Twilight engulfed all. It stuck to light, smothering all manner of illumination. Isnal grumbled, his hands slick with sweat. He hated the darkness of night, it reminded him of direful times. Times spent marauding and murdering. 

Times spent surviving.

He snorted, spitting thick phlegm on the wooden floor. The woman in the corner of the room glowered at him, scrunching her face in disgust. Her bright vermillion-colored hair sparkled brilliantly from what little light the candles offered. 

“Akrit,” Tala cursed, caressing her neck as though she could feel the slimy greenish-yellow mucus plastering her throat. “I’ve told you time and time again, stop doing that indoors!”

Isnal simply shrugged. He couldn’t help it. When he was uncomfortable, he spat. When he was nervous, he spat. Honestly, he didn’t know when or why he began with the habit, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Bad habits usually came with bad traumas.

Not satisfied with his response, Tala seethed silently for a moment, her Radiance—the aura bubble suffusing her body—tinted a deeper shade of maroon to reflect her anger. She opened her mouth to say something, but was interrupted by a sudden ear-splitting explosion outside.

The building trembled slightly from the resulting shockwave.

Sighing, Isnal wiped his palms on the side of his cloak, then pulled out his pocket watch. “It’s time,” he groaned out, looking at the ticking hands. “We have thirty minutes and counting.”

Tala sucked in a breath, sheathing a pair of purple-black gloves on her hands. “I suppose you’ll need a minute?” she asked, clenching her fist; the tight leather clinging to her hands squeaking softly. 

When he nodded, his partner didn’t wait for another word. She opened the door and dashed into the dark street. 

Isnal let the silence reign, the ringing in his ears fading. He slowly fitted the rune-inscribed gloves onto his hands. His breathing steadied, and a feeling he would never get used to tightened his chest; his heart hardened—contracting so painfully it felt as though it was replaced by a cluster of metal.

It then relaxed, pulsing a rush of blood through his body, and his Radiance flashed a bright—almost glowing—crimson that settled on the floor, shifting like red, misty flames around his feet. 

He surged forward with a powerful step, bursting out of the small house and into the streets in a flurry. The cold fire at his feet burned away the darkness, painting his surroundings a blazing red. 

Isnal sprinted across the street, running up the wall of the house opposite the building he just exited. His Hearth flared, a portion of the flames shifting into tangible energy that seeped into his boots; activating the runes etched onto the soles of the special shoes. 

The arcane symbols sparked, stretching into a long circuit that ran up from his shoes to his gloves, forcing a boost in strength throughout Isnal’s body. 

He pulled himself up, climbing onto the rooftop. Then, after fully regaining his momentum, he blitzed; jumping from one building to the next. The rooftops quivered under his light, fast footfalls as he made his way to the enormous building burning in the distance.

Isnal gritted his teeth, picking up more speed. The runes flickering across his clothes emitted a harsh glow, the wreathing fire of his Hearth seeping into the arcane symbols in accordance with his Intent. He felt them instantly change his physique, contorting it into something sturdier; leaner; stronger. 

He jumped, harsh air blaring against his skin from how fast he was moving. The world lurched as he slammed against the side of a bailey, his fingers barely grasping hold of its sharp-edged crenel.

Blinking away the pain, Isnal slowly pulled himself up to the top of the oversized wall, trying not to think about how he was tens of feet above the ground. He groaned, rolling to his back once on top of the battlement. 

The dense smell of blood thickened the air, then he felt his back slicken. Distant screams and cries reached his ears, prompting him to stand. If he let Tala and the others do all the work, she’d never let him hear the end of it.

Isnal glared around, up ahead; the castle-like keep was still ablaze with violent flames that seemed to feed on the very stone making up the extravagant building. 

At his feet, the blood of guards unfortunate enough to be on duty when his partner passed through pooled. About fifteen men lined the broad fortification, without Radiance—dead.

He took a step forward, then jerked to a stop, feeling a firm hand clutch around his ankle. He looked down slowly, meeting the eyes of a soon-to-be-dead man. 

The guard scowled at him, his Extinguished Radiance flickering and wreathing back to life, almost as if the man was using his hatred to deny death itself.

Isnal snapped, his heart thrumming like a drum in his chest, his soul Burning fiercer. He kicked the guard, plowing his steel-toed boot into the man’s jaw, effectively shattering his teeth; bludgeoning the lower part of his face into bits of bone and flesh. 

The grip loosened, the man’s fingers slowly—stiffly—splaying.

A few of the thinner brown hairs on Isnal’s head bled red, shedding from his scalp. “...Don’t glare at me, Aardin scum,” he whispered almost to himself, unable to control yet another horrible habit, jogging away to the turret a few feet away. 

