Nuri's eyes widened. He immediately scanned the crowded festival square once more, but beneath the floating blue lanterns, people simply continued laughing, singing, and dancing.
Lucien had completely vanished. No trace of his golden hair or dark blue robes remained.
"How strange..." Alina murmured, returning to his side with a few skewers of food still in her hands. She looked around the square, her brow furrowed. "Where did Lucien go?"
"I... don't know," Nuri answered quietly.
The moment the words left his mouth, Alina's expression visibly fell. "A pity," she whispered softly.
She genuinely seemed disappointed. Truthfully, she had liked Lucien quite a lot; it was rare to see Nuri speak to anyone so easily, and she had wanted to know his friend better. Something about the blonde scholar intrigued her, even if she couldn't properly articulate why.
Meanwhile, Nuri was entirely distracted. Lucien's constant glances toward the slums during the walk had planted a seed of dread in his stomach. There was something he needed to confirm right now.
"Alina," he said abruptly, handing her his bags. "I suddenly remembered I have something urgent to take care of. I'll see you back at the barracks."
Before his sister could even formulate a response, Nuri turned and dove into the thickest part of the crowd. Alina stood frozen for several seconds, staring at the space he had just occupied. It felt as though he had vanished right before her eyes.
"...Seriously," she muttered to herself, a heavy sigh escaping her lips.
Deep within the city outskirts, far away from the warm festival lights, the atmosphere grew cold and oppressive. The cobblestones turned uneven, and the cheerful music faded, replaced by a tense, heavy silence.
"Get them loaded faster!" a rough voice barked from a dark, narrow alleyway. "Come on! Move it!"
A large man with a heavily scarred face stood beneath a flickering oil lamp, aggressively tapping a checklist against his thigh. One by one, small groups of people silently climbed into the back of large, barred transport carriages. Nobody resisted. Nobody spoke. Their expressions looked entirely empty, like ruined canvases that could no longer be painted over. Children, women, and men all carried the same hollow look in their eyes, shrinking away into the darkness of the wagons.
"Finally," the scarred man sneered, spitting on the ground. "We'll get these filthy nonbelievers out of the country. This is exactly why people should worship the gods properly. What kind of idiot disrespects divine beings, huh?"
He suddenly lunged forward and grabbed a man by the hair, violently yanking his head backward. Still, nobody answered. Not even the man whose scalp was being painfully pulled. No one reacted at all. The scarred leader clicked his tongue irritably before suddenly driving his boot directly into the man’s stomach. "Useless filth."
Hidden nearby within the deep shadows of an overhanging roof, Nuri silently watched the cruelty unfold. His entire body felt ice-cold.
Was this truly normal? he thought, his chest tightening. Was this what passed for justice?Just because someone didn't follow a god?
Nuri had originally followed this path because he noticed Lucien staring toward this sector of the slums earlier. He had only wanted to stop the Heretic from doing something reckless. Yet never, in his wildest nightmares, had he expected to witness his own kingdom conducting a silent, brutal purge.
"Mom..." a small child's trembling voice whispered from near the nearest carriage. "Why are they being so mean? What did we do wrong?"
Nuri's breathing caught in his throat. That child had done absolutely nothing wrong; he probably didn't even fully understand what it meant to reject a god. Then why did these people deserve such subhuman treatment? How had Nuri himself accepted things like this so easily before just because the Order sanctioned it? His knees slowly weakened, and he slumped back against the stone wall, covering his face with a trembling hand. It wasn't from fear. Something else, something unbearably heavy and hot, was burning deep within his chest.
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"Shut up!" the scarred man barked. He lunged forward, grabbing the child by his shirt collar and violently dragging him away from the carriage.
The child's mother desperately reached forward to pull him back, but months of exhaustion and malnutrition had weakened her body severely. Her arms shook helplessly as she fell into the dirt.
The leader raised a thick, calloused hand, preparing to strike her across the face.
Bam!
A powerful impact instantly sent the scarred man flying backward, his heavy frame smashing through several wooden crates before rolling into the muck.
"What the hell?!" one of the surrounding guards shouted, drawing his shortsword.
"I followed my brother because I was worried," a familiar, perfectly calm voice echoed through the alley. "I certainly didn't expect to find a den of thieves."
Nuri snapped his head up.
