For the first time in years, Sylrith Naerthil stood beneath a sky unmarred by peaks or storms. The horizon stretched far and wide, dry and cracked, where the breath of the earth itself tasted like sand and copper. The mountains of Tenebris were distant now — a black line behind her. She was no longer a daughter of Shaer’Zanir, nor merely a blade forged by Kaer’Thalor. She was a shadow moving across the world.
Now, she had a name of her own choosing.
In the port towns and trade-hubs along the western front, they called her The Whispering Jackal, an elusive broker of secrets. Her contacts never saw her twice in the same disguise. She wore veils, masks, or simply vanished before they could ask her real name. But they all knew her by the same symbol — a faded silver medallion engraved with an obsidian jackal under a crescent moon.
Her new task, as given in silence by the Watcher himself, was to uncover the growing networks of slavers and smugglers operating along the fractured frontiers. Magical relics, old and new, were surfacing in black markets across the land. Ancient names whispered in forgotten tongues. More disturbingly, elven children and halfling bloodlines had begun to vanish, bought and sold like cattle by unseen hands.
She was to find out who was buying, and more importantly — why.
The world beyond the mountains was not as she had imagined in the folktales.
It was not golden or wild with wonder — it was worn. Cities with crumbling edges and palaces gilded in false gold. Dusty towns where children cried for bread. Fortresses built on corpses of older empires. Slaves were auctioned in alleyways while priests blessed the crowd. Kings debated borders while farmers buried their kin.
But even in the filth, life burned fierce. The world stank of sweat, blood, ambition, and hope — and for Sylrith, it was intoxicating.
She moved from place to place, earning trust through whispers, fear, and manipulation. At times she worked as a messenger, other times as a mercenary escorting caravans through dangerous routes. But always, always listening. Always watching.
The shadows in cities were different from those in the mountains. They were louder, more tangled — and far easier to manipulate.
In the black-market taverns of Calven Reach, where no law dared tread, she began weaving her web.
She sold real information to the right people and falsified truths to the wrong ones. She helped smugglers avoid patrols — only to tip off slavers and observe their movements. Every whisper was bait. Every betrayal, a thread.
Rumors grew. The Jackal knew everything. Where lost caravans disappeared. What docks were bribed. Who was buying elven blood. People came to her in the dark, desperate and terrified. Sometimes they found her. Sometimes they never left.
She kept detailed notes in a cipher of the Shadows — passed in dead drops to anonymous agents of Kaer’Thalor. Some she knew. Some she didn’t. The Watcher never spoke again. He didn’t need to.
The borderlands bore no resemblance to the world Sylrith once knew. Gone were the endless stone corridors of Shaer’Zanir and the strict elegance of clan halls; here, life thrived in dirt and desperation. The towns were patchworks of mud, wood, and crumbling stone, pulsing with the quiet violence of markets soaked in secrecy and fear. Children darted through alleys with stolen fruit, beggars scraped together lies for bread, and every word had a price.
Sylrith watched it all from beneath her hood, anonymous and unremarkable. She had adopted a new identity — Nyssra, an information broker of vague origin with a reputation for silence and results. It was a mask that fit disturbingly well.
At first, the work had seemed beneath her — bribes, coded messages, empty tavern talk. But now, as the rumors mounted and patterns emerged, she saw a web forming. Relics, once thought lost to legend, were surfacing in distant markets and vanishing again, sold to buyers who rarely reappeared. Slaves with elven and halfling blood were auctioned behind closed doors, and strange shipments came through port cities under escort of mercenaries clad in sigils Sylrith did not recognize.
She filed reports when she could — encrypted scrolls wrapped in shadow-binding glyphs and delivered to dead drops along mountain trails. But what disturbed her most was how familiar it all became. How easy it was to play this role. How comfortable the lie of Nyssra had become.
At night, Sylrith sometimes dreamed of her childhood. Of her father’s cold voice echoing through ancestral halls. Of meals served in silence, of siblings she hadn’t seen in years. The contrast was sharp and bitter — then, she had been watched constantly, judged at every breath, hemmed in by duty. Now, no one cared if she lived or died — but the freedom stung just as deep.
The fog that night in Valthenor hung heavy, as if the city itself sought to muffle the violence to come. Sylrith moved like a whisper through the outer alleys of the trade quarter, following leads etched in blood and secrets. Her search for the relic smugglers had brought her here — but what she found was not a contact. It was a shadow from the past.
Irilsa Venor.
She stepped from the mist with her usual poise, dressed in fine leathers trimmed in dark crimson, the gleam of a curved dagger at her hip. Her smile, as always, was polished and cruel.
