First light pried at the horizon, a weak blade of silver cutting through the spiritual haze above Jade Immortal City. It did nothing for the knot twisting in Quentin’s gut; the whole manor felt braced for bad news. Inside the Executioners’ Quarters duty room the air was worse, as if frost had been packed into the walls and told never to melt.
Four enforcers stood below him, faces leached of color, sweat shining on their lowered brows. None dared draw a full breath. He rested behind the broad slab of obsidian that served as his desk, the stone cold enough to bleed through his sleeves.
The ink-green brocade of his robe rasped when he shifted, the cloud-stitching catching at his forearms. A tight ache rode the muscles around his eyes; he did not need a mirror to know the look would slice.
Quentin, Grand Chamberlain of Internal Affairs, let the silence steep one breath longer.
“Over one night, two living men vanish right beneath your eyelids; care to explain?” His tone stayed level, almost mild, yet the words still made the four men shiver as though he had slammed a blade into the table.
“R-Revered Grand Chamberlain,” the lead enforcer began, his voice trembling. “We kept to routine. At the midnight hand-off the logs were clean; Miles was on duty and never left the quarters. Garth, he had the day off, went to the Drunken Immortal Tavern as usual and has yet to return…
At roll call this dawn, neither could be found. We searched the quarters, the tavern, the Thousand-Gold Parlor, every haunt they favor—nothing. We questioned their colleagues; no one heard so much as a creak last night…”
Quentin cut the report short, letting one fingertip drum the obsidian—sharp, metronomic. “What about the warding formation around the quarters? Any sign of breach?”
“The formation ran normally, no record of a trigger,” came the answer. “We inspected Miles’ quarters and every corner inside and out. No marks of struggle, no lingering aura, nothing. Everything is… unnervingly intact.”
A second enforcer swallowed and added, his disbelief plain, “It’s normal in a way that feels wrong, Grand Chamberlain.”
Quentin mouthed the words, *normal in a way that feels wrong*, letting them roll across his tongue as his eyes narrowed, the chill in them sharpening.
“Two High Immortal Level Four body cultivators…” he said, voice silk around steel. “Miles on duty inside a warded compound, yet they vanish without a ripple? Not even dust out of place?”
He rose and paced to the lattice window. Dawn spilled pale gold across the courtyard, but his stare only deepened, tunneling past the light. He had plucked the Garth-Miles brothers from gutter brawls, shaped them into fists for chores no ledger would admit, like the Soulfall Slope matter weeks ago. For both fists to vanish now, leaving neither blood nor corpse, screamed design.
Without turning from the window he asked, “Lately, has anyone been sniffing around the city for things they should leave buried?”
The men traded looks. Finally one ventured, “Grand Chamberlain, a few days back… Rumors said someone paid heavily at the Knowledge Pavilion in the Western District, asking about Soulfall Slope… Specifically about the man and woman involved,” he continued, shrinking under Quentin’s silence. “But the pavilion’s old keeper guards his clients; we couldn’t learn who asked…”
Quentin’s gaze snapped to the enforcers, voice low but serrated. “Soulfall Slope… That pair…” He pivoted slowly, the lamplight sliding over his cheekbones as a brief shadow flickered behind his eyes. “What else?”
The words sounded almost bored, but the hush that followed hurt the air. The youngest enforcer swallowed so hard Quentin heard it. “And… and… yesterday afternoon, one of Punishment Hall’s outer lookouts sent word. Fresh faces were circling the Drunken Immortal Tavern, asking after Garth… We thought it was a routine grudge, maybe debt collection, so we… dismissed it…”
The report barely landed before a sound like ice shattering cracked across the duty room. Quentin’s palm hammered the obsidian tabletop; a corner splintered, powdered stone dusting his boots.
“Incompetent!” The shout felt heavier than the broken stone. He leveled that fury at them, eyes alive with the wish to wound. “Someone is sniffing around the Executioner himself, and you call it trivial?!”
All four enforcers dropped as one, knees clacking on stone, foreheads chasing the floor. “Grand Chamberlain, forgive us! We failed. We deserve death!” they babbled, each word falling over the next.
Quentin’s chest lifted, fell, lifted again. The rage scraped the inside of his ribs before he caged it. Under the anger, something colder—unease—spread like spilled ink.
The Turner brothers were missing; now strangers asked about Soulfall Slope and the Executioner. The line between those points burned neon in his mind. Could it be the old friends of that wandering couple, come to call in a blood debt? Yet according to every report, the pair had no footing on level thirteen, no wealth, no allies… So, who moved for them? A phantom able to slip past the Executioners’ Quarters array without even stirring the wards? Unless their earlier crawl around the city lord mansion had uncovered secrets bigger than either of them.
Possibilities wheeled, colliding, shattering, reforming. He chased each, caught none. He knew Julian’s temper—cut once, never twice. Fail the celestials’ directive, and punishment would arrive faster than breath. The Soulfall Slope incident had to stay buried; any hand reaching for the lid must be broken at the wrist.
“My orders, now…” The chill in his tone felt surgical. “First: seal the rumor. Tell the world Garth and Miles are on confidential duty. Anyone who whispers otherwise is sabotaging the mansion and will bleed for it. Second… Punishment Hall and the Internal Guard move out. Quietly screen every newcomer to the city, especially those whose cultivation masks itself or whose routes make no sense! Focus on the two asking about Soulfall Slope and the Turner brothers. Dig them up, even if you have to peel the streets. Third… Tighten every ward around the mansion, the inner court, the vaults, and especially Soulfall Slope. Without my seal, no one breathes near them… Fourth! Alert the Western District. Lock the city. Entry only, no exits. Every gate and transport array gets inspected to the bone.”
The commands fell in ruthless sequence, each sharp enough to cut the next one free.
“At once, Grand Chamberlain!” Relief flooded their voices as they scrambled out, clutching his wrath like a pardon.
Silence returned, elastic and suffocating. Quentin stood in it, face shifting between hard resolve and the dread he refused to name. He pressed the knot of wood that only he and the architect knew. A panel sighed open. Inside, rows of jade caskets waited, squared shoulders gleaming under dustless lamplight, each with a neat parchment tab curling against its lid.
He let a knuckle drift across the labels—A09-51, B37-12—until the skin tingled over A11-73. There, his pulse snagged. That was the one Soulfall Slope had cost him two battalions to salvage. Behind that lid glimmered a Soul-Refining Crystal, the size of a sparrow’s egg, spun from the shredded spirits of Sidney and Cadence on the night the valley screamed. He could still taste ash when he thought of it. By doctrine, crystals forged from named souls had to be re-shackled every three days and logged with the celestials—paperwork he filed, sigils he renewed, vows he pretended to respect.
“Could that be what they’re after?” The words slipped out before he could cage them. Light jittered across his eyes the way it did whenever risk and profit tried to share the same seat. Instinct shoved him toward the vault door, but years of surviving other people’s mistakes yanked him back. If someone watched the secret vault, his sudden appearance would shout louder than any alarm.
He steadied his breathing, drew a custom message sigil from his sleeve, and poured a thread of power into it. “Status of A11-73,” he whispered, each syllable keyed to the wards.
A heartbeat later the sigil pulsed—cool, even, unquestioning. The reply wrote itself inside his skull: *perimeter intact, no disturbance recorded.*
Relief loosened his shoulders, but the very space that filled his lungs reminded him how much further they could still fail. Enough guessing. Before dusk he would stand in front of Manor Lord Julian and let the man taste this danger for himself.
