2026-01-16 01:36:06
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
CHAPTER 20: The memories.
Ferris froze. He kept walking, head down.The dump's that way, idiot! the guard yelled. He pointed to a gross alley. Not the main gate!Ferris grunted, changed directions, and walked toward the alley, the pipes heavy on his shoulder.He was out.He dumped the bag and slipped into the city's shadows before dawn. The adrenaline faded, leaving him tired and empty. He missed the feeling of the link to Lyria in his head.He needed a place to hide and information. Only one person could give him both and not rat him out.He went to The Mourning Veil. The shop was dark, the sign gone. He knocked on the back door with the code Silas used for bad, but not deadly, problems.After a minute, the door opened a crack. Silas's tired eye looked out. You're supposed to be dead or getting executed.Can I come in? I think a god's messing with me.Silas sighed and opened the door. Ferris went into the back room. The raven, Phil, slept on the bear, his head tucked under his wing.Silas looked Ferris up and
Chapter 19: The library.
The Spymaster froze, caught doing exactly what he shouldn’t be.Ferris didn’t wait. He ran back up the stairs, leaving the Spymaster unprotected and embarrassed.Lyria’s escape wasn't quiet. Letting the hydra out had seemed like a smart move. But it turned out, the hydra really liked Lyria, which was a problem.The creature had decided the Adept wasn't as fun as the woman who gave it magic water. It now followed Lyria around, all five heads hissing happily.“Go away!” she whispered, hiding behind a statue. The hydra wrapped around the statue, peeking at her with each head.She had the keys to the animal rooms. She needed a way out. The windows were locked. The main door was full of guards because of the chandelier thing.Then she saw it a small door low on the wall. A cleaning chute for old straw and garbage. It led outside, probably to a pile of trash. It wasn’t fancy. It was perfect.She opened it. It smelled awful. She looked back. The hydra was watching.“Stay,” she said, trying t
CHAPTER 18: At the hall.
The blood-ruby ring felt like a frozen spider in Ferris’s hand. A low power buzzed against his skin. He put it in the only safe place he could think of a pocket he’d sewn into the seam of his stolen servant’s pants and walked away from the empty box.The other rooms were full of noise, but the study was silent, like a trap about to go off. They would have come here first.He had two ways out: the door (crazy) and the air vent (which they knew about now). He went with choice number three: the bookshelf.Every important person had a secret way out. It was a given. This one would be behind the bookshelf with the boring, matching books the ones nobody ever read. He ran his fingers across them, trying to find a button, a switch, anything different.Nothing.The shouting got closer. People were yelling orders. “Lock down the floors!” “Find the hydra!” “The Adept is done for!”Done for? Did that mean Lyria got out? Or that the hydra was eating office workers?He touched a book called Treatis
Chapter 17: The red ward.
He saw the problem right away. Someone had put crushed glow-berries in the champagne. Simple chemistry. He also saw his chance. The fountain was right under a big, fancy vent that led to the upper floors.While he pretended to adjust the valves, he took out the Social Key, pointed it at the closest noble (a guy staring sadly at the purple fountain), and pushed the button.The device buzzed. A word popped into his head: Mushrooms.Ferris leaned in. “Bad luck about the fountain, sir. It reminds me of the glow-mushroom problem back in ’87. It destroyed the vineyards up north.”The noble’s eyes lit up. “You know about the Great Blight?!” He grabbed Ferris’s arm. “My family lost our entire mushroom sculpture garden! Nobody understands!”For ten minutes, Ferris was stuck listening to a long story about mushroom art and tragedy. It was the perfect cover. While the noble cried over missing mushrooms, Ferris used a butter knife from a nearby tray to loosen the screws on the vent.Lyria's path
CHAPTER 16: The map.
The orange peel map vanished into golden specks that danced in the morning breeze. Alder was gone, leaving behind a citrus smell and a sense of serious cosmic tampering.Ferris and Lyria stood on the windy rooftop. Below, the Spymaster’s fortified palace glittered like a nasty tooth. The party Alder mentioned was the Grand Accord Gala, which was happening tonight. It was a boring get-together where powerful people pretended they weren’t plotting against each other. The “missing heirloom” was rumored to be the Spymaster’s personal seal, a ring with a blood-ruby on it that supposedly controlled the city’s magic watchers. Nobody had a clue what the “unhappy hydra” was.“This is crazy,” Lyria said, staring at the palace in the distance. The cut on her side had stopped bleeding, but it still hurt. The dented kettle hung from her hand, useless and tied to her.“Crazy is normal for us,” Ferris said, squatting to look over the roof’s edge. The piece of horn dangled from his wrist, clinking ag
Chapter 15: The hole.
Lyria looked at the new hole, then at Ferris. They didn't talk. They just knew what to do from being on the battlefield and from trying to stay alive.She grabbed the whistling kettle.He picked up the horn piece.Together, they jumped headfirst through the hole into the dark.They landed in a pile on a soft, dusty floor. Behind them, Kaelan's angry face appeared in the opening. He was too big to fit through easily.Lyria didn't wait. She swung the still-whistling kettle like a club and smashed it against the edge of the hole. More stone broke, and the opening fell apart with a cloud of dust and a last, sad splash of hot water from the broken kettle.Darkness. Quiet. Faint cursing from the other side of the collapsed wall.They lay there, breathing hard in the dark. The only light was the soft, silver glow from the ropes on their wrists, which were connected to the broken kettle and the horn piece between them.Is your thing supposed to leak? Ferris whispered, feeling warm water on hi
You may also like
Wizard Of Cosmos
MadRain27.8K viewsThe Awakened Arcane Legacy
Paul_okito22.8K viewsLife as A Servant
TheCrow380.3K viewsThe God of War Calen Storm
Cindy Chen30.8K viewsthe rise of the useless son-in-law of a wealthy family
Lev Bodgan1.1K viewsThe Sun Primordial
Catastrophy Y9 5.0K viewsBeast Driven
Darkvirus_185.0K viewsTHE ILLUSIONIST OF ELDRALITH
Amìnessa Vale282 views