“Still chasing ghosts in the name of loyalty?” she asked, tilting her head. “You always were the obedient one, Sylrith. The little candle hoping to outlast the storm.”
Sylrith didn’t answer. Her pulse was steady, but her thoughts fractured under Irilsa’s voice. That voice had once mocked her in training yards, whispered poison in the dormitories of Kaer’Thalor, always pressing into the cracks of her resolve.
“You dream of freedom,” Irilsa continued, circling her like a vulture. “A hundred years of blood and silence, and then what? A new name? A lie? You still think you’re better than the rest of us, don’t you?”
Sylrith’s hand drifted near her blade, but Irilsa laughed.
“You’re still loyal to a system that uses you — and you think that’s honor. You don’t fight for justice, Sylrith. You fight because you’re afraid. Afraid there’s nothing else beyond duty.”
The first strike came without warning. A flash of steel in the fog. Sylrith barely dodged it, rolling to one side and drawing her blade in one smooth motion. Irilsa pressed forward, elegant and ruthless, every movement a reminder of why she had once been considered a prodigy. Her strikes came in measured flurries, testing, probing. Not just fighting — reading.
Sylrith defended, countered, but her footing was less precise. Irilsa was not only faster — she knew how to push her opponent off balance with words as well as weapons.
“You wanted to be more than a pawn,” Irilsa hissed, her voice low in Sylrith’s ear as their blades locked. “But look at you. Still dancing on strings. You think silence makes you strong? It makes you predictable.”
Sylrith said nothing.
She didn’t need to fight fair.
As Irilsa overextended in a sweeping arc, Sylrith feigned weakness — then slipped a throwing needle from her sleeve, driving it into Irilsa’s side. Not fatal. Just enough to slow her.
Irilsa recoiled, eyes wide in pain, lips curling into a snarl. “So you’ve learned a few tricks,” she spat.
“I’ve learned not to waste energy on words,” Sylrith answered coldly, launching a cloud of blinding powder into the air. In the confusion, she struck — low, fast, brutal. A knee to the ribs, a blow to the wrist that knocked Irilsa’s dagger from her hand.
They both stumbled back, breathing hard.
“You never cared about the mission,” Sylrith said, voice like ice. “You wanted to be feared. I only want to finish what I started.”
Blood dripped from both of them now — but it was Irilsa who looked uncertain.
“You think your cause makes you invincible?” Irilsa growled. “The network will break you. And when it does, you’ll wish you had joined me.” “They chain us. I broke those chains.”
Sylrith wiped blood from her mouth and stepped back into the mist, her voice steady.
“I don’t break,” she said. “I burn quietly.”
And then she was gone — leaving Irilsa bleeding in the dark.
The wound in her side burned with every step.
Sylrith limped through the winding alleys of Valthenor’s lower quarter, cloak drawn tight, blood soaked through her bandages. She found a half-collapsed warehouse near the old salt docks — a place forgotten, unpatrolled, perfect for vanishing. There, she bound her injuries with trembling fingers, jaw clenched against the pain.
The fight with Irilsa had left more than scars. It had shattered something deeper.
The words her old rival spoke echoed like a poisoned chant in her mind: They chain us. I broke those chains.
Sylrith had always known the path she walked was narrow, shadowed, unforgiving. But now… now the certainty wavered. For the first time in years, she let herself think what had always been forbidden:
What if I just stopped?
What if she disappeared, fled the order, slipped into one of the outer cities and abandoned the mantle of a Shadow? She had enough coin. Enough skills to become someone else. No more masks, no more blades in the night. No more orders carved into her bones.
She leaned her head back against the damp stone wall, vision blurring with exhaustion.
She could almost hear Old-Shadow’s voice again — the one who raised her when her parents offered only duty. He had warned her, once, in a whisper meant for no ears but hers:
“There are storms coming, Sylrith. Not the kind we can fight with steel. Not the kind the world is ready for. If you ever find yourself standing at the edge — you must decide whether you will be wind, or fire.”
And now she stood at the edge. Alone. Bleeding. Unsure.
Her thoughts drifted further, reaching for the faces she had not allowed herself to remember. Her younger siblings — laughing, playing beneath the high trees of Shaer’Zanir, before war and silence stole those days away. The children on the streets of the border towns, telling stories of ancient heroes in broken voices. Their dreams had weight. Fragile. Unprotected.
She thought of the horrors she had seen — and worse, the horrors she had done. In villages where no one would remember the names of the dead.
That was the cost.
That is the weight of duty.
It wasn’t about loyalty to a title or creed. It was about the line between light and collapse. If no one stood in the shadows, the darkness would not wait.
