By the third night of his silent patrols, Meronia had become familiar to Ludger, its patterns, its sounds, its nocturnal rhythms. He knew which inns stayed loud until dawn, which streets were always empty, which rooftops dipped dangerously low, and which chimneys spat surprise embers. Nothing out of place had escaped him for seventy-two hours.

  But that night, something finally shifted.

  As he crouched on the roof of a merchant warehouse, Seismic Sense humming quietly through the soles of his boots, he picked up a disturbance in the flow of the city, a pair of footsteps that didn’t belong. Too soft for drunkards, too measured for guards, too quiet for normal travelers. They moved with trained caution, gliding through the alley shadows like predators trying not to disturb the night itself.

  Ludger’s eyes narrowed. He followed from above, leaping silently across rooftops, keeping parallel to the two dark shapes moving through the maze of backstreets. Even without seeing their forms clearly, he could sense enough. Their steps were balanced. They carried weight at their waists, short knives, maybe more. No armor. No chatter. Just intent.

  They didn’t move toward the markets or warehouses. They moved toward the Torvares estate. A very deliberate direction. When they reached the last set of alleys before the manor walls, the pair slowed, sinking deeper into the darkness. Ludger crouched low on a rooftop edge and listened.

  They weren’t looking for a way in. They weren’t searching for blind spots. They weren’t preparing to infiltrate. They were observing.

  Watching the guard rotation. Counting wall patrols. Studying lantern patterns. Timing footfalls.

  Ludger’s gaze sharpened. The estate walls had thirty guards posted tonight, trained, well-equipped, disciplined. No gaps. No weak points. No accessible corners that could be exploited without making noise or climbing a sheer wall of enchanted stone. He killed time trying to find an opening in their patrol routes the last two nights.

  These two weren’t foolish enough to attempt anything tonight. This was reconnaissance. They were preparing for another night. Or the day of the party.

  Ludger rested a hand under his chin, rubbing it thoughtfully as the two shadows melted back the way they came, having learned what they wanted. Their footsteps faded into the larger pulse of the city, but Ludger kept tracking them until they slipped into a tavern basement two blocks away, likely a rented room.

  He exhaled quietly.

  “Well,” he muttered to himself, “at least the morning is free.”

  He stood, stretching slightly as he rolled his shoulders.

  “If they’re doing reconnaissance at midnight, they won’t risk doing it again during the day.”

  Which meant Ludger could finally, finally, grab a few hours of actual sleep instead of dozing on chimney tops like a deranged bird. He turned away from the alley, stepping back into the shadows of the roofline.

  Fortunately for him, and unfortunately for the two idiots he was tracking, the tavern they slipped into was built mostly of stone. Old stone. Thick stone. The kind that transmitted vibrations beautifully through its beams and foundation.

  So when Ludger stepped lightly onto the tavern roof and placed a hand on the tiles, his Seismic Sense spread downward like a web. The entire building lit up in his mind, the clatter of mugs, a bartender sweeping, a cat prowling under the floorboards, and finally… the two spies descending into a cheap basement room with quiet, trained steps.

  He followed their movements as they unpacked their gear. A pair of knives. One coil of rope. A small metal case that felt… heavy. Possibly runic. Their boots were soft-soled, meant for silence. Their breathing was steady. Not amateurs then, trained, but probably not elite.

  Ludger crouched, listening, waiting. Were they that easy to track… or was he just getting that good? Probably both. He smirked faintly. If this was the caliber of reconnaissance scouts the enemy sent, then they were underestimating Lionfang badly.

  He remained perched on the roof until the sky began turning faintly pale in the east. By then, the two spies had finally gone to sleep, he could sense the shift in their breathing, the slow steady rhythm of unconsciousness. Perfect.

  Without hesitation, Ludger slid off the roof, landed silently in the alley, and touched the stone wall of the tavern. Earth shifted at his command. A thin tunnel opened downward from the outside wall, connecting straight into the basement room.

  Then he widened it, just enough. A circular chunk of ceiling silently dissolved into his waiting hand.

  The two spies, asleep on their cots, didn’t even have time to gasp before the floor beneath them rose and wrapped around their bodies like a living snare. Earth cocoons sealed around them up to the mouth, no movement, no escape, no chance to scream.

  Their eyes flew open just in time for Ludger to drop a pair of stone spheres onto their foreheads, light taps for him, knockout blows for them.

  They slumped instantly. Ludger tugged the earth cocoons toward him, dragging both unconscious bodies through the tunnel he’d just created. He slipped into a dark alley, sealed the wall behind him, and continued deeper until he reached a larger chamber, a hidden place he’d carved during his nighttime patrols beneath Meronia.

  His temporary hideout. A place only he knew existed. As he set the bodies down and began reinforcing the chamber wall with mana, he took a moment to consider something important: He needed a name for this place.

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  He crossed his arms, contemplative. He couldn’t call it the Batcave. That was too obvious. Too copycat. And he was not wearing a cape anytime soon.

  He considered The Quiver, but no, he wasn’t an archer. That was Mira’s thing. The Fist Den? No, sounded like a sketchy underground fighting ring. The Stone Vault? Hmm… too bland.

  He tapped his chin.

  His fighting style leaned into hard hits, brutal force, overwhelming bursts of mana. Punches like seismic hammers. A small smirk tugged at his mouth.

  “I’ve got it,” he murmured to himself.

  A name fitting for someone who broke enemies and problems alike with his fists. It would be called…

  “The Break Room.”

  Perfect. Solid. Intimidating. And absolutely his. He glanced at the unconscious spies.

  Now it was time to see what they knew. It was time to break them and then take a break later.

