Chapter 3: An Unholy Alliance

Chapter 3: An Unholy Alliance

The Aethelred Bridge was a skeleton picked clean by time. Rust and rain had eaten away at its majesty, leaving a skeletal arch of iron hanging over a canal choked with black, stagnant water. Fog coiled up from the depths, muffling the distant city hum and clinging to Rhys’s clothes with a damp, spectral touch. The demon blood still sang in his veins, a high-strung wire of false energy that made every shadow seem to writhe. He felt less like he was walking to a meeting and more like a sacrificial offering approaching an altar.

He stopped at the center of the span, the most exposed point. He could feel eyes on him, prickling the back of his branded neck. He didn't have to wait long.

Two figures emerged from the fog at the far end of the bridge. They were Serpentines, he could tell by their swagger and the cruel cut of their long coats. One was built like a brick outhouse, his knuckles scarred from a hundred back-alley brawls. The other was lean and wolfish, a thin smile playing on his lips that didn't reach his eyes.

“Calder,” the wolfish one purred, his voice slick with contempt. “You’ve caused quite a stir. The Mistress is… displeased. But she is also merciful. Hand over the package, and we can forget this unfortunate mess.”

Rhys’s heart hammered against his ribs. They didn’t know. They thought he still had it. This wasn’t an execution. It was a retrieval. His role as a decoy wasn’t over yet. He played his only card: bluffing.

“The price has gone up,” Rhys said, forcing a confidence he didn’t feel into his voice. “An Arbiter was involved. The risk factor has increased exponentially. So has my fee.”

The burly one chuckled, a low, rumbling sound. “You’re in no position to negotiate, Hex-touched.”

From a rusted gantry high above the bridge, Kaelen Vance watched the scene unfold through the cold, clear lens of a shard of ice he held to his eye. The demon, Cryos, thrashed against his mental wards, hungry and impatient. They are weak. Let me shatter their bones. Take the boy. Find the masters.

“Patience,” Kaelen breathed, a puff of frost disappearing into the night. His goal wasn’t to arrest two Syndicate thugs. It was to see who they answered to, to follow the artifact up the chain. He had to let the scene play out.

It was a decision he would regret.

The air on the bridge didn’t just grow cold; it went dead. The sound of the city vanished. The fog ceased its coiling dance, hanging still and heavy as a shroud. The wolfish Serpent-slinger’s smile faltered. “What in the hells…?”

It happened without a sound. A flicker in the space between the two thugs, a distortion like heat-haze on a winter’s day. Before either could react, a spindly, chitinous limb, black and glossy as obsidian, shot out and impaled the larger man through the chest. He made a wet, gurgling sound and collapsed, a puppet with its strings cut.

The second thug had a moment to scream, a raw, terrified sound that was abruptly silenced as two more limbs, ending in scythe-like blades, scissored through his neck. His head tumbled onto the iron grating with a dull clang.

Rhys stumbled back, his bravado instantly evaporating into pure, primal terror. The thing that stood over the butchered corpses was a nightmare given form. It was vaguely insectoid, seven feet tall, with multiple limbs that moved with an unnatural, silent fluidity. It had no face, only a smooth, chitinous plate that seemed to absorb the light. It wasn't Syndicate. It wasn't Arbiter. It was something other. And its featureless head was swiveling slowly, inexorably, toward him.

He didn't think. He reacted. Rhys threw himself backward, dissolving into the shadow of a thick iron girder. The world became a cold, silent place of shifting darkness. He poured himself through the shadows, reappearing twenty feet away, scrambling for his life.

The creature was impossibly fast. It didn't run; it simply flowed across the distance, its bladed limbs clicking on the metal. It was ignoring the bodies. It was ignoring everything but him. It wanted the artifact it thought he carried.

From his perch, Kaelen swore, a harsh, guttural sound. His lead was being systematically slaughtered, and his only link to this conspiracy was about to be dissected by a creature from a madman’s fever dream. Cryos roared with savage glee. Yes! A true fight! Let me out!

There was no more time for observation. Kaelen dropped from the gantry, landing on the bridge with a ground-shaking impact that cracked the iron beneath his boots. He didn't bother with a warning. He thrust his frosted hand forward, and a spear of solid ice, thick as a man’s arm, rocketed across the bridge and slammed into the creature's torso.

The impact was immense, throwing the monster sideways into the bridge’s railing, which buckled and screamed in protest. But the ice spear, which could punch through solid steel, merely cracked its carapace before shattering into a thousand pieces.

