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Shadow Behind the Mask

Ep. 7 — Still There

Ep. 7 — Still There

Jan 31, 2026

Rather than a mishmash of signatures or an absence of mana, what he found were clear signs of mana usage but no signature. His mind flashed to the case from this one morning, the one they were getting ready to wrap up, and he swallowed a groan.


Grimly, he put down the reader and fished in his bag one more time. 

This time, what he pulled out looked like an infant toy. It had a short handle, like a rattle, with a strange little box built around it—not a real box, just four bare edges marking the corners.

The handle ran straight up through the center of it, piercing the hollow space and attaching to a solid plate at the top. The frame itself hung beneath that plate, unsupported, as if it had been assembled upside down.

Small crystal beads were threaded along each of the four corners. Three on one edge, four on another. They slid freely, clicking softly against one another as he shifted his grip.

He rarely had to use this device. Usually, all he needed was the signature reader.


Holding out the rattle, he watched the beads move sluggishly. Then, moved by the momentum of staying in one space and reading the same area without interference, the beads’ movements became more intentional.


One corner remained a steady rhythm, its bluish beads picking up the waves of mana in the ether, pulsing with the rhythms of life. But the other corners were giving different information, telling him what wavelength the strongest sources of mana were giving off.


Demons. This was a demon trail.


He cursed quietly even as his heart rate picked up in excitement, then he packed up the device and continued his trek through the building.


Hours later, after poking around and interviewing the guards, members of the staff, and even some of the children, he finally got into a carriage with Jacques.


His mentor studied him across the carriage, arms crossed and head tilted to the side, until Eblin finally moaned and leaned his head back dramatically.


“I take it you didn’t find anything good.”


“No.”


Eblin slid down in his seat and covered his eyes with an arm. Actually, despite his dramatics, he was more intrigued than put out. The mystery meant there’d be a delay in being paid, but that was alright. He’d just sorted out a whole stack of easier cases.


“Well?” his mentor said impatiently.


“We’re about to go on a raid.”


“So?”


“So.” Eblin sat up and leaned forward on his knees, taking on an air of seriousness. “I followed the traces of the demon through the building. It has no signature.”


Jacques froze. Suddenly, Eblin was reminded why he chose this man for his mentor. For once, the old man forgot about the money and leaned forward eagerly.


“No signature,” the old man breathed. “Just like the other case? You sure?”


Eblin nodded. In the other case, they’d been tracking illegal magical artifacts and unregistered mana cores. Its highlighting feature had been the lack of signatures in all spellcasting.


“Do you think the masking spell is being put on the black market?”


“Very possibly,” his mentor mused. “If we can trace where the spell was sold from, we might be able to find the maker.”


“It also suggests that our mastermind in the other case isn’t connected to the signature masking. Or that the cases are somehow related.”


Jacques snorted and waved a hand dismissively.


“What could a criminal organization smuggling artifacts and cores have to do with an orphanage?”


Eblin grinned. Jacques was right, of course, but it was nice to see the older man acting with less professional boredom and more interest.


As though sensing Eblin’s thoughts, Jacques’ expression dulled and he sat back, crossing his arms.


“But, it’s not our contract.”


“What?” Eblin sat back, dismayed. “Of course it—”


“We’re being paid to find the criminals who used masking spells, not to find the producer of said spells. Continue. What else did you find?”


Grudgingly, Eblin also explained the mashup of signatures, which had seemed like a bewildering opposite to the lack of them. His mentor’s eyes lit up again as he pressed his lips together in thought.


“Any ideas for that one?” Eblin pressed.


“None. I’ve been doing this job for thirty years, and I’ve never seen anything like that. Was it just one spell?”


Eblin shook his head. “The demon had a clear trail from the outside, but I found the mashup spells all over the building.”


“Could you tell what the spells did?”


Again, Eblin shook his head. “I took some recordings of both the signature and the spell structures. If it's alright with you, I’d like to have Roryce look at the spell structures.”


“Do it.” His mentor grinned and leaned back again, eyes closed. “This might be more fun than I thought.”



***



The Amicus: 17 Years Old


Nark was the name they gave her in place of her real name. But she didn’t remember that.


The world was a swirl of color, sound, and movement. Snippets of people talking, the threats that hovered in and out of reach, the things she instinctively knew she needed to have in her hands in order to survive… that was all she understood.


She saw the world, but she didn’t understand it.


Not anymore.


Not since something had pounded into her head, forcing her to relive painful things over… and over… and over again. She’d tried to fight it, to push away the power worming into her mind, leaving her only the painful things… and now, even the things that hurt… she remembered in flashes rather than understanding why they were so painful.


But if she fought too much, then they would have killed her.


So, eventually, it worked. It got inside. It broke her.


Broken. She was broken. Just like the troll… she couldn’t remember clearly. She remembered the fear, the pain. It gnawed at her. 


But there had been something else…


Maybe the troll was this.


