Arc 4: Roar || Chapter 1: Downpour
A bolt of lightning illuminated the rooftop, and in that flash I saw my mark.
The latest victim of the Carmine Killings hadn’t died well. He’d hurled himself from a balcony, broken his back, and lain there long enough for vermin to start eating him alive. He looked like a painting half-done, in that flash of lightning — one armed, chunks missing from his torso, a smudged face and strips of damp hair hanging down to one desiccated shoulder.
No telling when his heart had stopped beating, or how long it had taken him to realize he could still move. Dyghouls don’t always know they’re stuck in their own corpse right away.
Rain drummed down across the sprawl of Garihelm, intermittently lit by bolts of lightning. A wicked storm had blown in across the Riven Sea, battering against the city’s ancient sea walls without end for nearly two days. The canals churned with angry water, rumbling falls gushed down crenellated towers, and the sky growled as though a war of titan beasts took place above.
My eyes, blessed with golden aura, can see through darkness. Heavy downpour is a different story, and I squinted at the rooftop ahead from my shelter beneath a belfry overhang. My long coat had soaked through, and the broad rain hat on my head dripped.
I shut out all that noise and focused.
Another flash of lightning. The half-eaten man had dropped down onto a balcony. He’d slipped on the slick stone, and I could see he’d broken something. He stood shakily, using the railing to help him lift his own weight. Then, turning drunkenly toward the balcony door, he lurched forward, caught himself again against a column, then knocked on the glass.
I saw movement inside. A curtain shifting, a lantern flickering to life.
The storm swallowed the curse I spat. I moved, dropping down to a lower level of the belfry, then used a ladder to descend to the level of the neighborhood’s rooftops.
I jumped a roof and started to duck under a gargoyle’s perch. The arch’s occupant came to life, snarling and snapping at me.
I caught the stone guardian’s eye, glowering, and he got a good look at the gleam of gold light in my gaze. He hunched like a chastised dog, and the silver glow of his own eyes faded.