The hall outside the chamber still smelled of old stone and damp copper when I padded out beside my master, tail swaying in that slow, predatory rhythm that always followed a kill. The door clicked shut behind us with a soft whisper, the last trace of Harn’s existence evaporating like frost in sunlight.

Pontune was already on her feet. The goblin had scrambled onto a bench, claws dug into the wood, eyes round enough to swallow lantern light. Pontune looked worse. Rigid. Pale. Breath caught halfway between demand and dread. She stepped forward. “Where is Lord Harn?”

My master didn’t even pause his stride. Cool as ice, steady as a judge walking past a sentenced man. I walked at his hip, brushing against him, making myself unmistakably present. He answered with that tired, cynical dryness that made people question their own eyes. “Oh, he left.”

Pontune blinked hard. “Left? The door never opened. That is the only exit.”

My master didn’t even look back. “Then he must have gone somewhere else.”

The goblin squawked. “This only room! One door!”

My master shrugged like a man who’d been awake too long and cared too little about anyone else’s sanity. “Well, if he isn’t in there…” He tapped the door lightly with two fingers.“…then clearly he isn’t in there.”

I watched them struggle with that simple sentence. animals always choke on the truth when it’s delivered like a knife wrapped in silk.

Pontune pushed past us and opened the door. Her breath caught. The room was empty. Cold but empty. Still dripping faint flecks of frost from the walls where the rune’s chill still clung like fog.

She turned sharply. “He was just here.”

My master adjusted his cloak. “And now he isn’t.” Just the truth delivered so casually the listener begins to doubt their own memory before the words even finish echoing.

Pontune swallowed. “He… wouldn’t simply vanish. That's impossible...”

“That’s the trouble with powerful men,” my master murmured. “They vanish all the time. Into debts. Into schemes. Into graves. Into whatever hole they dug and then fell into.” He glanced at her with deadened, noir detachment. “Maybe he walked out a back way. Maybe he crawled through a crack in the foundations. Maybe he never existed outside your paperwork.”

The goblin nodded furiously, helpful as a kicked stool. “Paperwork lies. Always lies. Goblins know.”

I purred, brushing my tail along my master’s wrist, loving the way Pontune’s composure strained at the edges.

“There is no corpse,” my master said, “no cry, no blood. If he’s not in the room, then clearly he walked away. Simple deduction.”

Pontune looked between the three of us, searching for a crack, a misstep, something to cling to. All she found was my smile. The kind that unnerves. The kind that says everything and nothing. She stepped close to my master, voice low. “If he vanished under suspicious circumstances I will be held responsible.”

My ears twitched. That line. That conceit. I slid between them before she could blink, pressing against my master, tail curling around his leg in open claim. “He won’t be an issue for you anymore,”

My master then said calmly, letting my presence block her approach without acknowledging it. “You wanted him gone from your shadow. Congratulations. You owe me.”

Pontune opened her mouth, then closed it again, defeated by the inevitability of it all. She leaned back against the wall, rubbing the bridge of her nose. The perfect noble mask cracked, hairline fractures of exhaustion and disbelief slipping through.

“You’re saying” She swallowed. “You’re saying I’m… free of him?”

My master nodded once, a tiny, controlled motion loaded with meaning. “With him gone,” he continued, “you’ll be able to take your proper place once Mire Point finishes construction. Marshal of the Foreign District. Your badge. Your power. No more Serrean leash.”

Pontune stared at him. Then at me. Then at the door. Then back to him. “Just like that,” she whispered.

“No,” my master replied, leaning his shoulder to the wall. “Nothing’s just like that. But opportunity is a door you walk through when the man blocking it disappears.”

I let out a low, pleased purr. Because that was how noir truth worked. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just inevitable.

Pontune pressed her gloved hands together as if trying to keep herself from shaking. It didn’t work. But she straightened anyway, spine aligning in that stiff noble way. “I suppose,” she said slowly, “I owe you both more than I realised.”

My master pushed off the wall, starting toward the exit. “Good,” he said. “Then put it to use. Remember it when we build Mire Point into something worth a damn.”

Pontune bowed her head just enough to acknowledge the weight of the exchange.

The goblin scrambled after us, whispering to himself: “Harn walked away. Yes. Walked right out. Must have had wings.”

I snorted.

Pontune caught up to us at the threshold, voice softer, tired, but honest for the first time since we’d met her. “When Mire Point stands,” she murmured, “and I take my post there… consider this behind us.”

My master stepped out into the corridor, the dying frost crunching under his boots like quiet applause. “That’s the idea,” he said.

I followed immediately, brushing my tail along his back, purring as the cold air faded and his scent settled warm in my lungs. Another problem solved. Another shadow erased. Behind us, Pontune stared at the empty chamber, face pale in the torchlight. And she didn’t ask again where Harn went. She didn’t want the answer. Not when the truth had already walked out of the room with her Lord Protector and his devoted, feral shadow at his side.

