Ludger paused just before stepping out into the corridor, letting the darkness settle around him. The new armor was silent, almost unnervingly so, but silence meant nothing if he moved wrong.

  So he closed his eyes for a moment and sifted through his memories.

  Through the classes. Through the skills. Through her lessons.

  Luna.

  Her movements were still embedded in his mind, fluid, silent, built on killing intent honed to an art. She never truly had never taught him assassination directly, but she’d taught him something more valuable: control. Control over weight, balance, breath, footfall.

  He stepped once.

  No sound.

  Shifted his weight.

  Nothing.

  Walked, gliding, heel never fully touching, momentum dissipating at the exact moment before it would make noise.

  Kaela blinked twice, ears twitching slightly as she strained to hear even a rustle.

  “…Okay, what was that? Since when can you walk like an actual ghost?”

  Ludger didn’t turn his head, just adjusted the hood slightly.

  “From a teacher who didn’t want her name revealed.”

  Kaela squinted. “Do all your teachers hide behind masks or something?”

  He was about to answer. then froze.

  He heard himself speak. Too light. Too clean. Too young.

  A twelve-year-old trying to sound intimidating was… not intimidating.

  He sighed internally. Right. Talking like this is impossible. I’ll stand out instantly.

  He lowered his hood further, considering. He could try pushing his mana through his throat to distort his voice, but it would sound obviously magical. He could try imitating an adult, rougher tone, slower cadence. but that would still come off forced.

  Maybe… Maybe it was time to actually pick up Actor as a job.

  Versatility was important. Assassins, spies, and infiltrators used it constantly.

  But now wasn’t the time to experiment. For this mission, silence was safer.

  He lifted one hand and made a simple gesture to Kaela, two fingers raised, then pointed down. Stay quiet.

  Kaela blinked, then grinned. “Oooh. Mysterious assassin Luds. Fine, fine, I’ll stop talking.”

  Maurien just huffed. “Honestly… it suits you better than it should.”

  Ludger didn’t respond. He simply turned, cloak swirling behind him with not even the whisper of fabric.

  He pushed open the door to the underground passage and stepped out into the night.

  The runelight of Coria dimmed behind him.

  The dark streets of the League opened before him.

  And Ludger, wrapped in shadow, face hidden, weapons ready, mixed seamlessly into the darkness.

  Not a boy. Not a vice guildmaster. A silhouette. A phantom. A threat.

  And no one who saw him would ever guess he was twelve.

  The door had barely clicked shut behind Ludger when the room finally exhaled.

  Maurien was the first to break the silence, arms folding as he stared at the empty doorway.

  “…Kid of many skills, that one.”

  Kaela plopped back onto the table, swinging her feet. “Many skills we were never told about,” she added, pointing a thumb toward the hall. “I swear, every time he goes on a trip he comes back with a new trick, and a new way to terrify adults.”

  Dalan let out a long breath. “He didn’t even step. He just… disappeared. Like smoke.”

  Linne rubbed her temples. “Is he even twelve?”

  Maurien chuckled under his breath. “Unfortunately, yes. I saw him growing since he was three.”

  Kaela snorted. “Well, his mom says the only skill he didn’t learn normally was how to rest like a human being.”

  She leaned back, smirking. “Everything else? That’s just Ludger being Ludger.”

  Linne blinked. “Rest? He… he rests?”

  “Sometimes,” Kaela said. “But only because Elaine can break bones with her stare.”

  Maurien cleared his throat, redirecting the conversation. “Jokes aside, we need to figure out what we’re doing while he’s out there. Waiting feels wrong.”

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  Dalan frowned. “Do we follow? Provide backup?”

  Kaela lifted a hand lazily. “Nope. He’ll murder us if we get in the way. And he’s right, three of us moving together is like shouting ‘Lionsguard!’ in the streets.”

  Linne sighed deeply. “So what do we do? Just sit here? Wait for his signal? Or… wait for a disaster?”

  Maurien rubbed his beard slowly, brow furrowing in deep thought.

  “…Honestly? With Ludger, both options are equally likely.”

  Kaela laughed. “Yep. Either he sends a message saying ‘all clean’… or the city shakes because he caved in someone’s basement.”

  Dalan swallowed. “Please tell me that’s a joke.”

  Maurien didn’t answer. He just kept rubbing his beard, eyes narrowed, as if preparing himself for any possible outcome. Because with Ludger on the hunt… anything could happen.

  Ludger slipped into the night like a shadow that had finally remembered it belonged to the dark.

  The rooftops of Coria were a forest of metal ribs and slate tiles, all slick beneath the ever-present mist. But the runes on the wyvern-hide suit pulsed faintly with each silent step, adjusting grip, softening landings, and turning every movement into controlled precision.

  He jumped. No thud. No scrape. Not even a breath of displaced air.

  The mist swallowed him whole as he crossed from one rooftop to the next, a silent arc through the smoky glow of distant furnaces. Below, a handful of night workers trudged along the streets, shoulders hunched, lamps in hand, but none of them even glanced upward.

  They couldn’t hear him. They couldn’t see him. To them, he didn’t exist. Ludger felt something tighten in his chest.

  …This is actually fun.