The creature righted itself, its faceless head turning to Kaelen. It emitted a low chittering, the first sound it had made, a noise that vibrated in Kaelen’s teeth.

“Get behind me,” Kaelen snarled at Rhys, not turning his head.

Rhys, frozen in terror, stared at the Arbiter. The man who had hunted him, the man who had nearly frozen him solid, was now planting himself between Rhys and certain death. The world had officially gone insane.

The monster lunged. Kaelen met its charge, not with a single projectile, but with a wall of jagged ice that erupted from the bridge’s surface. The creature crashed into it, its bladed limbs shearing through the frozen barrier but slowing it for a precious second.

“It’s fast!” Rhys yelled, his mind finally kicking back into gear. “And quiet!”

“I noticed,” Kaelen bit out, his left arm now covered in a thick gauntlet of ice. “Distract it.”

It was the last thing Rhys wanted to do, but the Arbiter was his only shield. He dove into the artificial shadows cast by Kaelen’s ice wall, his umbrakinesis flaring. He created three perfect, shadowy duplicates of himself, sending them scattering in different directions.

The creature paused, its head twitching as it tried to locate the real target. It was the opening Kaelen needed. He stomped his foot, and the entire surface of the bridge around the monster flash-froze, the sudden, intense cold causing the metal to groan. The creature’s limbs became momentarily encased, locking it in place.

Kaelen didn’t waste the opportunity. He charged forward, summoning a blade of pure, compressed ice into his hand. He moved with the brutal grace of a seasoned killer, ducking under a wild swing from a freed limb and driving his ice-sword deep into the creature’s leg joint.

The monster shrieked, a high-frequency blast of sound that made the air shimmer. It thrashed, shattering the ice around its legs, and swiped at Kaelen, forcing him back.

In the chaos, Rhys felt a name surface from the panicked recesses of his memory, the words he’d overheard in the stitcher’s shop. The Silent Tongue won’t stand for it. This thing… it had to be them.

The fight was a blur of black chitin and blue ice. Rhys used his shadows to harry the beast, creating pockets of blinding darkness and phantom shapes to throw off its senses. Kaelen was the hammer, relentlessly pounding at its defenses, his frost demon’s power turning the bridge into a miniature glacier littered with shattered ice and viscera. The air grew so cold that Rhys’s breath crystallized the moment it left his lips.

Finally, with a desperate surge of power that made the silver scars on his arm blaze with light, Kaelen unleashed a concentrated blizzard. The vortex of wind and razor-sharp ice engulfed the creature, shredding its carapace. With a final, agonized shriek, the monster was hurled backward, over the broken railing, and into the black canal below. It vanished with a heavy splash.

Silence. Heavy, panting, and absolute. The bridge was a warzone. Two Syndicate corpses lay twisted on the ground, and the air was thick with the ozone scent of Kaelen’s magic.

Kaelen stood hunched over, his chest heaving, the ice on his arm receding. He looked at Rhys, his grey eyes piercing, devoid of any gratitude. “Where is it?” he demanded, his voice a raw rasp. “The artifact.”

“You have it!” Rhys yelled, the adrenaline giving way to a frantic, hysterical edge. “You took it from me on the docks! This was a setup! They sent me here to die!”

Kaelen stared at him, the pieces clicking into place with sickening clarity. The boy wasn’t lying. He could feel the truth of it, a fringe benefit of living in Veridia. He was a decoy. The attack wasn’t a retrieval; it was sanitation. They were cleaning up their loose ends.

He was holding a piece of a weapon that could tear the city apart. A monstrous, unknown faction was willing to kill anyone to get it. And his only lead was the terrified, Hex-touched thief standing before him, a thief who now knew just enough to be the enemy’s number one target.

His original plan was ash. The old rules no longer applied.

“Alright, kid,” Kaelen said, straightening up, his face a mask of weary resolve. “New deal.” He gestured to the carnage around them. “You’re wanted by the Syndicate for failing a job, you’re being hunted by… whatever that was, and you’re still on my list for grand larceny.”

He took a step closer, his presence an intimidating weight. “But right now, you and I are the only ones who know what’s really at stake. You help me, you tell me everything you know—your contacts, your employers, the name ‘Silent Tongue’—and I grant you temporary immunity.” He offered a hand, not in friendship, but in grim contract.

“You get to stay out of an Arbiter’s cell. You get to stay alive.”

Rhys stared at the outstretched hand, then at the man’s face. An hour ago, this man was his hunter. Now, he was offering protection. A leash, not a lifeline. But as the distant sound of approaching city patrols grew louder, Rhys knew it was the only choice he had left.