The hall shuddered beneath our boots as the Embercrack officer strode back into the corridor. Broad shoulders. Armour scraped with old soot. A man carved from the same stone their stronghold worshipped. His eyes were already sharp, already hunting, already smelling the absence of the one man who was supposed to be here.

He stopped dead when he saw us.Three shadows in the hallway. A cold breeze still whispering out from Harn’s door. “Where,” he growled, “is Lord Harn?”

My master didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. Didn’t bother offering the smallest scrap of courtesy. He stood like a man inconvenienced by someone else’s panic. I curled around his side, close enough that the officer’s eye twitched with distaste, not that it mattered. My tail slid around my master’s hip, slow and deliberate.

I could smell the man’s tension. Iron. Sweat. Authority on the brink of cracking.

My master shrugged, voice dry as dust. “I don’t know. He left.”

I watched the words hit the officer like a punch to the jaw. His posture tightened. His hand drifted halfway toward his sword, then froze, a man remembering that drawing steel in his own house came with consequences.

“Left?” he repeated. “Left where? That room is sealed. He was supposed to give us orders on the Serrean affairs. How does a man simply leave?”

My master sighed like he’d been asked to explain the concept of gravity to a stubborn child. “That’s the trouble with men who hide too many secrets. They have a habit of slipping away. Through cracks, through debts, through their own cowardice.”

The officer frowned. His suspicion sharpened. His mind was turning, hard enough that I could feel the tension radiating from him. Before he could push it further, my master reached into his cloak. The book emerged. Pontune’s book. The Redstone records. The lies. The hidden taxes. The falsified shipments. A year’s worth of House Serrean’s dirty laundry pressed into parchment.

He tossed it to the Embercrack officer like it weighed nothing. It hit the man’s chest with a soft thud. He caught it on instinct, heavy in both hands, eyes dropping to the serpent seal and the signature strokes of Serrean scribes.

“My promise,” my master said, voice smooth, dangerous, flat as a lake before a storm. “Steel. Not just steel. Every shipment, every rerouted caravan, every falsified tax from Redstone’s holdings over the past year.”

The officer looked up sharply. “This,” he growled, “is treason.”

“This,” my master corrected, “is leverage and Lord Harn without talking back.”

My tail curled tight, thrilled. The officer’s expression shifted. A calculation replaced suspicion. But still, He couldn’t let go. “And Harn?” he demanded again, voice cracking like a whip.

My master leaned in slightly, a man who had lived too long to be intimidated by uniforms or banners or clan pride. “You want Harn?” His tone was bored. “You want a missing bureaucrat whose greatest achievement was drowning in paperwork?”

The officer bristled.

“Or,” my master continued, “do you want a book full of secrets? The kind that could cripple Serrean’s marsh authority for a generation?”

Silence. The kind that changes futures. The Embercrack man opened the book. Pages flipped. Numbers. Routes. Stamp forgery. Smuggling reports. Hidden levies. Names of the Serrean officials involved. His breath went unsteady.

I stepped a little closer, ears twitching, tail flicking lazily behind me. “Your clan likes power,” I said softly. “Likes knowing who owns what. Who lies. Who eats off your land.” I smiled. A soft, cold, patient smile. “That book,” I purred, “is a banquet.”

His hands tightened around the leather-bound cover. “But Harn,” he tried again, thin now, stretched.

My master shook his head. “You’re a clever man. Harn’s gone. Maybe he fled. Maybe he ran home to Serrean. Maybe he crawled out a window and drowned in the marsh. But what matters is this...” He tapped the book with one gloved finger, slow and deliberate. “this will reshape your clan’s position far more than one missing advisor.”

The officer stared at the book as if it were a holy relic.

And then my master murmured, almost lazily, “Besides. If you keep a tight leash on your pet bureaucrats, one of them will turn up eventually.”

The insult landed with perfect noir indifference. The Embercrack man’s jaw clenched. He didn’t refute it. He didn’t question further. He didn’t open the door behind us again. He just stared at the ledger, and I could see the storm already building behind his eyes as he recalculated the political landscape of half the western marshes.

My master turned away. And because I move where he moves, I followed immediately, brushing against him, fur soft against hardened leather armour. Pontune fell in behind us, frozen disbelief still strangling her breath.

The goblin trotted after her, muttering, “Book good. Better than boss. Book heavier too.”

As we stepped out into Embercrack’s outer hall, the officer finally found his voice again Then we stepped out into the open air, toward the long planked walkway stretching back to the marsh inlet. Wind cut across the wood, cold and sharp. The world smelled of wet timber and distant smoke. My tail curled around my master’s arm, possessive and warm. Behind us, Embercrack was already tearing through those pages. Already reshaping alliances. Already preparing to strike.

