NightSwallow saw him: Brian, calm, his blade raised high, sunlight breaking across the steel like it enjoyed him. And kneeling before him was Lunaris.

  For a moment, NightSwallow didn’t move. She just… watched. The shadows still wanted her. It was easier that way.

  But then Lunaris sent her a message.

  She wore the same idiot grin that always said I can still win this.

  Swallow exhaled. Idiot, she thought, and the shadows moved for her.

  She slid out of the darkness between two bodies, silent as the world’s apology. Her daggers drew their own shadows as she crossed the gap, one breath before Brian’s sword would have fallen.

  Lunaris smiled. “Thank you.”

  It should’ve ended there: clean, Lunaris keeping her class. Swallow tightened her grip, ready to strike —

  Steel screamed.

  A flash of silver cut between them, a bright arc splitting the dark. One of Swallow’s daggers jolted aside, knocked wide by another blade… smaller, faster, too damn cheerful.

  “Got you!” sang a voice, high and delighted, as a figure tumbled out of the circle: a cat-girl assassin, ears perked, tail flicking. She landed in a crouch, her grin wide enough to be criminal.

  Lunaris looked up just as Brian’s sword fell. NightSwallow froze in the echo, her blade still half-raised, as the cat-girl straightened and winked. “Aww~” she purred. “How lucky am I? I met the fearsome Swallow on a job.”

  Juliette retreated into the shadows in front of everyone, as if she had never been there. The catgirl furrowed her brow, looking around confused. “Damn, that’s one hell of an ability. But I’ll find you!”

  She waited in the ruined stall like a black cut into the world, the cloth and broken wood making a decent excuse for absence.

  The circle of men around Brian loosened, laughter working its way back into their faces while he crouched to lift that sword, sunlight snagging on nicked metal, an ironic little crown for the man.

  She checked her skill that should allow her to escape. She really hoped it would.

  “Wow. This is... a broken legendary sword! Feels bad taking it.” he said, voice almost reverent. He toyed with the edge, then glanced at the elite beside him who’d spoken earlier. “Maybe... a peace offering to Lisa?”

  The man laughed. “Lisa? After you did, she’ll hate your guts forever. Remember Dmitry.”

  Brian’s smile softened, half guilty. “Yeah. She’ll never understand.” He checked the invisible system interface. “Wait... I see the kill, but... I don’t have a counter or something for Chronosblade?” His eyes flicked to where Lunaris had been.

  The mantle and the things she wore lay in the dust. A gem in the [Rimebreak Oathsworn Mantle] winked; a beautiful reflection that divided the square into slivers.

  NightSwallow watched the glint. She didn’t think; thinking was for Lola.

  She moved.

  Shadows swallowed her walk. She left the stall like a secret stepping out to check its own teeth, hand reaching for the mantle and the gem before Brian could blink twice. Her fingers closed on jeweled metal and mantle, and she already moved to leave.

  The cat-girl reacted first, blades popping like bright punctuation.

  One dagger sliced a path for itself where NightSwallow would be; the other aimed clean and merciless. Juliette—no, NightSwallow—bit down on a curse she’d never say aloud and ran straight at the assassin. Going around would take too long.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  At the very last damn moment, she twisted. One blade found shoulder meat, and she hissed as she felt heat. Pain flared, but the other dagger met her bracer and skidded off with a metallic shiver.

  She tasted copper and satisfaction both.

  “Respect!” the cat-girl crowed, as if the wound were a compliment. NightSwallow didn’t answer. She left a smear of shadowed footprints and the taste of iron, and she was already sliding back toward the square, mantle and gem secured in her inventory like contraband.

  “GET HER!” Brian’s voice cracked the air. The grin that followed was logistics. “I’ll arrange a date with Eri, or with me, for whoever kills her!”

  Cute.

  She’d rather die.

  Light and sound detonated around NightSwallow as the square turned predatory. Arrows split the air into ribbons; spells cut through smoke like spotlights hunting a ghost. The first blade missed by a whisper; the next didn’t.

  She let instinct take over, feet sliding, knees bending, the rhythm of her [Night Dance] unfurling through muscle memory, but it wasn't perfect. She should have practiced instead of scaring players by appearing from shadows.

  Princess of the Night became motion without pause, a sketch of herself drawn in half-light. Steel hissed past her cheek; heat licked the edge of her sleeve. A shockwave hit and rolled over her like thunder through silk.

  She didn’t stop.

  Couldn’t.

  Every shift, every sidestep felt like music only she could hear; notes played in shadows.

  All she needed was one mistake. One breath where nobody looked, nobody believed in her existence; and she’d slip back into her element.

  But too many eyes were on her. Too many names on the kill feed waiting for a date. The shadows refused to open, not while she was being seen. So she ran through hell, untouchable only because the night pitied her.

  The battle had already died.

  Luminaria and Dmitry stood amid the ruin, fighting back to back, refusing surrender. Around them, Rimebreak was smoke and equipment on the floor, their banners trampled into the mud. The Empire’s players weren’t even waiting anymore; they’d turned their blades on the demons now, finishing the mess they’d started.

