Flying through a choked tunnel full of soot, Kenva was having the time of her life. Dissolving into a cloud of floating leaves was a strange experience. She still felt like she had a body — one she had to contort and twist to slip down the chimney.

Every time one of her leaves brushed against the thick coal dust, she felt it on her skin, and her heart pounded in her non-existent chest as she urged herself to fly faster. Sight was muted, but sound was almost piercing. The laughter of the guards pulsed through her, and she could hear faint footfalls at the back of the building.

As another leaf brushed against the edge of the chimney, Kenva wondered how often Kanmost had his chimney swept. The dust was thick; verging on a fire hazard.

The idle thought flitted away as the wind bent to her will and she flew. While the Leaf on the Wind was ruinously expensive, and more often than not using it to empower a single leap made more sense, using it like this? Becoming one with the world around her, and severing all fetters that held her to the earth?

It was exhilarating.

Beneath her, light spilled towards her, a soft yellow that revealed an ash covered grate with the remnants of an unburnt log. Kenva strained, leaning on The Mother’s Shadow to hide her presence as she rushed down and out, only barely shifting the settled ash.

Rematerialising, she took in her surroundings in an eyeblink.

Thick dust coated every surface of Kanmost’s living room, far too dense to be explained by his weeks-old disappearance. The ceilings were high, with simple plaster mouldings as was befitting of a house that sat solidly in a middle-class neighbourhood. Despite that illusion of space, the room was almost cramped — with two couches clustered close to the fire, and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that wouldn’t have looked a hair out of place in the Aanthrast grand library.

That is to say, they were filled to the bursting with old, leatherbound books that followed some organisational scheme more arcane than any of her teammates’ magics.

Kenva slipped silently across the room, feeling her pools of stamina and mana slowly bleed as the shadows clung to her lovingly. Boards shifted under her feet in dead silence, and the ruffled rug didn’t so much as budge a hair under her motion. Her skill might have specialised in blending into natural environments, but she’d still levelled it to the end of the first tier, and it was backed by Silver power.

More than enough to fool a few city guards.

Above, the rattling laughs of the guards still filtered through the ceiling, their voices clear as day as they jeered at their unfortunate colleague. Kenva could even hear the distinctive clack of ceramic tiles as the guards on the roof shifted their weight.

More concerning were the voices she could hear from the back of the house. From the floor plan she’d studied, the door to her left led into a wide dining and entertainment room, and the back courtyard.

“Gods damnit, do they have no decorum? You’d think this was a bloody pub, not the scene of a serious crime!” a voice fumed, muffled by multiple walls. “With me!”

Kenva’s stomach lurched as she heard the back door swing open. There was nowhere for her to hide — the only other door led out into the building's stairwell, and its front door.

Feeling like a fool, she blitzed across the room like a wraith, and crouched down behind one of the green embroidered couches. The gap between them and the wall was small, housing shadows that embraced her lovingly.

Somehow, her confidence in her Skill didn’t make it feel any less like she was a fool. Behind the couch? What was she, seven? Still, even if stealth abilities did much, everything she did to hide her presence without the help of magic made it all the more potent.

When the door to the lounge rattled, Kenva held her breath. Two sets of feet stomped in a moment later, the glow of their presence fully visible despite the couch in her way.

“I’m going to have their hides,” the same voice said. Kenva could only assume it was the commanding officer — a sergeant, perhaps?

As the men stomped past, she quickly ran through her plan of attack. As soon as the sergeant passed, she’d need to make a break for the stairs before he reached the front door. That would be easy, she was more than swift enough.

More problematic would be the second floor. She’d need to pass through a narrow hall filled with dead end bedrooms and too-small cabinetry — and the room currently full of guards at the front of the building — before she could take the stairs up to the third.

From there, it was unknown what she’d face. They hadn’t been able to identify the total number of guards, and it was entirely possible there would be a guard watching the master bedroom that lay at the top of the stairs. She couldn’t hear one, but she was experienced enough to know that senses could be lied to. From there, it would be a quick jaunt past Kanmost’s study — and another potential guard — before she reached the spare room where Lyren had seen the hidden journals.

Then all she needed to do was figure out some way to silently pry open a wall panel, and hope that Kanmost hadn’t moved his journals.

Not for the first time since they’d started planning this madness, Kenva wished she had a tonic or artefact to suppress noise. Damned Lord Flowers had made that far too complicated. It would have looked mighty suspicious if anyone had noticed them making a purchase like that right after they’d been warned off looking into the Archivist’s disappearance.

Peering under the couch she was crouched behind, Kenva watched two guards stomp their way to the hallway. The first one yanked the door open with a huff. It creaked. Loudly — as had the back door.

As they left, she rose the second they passed out of sight. There was no hesitation; a hunt lived and died on decisive movement.

Padding across the room, she got her first look at the hall.

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It was plain, with the top stairs rising directly in front of her. At the end of the hall to her right, she spotted a full length mirror — one that gave her a perfect view of the guards backs as they stalked towards the front door.

She had to move, now.

Softening her movements on the balls of her feet, she took a single step and leapt upwards. Her outstretched hands easily reached the banister a good six strides above her. Tension rippled through her body as every muscle moved in unison to silently shift her momentum to swing up and over.

The guards kept walking, the sounds of their footfalls uninterrupted as she lurched around the corner.