And so, though her hands shook, Sylrith reached for the hidden crystal shard embedded in her satchel — the secure contact tether. A last resort.
She breathed in. Spoke the passphrase.
“Shadows rise only in the light.”
“Watcher… this is Naerthil. Confirming contact. I have information. The network runs deeper than we thought. There’s corruption in our own ranks. I have engaged an ex-Shadow turned asset. Valthenor is compromised. I await instruction.”
She ended transmission.
The silence that followed was heavy, but inside her, something had steadied. The doubt had not vanished — but it no longer ruled her.
Now, it served as a reminder: she was not unbreakable. But she was still standing.
And she would not break alone.
The Watcher’s reply came in the dead of night, the tether crystal humming with a low, cold pulse that stirred her from half-sleep.
His voice, as always, was calm — almost inhuman in its precision.
“Confirmed. Valthenor is the convergence point. Artifacts. Slaves. Power. The Nyssra network anchors here. But we need caution. You are to observe only. No intervention. No engagement. You are not to risk exposure. Not yet.”
A pause. A longer one.
“There is reason to believe the Shadows may have been compromised. Until we know more, assume all channels are under threat. You are alone for now. There will be no reinforcement. New directives will follow once the situation is clarified. Standby.”
And then… nothing.
The line went dark.
The days that followed were restless.
Valthenor’s tension bled into the streets. Murmurs of disappearances. Closed-off wards in the slums. An old noble family suddenly vanishing. Whispers of relics — not just moved through the city, but used. Power shifting hands with every shipment that passed beneath the cobblestones.
And Sylrith? She waited.
She obeyed.
She watched from the rooftops and gutters, from the rafters of dens where flesh and gold were traded without shame. But the waiting became poison. The silence stretched into weeks. The city festered beneath her feet, and the crystal tether remained cold.
She tried to contact him again. This time, nothing answered.
Protocol was clear: in the event of severed contact beyond an extended period, operatives were to return immediately to a fallback point. No discretion. No deviation.
But protocol was written for simpler wars. And this… this was something else.
So, she sat alone on a rooftop beneath the rain-swollen moons, cloak soaked, hands trembling, heart torn. And she made her choice.
She would not return.
Not yet.
She withdrew a small blade and the crystal tether, laying them on the stone like relics in a forgotten shrine. Then, in a voice steadier than she felt, she spoke:
“To the Watcher. This is Naerthil. I am proceeding alone. I will return within six months. If I do not… assume the worst. Burn this tether. Do not send others. Not until you know what waits here.”
And with that, she raised the blade — and shattered the crystal into dust.
The glow died instantly.
A final, deliberate severing.
From this moment on, she was alone — truly alone.
Her identity was discarded. A new name would rise. A new face would move through the alleys and parlors of Valthenor. One shadow among many, hunting a truth too large for any one person to contain.
In the darkness, she began to build — a network, a legend, a weapon.
And far beneath the city, something stirred… watching.
Waiting.
The creation of a new identity in Valthenor was far more than choosing a name — it was the slow carving of a legend, whispered piece by piece into the right ears. Without the backing of the Shadows, without the silent authority of Kaer’Thalor’s seal, Sylrith was just another ghost in the city’s underworld.
She began with caution. A small job here, a whisper sold there. Disguised as a lowborn sell-sword with a knack for secrets, she brokered information in exchange for favors, weapons, or coin. She changed her mannerisms, let her accent slip, wore her hair differently. Her weapons were hidden beneath layers of rags and misdirection.
Weeks passed before anyone remembered her name. Months before that name was spoken with even the faintest trace of fear.
Songbird.
That was the pseudonym she chose. A shadow name. Something easy to pass between lips but hard to track. She sowed the myth carefully — Songbird knew things no one else did. Songbird had eyes everywhere. Songbird never asked questions, but always had answers. It was all performance, built on risk and silence.
But building that reputation meant blood. She had to prove herself again and again. Smugglers tried to cheat her. Mercenaries thought her an easy target. Spies and thieves tested her reach. Each time, she responded with calculated precision — not by overpowering them, but by outwitting them, uncovering their secrets before they uncovered hers.
It was exhausting.
The missions she took grew more dangerous. One week, she infiltrated a private den where slavers auctioned bound elves and halfling children to masked buyers. She slipped a message into a buyer’s pocket — a warning that eventually sowed chaos and gave the children time to escape. She killed no one that night. But the panic she’d caused grew her name tenfold.
Another time, she stole a ledger from a merchant who trafficked in enchanted chains used to bind spellcasters. The ledger contained names — many of them protected. Sylrith didn’t know who to trust with the information. So, she kept it.
