Insomniac Player

Kang’s fear didn’t last. "Anyone can speak a name out of the dark," he said, and the words came out steadier than his hands, which hadn’t quite stopped shaking since the mask cracked.

"You’ve built your whole career on that discovery."

Kang moved first. His sword cleared the sheath in total silence, no ring of metal, no rasp, just six black copies of the blade blooming around it at once, all six converging on the stranger’s throat.

Damien watched every one of them, clear as day through Nocturnal Eyes. He also watched the grey-robed man take exactly one step, unhurried, almost bored, and touch the toe of his sandal to the edge of Kang’s shadow on the floor.

Kang stopped mid-swing like a puppet with its string cut.

The copied blades winked out of existence. A thin red line opened under his eye, right through the tattoo, and slid down, throat, chest, belt, quiet as a seam splitting on old fabric.

He came apart along it.

Both halves hit the stone floor at the same moment, and the sound of that landing was the loudest thing in the room, wet and final, echoing off the burial walls longer than it should have. Damien’s stomach turned over hard enough that he tasted bile at the back of his throat.

He’d seen John tear a monster in half with brute force, all noise and impact. He’d watched Wei Jian break three attacks in a single motion, fast enough that the eye lagged behind the hand. This was neither of those. This man hadn’t looked fast at all. The result had simply already happened, and his body only caught up to it a half-second later, like an afterthought remembering to occur.

The other four came at him together, no hesitation, no fear left for whatever had just happened to their leader. Cords whipped out from one pair of hands. Purple smoke rolled from a clay vial in another’s grip. Two dove headfirst into the black mirrors lining the wall, aiming to come out the other side, behind him.

The man in grey didn’t turn to face any of it. He walked toward Damien instead, unbothered, like a man crossing a garden.

The cords looped back and wrapped their own thrower’s wrists. The smoke reversed course mid-air and funneled straight down its own maker’s throat, and Damien heard the wet, panicked choke that followed. Both mirror-diving assassins came out the wrong side without their shadows attached, dropped flat, and didn’t move again, like whatever made them people had stayed trapped somewhere in the glass. A hooked dagger stopped one finger’s width from the grey robe’s back. When the man glanced over his shoulder at it, almost curious, that last attacker simply folded into his own shadow on the ground and never rose back out of it.

Five bodies. Four unhurried steps. Damien never once saw a weapon leave the man’s hand.

Somewhere behind the shattered mirrors, Mo Xian’s voice cracked, thin and much less steady than it had been a minute ago. "Dark Lord."

The two words landed in the room like a stone dropped into still water, and everyone left standing, Damien included, felt the ripple of it.

The Dark Lord stopped beside what was left of Kang, not even glancing down. "You knew."

"I suspected."

"You dressed hired killers in our mark."

"They dressed themselves. Reputation is a tool. I only let them carry it a while."

"A physician who lets an infection spread is still guilty of the fever that follows."

That’s exactly my kind of sentence, Damien thought, half a laugh caught somewhere behind his ribs even now, except it’s coming from someone who actually means it.

Mo Xian triggered the central mirror. Moon-jade light swallowed him whole, and the Dark Lord crossed the distance before the light finished closing, driving one hand clean through where his chest should have been. The body burst apart into a scatter of folded black paper, drifting to the floor like something out of a funeral rite.

Another decoy. Mo Xian’s real voice came from every remaining mirror at once, thin and layered and everywhere.

"You came too late. The Palace’s name bought me everything I ever needed."

"Names are only expensive to men without substance underneath them."

The Dark Lord closed one hand into a fist, and every mirror in the room shattered together, one sharp crack after another, the fragments hanging suspended midair instead of falling. Darkness poured out of the broken glass and gathered near the back wall, twisting into a shape, and for one breath Damien caught the image of Mo Xian himself, small and far away, running through a moonlit forest somewhere miles from this chamber.

The Dark Lord flicked two fingers at the floating shard nearest him. It crossed the tiny image cleanly, and Mo Xian’s head simply wasn’t attached to his shoulders anymore.

The body ran two more steps before whatever was left of him caught up with the fact that he’d already died.

"Scum of a physician," the Dark Lord said, no heat in it at all, just fact.

Damien agreed completely. What he wanted more urgently, though, was for someone to pull the last needle still buried in his shoulder, because the cold radiating from it had started climbing toward his elbow.

"A rescued prisoner is still furniture," he managed, "while gratitude sits tied at the wrists."

The Dark Lord turned to actually look at him for the first time, and laughed. Not a kind sound. Genuinely amused, though. "You talked like that through the whole fight."

He’d been listening this entire time. Something in Damien’s chest sank at that, remembering every riddle he’d tossed off in the last hour, wondering how many of them this man had actually caught the seams on.

The Dark Lord crossed the room in three quiet steps and touched one restraint. All five sprang open together. He drew the moon-jade discs off Damien’s temples and pulled the last needle free in one smooth motion, no hesitation.

Feeling flooded back like someone had poured lit oil straight into the joint. Damien stood, mostly because staying seated a second longer felt like the more dangerous choice, and his legs immediately proved him wrong, buckling under him. A hand caught his elbow before he hit the floor, held him there until the room stopped tilting, then let go without comment.

"I was in the gorge before the first cord was even drawn," the Dark Lord said.

Damien’s eyes went to the dark passage behind them, where twelve people who’d never asked for any of this were still lying somewhere above. His throat tightened around the words before he got them out. "A witness who waits beside a grave has already chosen which voice gets to speak for the dead."

The Dark Lord’s face didn’t change at all. "You’re asking why I watched."

I’m accusing you of letting them die. Close enough, apparently, that the man didn’t bother correcting him either.

"I came to find every impostor wearing my palace’s name. Kill the first one, and the rest scatter into hiding for a decade. Your investigators drew the whole nest into the open for me instead."

No shame anywhere in his voice. No regret. "The dead weren’t mine. Their enemy was."

Something hot pushed up behind Damien’s eyes, unexpected, and he was grateful for the mask hiding whatever his face was doing right now. "A blade that only counts the blood it likes shouldn’t call itself justice."

"Good." The Dark Lord studied the Rakshasa mask a long moment. "You disapprove of me, and you’re not pretending that disapproval could actually touch me."

Damien hoped for at least a flicker of guilt somewhere in there. Apparently that particular commodity wasn’t for sale tonight.

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