Party Time

The morning had bled into night, and the Valkart mansion shimmered under rows of lanterns and crystal chandeliers. Velvet draperies, gilded candelabras, and tables set like altars to luxury filled the great hall. Music floated through the air—strings and light percussion—while servants moved like shadows, offering flutes of wine and silver trays of sweets. It was everything the Valkarts wanted the world to see: wealth, taste, control.

Ark moved through the crowd with a tray in his hands, face calm and blank as ever. Masks hid the noble faces; anonymity made cruelty easier, he thought. Men raised their glasses, nobles laughed loudly at jokes that were not very funny, and women in embroidered gowns glided like swans. A dozen different perfumes mixed, masking the true smell of the mansion. Ark served, smiled on cue when an eyebrow lifted, refilled when a glass dipped low. All the while, his mind ticked through the plan he and the girls had crafted in whispers at midnight.

"They will be clustered in groups," he thought. "They will come to the main hall in threes and fives. The servers will be concentrated in the east wing. Guards will be posted at every entrance and three at the main gate. After the music picks up, they will lower their guard. That's the moment."

As a noble lady offered a hand to take a pastry, Ark stepped back, keeping his movements small and precise. "Two more rounds on the west side," a head server commanded him, expecting quick obedience. Ark’s tray dipped and rose—no hesitation. He laid a plate before a man with a carved wooden mask inlaid with black lacquer and gold, who tapped Ark’s shoulder in passing. Ark bowed with perfect posture.

He caught a glimpse of the clock. The orchestra would crescendo in twenty minutes; the plan called for the signal to follow the final chord of the opening suite. He kept his face neutral, felt the blood thrum in his ears like a distant drum.

Outside the grand hall, through a side corridor near the staff rooms, twelve beast-human girls crouched in the shadowed service passage. Their eyes—bright and raw from hours without rest—tracked Ark as he moved through the crowd. Some had patched clothes; some had dresses soiled from labor. But all of them held a different kind of stillness now, the same stillness a bowstring feels just before an arrow releases.

Delta stood at the back of the group, arms folded, tail wrapped neatly. She watched Ark the way a captain watches weather. At her side, the rat girl clutched a small gold pin—one of the house’s name tags she had taken from a careless servant and polished until it nearly shone. The fox girl rubbed her palms together as if warming a fire inside. The rabbit girl—fresh from the field and still tender where she had been hit—kept her gaze low, breathing in and out slowly.

Ark lifted his head and breathed out. He moved to the nearest door to the courtyard and slipped through, unnoticed in the noise. Inside his small room he had left earlier, folded into a dark corner of the mansion, lay the black outfit Delta had made him hide in: a fitted jacket, soft but tough-looking trousers, and most importantly, the mask—smooth, matte, black, designed to cover the lower half of his face. It was light, easy to move in, and deadly in appearance. He had never liked masks before. Tonight, it felt like armor.

He changed in quick, practiced movements—cloth rustled, the mask clicked into place. He tested the straps at his ears and found them secure. He wrapped the black jacket around his shoulders, slipped his hand into the sheath at his side, and felt the weight of the short sword Ark kept for emergencies. It was not ornate; it was clean and sharp. The gold coins in his pouch felt suddenly small and distant, meaningless compared to what waited outside.

He opened the window of his room just a crack. The air outside tasted of autumn and distant roses; music hummed like a beast. He climbed out and dropped silently to the shadowed rooftop. From here, the lanterns made the garden look like a constellation of golden lights, promising splendor and hiding cruelty.

Ark moved like a thought—quiet, precise, invisible until he chose to be seen. Down along the wall, near the servant gate, two guards stood wearing the house standard, their masks covering their faces but not their eyes. Ark watched them for a beat, waiting for the best angle. He did not rush. Ambush was not about speed alone; it was about patience.

The first guard turned to adjust his spear. Ark stepped from a darker shadow, a single long movement. The short sword flashed, and the guard’s world narrowed to a single bright cut. The second guard barely had time to shout before Ark closed the distance. A quick step, a quiet strike—no theatrics. The guard fell without a sound that carried to the party. Ark breathed in, exhaled, wiped the blade on the grass and dropped out of sight.

Back on his feet, he moved from shadow to shadow, closing the circle of danger around the mansion. He took down a sentry by the eastern wing with the same swift precision, then another, then a pair near the carriage house. Each movement was clean: approach, disable, cover, vanish. He bound and muffled, used the same leather ties the staff used for bundles. He did not demolish; he neutralized. The planning had called for that—swift, surgical removal of the first layer of resistance. The guards who enjoyed cruelty would not die for carelessness; they would be made useless for a time.

A scream somewhere distant—one of the men on patrol stumbling against a fallen watchman—rose and died into the music inside. Ark thought of the girls waiting in the corridor, imagined their breaths counting like a metronome. He hurried.

At the eastern gate, where the bulk of the guard force grouped behind the polite marble lions, Ark found his second set of targets: the pair that always drank less than they should and talked more than they ought. He moved then like a shadow in a room full of candlelight. The first guard turned with a puzzled frown and never completed his thought. The second one sagged against the stone, bound and gagged before he could make a sound that would bring reinforcements.

Ark worked with a calm that had nothing to do with the party inside. His hands were steady, his mind a blade honed to one edge. He left no trail—only the knowledge, in the silent places, that something had changed. When he stepped back into a doorway and glanced toward the main hall, the music swelled to an unfamiliar high note. That was his signal.

Back in the service corridor, Delta nudged the girls. “Now,” she mouthed. Their faces hardened like iron as the sound in the hall rose and then—perfectly timed—the chandelier lights dimmed for a moment as the orchestra reached its peak and the dancers spun. In that breath, loud and beautiful, the first phase began.