The dusk was nothing but a pale smear through the marsh haze as we moved, shadows crawling across the slick planks of Embercrack’s landing. I stayed glued to Master, my tail a whip around his waist, ears flat and twitching at every glint of water. The taste of wet wood and the distant stink of iron drifted through the air, mingling with the memory of Lord Harn’s fate,a delicious cold finality that lingered like frost in my bones.

I watched Pontune out of the corner of my eye; the way she clung to her poise, chin high, was almost comic given the rot and ruin underfoot. The goblin, bold as ever, trotted ahead and tested each mooring as if she owned them all.

The walkway was deserted, save for a pair of Embercrack grunts lounging near a crate of smoked eels, who gave us the kind of stare reserved for people you wish were someone else’s problem. No one stopped us, whatever passed between Master and the Embercrack officers had left a long shadow, and nobody wanted trouble with Vanguard business and a Pure Class noble in tow. Especially not with the cold suspicion of Harn’s disappearance still clinging to the air like fog.

Master’s stride was even, measured. I could feel his mood through the bond: calm, clinical, completely unbothered by the subterfuge and the vanishing act we’d pulled. He only quickened as we reached the end of the platform, where the battered rowboats bobbed, little more than driftwood patched with ambition. The water beyond was slick and dark, full of shifting shapes and secrets. Every instinct screamed at me to run, but I only pressed closer to him, claws curling into the leather at his side.

The goblin, never subtle, vaulted into the nearest boat, wobbling it dangerously. “Well, get in then! Unless you fancy a swim, cat!” he cackled, eyes flashing.

Pontune stepped in first, boots barely missing the river slime, her face a mask of contempt for the world. I hesitated, hissing softly, ears slicked down. Master’s hand tangled in my fur, firm, reassuring, the silent command that kept my world in orbit. He guided me down, his voice little more than a gravel whisper. “It's water, Aliza.”

I slithered into the centre of the boat, wrapping myself bodily around his legs, tail lashing his thigh with a blend of terror and need. The planks creaked. The world narrowed to his scent, the taste of his leather, the pounding of my heart.

The goblin spat on his hands, grabbed the oars, and with a grunt, we pushed off. The boat shuddered and rocked, my claws almost punched holes through the wood, but Master didn’t move. Not for an instant. His confidence anchored me, let me breathe.

The world changed instantly. Gone was the safety of dry land, the solidity of stone. The marsh opened up around us, reeds shivering on either side, shadows gliding beneath the surface. Something big surfaced to our left, a glossy back arching for a moment before vanishing into the murk. My ears flattened, hackles rising. If I could’ve climbed inside Master’s armour I would have.

Pontune stared at the horizon, ignoring us, her hands folded tightly in her lap as if in prayer, or penance. The goblin rowed with the expertise of a lifetime spent in mud and water, her song rising over the oarlocks: a rough Mire folk tune, full of broken words and laughter.

Master’s hand fell to my head, fingers moving behind my ear in slow circles. He didn’t need words; his touch was enough. My world steadied. The noise of the water faded, replaced by the slow thud of his heartbeat through the bond.

Minutes bled into each other. The marsh was a world of endless repetition, water and reeds and ghostly trees like fingers reaching out to drag us down. But under the bridge, where the moss dripped and the sound of distant shouts echoed off stone, we were alone, ghosts in a world that had already forgotten us.

The goblin ducked his head, aiming for the shadow where the bridge’s guts blocked out the light. We slid under, the scrape of the oars harsh in the silence. No one above, no guards, just the sound of old rope and the hum of unseen creatures.

Pontune’s voice was barely a whisper: “We shouldn’t have left so soon. They’ll have questions.”

Master didn’t look at her. “Questions are safer than answers. Harn disappeared. The records are with Embercrack. We’re not waiting for the world to catch up.”

I shivered, tail tightening, still half-convinced the water would rise and drag me under. But Master’s calm was absolute, unbreakable, and I clung to it, let it drown out the panic. My claws scratched slow circles on his knee, needing to remind myself he was real, here, mine.

On the far side of the bridge, the marsh widened out again. Mire Point was only a rumour on the horizon, a cluster of shadows barely visible through the reeds. The boat drifted as the goblin rested, catching her breath. Silence pressed in.

Pontune turned to Master, voice clipped and precise. “You took a risk."

He cut her off with a look that could slice iron. “I sorted our problem” He then glanced down at me.

I sat up, ears pricked, scanning the marsh as the boat drifted. Nothing moved but the ripples, the distant cry of a mire bird, the slow shifting of a cloud.

The goblin finally started rowing again, singing softly, the sound rising and falling with the movement of the water. Master sat still, one hand on my head, the other resting on his crossbow. The world narrowed to our little boat, adrift between dangers, but together, always together.

We slipped through the marsh, gliding under the bridge, lost to the world. Whatever waited at Mire Point, whatever trouble the past had stirred, none of it mattered so long as I had him... so long as I could feel the strength of his presence, the pulse of the bond tying me to him, stronger than fear, stronger than fate.