  He landed on a chimney, perfectly balanced, and the runes along his boots absorbed the impact with a soft pulse. The armor shifted with him, adapting to his posture as if it had waited years to be worn. He almost growled at himself.

  Why had he never made something like this before?

  He could shape stone. Control earth. He could have crafted a full-body armor since he was ten. Yet he never tried. His focus was always on fighting, protecting, building, solving immediate threats.

  Always reacting, he realized as he vaulted over a wide gap between buildings.

  His cloak fluttered behind him without a sound, runic dampening at work.

  Always responding to problems, he continued mentally, never preparing for the next ones.

  He landed in a crouch, hood shadowing half his face. The city stretched out before him: a maze of towers, pipes, lanterns, and thick fog where shadows moved with their own rhythm.

  He breathed in. He was a geomancer who could carve mountains, a rain sorcerer, a teacher, a warrior, a builder, yet only now was he thinking of infiltration gear, disguises, tools that prevented recognition.

  Stupid, he thought bluntly, pushing off the ledge and sprinting across another roof.

  He should have anticipated this. Should have crafted gear weeks ago. Should have designed runic camouflage, noise suppression talismans, alternative identities, This armor wasn’t just useful. It wasn’t just cool. It was necessary.

  He slowed atop a roof, letting the fog swirl around him as he studied the city from above, smokestacks glowing faintly, runic lines pulsing across the stone streets like veins of blue fire.

  Being reactive is a liability, he told himself. If I wait for threats to appear, then I’m always one step behind.

  He straightened, the mist curling around his hood like he belonged to it. From now on? He would prepare before problems appeared. Build tools before enemies moved. Design plans before plots unfolded. And create identities before anyone even realized they needed watching.

  He wouldn’t just react anymore. He would be ready.Ahead of the curve. Ahead of his enemies. Ahead of everyone.

  Ludger stepped off the roof and let himself fall, then caught the edge of a pipe in perfect silence, swinging into the next shadow. He disappeared into the night.

  Ludger cut across three more rooftops before dropping down silently behind an abandoned smithy. From there, the path to the warehouse was easy, too easy. Maurien had marked the place well on their shared map, and Kaela’s wind traces lingered faintly around the outskirts like invisible fingerprints.

  When he finally reached the structure, he paused in the shadows. A squat, brick-and-timber building. Broad loading doors. Two narrow windows. And at the very top, A wide chimney venting out nothing but cold air. Perfect.

  He scaled the back wall in four silent steps, then gripped the chimney’s rim with both hands and slipped inside like smoke. The wyvern-hide armor muted the scrape of brick against his sleeves, and the mask hid his breath as he slid down.

  He landed lightly on a support beam. Below him sprawled the warehouse floor, empty, dim, and smelling faintly of crushed vegetation and burnt wind mana.

  Maurien and Kaela had definitely been here.Every table had been overturned.

  Every bag of mushrooms incinerated. The back wall bore scorch marks where Kaela’s wind-laced hallucination spell had flared too hard. And in the far corner, the last of the shattered storage tanks still oozed a sticky purple residue. Ludger dropped down, landing without a sound.

  “Good,” he murmured internally. “No evidence left to tie to us.”

  But the place wasn’t entirely empty. A stack of crates, large, metal-banded, newly assembled, remained untouched along the eastern wall. The smugglers had prepared them to transport refined mushrooms, but they never got that far.

  He pried open one. Inside: packing straw, alchemical jars, transport brackets.

  Not useful for the draught, but perfect for a delivery ruse. He closed the lid with a soft click and turned his head toward the far corner of the warehouse.

  A carriage stood there. Plain wooden frame. No runes. No horse. Just a simple transport vehicle, one meant to be loaded fast and abandoned faster.

  Ludger approached it, brushing a hand along the wood. “Old. Cheap. But usable.”He didn’t need a horse. He only needed earth.

  He placed one palm on the floor and pulsed mana. The dirt beneath stirred, lifting the carriage just enough that he could draft an earthen harness beneath the wheels. The entire structure groaned once, then settled. Then he filled the inside with the empty crates other things that could be useful to hide the emptiness of the cargo.

  Perfect. He climbed onto the driver’s bench, pulling the cloak tighter around his armor. The mask hid everything but the eyes. and even those were dim behind the shadows.

  Night fog curled into the warehouse through every crack in the wall. He exhaled once.

  All right. Time to start.

  He knew the rendezvous point. The prisoner gave a carved symbol, a time limit, a location. He’d studied them already.

  A forested ridge beyond Coria’s eastern boundary, they’d meet others there. And he would go in their place. They wanted mushrooms? They would get something more interesting.

  In the silent warehouse, Ludger tapped his foot once, sending a ripple of earth down the floor. The earthen harness responded immediately, sliding the carriage forward as he opened the entrance door. The wheels turned without touching the ground.

  He rode toward the entrance, eyes narrowed behind the mask, hood hiding the gleam of his armor. Night was still deep.

  And Ludger was about to make it much deeper for the people foolish enough to dabble in cross-border corruption and start a conflict that involved his family years ago.Tonight, he wasn’t a guildmaster. He wasn’t a child. He was the shadow their crimes had summoned. And he was ready to start causing havoc.

  I think I am going too far with this alter identity stuff…