Piece by piece, a larger puzzle formed. Names began to repeat. Symbols carved into crates, whispers of an ancient language used to activate relics, references to a city beneath the city — an invisible marketplace only accessible to those with specific artifacts.
Meanwhile, the city itself simmered.
Rumors echoed in the taverns and merchant halls: the Empire had secured its eastern front with Rakkesh. The war-hardened legions were restless. Now, they looked west — to the free cities. Valthenor was no longer a trade jewel; it was a future foothold. Whispers of imperial agents, of new taxes, of veiled threats — they spread like infection. Every merchant tightened their grip. Every faction drew new lines.
For Sylrith, it was a curse.
Information became harder to trust. Networks shifted. Smugglers fled or vanished. Fear clouded even the boldest tongues. And through it all, she was utterly alone.
No orders. No backup. No Watcher.
For the first time, Sylrith had to decide — truly decide — what her next step would be. She remembered the words of Old-Shadow, whispered years ago: “A storm will come, girl. And you must know where you stand before it breaks.”
She had no choice now but to become the storm.
The days bled into each other.
It had been nearly six months since she severed contact with the Watcher. The time she had given herself — six months to disappear or return — was nearing its end. Any normal operative would have started the retreat. Prepared a clean exit. Left the city and vanished before the promise turned to betrayal.
But Sylrith could not leave.
Not now.
Too many signs converged. Too many loose threads tightening into a knot she could almost touch. Something was building beneath Valthenor — something larger than the Network, larger than smuggling or even slavery. A final thread had reached her ears: a meeting was planned in the old sewer arteries beneath the western ward, a place long abandoned and sealed off during the plague generations ago.
She went alone.
Disguised, silent, her breath measured.
What she found beneath the city was not a deal. It was a sanctuary.
The entrance had been disguised behind collapsed masonry, opened only by activating a rune carved into the sewer wall — a rune drawn in dried blood. Past the threshold, the tunnels changed. Carved stone gave way to sculpted chambers, blackened altars, and strange, twisting markings etched into every surface.
These were not smugglers. These were devotees.
The deeper she went, the colder it became. Candles flickered in iron sconces. Whispering voices echoed through the dark — not spoken aloud, but crawling along the edges of her thoughts. Every instinct told her to turn back.
She didn’t.
She passed barracks — rows of neatly arranged bedrolls, carved emblems above each. Scriptoriums. Prayer cells. Ritual tools soaked in something far thicker than ink.
And then… the hall.
It opened before her like a wound — a vast, circular space lit by hundreds of flickering braziers. The air was thick with copper and ash. At the center lay a pit, and within it, a mass of bodies. Dozens — maybe hundreds — all mutilated, bound together with grotesque precision, limbs twisted into unnatural shapes, mouths sewn shut.
She could not move.
This wasn’t just a slaughter. It was deliberate. Recent.
And then the whispering became voices.
Real.
Audible.
They pressed against her mind with unbearable weight, speaking in no language she knew — and yet every syllable clawed into her thoughts like nails on stone. She stumbled back, struggling to breathe, vision swimming with images not her own — burning cities, bleeding skies, a tower of bones rising from the earth.
And then they moved.
From behind the altars, the corpses shifted.
No — not corpses.
Constructs.
Things stitched from the dead, eyes glowing faintly, breath hissing through torn throats. Golems of flesh, animated by something darker than necromancy. One turned toward her, its movements slow but relentless.
Sylrith ran.
The first struck the wall beside her as she ducked past, chunks of stone exploding outward. She slipped into the tunnels, bleeding, breath ragged, every step echoing louder than the last. Another blocked the exit — she dropped low, rolled beneath its grasp, and sliced a binding cord from its leg. It collapsed with an unnatural scream, and she kept running.
The tunnels blurred around her. Her limbs burned. But the exit came into view — and with it, the blessed stench of the surface world.
She burst into the alleyway behind a derelict warehouse, collapsing behind a stack of broken crates. Her heart pounded against her ribs like a trapped animal.
She had seen horrors before.
She had done them.
But never like this.
And now she understood. This wasn’t about relics or coin. This wasn’t a network of crime.
This was a cult.
A preparation.
Something ancient and growing.
Something that had changed the very nature of the shadows themselves.
Sylrith wiped the blood from her lips and stared into the night sky, shaking.
She could not return.
Not yet.
She had crossed a threshold. And now, whatever price awaited her for disobedience, she would bear it.
Because the thing buried beneath Valthenor was older than orders, and far more dangerous than betrayal.
Chronicles of Astravara 
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