The Veiled Concord part 1

The Letter in the Ashes
Eltareth never slept after the Festival of Lanterns. Even days later, the streets still whispered — faint light from half-burnt candles guttering in puddles of wax, the air thick with the scent of ash and wilted chrysanthemums. The city celebrated death not as an ending, but as balance — a reminder that even glory must fade in order for peace to hold.

And yet, on the morning after peace, someone always died.

The Dying Noble
The Lantern Market was quieter than usual. Only the scavengers remained — children gathering bits of wax to sell, old women sweeping ash into buckets. Amid the gray mist, a man in fine blue robes staggered between stalls, one hand clutching his chest.

He fell before the statue of the goddess Aruna, gasping, eyes wide in disbelief. No one moved to help him. In Eltareth, a city where silence was sacred, bystanders only watched.

When I reached him, he was already past saving. His fingers twitched toward me, desperate, trembling.

“Delivery… unfinished,” he rasped. Then nothing.

The crowd melted away like mist. Not a single guard came. The nobleman’s body lay in the mud as though he’d always belonged there.

Beside him, half-buried in the ash, was a small leather pouch — unmarked except for a faint insignia: a veil, half-raised.

Curiosity outweighed caution. I picked it up.

The Pouch
Inside the pouch were three sealed letters, black wax pressed with the same half-veil sigil. Their parchment smelled faintly of ink and perfume — or perhaps poison. At the bottom lay a coin of strange design: a crescent moon encircling a single open eye.

Before I could think, two city guards rounded the corner.

“You there! What’s that you’ve got?”

I froze.

The taller one took a step forward, but his partner’s hand shot out, stopping him. Both stared at the pouch, eyes widening — then, almost simultaneously, they looked away.

“Orders just came through,” the younger said, voice oddly tight. “Stand down.”

They left without another word.

That was when I understood: Eltareth was watching, but not speaking.

Something — or someone — had already decided I was permitted to walk away.

The Advocate
That evening, the fog rolled in thick as wool. I found a room above a tavern — nothing fancy, just dry walls and a window that didn’t leak. I was halfway through my drink when the latch clicked.

A woman stood in the doorway.

Gray silk gloves. Traveling cloak of muted silver. Her expression was calm, but her eyes — sharp, measuring — flicked to the pouch on the table.

“You picked up something that wasn’t yours,” she said softly. “Yet no one stopped you. Eltareth noticed. I noticed.”

I tightened my grip on the table’s edge. “Who are you?”

“Mara Seyne. An advocate,” she said. “For the dead… sometimes the living.” She moved closer, the faintest trace of perfume and candle smoke following her. “That pouch belonged to one of ours. You can return it and forget this ever happened — or deliver it, and see how deep the shadow runs.”

Her words were polite, but not optional.

The Choice
I stared at the letters. Three black seals. The coin with the staring eye.

I could have handed it back, walked away, pretended the nobleman’s death was none of my concern. The city would have let me — Eltareth never punished silence.

But the part of me that couldn’t sleep, that hated not knowing, made the choice for me.

“I’ll deliver it.”

Mara Seyne’s lips curved faintly. Approval, or amusement — I couldn’t tell.

“Then listen carefully,” she said, sliding one of the letters across the table. “This goes to House Halden’s courier, before sunrise. If the seal is broken, if the name is misspoken — your blood will sign your failure. Understand?”

I nodded.

“Good. Then from this moment,” she said, “you serve the Veiled Concord — whether you speak its name or not.”

She turned, her gray cloak whispering across the floorboards, and vanished into the fog.

The Delivery
The address led me through Eltareth’s underways — beneath crumbling bridges and between mausoleums where candlelight flickered behind carved stone faces. The city’s upper tiers glittered with marble and gold, but here the air was damp and tasted of iron.

The Halden courier waited at the appointed place, a pale woman in the uniform of the city’s diplomatic service. She didn’t ask who I was, only took the letter, checked the seal, and bowed once.

When I turned to leave, she whispered something I almost didn’t catch:

“Death moves quietly again.”

The Induction
By the time I returned to the inn, Mara was waiting. She stood by the window, hands clasped behind her back, the fog outside lit by the distant glow of funeral candles.

“You’ve done well,” she said. “The Concord remembers its debts.”

She stepped closer, and in her eyes, I saw the faint reflection of flame — or perhaps something deeper, older, watching through her.

