The enclave had its own rhythm, a pulse buried deep beneath stone and secrecy. By now, Allen had synchronized with it. He didn't walk its halls like a guest anymore. He moved like something built from the same ancient bones. But even stone could fracture, and tonight, cracks began to show.
It began subtly.
Whispers in the Bleeding Lab. Codex agents returning from an external mission missing limbs, eyes, memories. A coded message left on the Low Board torn off before anyone could read it. Jake's name, briefly spoken in a corridor, cut off like a noose tightening mid-word.
Allen felt it like pressure in his teeth.
Shardu's lessons had continued. The alchemist's workbench looked like it had been hit by lightning and blessed by chaos. Glass vessels clinked, powders hissed, and notes were scattered everywhere, as though knowledge itself had tried to escape the confines of parchment.
"You've got a nose for survival," Shardu said, waving a smoking vial at Allen like a priest with incense. "Rare, that. Most who come here either want to prove something or run from it. But you... you don't care about winning. Just not dying."
Allen offered no response. Just watched. Absorbed.
Shardu liked to talk, especially when excited. And today, he was nearly shaking with it.
"Your mushroom - brilliant. Not only does it act as a base for the spider venom antidote, it also reacts violently with bloodroot extract. Which means, theoretically, I can kill a man and cure him in the same breath!" He laughed like a madman.
Allen narrowed his eyes. "Useful."
"Deadly," Shardu corrected, grinning. "Come back tomorrow. I'll show you a blend that'll fog a man's thoughts so deep, he'll confess to crimes he never committed."
Allen left with a small pouch of toxin-laced needles, a "gift" from Shardu for his reliability. He stored them carefully. Not for immediate use,but someday. Will give him an edge, when really in need.
That night, Irvin returned.
The illusionist wasn't loud. His entrance was like mist through a broken window.
"Still killing shadows, are we?" he said, appearing beside Allen in the Spine as if conjured.
Allen didn't flinch. "Still chasing your own reflection?"
Irvin smirked. "Touché."
They sparred. No audience. No ceremony. Just two blades dancing beneath faint torchlight, broken occasionally by bursts of illusion- doubles, distortions, mirror traps. Allen adapted quickly. He had no magic, but he read motion like a map.
Mid-swing, Irvin flicked two fingers and his form split- two shadows, one real, one false. Allen closed his eyes for half a heartbeat. He pivoted, stabbed left. Flesh.
Irvin gasped. The blade halted just before it bit.
He grinned.
"Good. You don't just chase ghosts. You wait for them to breathe."
Allen stepped back.
Irvin pulled a black ribbon from his robe and tossed it to him. "Mark that. Invitation to the Rook's Nest."
Allen raised an eyebrow.
"It's where the Codex's blades show off. Tricks. Techniques. No death - unless you're careless."
Allen pocketed it without a word. He wouldn't attend out of curiosity. Only for information. Weaknesses.
But that would come later.
The real storm came the next day.
He was returning from the fungal ridge again; testing an alternate path for spore-scouting when he noticed the signs. Burnt leaves. Smashed brush. Drag marks.
Blood, blackened at the edges.
He followed it cautiously, shadow to shadow, until he found them.
Three Codex scouts. Dead. Burned by something unnatural. One of them; a boy no older than sixteen,was still twitching. Allen knelt.
"What happened?"
The boy's eyes rolled. "Not... beasts... people. In black. No insignia. Shadows bent around them..."
Allen's blood chilled.
Sanctum?
No. These weren't the robe-wearing fanatics. This was something else. The boy coughed, blood bubbling up. Allen ended it with a clean stroke. Mercy, not kindness.
He searched the bodies.
A sigil on the back of one's neck. A triangle within a circle. Faint. Almost branded. Not Codex. Not Knight.
He took samples, burned the rest. He wasn't bringing a trail back to the enclave.
That night, he made two copies of a report.
One he slipped into a slot near the Hall of Dust.
The other, he kept.
Just in case someone buried the first.
Back in his room, he sharpened his blades, slower now. More focused. His shadow flickered.
He didn't acknowledge it.
Not yet.
Because soon, he'd need to start choosing sides.
Or pretending he had.
The enclave wasn't as safe as they thought.
And Allen wasn't here to be part of their family.
He was here to learn which of them would live.
And which of them would be left behind.
****
The Rook's Nest wasn't a name on any official map. It was whispered, passed between trusted hands and quiet lips; one of the Codex's oldest halls, sunk deep beyond the sanctioned corridors. A cavern domed like a cathedral, walls ribbed with fossilized roots and petrified vines. Its light came from bioluminescent threads that veined the ceiling like star maps, casting a silver glow on the floor below.
