Lucimia rose back into the high air, the wind a cold blade on her cheeks. She scanned the place where Cole vanished, streets spread beneath like ink on a map. The tavern sat below like a quiet whale, and she was sure he’d walked straight into it.

So how did he slip through every gaze, like a fish through a net? The thought pressed in like fog.

Invisibility Spell? The idea fluttered like a moth against glass.

But he pushed the door, a ripple anyone should’ve seen.

She and Ritch saw him, while the drinkers sat like stones in a river.

“Deceiver… deception…” Her whisper fell like dust.

“I get it,” she said, the answer clicking like a spark off flint.

“What did you get?” Ritch’s eyes latched on like a hook.

“It’s the Deceiver’s Blessing. He veiled the people inside, like gauze over their eyes.”

“The Deceiver’s Blessing? Which Dark Deity is Cole a follower of? So we can see him because I’ve got an hour of Purification, and you’ve got your family’s Exemption?” His words came in a rough spill, like water from a tilted bucket.

“Cole is…” She swallowed it, the name a thorn in her throat. “Forget it. He used a deceiving Blessing to fool the tavern, but here’s the snag. If he could fool them, why put on a stage mask for that drunk on the road, pretending to escort a prisoner?”

Answer in hand, a new question rippled out like rings on a pond.

“Maybe the Blessing has limits,” Ritch said, cautious as a man feeling for a step in the dark. “He didn’t want to waste the chance on one drunk.”

“Mm. That tracks,” she said, the logic fitting like a key in a lock.

Blessings always asked a toll; that was ink she’d drunk from her first bookshop pages. Only Purification cost almost nothing, a clean spring that ran free. And Exemption demanded no Sacrificial Ritual, not even church prayers; it sat in the blood like a birthmark. Beyond those two, every follower paid a price, shadow for light.

“If so, we should get back to the tavern. If we’re late, who knows where Cole runs to.” Ritch’s urgency drew taut like an arrow on a string.

But Lucimia didn’t rush; certainty cooled in her like night dew. Cole wanted to trigger a buried rite, and such things burrowed underground, like roots under stone and rats in a sewer.

Thread by thread, her clues wove into a guess. “They hid their trail because the place isn’t in the tavern, but in the back yard,” she said, a door behind a screen.

“What do you mean?” Ritch’s brow knotted like twine.

She laid it out, voice low as clouded water. Cole would hold a Sacrificial Ritual to a Dark Deity. So they planted the site where the crowd roared like waves, the safest danger. The most dangerous place is often the stillest wind.

Cole used the Deceiver’s Blessing to glide from shadow to shadow, then slipped into the tavern’s rear yard. No need to enter the hall; we fly over and drop like a feather.

In the yard, her eyes caught a manhole cover at once, a dull coin in the dirt. She jogged over and crouched like a fox reading tracks.

Dust at the rim had a broken seam, a cut that didn’t match the ground.

It meant someone had opened it, a fresh scar on old skin.

Untouched, the dust should lie like frost, thinly connected to the road, not bitten through.

Worse, the dust slanted to one side, thick here, thin there, like a waning moon.

“Should be down here,” Lucimia said, pointing with a blade-thin finger.

“All right. Do we go smash the ritual? Can just the two of us manage?” Ritch drew his sword, moonlight slipping along the steel.

“…There’s no one else,” she said, the words falling like stones.

“Guess not…”

They dropped in together, two pebbles into a well.

The ladder was slimed like mossed bark. Lucimia wouldn’t touch it, and let magic lower her like a slow breath of light. Ritch cared less; with gloves on, he rattled down, boots tapping like a woodpecker, then jumped.

His landing boomed like a drum, echo chasing echo down the hollow runs. “Softer…!” Lucimia’s brows pulled tight, two strokes of ink. Was he really a Holy Knight?

“Sorry, sorry,” Ritch muttered, scratching his head like a dog in rain. “It’s filthy, I wanted to hurry. In Anding Town we rarely see real fights, so I’m short on experience… sorry.”

She let the annoyance drift like a falling leaf. “Forget it. We came down long after Cole. Our trail is cooling ash; they won’t catch it fast.”

Then she studied the sewer’s bones. Lamps of mana-stone hung along the walls like dim stars. Their pale glow thinned the black a shade. Walkways ran on both sides, and a foul channel cut the middle like a dark vein.

She fought the rising nausea like a tide, tugging her collar up to shield her mouth and nose.

“Which way?” Ritch asked, his whisper crisp as paper.

Lucimia looked both ways, twin tunnels gaping like two throats. She gathered a bead of light in her palm, then crouched to read the floor.

Ahead, the dust was pressed with passage, big and small prints tossed like petals in ash. Behind them, the ground lay smooth, unbroken snow.

“Forward,” she said, voice a thin knife.

“Got it.”

They moved in single file, hugging the wall like climbers skimming a cliff. At each bend, Lucimia edged a look for any octopus-like sentry, breath held like a strung bow. When the turn lay empty, she followed the prints again.

At last, at one corner, two silhouettes cut the lamplight like stakes. Two men in armor stood there, the same pair who’d tailed Cole at the start.

Lucimia snuffed her spell, a candle pinched to smoke. She flicked her wrist, signaling Ritch.

His mouth opened in surprise, words steaming up. She raised a finger to her lips, and the steam died.

She gestured the retreat, and they slipped back on quiet feet like cats.

In a safer hollow, Ritch finally breathed words. “Didn’t think those two were in on it. I even bought them dinner once.”

“Leave that,” Lucimia said, voice low as a river under ice. “We work together. We take them both without stirring the rest.”