Ignoring the lifeless bodies lying within the small tower, Isnal strolled down a crudely constructed stairwell, then pulled on the latch at the landing; opening a not-so-hidden entrance. 

As soon as the passage creaked open, a dense smell burst forth from the dark shaft. Stale and rotten. The scent of old corpses. 

He leaped down, letting himself fall into the man-made chasm, his knees almost buckling as his feet slammed against the bottom. 

With him came light, the flames at his feet curling, licking the rough walls. 

Isnal had to keep his head low as he walked deeper into the narrow tunnel, the walls scraping the thick, leathery material making up his cloak. 

He was nervous. If someone were to attack him now… Even he was not confident in fending off an assault in these narrow tunnels. So he kept glancing back, trying to tune his Intent with the World Will, sensing for any foreign Radiance signatures close to him.

There were no such signs. The sound of his footsteps against the stone ground and his breathing was all that filled the tight, earthy corridor. 

Isnal crawled for a minute or two, and finally stumbled into a large, humid oubliette before his claustrophobia could hit its peak. The prison held about twenty barred cages, all packed with people. Old and young. 

Some stared with hollow eyes, shying away from the brilliant light he bore. Their own Radiance was practically non-existent, snuffed by utter despair.

He spared the damned things a single, apathetic glance, then walked to the other side of the dank room with long strides. Up ahead, an imposing metal door stood, already half-open. The sounds—cries of men screaming orders; pleading for their lives; dying—from beyond it were anything but welcoming. 

Nonetheless, there was work to do, so he forced open the door and entered the cavern it led into. 

Chaos ensued his vision immediately. 

He saw Tala, a simple stiletto in her hand, calmly slit the throat of a guard charging at her. She jumped back, jerking to her left, easily dodging the cudgel blaring past her head.

Tala’s sword streaked through the air with a single, profoundly swift swing, arcing as a thin silver streak that bisected the cudgel wielder’s face. And as her blade split through the man’s chin, it flitted sharply. Left, right, then at her rear; instantly killing three of the men closest to her.

She stopped, glancing toward Isnal, acknowledging his presence; her sword raised pointedly at the remaining six men. 

The guards cowered. 

They had the numbers—even now, more men were poured out from tunnel mouths to act as backup—but were scared stiff. Rightfully so. A mere man couldn’t hope to kill a Hearthborne, especially not an Infernal.

“You took your time,” Tala said, smiling mischievously. She flicked her sword through the air, removing what little blood tarnished the silver luster of her blade, then brought it to her scabbard. “Will you take care of these miscreants—”

A battlecry cut her words short, a guard that’d just arrived thrusting a spear at her, triggering a frenzy from the rest that were only staring moments ago. The fear-induced paralysis wore off the moment she sheathed her blade. 

An oversight. 

She effortlessly grabbed the spear inches before it plunged into her gut, absorbing all the force contained in the attack. The assailant didn’t get the chance to be shocked, she pulled him close, punching his throat in. The man went limp, but she caught him, spinning and using his body as a shield from the sharp steel directed at her.

“—for me,” she continued, tossing the corpse aside, skewering a helpless guard with the borrowed spear. “Isnal?”

He shrugged. The guards—in spite of Tala talking directly to him—seemed to be completely oblivious to his existence. That hurt his feelings. 

He reached for the clasped pouch strapped to his waist, extracting a white tablet.

Seeing the tablet in his hand, Tala’s blood-red irises gleamed. She ducked, twisting her body slightly and escaping a barrage of attacks; running for one of the tunnels leading out of the cavern. 

Baffled, the guards paused for a moment. “Af-, after her!” one of them yelled, breaking the rest of them out of their dazed states. 

Isnal brought fingers to his mouth, whistling loudly. The Aardin bastard’s all lurched to a stop, their heads snapping in his direction. 

One of the guards—a senior maybe—cursed, glaring at Isnal. He barked a few orders, and half of the men marched after Tala. Or at least, that’s what they intended to do.

Isnal grunted, then whipped the aoria through the air. It spun, quickly losing its rectangular shape, whizzing through the air as a blurring circle. 

The runes inscribed on his left glove sparked red, and thin threads weaved from the tip of his fingers shot towards the tablet. 

A white glare pulsed through the cavern as the threads came into contact with the runestone, then, after the stone's Initial Ignition, Isnal's consciousness collapsed. 

There was an eternal darkness for a split second, and when his glazed eyes rolled out of the back of his skull, he saw one of the world's Truths. 

Matrixes of white symbols rapidly filled the cavern, sharply spiraling as a chaotic tapestry. The symbols—the aoria’s condensed Intent to fill the world with breathable air—cut away at the guards indiscriminately. To them, it probably looked as though sudden, violent whips of air burst out of nothing to split their bodies asunder. 