They, the human threats, pushed her out onto a floor made of sand and stone. All around her were the obstacles of the arena, put in place for this special fight. Her head pounded, desperately trying to understand things she knew—she knew—she’d understood before they started playing with her mind.


She heard the troll roar and focused on that. Yes, she knew that sound. She knew that smell.


It was almost comforting to finally understand something, to have something to focus her ungrounded thoughts on. She picked up the pair of knives the human threats had tossed in after her, and she stalked toward the troll.


If she didn’t face it, it would come after her. It would kill her.


She didn’t want to die, though now she couldn’t remember why. Had she ever known why she didn’t want to die?


There was a roaring sound from other human threats, thousands of them watching her from above the containment walls. Cheering, laughing, pointing, calling… They were annoying, but they were not currently attacking. They were on the other side of the containment wall, where they couldn’t get at her without her knowing they were coming.


So, she ignored them. Ignored the noise.


She found the troll and took only a second to gauge if it was a threat that would come for her. In that second, it saw her and made the decision for her. It bellowed and charged, raising a club above its head, murder in its eyes.


Dodging the club, she swung underneath it to swipe at the troll threat’s legs. It bellowed, stepping out of reach just in time, and kicked at her. She snarled in reply, ducking another attack of that monstrous club.


Instinctively, she knew if the troll threat hit her even once, then she’d die.


Round and round they went, dodging, slashing, jumping out of the way. They moved around boulders, kicked up sand, and screamed their rage at each other. She felt flecks of the creature’s poison land on her skin, flicked at her from its tusks as it tossed its head.


Then she sped back toward the middle of the labyrinth, causing the creature to roar in panic and rage.


She didn’t know why it was so panicked until she tripped over the thing the troll threat had been guarding at the beginning.


Rolling forward, Nark immediately gained her feet and turned around, both hands still occupied with forearm-long dangers. And there, trying to hide itself in the sand and making terrified squeaking noises, was a little troll.


She couldn’t even think of it as a threat as it turned terrified eyes on her.


Instinctively, she knew if she killed that thing, it would either end the big troll threat’s efforts or escalate it.


The big troll threat burst into the circle of boulders, running straight at her with its head down, horns out, ready to ram her. She jumped back, out of reach, and threw one of her daggers in a precise arc.


The little troll screamed in agony, and the big troll threat lost what reason it had.


Now it attacked her without any calculation, two monsters running, ramming, jabbing, snapping, biting, all on instinct. All in rage.


In desperation.


She felt it when the creature’s tusk pierced her side. It didn’t stop running, pushing her over as it briefly turned its back to her. Everything moved in slow motion, and it was with real terror that she saw her arm fall, unable to move as poison coursed through her.


In one last act of desperation, she swung with her left arm, cutting the creature’s back leg along the hamstring as it rushed past her.


It collapsed.


Bleeding from over a dozen wounds that she—Nark, a monster—had given it, the troll gave her a quick glance. It took in that she could no longer move her other arm and dismissed her, crawling on its three remaining limbs back to the whimpering, crying thing in the sand.


The human threats were all cheering and laughing. Nark blinked stupidly at them from where she was bleeding out her life on the sand.


The troll won. It won and left her to die.


There was a bitter taste in her mouth.


Kathryn never came for her like the troll threat went to its baby.


It was such a strange thought. Like it was a familiar habit to think. But she didn’t understand it.


Not any more.


She closed her eyes, all the fight gone from her paralyzed limbs. She just wanted to sleep, and she no longer cared about the other human threats, the ones that came to drag her out while keeping the traumatized troll and its offspring from attacking them.


“Everyone, behold! The slave lived through her last fight. We have a new amicus!”


The world laughed and cheered. She closed her eyes.


Ready to sleep forever.



***



Present: 20 Years Old


The Amicus woke up in her own bed.


Confused, she looked around, her whole body tense. It took her a long, long time to finally realize where she was or to even think in words.


It helped that the golden-haired girl, no, it helped that Chloe was whistling the song.


The lullaby was soft and slow, the words filtering into her consciousness with her awareness, helping her to remember who and where she was.


She sat up quickly and blinked dazedly at her friend.


Chloe didn’t react, continuing to knit and whistle as she slowly rocked. But her eyes crinkled in a smile.


“How long—” The Amicus’ voice was hoarse. Had it been a long time then? Or had she been screaming in her sleep? She wasn’t sure which was worse.


Chloe put down her knitting needles and signed back. “Just a day.”


I was probably screaming or growling then, the Amicus thought with a shudder. She wrapped her arms around herself and leaned forward, focusing on breathing. It had been so long since she’d had an episode. Why now?


That was when she remembered the fire and the demon.

kittykir1129
kittykir1129

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Yay! Last of the big drop. 😁 If you've been enjoying it, leave me a 👍 in the comments. If you've REALLY been loving it, send me a 🥳. Have fun, y'all! See you Tuesday!

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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.

---

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13 episodes

Ep. 7 — Still There

Ep. 7 — Still There

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