The tavern was loud, even this deep in the city’s western quarter. Laughter rang out through the haze of pipe smoke, and the air stank of spiced mead, sweat, and old stories retold a dozen too many times. The patrons—mercenaries, smugglers, displaced sellswords from the outer reaches—drank like tomorrow was uncertain.

  Because in Silvermoon, it was.

  He sat alone in the back corner, half-shadowed by the flickering light of a sputtering lantern. The drink in front of him remained untouched. It was just for show. His eyes scanned the room—not with the paranoia of someone hunted, but the focus of someone used to surviving by noticing what others missed.

  He’d been in the city for three days. Long enough to pick up whispers.

  Leylines stuttering. Magic going haywire near the Gardens. The Umbral Court crawling out of its grave. And most interesting of all: a stranger caught beneath the Bastion. A man no one could place. A man with power he didn’t seem to understand.

  The mercenary smiled faintly beneath the hood pulled low over his short, messy blonde hair.

  He didn’t believe in coincidence.

  Not anymore.

  Outside, the bells rang softly as the sun fell behind the spires. A fresh patrol passed through the street, heavy in armor but light on awareness. Too many of the city’s Guardians were distracted these days—looking the wrong way while something old stirred under their feet.

  He rose smoothly, shoulders rolling beneath the worn leather armor, and stepped out into the street. The chill didn’t bother him. The city was colder than he remembered, and not just in the air. Something about it felt wrong in the bones—like the cobblestones themselves were waiting for a scream.

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  He made his way along the edge of the Gilded Quarter, not fast, not stealthy, but deliberate. He moved like a man who had traveled too far to lose what he was after now.

  The alleyway was narrow and choked with ivy. A forgotten side path that hadn’t seen use in years. But the trail was clear to someone who knew how to look. The shifted dust. The faint imprint of a boot heel. The residual spark of magic, weak but recent.

  He crouched beside the trace and smiled.

  “Found you.”

  He didn’t say the name aloud, though it had been on his mind since arriving. He’d followed rumors across three provinces. A man who’d walked away from the ruins of Varenhold. A man who shouldn’t be alive.

  But was.

  He slipped deeper through the alley, past a crumbling wall marked with faded sigils, and into one of the underpass entrances. The tunnels below were labyrinthine, but he knew how to navigate chaos. It had been his trade once.

  And it would be again.

  A faint tremor ran through the ground beneath him.

  He paused.

  That was new.

  Something old, buried. Stirring. He didn’t need to know what it was. That was Matrim’s curse to carry. His job was simpler.

  Find him. Watch his back. Get him out alive.

  He moved faster now, through a side corridor that cut dangerously close to Guardian patrol routes. But he wasn’t worried. His presence wasn’t registered. No wards tracked him.

  He’d seen to that.

  At the far end of the corridor, the passage opened into a lower terrace overlooking a rarely-used Bastion annex. And there—through the stone grating, framed by torchlight—was Matrim Kaelen, climbing a stairwell with a tall woman in dark armor beside him.

  The mercenary’s breath hitched.

  You stubborn bastard. You’re actually still alive.

  He leaned back into the shadows, hood casting his face into darkness.

  He didn’t call out.

  Not yet.

  Instead, he turned and disappeared into the tunnels again.

  He’d seen enough.

  For now.