Crimson Veil

The vault had no windows. That was the first thing Drevian had noted when he mapped the route three weeks ago — no windows, no torches after midnight, and only two guards on rotation who believed the post so dull that they had taken to trading watch stories in low voices rather than maintaining the silence their orders demanded. Their mistake. He moved through the dark like water finding the lowest point — not fast, not slow, but inevitable. He had learned long ago that speed made noise and noise made bodies, and bodies made questions that the wrong people might start answering correctly. The first guard never heard him coming. The second turned — fast, faster than expected — but not fast enough. He stood in the silence after, breathing slow and even. He stepped over the bodies and pressed forward into the vault. The obsidian mirror sat on its shelf like something that had been waiting. He wrapped it in black cloth without touching its surface directly and tucked it beneath his coat, close to his chest. He turned back toward the dark corridor. The Iron Veil had stood for three hundred years on the belief that its rot lived outside its walls. They were about to learn otherwise.