The second floor. Lit by the same dim yellow wardlights as the rest of the building, it was a featureless expanse of varnished wooden wainscoting that served as a foundation for the cream plaster walls. Doors stretched down the left hand side, all closed except for the last one before a set of shut curtains and the next stairs up.

Now — this was the most precarious moment.

Halfway down the hall, Kenva’s stomach dropped as she heard a window slam shut.

“Well, boys, the fun’s over. Sarge seems pissed,” guard grumbled, drawing a few chuckles from the others. “I know Demos is a lackwit, but how’d he manage that?”

“Wouldn’t put it past him to have kicked the damn thing,” someone replied.

Their voices were getting closer. Two of them at least, judging by the footsteps.

Kenva whipped her head around. There was no where to go. Every bedroom on this floor was a dead-end, and if the door hinges were as poorly maintained as the others she had heard, her stealth Skill wouldn’t be much help.

Sure, she had oil in her storage ring, but she wasn’t that fast.

She couldn’t go back — if the front door was open, she’d be in full view. She could hear the sergeant ripping into the poor bastards who’d been on the receiving end of their weaponised stray.

The wardlights. They were set two thirds of the way up the wall, and their housings directed the light down. The ceiling was shaded, enough for her Skill to work with at least.

Gods, this was so bloody stupid. This entire job was a shambles.

With few options, Kenva leapt up, planting her hands and feet on opposite walls as she wedged herself tight to the shaded ceiling.

Mere moments after she held herself in position, two guards walked into the hall. The first one couldn’t have been much older than her, with a mousy moustache that he hadn’t quite grown into. The second looked seasoned, with more than a few lines on his brow.

The younger guard shook his head. “At least it was a bit of entertainment. This job's bloody boring — it’s enough for me to wish I was working Stab Alley again.”

“Please,” the other scoffed as Kenva tracked their passing — though she didn’t dare to move her head. “It’s good and easy, we’re getting triple wages, and the sarge doesn’t mind if we smoke. That’s enough for me.”

“How long’s it gonna last though? And I don’t know about that bonus — smells fishy to me.”

The other guard stopped dead. Right underneath her. Hells.

“Listen mate,” the guard said, laying his hand on the first’s shoulder to pull him to a stop. “Best you keep thoughts like that to yourself — this job’s gonna go as long as it needs to.”

The first guard jerked, looking back in surprise. But not up. Kenva bit her lip, the sharp stab of pain keeping her mind clear.

“What do ya mean by that?” the first guard asked, before he stumbled as the older guard loosened his grip on the man’s shoulder to clap him on the back.

“Seen more than a few jobs like this before — high pay for a seasoned team to sit on their ass while sweet fuck all happens. If the sarge hears your yapping, you’re not getting picked again, i’ll tell ya that.”

“Whats that supposed to mean?”

Would they just move! Though, she really shouldn’t have been surprised that Flowers had shoved crooked guards to falsify the investigation. No doubt he had more delicate agents working on it — or it was just a cover up. Thank the gods she had enough Strength to hold her weight for hours.

A faint chime of The Mother’s Shadow finally reaching its two-hundredth level brought some small measure of relief to her frustration.

The older guard sighed and shook his head, before he gently pushed the younger one down the hall.

“Listen, sometimes orders come from up high. It’s always the same: a lengthy investigation turns up a bright and shiny report that says nothing, without any actual investigators showing up. Someone shoved their nose where it don’t belong, so now we’re here to keep the peace — you can go back to taking bribes from pick-pockets in a few weeks.”

The younger guard lurched. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, ya do. So keep your grumbling to a minimum and enjoy the extra silvers.”

A moment later, the pair slipped into the back room by the stairwell down — one she knew had a window that looked over the back of the house.

The second the door clicked shut, and she saw the glow of the men's souls head towards the window, she dropped from the ceiling. Bleeding off the force of her fall by crouching her knees, she didn’t make so much as a whisper. Her team would want to know what she heard — it was seeming more and more likely that Lord Flowers was directly involved with Kanmost’s disappearance somehow.

That, however, could wait. The notebooks were more important — and hopefully they would point towards where the man might have been taken, or at least what his kidnappers were looking for.

Moving swiftly, she repeated her earlier trick — hauling herself over the banister so that she didn’t have to pass by the room she knew still held one more guard.

Then she was there. The third floor.

By the blessings of the gods the door to the room she was looking for was ajar — as was the one to Kanmost’s bedroom. A moment later, she stopped as she registered a glow against the far wall of the Archivist’s room — someone was inside. Another guard?

They seemed occupied at least, busy looking out the window if she had to guess. Still, she wouldn’t take it on chance. Creeping forward, she peered through the doorway.

What she found stopped her dead.

A man, wearing mottled dark leathers that fuzzed his outline. He was laying chest down on the floor. Bulging, glassy eyes stared straight at her — the impossibility explained by his snapped neck.

It wasn’t hard to spot the culprit. A lithe figure, wrapped in a cloak that wavered like smoke as they tore open the far wall’s wooden panelling with a steel prybar. It splintered in unnaturally enforced silence. The figure’s aura wafted the power of a Peak Steel.

Someone else was looking for the notebooks. In the wrong spot.

Before Kenva could even properly process what she had run into, the figure spun towards her. A woman, her piercing amber eyes wide with shock. The stranger reached for a vial on her belt.

Kenva burst into motion.