ShadowBound: The Need For Power

Four months had passed by since the infamous Bleeding Smile raid and Serah's annoying encounter with the man known as Marcus.

In the weeks that followed, Serah returned to her normal grind—hunting down dark mages deemed too dangerous to be left to ordinary units—after taking her short, well-earned break that barely lasted a week.

Her new assignment, alongside a freshly assembled squad, led her into the rising heat of suspicion festering in the city of Heyh, located in Zone 16.

Heyh—glittering with wealth and excess—was a place where even the beggars wore silk. The streets shimmered with polished stone, the air perfumed with incense, and its citizens strutted with pride, untouched by poverty. Sitting comfortably in the heart of all that glam and grandeur was one of its prized gems: a nobleman named Vaelen Drosmir.

Drosmir wasn't just rich—he was practically swimming in wealth. Some even whispered that he might be the wealthiest soul in Heyh, period. His gold had built roads, healed sick children, and even boosted the Solara Kingdom's military with generous donations of coin, enchanted armor, and refined myst supplies.

But about a month ago, something cracked the polished image.

During a completely unrelated mission in a far-off province, a noble's daughter—believed dead in a bandit raid—was found alive. Barely. She had been enslaved, her body pumped with toxins, and her mind fogged under the weight of a memory-altering spell, a dark magic spell. Once she came to her senses, she began to speak—and what she said started to spark serious questions about Drosmir.

She recalled being sold at an underground auction, surrounded by masked figures kneeling before a man whose voice gave her chills. Smooth, confident and too familiar. The way she described it—it sounded exactly like Vaelen Drosmir.

King Tharion didn't brush it off.

Though Drosmir was publicly known to possess only water affinity—with myst resonance records backing that claim—Tharion didn't like loose threads. Especially when dark magic might be involved.

So, without hesitation, Tharion dispatched Serah and her unit to infiltrate Heyh and quietly start poking around.

Serah led a small team of five, slipping into the city under new identities, setting up base in the upper ring, and beginning a slow, methodical surveillance campaign on Vaelen Drosmir.

For an entire month, they watched him.

They followed him to council meetings, social gatherings, charity events, and even his private library. They checked shipments, tracked visitors, monitored myst flows around his estate—everything.

And after all that? Nothing.

No signs of dark myst. No shady exchanges. No whiff of auctions, slaves, or hidden chambers beneath his estate. The man looked clean.

But Tharion wasn't satisfied.

Despite the lack of hard evidence, the King insisted that Serah and her unit stay embedded for another month. "Double-check everything," he'd ordered. "Sometimes, the darkness hides behind the brightest lights."

And so, Serah and her squad remained within Heyh's gilded borders, quietly watching, waiting, and hoping for a crack to show in Vaelen Drosmir's perfect reflection.

***

The sun sank behind Heyh's jagged skyline, the diamond-tipped spires catching the last of the gold light like fangs poised in twilight. Down below, where the polished stone roads echoed with carriage wheels and hawkers slinging half-truths like gospel, a modest three-story manor hid in plain sight between two merchant guild halls. To passersby, it was just another warehouse—maybe a textile archive no one bothered checking.

But inside... it was the nest.

Serah stepped through the front door, hood drawn low, her boots whispering against the marbled floor. The air was thick with the scent of old stone and burned incense—a familiar bite she'd grown used to. This place, for all its coldness, was the only kind of home she could afford these days.

Upstairs, on the second floor, the others were already waiting. The central room was wide and dim, wrapped in enchantments that muffled sound and warded off eavesdropping. Curtains were drawn, locked in a permanent twilight haze. At its center, the circular war table sat like an altar, buried beneath a chaos of charts, city maps, coded dossiers, myst resonance diagrams, and stale food no one remembered ordering.

Kael lounged in his usual seat, boots up, spinning a coin between two fingers. His bored expression didn't fool anyone—his jaw was clenched, his eyes razor sharp as they followed Serah's entry.

Elira, hunched beside a pile of heavy tomes, scribbled furiously in her journal, cross-referencing known public sightings of Vaelen against myst ripple data. The dark smudges under her eyes had deepened—another sleepless stretch added to her record.

Jorin and Myla sat close, finishing the sync on their latest recon. Myla looked up first, a smirk tugging at her lips. "Late again, princess," she muttered.

"I stopped at North Plaza," Serah replied, shrugging off her cloak and letting it fall into a spare chair. "He gave another donation. A full-on healing ward this time. For veterans."

Kael scoffed hard enough to echo. "Saint Vaelen strikes again. I swear, this guy's either a genius or we're the dumbest crew in Heyh."

"He's too clean," Elira muttered without looking up. "No one's that spotless. Not in this city."

Serah moved to the table, scanning the latest myst logs and leyline charts. "Any spikes?"

