Chapter 4: The Veiled Truth

Chapter 4: The Veiled Truth

Distrust was a chasm, and the flimsy bridge of their new alliance felt ready to splinter with every step. Kaelen led the way through the warren of nameless alleys that snaked behind Veridia’s grand avenues, a hunter forced to walk alongside his former prey. The frigid power he’d unleashed on the Aethelred Bridge had left a deep ache in his bones, a familiar price for borrowing the demon’s strength.

The boy is a liability, Cryos hissed in the back of his mind, a constant, chilling murmur. He brought this trouble. Let us end him and take the artifact for ourselves. We can master its power.

“Silence,” Kaelen growled under his breath.

“What was that?” Rhys asked sharply from five paces behind, his body coiled with tension, ready to bolt at the first sign of betrayal. The jittery energy from the demon’s blood had faded, leaving him raw-nerved and exhausted. Every shadow he saw looked like one of those chitinous monsters.

“I was talking to myself,” Kaelen said, not looking back. “A habit you’ll get used to. You mentioned a name on the bridge. ‘The Silent Tongue’.”

“I overheard it,” Rhys confirmed, his eyes darting from rooftop to doorway. “In a stitcher’s shop after I escaped you. They said the Silent Tongue wouldn’t stand for the ‘keystone’ being in Arbiter hands.”

So, the enemy had a name. It wasn't much, but it was a start. Kaelen came to a halt before a shop that seemed to sag inward, pressed on all sides by its taller, more modern neighbors. The windows were opaque with dust, and the sign above, depicting a quill and an open eye, was faded to near invisibility. ‘Silas’s Tomes & Antiquities’.

“This is it,” Kaelen said, pushing open the heavy oak door. A small bell chimed, its sound immediately swallowed by the oppressive silence within.

The inside of the shop was a testament to organized chaos. Towers of books and scrolls leaned at precarious angles, threatening to collapse and bury any unwary visitor. The air was thick with the scent of aging paper, dried ink, and dust so ancient it might have been sentient. From behind a mountain of leather-bound volumes, a withered old man with spectacles perched on the end of his nose looked up. His eyes, magnified by the thick lenses, were surprisingly sharp.

“Arbiter Vance,” the old man, Silas, rasped. His voice was like the crackle of dry parchment. “It has been a long time. You don’t visit unless the past has decided to start biting the present. What fresh horror have you unearthed?”

“Silas,” Kaelen acknowledged with a curt nod. He placed the lead-lined satchel on the cluttered counter, clearing a space with a sweep of his arm. “I need you to identify an artifact.”

Silas peered at Rhys, who lingered near the door like a stray cat ready to flee. “And you’ve brought a stray. A Hex-touched, no less. Your standards for company are slipping, Kaelen.”

“He’s a consultant,” Kaelen said flatly, the lie feeling foreign and clumsy on his tongue.

He opened the satchel. The shard of obsidian seemed to devour the dim light of the shop, the strange runes on its surface pulsing with a faint, malevolent energy.

Silas’s casual demeanor vanished. He inhaled sharply, a dusty, rattling sound. With a trembling hand, he reached out, not to touch the artifact, but to hover his fingers just above it, as if feeling a profane heat.

“By the Founders…” he whispered, his eyes wide behind his spectacles. “Where did you get this?”

“Stolen from the Magister’s archives,” Kaelen answered.

“Not stolen,” Silas corrected, his gaze locked on the obsidian. “Liberated. This does not belong in a vault. It belongs in a furnace at the heart of a volcano.” He looked from Kaelen to Rhys, his expression grim. “Do you know what this is? Do you understand the catastrophe you hold in your hand?”

Rhys shifted his weight, uneasy. “We know it’s called a keystone.”

“A keystone, yes. The first of three,” Silas confirmed, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “Together, they form the Cor Silentium. In the common tongue… the Heart of Silence.”

Kaelen’s blood ran cold. He had heard the term before, in the most forbidden sections of the Arbiter’s own archives, a reference to a theoretical weapon of societal collapse. A myth.

“The Heart of Silence is a legend,” Kaelen stated, his voice tight.

“Legends are just truths that have grown old and forgetful, Arbiter,” Silas countered. He leaned in closer, the lamplight glinting off his glasses. “Think, Kaelen. What is the foundation of Veridia? The one, immutable law that holds our entire society together, from the highest lord to the lowest cutpurse?”

“The truth-pact,” Rhys answered, the realization dawning on his face like a sickening sunrise.

“Precisely,” Silas affirmed. “The magical geas woven into the city’s very stones that makes it impossible to speak a deliberate falsehood without suffering excruciating pain. It is the bedrock of our courts, our contracts, our trust. The Heart of Silence is a nullification engine. A device designed to create a zone of absolute magical silence around its user. Within its aura, the pact is broken. A man could stand before the High Arbiter, swear an oath on his own soul, and lie through his teeth.”

The horrifying implications slammed into Kaelen with the force of a physical blow. A world without the pact. A city where any promise could be poison, any treaty a trap. Evidence could be fabricated, testimony worthless. The order he had dedicated his life to, the black-and-white code he forced upon a grey world, would crumble into dust. It would be a return to the Age of Lies, the bloody era of chaos that the city’s founders had ended with their great ritual.

The Silent Tongue. The name suddenly made perfect, terrifying sense. They weren’t just a criminal syndicate. They were ideologues, anarchists who saw the truth-pact not as a shield, but as a cage. And they were two pieces away from finding the key.

“Who would build such a thing?” Rhys asked, his voice barely a whisper.

“Those who believe that a forced truth is the greatest lie of all,” Silas said grimly. “Those who would rather burn the world down than live in a gilded cage.”

Just as the weight of their discovery settled, a sound echoed from outside. Not a footstep or a voice, but a low, resonant thump.

It came again, from the back of the shop. THUMP.

Then another, from the door Rhys was standing beside. THUMP.

Kaelen was moving before the third sound finished. He lunged for the front door, grabbing the iron handle, but it wouldn't budge. It was sealed tight, as if welded to the frame.

Rhys scrambled to the nearest window, wiping away a circle of grime. His face went pale. On the outside of the glass, a glowing, crimson glyph flared to life, its lines burning like hot wires. Similar sigils were igniting on the door and every other window, casting a bloody, prison-bar light into the dusty shop. The ambient noise of the city—the distant traffic, the murmur of pedestrians—was gone, replaced by an unnerving, profound quiet.

“Magical ward,” Silas breathed, his face ashen. “An assassin’s seal. Nothing gets in… and nothing gets out.”

Kaelen threw his shoulder against the door, a futile gesture. The wood didn’t even groan. It was as solid as the bedrock beneath the city.

Through the newly illuminated glyph on the window, Rhys saw them. Figures in dark, form-fitting armor, melting out of the alley's shadows. Their faces were hidden by smooth, mirrored masks, and in their hands, they held blades that shimmered with malevolent energy.

They were trapped. The hunters had become the hunted.