Isnal's fingers twitched, his cloak fluttering as he worked to push and pull his Intent into the radiant symbols. He brought order to the chaotic matrix, turning the powerful gusts and gentle eddies of wind into fine blades of air.

A perpetual hissing sound reverberated within the cavern, the pressurized air slicing cleanly through man after man. Blood sprayed, painting the cavern walls and floors a dull red. The guards tried to fight back, swinging weapons wildly. That did nothing to slow their imminent deaths; their enemy was a formless blade commanded by man’s will, after all.

The last body dropped limply to the ground, a morbid silence and the overwhelming scent of death filling the air. 

Releasing his mental hold on the aoria’s Intent, Isnal took a step forward. “...Annoying,” he grumbled, combing a hand through his balding head. He’d need to treat his receding hairline—again. “I’ll need a break after this.”

He checked his pocket watch, squeezing into a tunnel, trailing after Tala. Seventeen minutes. By this point, the rest of the crew should’ve been done with their roles—heck, maybe his partner already reached the lord of Aardin. 

So…why was he restless?

Isnal gulped down a mouthful of saliva, following the path laid out for him. He knew where the lord’s hideout was, so the complex pathways were only a mild annoyance to him. The stench of blood left behind by Tala, however, was not.

Another steel door towered before him but, unlike the first one he passed, there was a morbid silence beyond it. ‘Why is she in there?’ Isnal thought, his palms drenched in sweat. He shook off his nerves, then proceeded to enter the chamber.

He felt his legs tremble, the eerie aura within the dim room overwhelming even his battle-hardened senses. It was a feeling he knew since his birth, one he grew accustomed to embracing whenever the sun set—but multiplied a thousandfold.

“Oh, Izzy,” the owner of the profane Radiance said, turning toward him. She gave a wide, childish grin. “You’re finally here.”

Joining Tala—who stood stoically in front of the deary presence—her back straight, and chest puffed out—Isnal gently bowed to Yasuha. 

The Last of Nine grinned, hugging her knees even more tightly against her chest. She resembled a child, thus her current expression was one that mirrored ignorant innocence. And if it weren’t for the bottomless depth of her eyes, Isnal would’ve been swayed by her smile…

Yasuha cocked her head, presumably confused by his stare, then shook her head. “Look,” she said, pointing at the man trembling in the far end of the room in a pool of his own piss. “The sinner.”

“Why did you come here, Arkshiv?” Tala asked in a low, trembling voice. She gently tapped a clenched fist against Isnal’s chest. “We could’ve taken care of that rat… We still had time, right?”

Isnal nodded.

“If it’s a reason you seek,” Yasuha said, looking at empty space with a dazed expression, then shrugged. “I have none, child.”

“Then–!”

“However,” she continued, stretching out her slender hand. Fractals of multi-colored light lit up around her fingers, and her hand began to disappear into the whirlwind of patterns. “Since my old friend has awakened from her long nap, shouldn’t I treat her?”

Tala’s jaw snapped shut, her eyes focused on the show of colors and shapes. The man in the corner screamed, twisting and turning in agony. It was then that Isnal noticed the blood dripping off the sharp edges of the fractals splaying around Yasuha’s fingers.

The lord of Aardin screeched; howling for his pain to end, spasming. With a gentle smile adorning her face, the Last of Nine violently pulled her hand free of the iridescent nimbus, a beating heart in her palm. 

The man’s cries seized a heartbeat later.

“A small token,” Yasuha said, biting into the bloody meat. She chewed slowly, appreciating the foul taste of human flesh. “This much should suffice for now, right?”

Isnal turned to the work desk, stepping over the middle-aged man’s corpse. He wasn’t fond of witnessing cannibalism—be it man or Hearthborne that indulged the act. The sight almost always brought up annoying memories. 

Pulling at the drawers, he ravaged for documentation, ignoring Tala’s fervent talk with Yasuha. 

Isnal spread a few dozen papers on the desk. ‘Just a lot of miscellaneous files,’ he thought, glancing over the scrolls. Trade logs, letters to lesser lords, and what seemed to be diary entries. 

“Well?” Yasuha said, her sickening Intent suddenly wrapping around him like a clammy blanket. “Did you find something that may or may not calm your hatred for me?”

“You jest,” Isnal murmured, shaking his head. He smiled softly. “What man could hate his savior? And”—a final peek at files—“there’s nothing of significance.”

Yasuha furrowed her thin brows ever so slightly, then gently clapped her hands together. “I suppose it doesn’t matter,” she said, jumping down from the seat. Her irises spun, whirling with countless colors. “Now that we’ve done this much… Karnden will have no choice but to ‘wake’ up, too.”