Elira met her gaze, tired but sharp. "Flat. Steady. If he's got dark myst in his pocket, it's buried so deep it's not even brushing the upper layers. Either he's masking it himself—or he's got someone masking it for him."

Serah sighed, leaning into the table's edge. Her crimson eyes drifted to the image clipped beside a list of aliases and shipping lanes. A painted portrait of Vaelen smiled down at them—cool, calculated, untouchable. Something about that smile gnawed at her patience.

"My gut says he's hiding something," she murmured. "He just hasn't slipped."

"Or doesn't need to," Myla added, folding her arms. "Guys like him—money makes the world move. No need to get his hands dirty."

Kael snapped the coin from the air and leaned forward. "So what's the play? Keep tailing ghosts while he funds orphanages and gets statues carved in his honor?"

"No," Serah said flatly. "We change angles. Tomorrow, I want eyes inside his storage hubs. Start with the one near the west docks. Cross-check the ledgers—especially that imported spice crate. Its shipping manifest doesn't match weight records."

"And if we come up dry again?" Kael asked, brows arched.

Serah's stare fixed on the map. Her finger hovered over a circle marked Drosmir Estate: Vault Access – Unknown.

"Then we dig deeper. Until something breaks. Or someone does."

The room fell silent.

Outside, the bells of Heyh sang the hour—soft, pretty, and empty.

"I'm getting some sleep," Serah muttered, already turning toward her quarters. "You should too. You all look like corpses someone forgot to bury."

***

Serah stepped into her quarters, closing the door with a quiet click behind her. This space, unlike her lavish room back at the palace, was modest—tight walls, cold stone, a rugged cot barely worthy of being called a bed. Still, Serah had long grown used to situations that pulled her from comfort. This wasn't her first off-grid mission, and it certainly wouldn't be the last.

Peeling off the day's grime-stained garments, she made her way into the small adjoining washroom. The cold shower hissed to life, and for several long minutes, she stood beneath it, letting the water wash away sweat, dirt, and tension. Her crimson hair, now wet, clung to her skin like silk-drenched ribbons.

Eventually, she stepped out draped in a white robe, her soaked red waves cascading down her back like blood-stained velvet. She walked over to the creaky bed, dropped her weight onto it, and released a long, exhausted sigh.

"This mission is starting to drive me up the walls," she muttered, her voice muffled by fatigue. "That bastard's still clean. No trace of dark myst. No slips. No hints. Nothing. Either the girl lied… or we're seeing all of this from the wrong damn angle."

Her eyes drifted toward the ceiling, the shadows of dusk stretching across the old stone above. She exhaled slowly, brushing a hand across her forehead.

"Whatever. I just need this cursed month to end so I can go back to hunting that idiot."

Two months before Vaelen even became a blip on her radar, Serah had thrown herself into the search for Marcus. She had made the trek back to Caelmoor, revisiting the ruins, the dark outskirts, and the exact spots where she'd first crossed paths with the shadowy bastard.

She turned over every stone, questioned every soul, examined every shadow—yet found absolutely nothing.

Marcus had become the very definition of "without a trace."

No myst to track. No presence to sense. Even the trails of his dark magic had vanished, like vapor in the wind. She circled Caelmoor multiple times, lingered in neighboring towns, loitered in places with even the faintest connection to that encounter—but came up dry each time.

Frustration brewed in her deeper than she cared to admit. She even caught herself replaying the last thing Marcus had said before he disappeared:

"Besides, they say when two destined lovers meet for the first time and have an unforgettable connection, fate practically insists on a second meeting."

The moment those words echoed in her mind, she grimaced. The fact that she remembered them exactly as he said them… and the fact that she was mentally confirming lovers—it made her groan in disgust at herself.

No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't shake him. Even though the bastard had disappeared entirely from Zone 17, Serah started trying to catch glimpses of him during her other missions.

She even crafted her own theory: Marcus might be hunting dark mages too. And after what he pulled during the Bleeding Smile incident, maybe he wasn't targeting just one mage—but an entire network. Maybe this was all personal to him.

But that theory collapsed on itself when mission after mission turned up nothing.

No whispers, no sightings, and no hints. This Drosmir assignment had been no different.

And now… Serah was beginning to believe the second meeting Marcus hinted at was never meant to happen.

No deeper knowledge of Purebloods. No closure. No shadowy bastard grinning at her from a tree branch.

Just… silence.

Gripping her pillow and turning over, Serah pressed her face into the cushion and screamed into it with raw frustration.

"I need to get my damn head straight," she growled, her voice muffled. "Why the hell is some idiotic bastard I met once making me feel like I did back when I had my first crush?"

She punched the pillow once, then let her arm flop off the edge of the bed.

"I'm a battle-hardened knight, for the gods' sake…" she whispered, more to herself than anything else.