Alina stood at the mouth of the alley beneath the pale moonlight, casually brushing a few golden strands of hair behind her ear. The dim light made her almost glow against the darkness around them.
"I'm fairly certain," she continued firmly, her eyes narrowing as she looked at the armed guards, "that the Order explicitly forbids harming innocent civilians, regardless of their beliefs."
The scarred man slowly pushed himself up from the shattered wood, wiping a line of blood from his mouth as he glared furiously at her. "Girl," he spat coldly, "don't interfere with sanctified business. Leave now."
Alina's expression gradually hardened into a mask of pure authority. "Then answer me. Why are you violating common law right in front of a Knight of Valanta?"
This time, her voice carried a deadly, resonant weight. The surrounding men visibly hesitated, but their scarred leader had completely lost his patience. Raging, he rushed toward her, swinging a heavy fist.
Unfortunately for him, he had chosen the wrong opponent entirely.
The instant he swung, Alina stepped into his guard, grabbed his extended arm, and pivoted her weight to effortlessly flip him over her shoulder. The movement was so fluid it appeared elegant. The man crashed heavily against the cobblestones, but fueled by adrenaline, he scrambled to his feet and charged her once more.
This time, Alina ended it instantly. With a single precise sidestep, she avoided his clumsy rush entirely before driving her boot directly into his ribs. The sheer force behind the kick launched him violently backward.
The stone wall behind him cracked from the impact, and the man slumped forward into the dirt, completely unconscious.
Alina calmly adjusted the cuffs of her uniform, as though simply brushing away dust. The remaining guards immediately stepped backward, their hands shaking on the hilts of their weapons. It was painfully obvious that none of them stood a chance against a high-ranking knight.
"Nuri," Alina called out firmly, not looking back. "Stop hiding and come help me. Let's get these people somewhere safe."
Slowly, Nuri stepped out from the shadows. For a brief moment, he stared silently at his sister. Right now, standing against the injustice of the city, she looked genuinely radiant. Without another word, he followed her lead and began helping the nonbelievers out of the barred carriages. Gradually, small traces of life returned to the exhausted faces around them, a few whispering quiet, tearful thanks to the siblings.
Then, a sudden sound broke the quiet.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
The slow, methodical applause echoed sharply off the narrow walls of the alley.
Both siblings froze instantly. Neither of them had sensed anyone approaching, yet a powerful, suffocating pressure now occupied the mouth of the alleyway, cutting off their only exit.
"How admirable," a deep voice echoed calmly from the dark. "To see members of the Holy Order protecting heretics."
A tall man slowly stepped forward, a heavy, frayed hood concealing most of his features. Yet even without seeing his face, the sinister aura surrounding him felt utterly overwhelming. Nuri immediately felt his throat tighten painfully, the air growing thick and hard to breathe. This person was dangerous. Strangely enough, even the chaotic void of Lucien's magic had never felt this terrifyingly unnatural.
Alina quietly stepped in front of Nuri, shielding him protectively as her fists tightened at her sides. "The Knight Order," she said firmly, her voice steady despite the pressure, "does not believe in harming innocent people."
"And yet," the man replied smoothly, "your Order still hunts the Heretic."
"His case is different!" Alina countered immediately. "That person has committed mass murder!"
Silence followed briefly, thick, heavy, and suffocating.
"There's no point discussing this with children," the hooded man muttered, completely dismissing her words as he turned his gaze toward the rescued nonbelievers instead.
He raised his hand and snapped his fingers once.
Instantly, every single nonbeliever disappeared. Around twenty people vanished simultaneously, gone without leaving behind a single trace, a breath of wind, or a footprint on the dusty cobblestones.
Nuri's eyes widened violently. How? How is something like that even possible?
Even Alina looked visibly shaken, taking a sharp step backward as her guard broke. "What did you do?!" she demanded, her voice cracking slightly. "Where did you take them?!"
"None of your business."
The hooded figure slowly turned away, and as he stepped backward into the shadows of the main street, his very body seemed to dissolve into the darkness, bleeding out of reality until he was entirely gone.
Nuri remained frozen in place, staring blankly toward the empty space where the man had stood moments ago. That magic... it felt fundamentally different from Lucien's. Lucien's magic always felt distorted, but beneath the chaos, it carried a strange, crystalline purity. This man's presence, however, felt entirely rotten. Sinister. Like something dead and crawling beneath the surface of the world itself.