  The Break Room was quiet when Ludger stepped inside, the only light coming from a faint lantern hanging high above. The earth walls absorbed sound, giving the chamber an eerie, muffled stillness, no echoes, no escape. The two spies remained bound to the wall in their earth cocoons, only their heads exposed. They were still unconscious, breathing shallowly, unaware of the trouble they had stepped into.

  Ludger approached the nearest one and crouched beside him. No speeches. No threats. He simply slapped the man hard enough to yank him out of sleep. The spy’s eyes cracked open, confused, unfocused, and Ludger immediately followed the slap with a sharp punch to the jaw. The man’s head snapped back, his breath escaping in a pained grunt before he sagged forward, dizzy and half-conscious.

  Before he could slump completely, Ludger rested a hand on the man’s cheek. Healing Touch flared, warm mana spreading through the injured tissue. It wasn’t gentle, it was just enough to pull the spy back from the edge of unconsciousness. The moment the healing settled, Ludger’s fist struck again, undoing half the recovery and leaving the spy’s face swollen and throbbing. The combination of sharp pain and partial restoration left the man’s senses scrambled, his mind spinning as if thrown into cold water. He did that several times in a row.

  Ludger waited. Calm. Patient. Like someone testing the temperature of a blade rather than interrogating a person.

  When the spy finally blinked himself into clarity, Ludger spoke in a measured voice, as if they were discussing business. “Who sent you?”

  The man could only groan at first, his jaw sluggish and his thoughts scattered. Ludger exhaled with irritation, reached out, and healed him again, slightly more this time, enough to restore the ability to speak and think. Color returned to the man’s face just long enough for recognition to dawn in his eyes. His breath hitched as the truth sank in.

  He knew who stood before him. The vice guildmaster of Lionfang. The twelve-year-old prodigy. The earth-shaping shadow. The child whose body count whispered through the underworld.

  The man trembled visibly, sweat beading at his temple. Ludger held his gaze without blinking. “Good. You understand who you’re dealing with.” He leaned in just slightly, his tone steady enough to feel colder than a shout. “Tell me, do you know why I’m letting you see my face?”

  The spy swallowed hard, unable to form a response.

  Ludger straightened. “Because you won’t live to see another day.”

  The words weren’t cruel. They weren’t dramatic. They were simply true, delivered with the calm finality of someone stating a weather report. Ludger stepped back, letting the weight of inevitability settle on the man’s shoulders.

  “And now you get to decide something very important,” Ludger continued. “You don’t have much time left. But you do get to choose what you do with the last day of your life.”

  He raised his hand. With a flick of mana, four pillars of compacted earth rose from the ground, solid, heavy, unbreakable to normal men. Ludger walked to the first and carved through it with a Wind Blade so clean and precise the upper half slid off like silk. The second he obliterated with a fireball, the flash of heat lighting his profile briefly. The third buckled under a jet of pressurized water, Ludger’s new elemental control making the stone fold inward as if crushed by invisible hands. The fourth he approached slowly, placing his palm against it before chopping downward with his bare hand. The hardened pillar split straight through, the fracture echoing like a warning.

  The spy’s breath grew ragged, panic tightening his chest with every demonstration.

  Ludger returned to him, calm as ever. “Four ways. Four choices. Some quick. Some not.” He crouched again so the man couldn’t escape his gaze. “If you cooperate, I end this quietly. If you don’t…” He gestured at the shattered stone around them. “You can guess the rest.”

  Silence stretched across the chamber, heavy, crushing, absolute. Then the spy broke, voice trembling as he finally spoke. Ludger had his answer.

  The spy swallowed hard, his throat bobbing painfully against the tight hold of the earth cocoon. His eyes darted around the chamber once, then lowered in resignation. When he finally spoke, his voice cracked with a mixture of fear and despair.

  “I… I accepted a job.”

  Ludger’s eyebrows drew together. “From who?”

  The man hesitated, just for a heartbeat, but the look on his face gave away the truth. He wasn’t weighing whether to lie. He was weighing which pain would be worse: Ludger’s… or his guild’s. Either way, the answer wouldn’t save him.

  He exhaled shakily, looking like he aged a decade in seconds. “A guild… an underworld guild. We are the iron moth brotherhood…” He choked on the name for a moment, as if speaking it aloud felt like betrayal, then forced it out. The name was predictably dramatic, one of those shadowy titles criminals loved to whisper. Something ominous, something theatrical, the type of name that tried too hard to sound feared.

  Ludger hummed thoughtfully. Underworld guilds always had names like that, overly edgy, eerie, like they wanted to be villains in someone else’s bedtime story. He held his chin, studying the spy’s defeated expression. There was no deception in the man’s posture, no flicker of mana or breath out of rhythm. He wasn’t lying.

  Why would he? He was dead either way.

  “What else?” Ludger asked, voice steady. “Who hired the guild? What instructions were you given? What’s the plan?”

  The man shook his head once, despair clouding his eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything else. I’m… I’m a small fry. A newbie. They told me to prove myself. Pick a job. Any job. And this one was open.”

  He wheezed softly, head drooping. “Watching guard rotations. That was it. They didn’t tell me what comes after. I wasn’t supposed to know.”

  Ludger watched him silently. No guilt. No pity. Just calculation. A low-level recruit. Barely initiated. Sent to observe the estate defenses, not by the Rodericks directly, but by a contracted underworld guild. That meant the Rodericks, or whoever was backing them, were hiring outside help instead of using their own people.

  Smart. And inconvenient. Ludger lowered his hand from his chin and stepped back, letting the room grow cold around them.

  “So,” he said, voice quiet, “you picked the wrong job.”

  The man closed his eyes. And Ludger’s questions shifted to the second spy.