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Shadow Behind the Mask

Ep. 4 - The Smell of Rot

Ep. 4 - The Smell of Rot

Jan 31, 2026

Was that a memory? Or a wish? She didn’t know. A part of her was scared to find out, so she shoved it away and rubbed her eyes.


She needed to walk.


And she was paying too much outward attention to the main building. Her job was to watch for intruders, not sit there in a mental daze. With a sigh, she stood up and stretched.


When she turned her back, it wasn’t to completely ignore the building behind her. Instead, she folded her arms and mentally reached for her ‘plants’ throughout the building.


The plants were spells, basically scanners that checked the presence of the building’s inhabitants. They were a pain to maintain, and she could only focus on one at a time, mentally jumping from scanner to scanner as her eyes half unfocused on the street outside.


Whenever her real eyes saw movement, she’d refocus on what was in front of her to investigate, then return to the scanners.


After twenty minutes of hopping around, all she learned was that everyone in the building was supposed to be there.


That was another annoying thing about maintaining them. Whenever they had a new child or staff member, she had to include them to the spell. This made the spell bigger, requiring more mana to activate.


The mana didn’t disappear easily—she was careful to keep her spells in a tight loop, not letting the mana escape—but unable to produce her own mana, she had to raid it. She didn’t want to take any from the orphanage, but she also had to be careful not to take too much from the neighbors or they might notice.


She wasn’t afraid of being discovered, but having investigators here looking into unusual mana theft would be a pain.


Ma’Shite would probably give her a mana stone to use if she asked, but raw mana didn’t work for her. It had to be used. And also… he already did so much for her… She knew it was illogical. This was for one of his projects after all. But, still…


Her shoulders slumped, and she sighed, letting go of the scanners long enough to roll her neck back.


She was pathetic.


She was on her second round with the scanners, and the chaotic dinner was wrapping up inside, when something flitted across one. Frowning, she skipped to the next hall, looking for bio-markers.


There!


The… whatever it was, was moving fast, but its bio-marker clearly belonged to something not included in the spell.


With a frown, she walked down the steps, signalling to the next guard over with a gruff call that she’d be back. Once on the ground, she began to jog.


She followed the marker from scanner to scanner, sometimes losing it only for it to appear in another room or hallway. What was it? It almost seemed like an animal. Something bigger than a rat or a mouse, creatures she’d given a blanket acknowledgement to, but smaller than a large dog.


It definitely wasn’t bipedal, whatever it was.


What in all tears? Maybe she should have created image feeds instead, but that would have been even harder to maintain and focus.


When the thing finally stopped moving, she increased her speed from a light jog to a fast one.


Now that she was inside the building, she could hear the sounds of the inhabitants coming from the direction of the dining hall. Laughter, shouts, and the low murmur of conversation. Above the din were a few childish wails, insisting they didn’t want to go to bed.


She shook her head and refocused. 


The kitchen? Whatever the thing was, it was in the kitchen.


Cautiously, holding her breath, she pushed open the swinging door and peeked inside.


The cook and her staff always ate with the others, but never left the kitchen a mess. The crumb-less counters, the spotless floor, and the empty sink gleamed in lamplight as the Amicus looked around the room.


Unable to detect right away the thing she hunted, she once again tapped into the room’s scanner.


Pressing her lips together, she stepped into the kitchen, letting the door close behind her as she rounded one of the big counters.


What she found made her stop dead in her tracks, staring at the thing trying to bury itself in the wall. Whisps of black, smoky ribbons flew about it as it slowly inched forward, kicking its legs determinedly as its body slowly disappeared.


“Oh, tears no!”


The Amicus snatched a frying pan from its hook and charged at the thing. It seemed to hear her and pulled itself out of the wall, turning its scornful, demonic eyes on her as it opened its maw to display its sharp, black teeth.


She raised the pan high, ready to flatten it… when the smell hit.


Most mana smelled like something in nature—grass, cinnamon, peppermint, basil, flour, that sort of thing. And each smell was its own unique flavor and strength, depending on the user.