Ark stepped from the shadows into the garden path where a cluster of lesser nobles had stepped outside to get fresh air. The night’s air was cool, and the nobles’ laughter grated. He moved fast; three guards by the fountain found themselves tripped by ropes as Ark and a gloved fox-girl slipped behind them. The ropes were quick work—knotted with old servant tricks, a collar of shame replaced with a coil of silence. One guard lunged for his horn, but Ark’s hand was on the blade; a soft thud, a shallow wound that would keep him unconscious until dawn. It was clinical, precise.

Inside the main hall, the music fell as a server spilled a tray of wine on a noble’s new gown—a perfectly crafted accident staged by a small group of cooks who had been bribed with the promise of being allowed to run away with pockets full of coin if the night dissolved into chaos long enough for escape. The noble’s mask snapped half-off in the scramble. A few heads turned toward the corridor where movement was now obvious: the guarded exits were quiet and empty.

That was Delta’s cue. She and the girls slipped through the service door and into the back of the hall, the same way they had always moved during service—unseen, unnoticed. But now they were a wave, a line of beaded courage.

Ark watched at the edge of the hall as the rabbit girl stepped forward first. She held her chin like someone preparing to jump into water. Her voice, when it came, did not tremble; it cut like a bell through the hum. “We are not your toys,” she cried. Her words made the hall catch like a struck wire.

Gasps echoed, wine splashed, a dancer stumbled. The nobles looked as if they had been slapped; their masks twisted with surprise, shame, anger. Sam Valkart himself stood, face reddening behind his gilded mask. “What is this?” he bellowed. His voice boomed like a stranger’s thunder.

Ark moved like wind. He did not run to kill. He moved to the back doors and ensured no reinforcement could pass. He placed a few quiet traps—small ropes and simple locks—that delayed any sprinting guards for precious minutes. He neutralized two more men in the corridor with a practiced strike. He did not cut. He bound. He tethered.

Within the hall, more voices rose—some shouting for order, others quiet as guests began to listen to the words coming from the mouths of those who had been silent for years. The girls told what they had seen. The rat girl stepped forward and laid a small, rough object on the grand table—one of the ledger pages she had swiped during months of quiet observation: line items, debts, transactions, the names of men who took pleasure in misery. Ark had spent nights teaching her to take things that would matter. Now the truth was there, spread like a stain.

A noble rose, mask in hand, face white with shock. “This is slander!” he shouted. Others murmured. Heads turned as the hall felt suddenly smaller—tighter—like a room where a candle had been dropped and many had to stare at the flame.

Outside, boots pounded as delayed guards discovered knots and stumbled—too slow. Inside, a few cooks, emboldened by the chaos, set free a handful of beast-human children from a back pantry. A guest screamed; a few struck out, uneasy hands that had always been used to striking would find now they would be seen for their cruelty.

Ark’s voice was a low thread at a woman’s ear as he helped lift a small, frightened girl behind a pillar. “Go now. Run to the back gate. Delta will meet you.” He did not smile. He did not look heroic. He looked necessary—an agent moving in a machine of human will.

At one corner of the hall Sam reached for the nearest sword. He tried to take command, but the ledger lay on the precious table in the light and the servants’ words had already made other eyes sharp. The guest’s wife, a countess with a familiar social reach, found her voice. She asked one simple, terrible thing: “Is this true?” Her question made more people look and less people dance.

For Ark, those seconds were everything. He worked them like a jeweler works a gem—careful, exact. He prevented doors from opening, guided escape routes for the innocent, and when necessary, used quiet violence to silence a hand that would have strangled a girl. None of his moves were big; they were small, decisive, focused.

When the first real surge of guards finally broke through the outer ring and tried to push into the hall, Ark met them in the corridor. He did not die for the sound of swords. He did not call for bigger wounds. He moved like a blade through grass—efficient, unromantic. A guard collapsed, bound. Another tried to shout; his mouth was closed with a simple gag. The rest hesitated when they saw the guest’s faces—some of their own had been exposed—and that pause was the crack they needed.

By the time the moon had climbed high and the courtyard outside echoed with the sounds of gathering panicked men, the main hall had become a place of confrontation: some nobles retreating behind pride and ketone, others trying to smooth the scandal over with murmured promises. But the music had stopped, the dance was over, and the perfectly masked night had peeled away to show faces behind the masks—some ashamed, some furious, some alarmed. The ledger’s ink was still wet under the chandelier’s light.

Ark stood near the back door when Delta slipped up beside him, her breath a whisper. The girls had done what he had asked. They had spoken. They had shown the truth. Some ran to the gates with sacks and a small group of workers who had somehow found courage in the moment to help. Others stayed and pressed the truth into the nobles’ faces like a brand.

He looked at Delta. Her eyes held the same cold calm he had practiced in the shadows. They had few illusions. Tonight would not fix the world. Tonight might be the beginning of a long war. But it was a start.

Ark did not celebrate. He only removed his mask for a moment and let the cool night air touch his mouth. He tasted the night and felt, in that small breath, the first real crack in the mansion’s perfect shell.

Somewhere inside, Sam Valkart hissed orders; outside, men shouted. But in the hall, for a sliver of time, voices were not just commands. They were names. They were stories. They were the first, trembling steps of something that had not existed here before.

Ark put the mask back on and stepped out into the night. The girls moved with him, one after the other, small figures wrapped in borrowed courage. Behind them, the mansion’s lights still burned, and the world had to look carefully now to keep pretending it was clean.