and a thin, warm bead of blood trickled past his collar.

“I don't have to do anything, brat. Troth, everyone treats me like a local monument ready to perform for a smile. You have a minute left, by the way.”

“Please, help me find someone. A missing person.”

“How intriguing. And what do I get in return?” A sharp, predatory business interest flared in those violet eyes.

“What do you want?”

“Oh, I think you already know the currency if you tracked me down,” the violet gaze narrowed into slits.

Elias swallowed hard. He knew. The rumors of Black Gabriel were carved in blood across Alteria. He didn't trade in gold; the price for his services was years of the client's life.

“Six months,” Elias breathed.

“Are you trying to be funny? By my troth, ten years.”

“A year.”

“You’ve got some nerve, I'll give you that. Standing there with a blade to your throat, still trying to haggle. A token of my goodwill—seven.”

I have to drive it down. I HAVE TO.

“Two years.”

“Five years. And not a day less, or I spill your life onto the cobblestones right now. Troth, eternity is when someone lops your head off and you keep feeling it. Five years is just a minor inconvenience between breakfast and dinner.”

Elias’s chest went hollow. Five years of his life. For a ghost of a chance to find Kai. He gave a sharp nod—there was no other path.

Gabriel peeled the glove from his right hand. His palm was mapped with intricate, winding tattoos that resembled arcane diagrams. They locked hands. Their palms immediately hissed and smoked, as if a white-hot ember had been crushed between them. Elias felt a wave of freezing cold rush up his arm, instantly replaced by a blistering, searing heat. When he ripped his hand away, a fresh mark was burned into his inner wrist—a lit candle, its wax weeping onto a human skull. On Gabriel's palm, the corresponding candle tattoo remained dark, but the skull bore wings forged of tiny, intersecting swords.

The contract was sealed. The bridge was burned.

“So, who’s the lucky soul?” Gabriel asked, and Elias watched as a strange violet smoke seemed to cloud the man's pupils, a spiderweb of black veins pulsing under the thin skin of his temples.

“Kai. His name is Kai.”

At that exact hour, Ricona of House Griffin stood on the threshold of the grand city library, her fingers tightly clutching the battered leather journal, which smelled of old dust and dark secrets. The night air on the street felt crisp after the suffocating quiet of Helvik’s sanctuary, but her soul was a storm. She had obtained the coordinates. But now, the weight of the book felt like an anchor chained to her ankles.

She glanced back at the towering silhouette of the archivist’s spire. The old man had given her a path, but no shield. “You unearthed this... in the back stacks of the city library. While sorting through discarded papers.” That was her shield against the high court. But Ricona understood clearly—if she began to dig deep into that darkness, she would be standing on that ledge entirely alone.

She looked down at the family comb pinned to her chest, the interlocking griffins gleaming in the moonlight. Kai had always mocked her, saying she possessed a spine stiffer than any griffin. Right now, that unyielding perseverance was her only weapon.

She shoved the journal deep into the folds of her heavy cloak and stepped briskly toward the family estate. She needed to calm Akora, to tell her that the gears were set in motion. That hope wasn't dead. And then, under the cover of the midnight candles, she would read. She would dissect every line of those “smoking terraces” and unearth exactly where the dark had taken her brother.

And then... then she would forge a way down. With her sister, or without.