This was also a ‘natural’ smell, a scent that was the same no matter the user.


The putrid scent of something that had died weeks ago, times a hundred.


Her stomach immediately heaved, and she dropped the pan with a clatter as she struggled against her own convulsing stomach. It was so involuntary that her eyes filled with tears, and it took her a second to frantically turn off her connection to the scent.


Once it was off, she could no longer connect to the mana around her, not even the scanners or other defenses in the building. She gasped, finding herself on her knees as she tried to get her breath back.


The demon’s mouth widened in an audible snicker, its face twisting, and she finally identified its base form as a huge rat. Then it rolled into itself, its insides brightening unnaturally, like a miniature fire blowing quickly into being.


“Dirty tears!”


Frantically, she turned her ability back on. It was just in time to see the blast coming and to yank every source of mana within reach, trying to cover it.


There was not enough mana to stop the blast completely. It flung her backward, slamming her into a counter and instantly damaging her ears. She barely felt the pain of her bruised back as she dropped to her hands and knees again.


But there wasn’t time to recover.


Cussing and cursing, she slammed her will into other spells. These weren’t hers, but all she wanted to do was trigger them. Tears! The alarms should’ve gone off by themselves, but she found remnants of the putrid magic sticking to them and had to shoo it away (while gagging) to start them up.


Although the blast and the spreading fire should’ve been enough to get everyone’s attention.


Vaguely, sounding like it was underwater, she heard the alarms go off. But she still didn’t have time for recovery. The fire was spreading at an obviously unnatural rate, and she frantically reached for the mana feeding the spell.


She couldn’t stop gagging and crying at the putridness. The mana itself had the strange sensation of goo on her mental touch.


Still, she yanked, and yanked, and yanked…


By the time she pulled all the mana out of the fire, dissipating it safely into the ether, she saw the movement of reinforcements. Men and women came, bearing buckets and spells to dump on the fire.


Worn out, the Amicus simply sat where she was, watching the fire eat the walls and the shadows of people frantically doing their part to stop it.


It was hot.


She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the counter.


Was this how she was going to die? Cooked in the kitchen? It was almost funny. Funny enough that she started laughing, her throat raw and her nose aching, her skin beginning to burn.


She must’ve sounded insane, but she couldn’t hear herself, so it was fine.


Someone eventually picked her up and moved her out of the kitchen. Vaguely, she thought she should heal herself. But she was hurting too much, especially her ears and her back. For now… maybe she should…


If she died, would she regret not trying to meet Mister Eblin at the tavern?



***



Eblin: 15 Years Old

Eblin bounced on his toes, unworried even though he was standing in the Headmaster’s outer office with his arms held above his head.


He scoffed at the punishment. Didn’t the Headmaster realize that their swordsmanship instructor was a much harsher teacher when it came to physical punishment? He could stand here all day.


Maybe.


He’d never admit to the ache spreading uncomfortably through his arms and bruises, especially in his jaw. Instead, he looked across the room at the other boy with his arms up.


Roryce Mendon from House Mendon was taller than Eblin, but all sharp angles and narrow shoulders. Even at sixteen, he looked like a weed that could snap in the wind. Sometimes he made it worse by donning those horrible spectacles, an act that never failed to set the nearest Academy students hooting about the “old man” among them.


Eblin laughed with them, desperate to fit in, while keeping a close eye on the other boy.


A year older and more awkward than Eblin in every visible way, Roryce never, ever, rose to the taunts.


He simply kept reading.


Which was why this situation was so amusing. All Eblin had done was switch his work. There was no need for Roryce to fall apart, attacking Eblin with both fists.


Up until today, no one had dared to be physical with Roryce. Not because his House was important—which it was—but because they didn’t want to end up with boils or some other nasty curse. Curses were something Roryce could do, and the others could not, since he was a genius spellmaker.


