CHAPTER 20: SHADOWS BENEATH THE BASILICA

The bell rang once, then twice, and when the hammer fell the third time its sound seemed to split the night in two. It was a summons used for dread more than for ceremony. The three heavy strokes that called those who could move quickly and knew the city’s darker rhythms.

Kaelen shouldered his cloak and stepped out into moon-bleached streets with Echo padding at his side. The wolf’s fur was a muted silver beneath the lantern light; his breathing was quiet as stone. The city slept in borrowed calm, but Kaelen tasted the tension as if it were salt in the air.

He found Joanna where they had agreed to meet. She stood below the basilica’s wide stone steps, the carved saints above them sleeping in shadow. She had not expected more than a messenger or rumor in response to her summons; she had certainly not expected Kaelen to answer it.

Joanna did not stand when he approached. She only folded her arms, the water-crest of her house pin catching the pale light. Her mouth twitched into a wry yet incredulous smile.

"I never expected you to come," she said.

"You gave me no choice," Kaelen answered. He let the words be blunt and small; there were worse things than looking a danger in the face.

She lifted her chin. "Then listen, the Basilica is not like any place, it’s dangerous."

"I have seen worse," Kaelen prompted almost impatiently.

"Where does this lead?" He asked

"First to the lower entrance then if we are able to pass the three vaults we might find something," Joanna explained.

They moved together into the Basilica’s lower entrance , a place of stone chill and draft that seemed to drink sound. Joanna’s steps were sure. She spoke as they walked, urgency threading her voice.

"The beast you struck down, it wasn’t born of the Marches. It was assembled. Patterned. The arc running through its spine was a man-made sigil, not a natural weave. Someone engineered it to look like a monster, to make the Conclave’s defenses react and hide what’s really being taken."

Kaelen kept his jaw still. "Who would design that?"

"No idea but the critical question is what was really taken even the council can’t figure it out," she revealed.

"Who profits," she said. "And whoever profits has hands inside Luminis."

"That’s not all, I noticed something odd at the council earlier today," she revealed.

"Two scribes but they didn’t enter the same message, one was written in blanks while the other plain words as expected," she revealed.

This time Kaelen listened rather than spoke . He noticed how tense she seemed and it was obvious she knew something but she was holding back.

They descended through arches grown slick with time. Faded glyphs winked under the pressure of their footsteps. Lamps guttered where the wind found them. At the far side of a long corridor Joanna halted and set her palm to a carved stone. The metal of her ring warmed.

"There," she whispered. "The fifth mark."

Kaelen’s fingers hovered over the notch she exposed , a shallow cut in the masonry where a sigil had been rubbed away to a smoothness that made it look like an old wound. Joanna knocked three times and the stone sighed, then slid aside to reveal a narrow stair plunging deeper.

"People speak of a Fifth Vault," Joanna said once they were inside, the stair swallowing them. "Not on official maps. Not in the Ember Ledger. Old wives’ tales, dismissed in the Academy. But the traces are real, it contains caches of tools, weapons, doctrines no one wants taught. The kind of things you only pull out when you decide to break or remake a city."

Kaelen felt the echo of something ancient in the words. "If there are weapons there," he said, "then someone is preparing to use them."

"They already are," Joanna said.

"We are being followed but not by an enemy, maybe an observer as well," she pointed out.

"I know...before I moved I noticed the ward had my father’s...I mean Lord Valerius seal," he cursed out.

"Don’t be quick to rule yourself out...but that’s not the only person following us, we don’t need to move yet until they move just be cautious," Joanna pointed out again.

A thin, animal wail slit the air from somewhere within the vault’s hollow throat. Joanna cut across the stair and motioned toward a side corridor. They moved fast, Echo leading with a low rasp.

They found Tiara in a narrow chamber, slumped against a buttress and bleeding slowly and dark into the stone. Her robes were torn, one arm wrapped clumsily across her middle. A scrap of burned paper , the letter’s edge blackened as if it had taken fire and then been doused. It littered the ground at her feet.

Assassins moved through the shadows like a second darkness. Their masks hid their faces even their blades caught the light and drank it. A stench of oil and bitter ash filled the vault.

"Back," Joanna breathed, water sliding into her fingertips like thin knives.

Kaelen didn’t answer. He let the Aether hum under his skin and took the shape of the space between them, the way a net might take the wind. Threads of life gathered, a squirrel’s small pulse behind the stone, the slow mill of fungus. He lifted that current and shaped it without naming it: a shield, a pressure, a sudden repulse like a tide.

Joanna moved with him; water coalesced around her palms in sleek blades. Echo hurled himself forward with a sound like breaking glass. The assassins came with the sharp economy of men who had nothing to lose. Joanna’s water flashed, catching a forearm and flinging a blade aside. Echo met another in a tangle of fur and sound; Kaelen’s hand exploded the narrow life-threads that animated one man’s strike, and his arm seized up mid-motion as if a puppet’s string had been cut.

They fought down the corridor, Joanna slashing water into arcs, Kaelen’s Aether rewiring strikes into useless gestures, Echo dismantling formation with fang and paw. The masked men tried to retreat deeper into their shadows, but the net Kaelen held tightened, thinned, and folded them into helpless shapes.

By the time the last assassin fell, Tiara’s breathing was a shallow grind. Joanna pressed a hand to a wound at the base of her throat and cursed under her breath.

"We must move," Kaelen said. "Now."

They bore Tiara as quickly as they could through the basilica’s maze. At the healer’s ward Tiara was stripped of her outer layer and passed under cold water and hot hands. A young medic, one of the wardsmen who looked like carved wood. He was rigid but worked without pause, knotting splints, whispering balms.

Tiara’s eyes opened enough to catch Kaelen’s; she saw the strain there and tried to smile through pain.

"You live too loud now," she rasped.

Kaelen dropped to the stool beside her pallet. "Who sent them?"

She closed her eyes and blinked slower. Her hands were pale, lined but fumbled. She placed her hands on Kaelen’s, then pressed something small and cool into his palm where the healer would not reach. It was a wafer of blue wax with a symbol stamped into it: a simple ring bisected by a line.

"Grip this." Her voice was thin but steady. "If they reach for you with empty words, press it to your skin. It will hold them at bay but only for a beat. Only enough for you to go where you must. You’ll... need it." Her fingers tightened around his hand and then slackened.

Kaelen palmed the seal and felt a whisper of icy clarity at its center. He slid the wafer into his glove and sealed his fist without telling the others.

"Tiara," Joanna said. "Who would have done this to you?"

Tiara’s breath hitched. "Above the Vault," she answered. "Do not... trust anyone... above the Vault." Her eyes fluttered as the medics stole at the ragged places on her side. "Find the Fifth... before they find you." Then her lids closed like a soft brick falling.

They stayed until the ward had steadied enough to promise nothing terribly cruel. When they stepped back into the basilica’s stair, the night seemed to press on them with more intent than before. Joanna’s jaw had set like something forged. Kaelen’s knuckles ached where the wax had fit.

"Who would send assassins to a retired Archmage?" Joanna demanded as they walked out.

Kaelen did not answer at first. He was enraged with anger , this has proven his enemies are too experienced. He was battling with his mind on how to move forward. His skills were great but not strong enough to move forces to his command. He was still bound to his father’s house where he wasn’t fully accepted.

"Someone who believes Tiara knows too much," he said finally. "Someone who believes she can lead you and me to what they need."

They did not speak again until the bell in the city chimed the uncaring hour and they made for the household gates. Both of them moved like people who had been given a new map of danger.