Here, illusions were allowed to breathe.
Allen stepped into the space with deliberate caution. Irvin had left him no formal invitation; only a folded strip of parchment tucked beneath Allen's blade that morning. No words, just a sigil: a shifting triangle of mirrored surfaces, always pointing elsewhere.
Around the Nest, spectral combatants flickered in and out ; reflections made real, echoes born of magic and memory. Illusionists shaped them with gestures, blood, and focused will. They fought with the unpredictability of dreams, and the lethality of sharpened instinct.
Irvin waited near the center, robed in gray. The violet third eye that had once glowed faint now flared with cold precision. His illusions circled him, five forms in various stances. One bore twin daggers. Another fought barehanded, fists glowing faintly. The third wore Sanctum armor. The fourth looked like Allen.
The last wore no face.
Allen said nothing. He drew his blades.
Irvin smiled without humor. "Observation is your strength. But what you study can also study you. Enter when ready."
He did.
The spar was not a match. It was a dissecting table. Allen moved like shadow and steel, each step cut to minimum waste. His blades flicked;not for flourish, but for arterial strikes. He ignored the phantom distractions, focused on pulse, pressure, and shift.
Irvin adapted. His illusions pulsed, grew more fluid. The double of Allen feinted like a drunk. The faceless one hissed with wind-voice, claws gleaming. Every illusion broke upon Allen's forward momentum, dismantled piece by piece. A clash, a tumble, a sudden flick of his wrist- and it ended.
Sweating, Irvin dismissed his summons with a twitch.
"You don't fight fair," the illusionist murmured.
Allen didn't answer.
Irvin chuckled. "Good. Fair is for funerals."
He gestured Allen to follow. They sat in a small alcove of cracked stone benches, overlooking a well of illusions that flickered like candlelight in storm.
"You're not just here for shelter," Irvin said. "You're listening. Watching. Weaving something."
Allen stared ahead.
"Don't worry," Irvin added. "I won't ask what. I just know the look. I have it too."
A pause passed between them, dense with implication.
Irvin offered a flask. Allen took it, tasted sharp mosswine.
"I'll show you more," Irvin said, "if you ever want to learn how to leave false footsteps behind. Or mimic another's rhythm. Illusions aren't just tricks. They're language."
Allen nodded, once.
They left the Nest without fanfare. Irvin vanished into the higher halls. Allen didn't return to his room. He walked, downward. Into the oldest roots.
****
The passage he chose was cracked, slick with moisture, carved not by hand but by time and pressure. Here, no glowstones hovered. He used a dull red tincture smeared across his palm to see; the light it cast repelled most beasts, if not all spirits.
The silence grew heavier.
He passed bones etched with prayer-spirals. Passed walls where shadows gathered unnaturally, turned as if to watch.
The air stank of mildew, ash, and something older than rot.
Then he found it: a sealed door, circular and engraved with forgotten symbology. The medallion Jake had left behind, now worn under Allen's collar, twitched faintly as he approached.
He didn't touch the door. Not yet.
He crouched nearby and marked the floor with silent notches, disguised as part of the decay. Then he left.
Some places asked to be earned.
****
He returned to the Codex's upper halls at dawn. Shardu found him first.
The eccentric alchemist smelled of ten kinds of chemical insanity. His robes bore fresh singe marks.
"You've gone wandering," the man said. "Your boots have moss from Dead Root Ridge. And you've been sparring. Or gutting."
Allen didn't respond.
"No matter. I have something."
From his coat, Shardu produced a vial; transparent, with what looked like a burning feather suspended in liquid.
"Firebane extract. Rare. Dangerous. It reacts violently to venom - clots and burns it out. But extracted wrong, it cooks the blood."
Allen studied it.
"Want to learn?"
Allen gave the smallest nod.
"Good. Come tomorrow. I'll need rat bones. Bring your own."
Shardu left without waiting.
****
By midday, Allen stood again near the Low Board. He wasn't looking for work—he was watching who posted what. One new task stood out:
>>> Retrieve a locked satchel from the corpse of Courier Thal. Location: Shatter-Root Ravine. High probability of beast presence.<<<
Simple. Too simple.
Allen marked it mentally. Waited until no one else moved toward it. Then he took it.
That evening, he sharpened his blades, reinforced the grip on his poison pouches, and re-checked his boots. He sat in silence. No thoughts of purpose or glory. Only the tension of prepared motion.
Somewhere beneath the enclave, the sealed door pulsed once. A heartbeat no one else noticed.