Despite his age, he was taking advanced spellmaking classes, an art that baffled most young mages even at its simplest level. There were so many lines, runes, and rules that most gave up before they truly started.


It gave Roryce abilities beyond the average mage, who usually lacked a written spell to anchor a cast. And that was despite having such a small bowl that he should have been barred from any significant casting at all.


It made Eblin envious of him even as he joined the taunts.


He suspected that was the real reason for them. Everyone was envious.


Tall, scrawny Roryce. The Academy’s competent teacher’s pet.


Eblin accidentally met Roryce’s eye. To cover himself, he made a threatening sniff, lifting his chin with a smirk. Roryce narrowed his eyes but had already regained his composure. He wouldn’t rise to Eblin’s bait now.


The outer door suddenly slammed open, and both boys jumped while their “guard,” an upperclassman from the advanced swordsmanship course, straightened and dropped into a bow.


“Regent Trovinski,” the guard said, sounding flustered.


The Regent didn’t look around as he briskly walked through the room and straight into the Headmaster’s office without knocking. The outer chamber echoed when he slammed the door behind him.


For a moment, no one moved or spoke. Eblin felt like his stomach was going to roil out of his throat.


Why was the Regent here? It wasn’t that bad. It was just a prank…


Eblin’s heart sank to his toes, his mind repeating over and over, It was just a prank.


Okay, so he hadn’t realized he could’ve blown up the entire inspection hall. If Roryce hadn’t noticed that his work had been switched with an earlier, incomplete version—and if he hadn’t argued with the inspector from the safety bureau—no one would have been alert enough to cut off the spell when the impatient inspector activated it anyway. 


It had only taken Roryce a few seconds to realize who’d done it.


He hadn’t waited for things to be settled, or to be scolded for embarrassing the inspector, or for the reprimand for submitting unfinished work. He’d gone straight to the lunch hall and punched Eblin squarely in the jaw, starting an all-out tussle.


Eblin closed his eyes.


The Regent wasn’t here because anyone had been hurt, or because Eblin had been accused of switching another student’s work.


He was here to cover up the embarrassment.


Sure enough, when the door opened, it wasn’t Eblin who was called inside.


“Roryce Mendon,” the Headmaster barked. “Get in here. You’re excused, Trovinski.”


The Regent stepped out as Eblin slowly lowered his arms. He barely noticed the poisonous glance Roryce shot back at him before the door slammed shut. Watching Roryce was safer than meeting the Regent’s eyes. Even when the man moved, Eblin kept his gaze fixed on the closed door.


“Come,” the Regent said coldly as he swept past Eblin.


Slowly, Eblin followed, wishing for the Headmaster’s punishment instead.

kittykir1129
kittykir1129

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The city calls her the Amicus, the arena’s shadow—an unwanted, dangerous survivor people pretend not to see.

Zanie prefers it that way. Keeping her head down, hiding her name, avoiding the one wrong encounter that might get her executed.

So far, it's kept her alive.

She owes that life to her benefactor—a gentle, incorruptible idealist who somehow manages to be both soft-spoken and impossible to bully. His charity work is infuriating the aristocrats who profit from suffering, and when the ruling regent fails to strangle those reforms with laws, he turns to quieter, nastier methods.

But Zanie won’t let him destroy the only person who ever showed her mercy.

To stop him, she has to sabotage him without revealing that she was once his property. Worse, she has to stay ahead of his son—an apprentice investigator whose sharp instincts and inconvenient kindness both cut far too close to the face she can’t let him see.

As danger tightens around her, Zanie finds herself caught between a ruthless noble who unknowingly holds the proof she needs… and a man she has no business talking to, let alone laughing with or falling for.

If she’s unmasked, she dies.

If she does nothing, the only good man she’s ever met loses everything.

And in a city where the law shelters monsters, the arena’s shadow may have to stop hiding—and start haunting.

---

Episode Drops: New episode updates will be on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.
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Ep. 4 - The Smell of Rot

Ep. 4 - The Smell of Rot

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