Chapter 61: The Stranger

To Sir Lucas, a veteran whose instincts had kept him alive through countless ambushes, the man appeared out of nowhere.

There was no sound of footsteps, no displacement of air.

One second, the alley entrance was clear, and the next, an aristocratic stranger was strolling past them.

"Hey!" Sir Boris barked, stepping forward to block the stranger’s path, his massive hand raising to physically halt the man. "This alley is closed by order of the Marquess. Turn around, citizen."

The man in the hat did not stop.

He did not break his smooth, hypnotic stride.

He simply continued walking, passing directly between the massive frame of Sir Boris and the estate guards holding the prisoner.

It took less than a fraction of a second.

It was a movement so fast, so impossibly fluid, that the human eye could not register the kinetic action.

It looked as though the man had simply walked past them without lifting a finger.

But Seraphina saw it.

Through her Spirit Sight, time seemed to slow to a molasses-thick crawl.

As the elegant man brushed past the kneeling, terrified abductor, a single, microscopic thread of pure, condensed, crimson mana lashed out from the tip of the man’s silver cane.

It wasn’t a blade of steel; it was a blade of sheer, concentrated malice.

The crimson thread whipped across the frozen throat of the abductor in a perfect, horizontal arc and immediately snapped back into the cane before the man had even taken his next step.

The man in the hat continued walking, emerging from the other side of the guard formation, stepping back out into the bright, chaotic lights of the main market plaza, entirely unbothered, his white silk cravat utterly pristine.

For one, two, three long seconds, nothing happened in the alleyway.

And then, physics caught up with the magic.

SSSHHHHHHK....!!!!

A sickening, wet sound echoed off the damp stone walls.

The abductor’s head, previously frozen solid by Kaelus’s magic, suddenly tilted backward at an impossible, unnatural angle.

A perfectly straight, impossibly deep fissure opened across the front of his neck.

The ice Kaelus had placed on the vocal cords shattered under the pressure of the arterial spray.

A catastrophic geyser of hot, dark blood erupted from the severed arteries, painting the cobblestones, the walls, and the pristine silver armor of Julian’s estate guards in a horrifying spray of crimson.

The abductor did not scream.

He just collapsed, dead before his knees even hit the wet stones, his life extinguished in a single, surgical heartbeat.

"WHAT IN THE LIGHT?!" Sir Lucas roared, his veteran composure shattering entirely.

He drew his broadsword in a flash of sparking steel, spinning around wildly, his eyes wide with absolute shock.

"He’s dead!" one of Julian’s guards screamed, dropping the manacles and stumbling backward, his face slick with the dead man’s blood. "His throat just opened! He’s dead!"

Sir Boris, his war hammer materializing in his hands, stared at the retreating back of the elegant man in the plum coat. "It was him! That noble guy! Stop him!"

The shouts, the screams of the guards, and the sudden, explosive metallic ring of drawn swords shattered the ambient noise of the festival.

The commoners nearest to the alleyway shrieked in terror, scrambling away from the smell of fresh blood, creating a sudden, chaotic ripple of panic through the crowd.

Duke Kaelus von Nacht heard the shout.

He heard Lucas’s roar.

He smelled the sudden, sharp, metallic tang of fresh, arterial blood cutting through the scent of roasted meat.

His reaction was instantaneous, bypassing conscious thought.

Threat!

Kaelus moved.

He grabbed Seraphina by the back of her crimson pinafore, hauling her behind his own body, physically shielding her from the direction of the alleyway.

His dark leather coat flared out like the wings of a bat.

The hidden dagger slid back into his palm, and his other hand reached across his body, drawing the magnificent, rune-etched longsword, Requiem, from its hidden scabbard beneath his coat.

His violet eyes flared with blinding, radioactive light.

His dark mana exploded outward in a massive, concussive dome, violently shoving the surrounding peasants away, clearing a thirty-foot radius of cobblestone in a split second.

"LUCAS! REPORT!" Kaelus’s voice boomed over the screaming crowd, a roar that commanded absolute obedience.

"Assassination, Your Grace!" Lucas shouted back, bursting out of the alleyway, his broadsword raised, his scarred face twisted in a mixture of rage and profound confusion. "The prisoner is dead! Slit throat! And we didn’t even catch up to who it is!"

Kaelus’s mind, the tactical engine that had never failed him, stalled for a fraction of a second.

Walked past them?

Sir Lucas and Sir Boris were Grandmaster-tier knights.

They possessed superhuman reflexes, battle-honed instincts, and mana-reinforced senses.

For someone to walk directly through their guard, assassinate a heavily restrained prisoner, and continue walking without triggering a defensive response... it was strategically impossible.

It defied the laws of martial combat.

Unless the assassin was not a man at all.

Kaelus’s glowing violet eyes snapped to the crowd, scanning the retreating figures, searching for the velvet coat Lucas had described.

Behind Kaelus’s legs, Seraphina was trembling so violently she felt as though her bones were vibrating against each other.

Her small hands were clutching the fabric of his trousers, her knuckles turning white.

She wasn’t looking at the dead body in the alleyway.

She was staring at the man in the hat, precisely, towards his back.

The elegant stranger had stopped walking.

He was standing twenty paces away, in the very center of the cleared circle created by Kaelus’s explosive mana burst.

The fleeing commoners had given him a wide berth, leaving him isolated under the warm, glowing light of a dozen paper lanterns.

He stood with his back to them, his posture relaxed, resting both of his gloved hands elegantly on the silver pommel of his cane.

He did not look like a man fleeing a murder.

He looked like a casual nobleman admiring a particularly interesting street performance.