  Encircled. Inevitable. The end of another Dmitry’s grand plan.

  She flexed her grip on the daggers and sent the message anyway as she avoided an ice spell to her face.

  Her gaze found Dmitry across the battlefield. He shouldn’t have been able to see her, but he did. Even through the spellfire, through the ruin, she saw the curve of his mouth; the grin that meant good job, now don’t die.

  His reply came a breath later.

  At that moment, Rimebreak stopped defending.

  It wasn’t a retreat. It was a scream.

  Luminaria hurled the sky itself; an enormous bolt tearing through the players and crashing down the square’s northern way, splitting stone and bodies alike. Dmitry followed with fire arrows that traced the lightning’s bones, then the rest joined in, mages and archers emptying their reserves in one incandescent suicide note.

  The air turned white.

  The blast carved a path, narrow and trembling, but it was enough.

  NightSwallow ran.

  She didn’t look back. She didn’t have to. Damon yelled in excited voice, “Dmitry, you bald bastard, now you… die!”

  Silence.

  She was the only shadow left standing.

  The square was smoke and equipment, banners half-buried in the ash, the light too bright for comfort. She ran north through what was left of the gap made by Vainqueurs Imbattables, every breath serrated, lungs dragging cold through cracked ribs of air.

  Players were already regrouping ahead; reforming their wall with practiced indifference. The opening was gone, collapsing like a wound trying to heal. Her legs burned; [Night Dance] was fading, its rhythm unraveling under her skin. Each step grew heavier, less like Eclipse Princess, more human.

  Then it ended.

  The world remembered she existed.

  The next blade didn’t miss. It slid along her ribs, sliced through leather, drew a gasp she didn’t mean to make. Heat bloomed down her side; she staggered, a pale breath steaming from behind her mask.

  She turned, daggers up, but there was no space left to vanish into. No shadow deep enough, no trick clever enough. Just light and steel and the press of bodies that all wanted the same prize.

  For the first time since it started, she stopped running. A frost spell bloomed in front of her like a star being born. She closed her eyes.

  The shadows still clung to her boots, loyal to the end. “Sorry, Luna,” she whispered.

  But… the ice didn’t hurt.

  For a moment, NightSwallow thought she’d glitched. The cold pressed from every side, a coffin made of breathless blue. Her lungs seized on instinct; the sound of her heartbeat filled the tiny space until it felt like the world itself was counting down.

  She tried to move.

  Her elbow hit something smooth, but unyielding. The walls were close… too close. She could feel them against her shoulders, her knees. The space wasn’t meant for a person; it was meant for a corpse.

  She slashed once, twice; blades sparking, no damage. The ice didn’t even crack. It was like hitting concrete sculpted by a god with no sense of humor.

  Her pulse spiked.

  The edges of her vision darkened, and not from shadows she controlled. Her breath came faster, shallower, each one stealing less air than the last. The mask pressed against her face like a hand.

  It’s not real, she told herself. Log out. Just—

  But her fingers wouldn’t move to the menu. They scrabbled against the ice instead, searching for a seam, a crack, anything. The rational part of her brain knew it was useless.

  The rest of her didn’t care.

  The walls seemed closer now. Or maybe she was just noticing them more. Every angle, every frozen surface reflecting her own trapped form back at her in fractured blue light. A kaleidoscope of her own helplessness.

  She remembered being small. She remembered a different dark, a different kind of trapped.

  Her chest tightened.

  Trapped.

  The ice fog from her breath had nowhere to go. It hung there, clouding what little she could see, making the space feel even smaller. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears. Too loud, too fast, drowning out everything else.

  She was going to die here. Not with a blade, not in battle, but sealed away like something forgotten. Like something that never mattered.

  No, no, no. She wasn’t that girl. She wasn’t weak anymore.

  She gritted her teeth, forcing air into her lungs. I will not—

  The ice melted.

  It didn’t crack or shatter; it simply dissolved, like the world breathed around her. Steam curled from her sleeves as she stumbled forward, blinking against the sudden light.

  And then she saw it.

  A circle—no, a crater—of melted frost fifty meters wide. Every player inside it lay still. Some frozen, some burned, all silent. The air shimmered with mana aftershock, as if the goddess had dropped a snowball the size of a meteor.

  NightSwallow lifted her gaze.

  Up there, high on a pillar of ice that hadn’t existed a second ago, stood Charlie.

  Her Queen.

  Wind tugged at her coat and hair; shards of frozen light spiraled lazily around her like obedient ghosts. Her eyes swept the battlefield, not with panic or mercy… just judgment.

  “Traitors,” Charlie said, and the word cracked the square.

  Oh. Of course.

  She was using that ridiculous [Ring of Shouting Real Loud] Juliette had found weeks ago in some abandoned dungeon. Swallow almost laughed. The sound stuck behind her mask, escaping only as a small, choked exhale that steamed in the cold.

  She smiled anyway. The night itself seemed to lean in, relieved.

  With Charlie here, they hadn’t lost.

  Rimebreak had won.

  The Empire just didn’t know it yet.