“Eltareth stands on graves older than empires,” she murmured. “We only keep the balance. From this night forward, your silence is your oath.”

She placed the coin in my palm — crescent and eye glinting in the lantern light.

“When the dead are restless, we listen,” she said. “When the living grow dangerous, we answer.”

Then she was gone again, leaving only the faint scent of ash and wax.

I never learned who the nobleman was, or who died because of the letter I carried.

Eltareth returned to its rhythm — merchants haggling over spice, priests lighting lanterns for the departed. The noble’s body vanished without record.

But sometimes, in the crowded markets, I’d catch glimpses of gray gloves disappearing around corners, or feel a folded letter slipped into my pocket, sealed with a black wax veil.

The city breathed around me — quiet, heavy, watchful.

And in that silence, I realized what Mara had meant.

Eltareth noticed everything.

Eltareth remembered the dead.

And now, I worked for those who spoke on their behalf.

The Silent Delivery
The rain in Eltareth never truly ends — it only changes texture. Tonight, it fell like silver threads, weaving through the upper city’s haze, catching torchlight on the cobblestones like veins of liquid mercury. Somewhere below, among the necropolis layers and tomb-marked foundations, bones whispered of quieter days.

I walked beneath my hood, courier’s satchel pressed against my side, bearing the wax-sealed letters of Mara Seyne. My first task, she said — “A simple delivery. If your hands tremble at parchment, they are unfit for blood.”

The words had sounded like a jest when she said them, her half-smile hidden behind the smoke of clove incense. But now, as I passed the marble stairways of the noble quarter, I began to wonder if there was a pulse beneath the paper.

The Couriers’ Trial
Each envelope bore a different sigil: a silver sun for House Aurelian, a twisted ivy for House Rhemir, and a wolf’s fang for Lord Jareth’s estate. I was to speak no words beyond the formal courier’s greeting, to leave the letter in their hands, and to turn away before the seal broke.

Aurelian’s manor smelled of perfume and ambition. Rhemir’s gatekeeper eyed me like a beggar. Neither gave me pause — until Jareth.

His servant was polite, but his eyes lingered on the seal. Perhaps he recognized the mark — not of the courier’s guild, but the subtle swirl burned into the wax’s center: the hidden symbol of the Veiled Concord, visible only to those who knew where to look.

When Jareth himself appeared, the air shifted. He was younger than I’d expected, with sharp features softened by good wine and quiet power. He took the letter, nodded his thanks, and dismissed me. I turned, as instructed. Behind me came the crack of the seal.

And then — a sound like air leaving a bellows.

I glanced back only once. His goblet had fallen, red spilling across marble. His lips were pale. His eyes — wide and vacant.

“The Delivery Was Successful”
By the time I returned to the Concord’s sanctuary — a cellar hidden beneath the undertakers’ hall — the rain had turned to mist. Mara waited beside a candle that refused to flicker, even in the draft.

“Jareth?” she asked, without lifting her gaze from her ledger.

“Dead.”

Her quill didn’t pause. “Then the delivery was successful.”

A strange pride crept into her voice, like a teacher satisfied with a student’s handwriting.

I wanted to ask — why him? Why this way? But her tone silenced the thought before it formed. Instead, she closed her book and gestured toward the candles lining the chamber. Each one represented a contract, each flame a life owed or ended.

“You have learned the first lesson,” she said softly. “We deliver more than letters. We deliver endings. Some are paid for in gold, some in silence.”

She handed me a new seal — black wax, etched with the mark of an apprentice courier.

The Echo of Doubt
Word of Jareth’s death spread by morning. The official story whispered of sudden illness, though the stench of bitter almonds lingered long after the burial rites.

His widow wept in the streets, claiming innocence for her late husband — that he was no traitor, no conspirator. But in Eltareth, truth and payment were rarely in the same house.

The city moved on. The necropolis swallowed another name. And yet, I couldn’t shake the faint, unnatural chill that clung to the parchment when I first held it.

A sigil hidden in wax. A poison borne by seal. A courier turned killer.

I wondered then — had Mara sent me to deliver death, or merely to test my silence?

The Price of Balance
The bells of Saint Dhalis did not ring for the dead — only for the penitent. Yet as I walked beneath the temple’s weathered arch, their toll echoed like judgment.

Eltareth’s upper district was quieter now, fog-drenched and funereal. The temple rose like a crown of ivory among the catacombs below, its marble worn thin by centuries of prayers and whispered sins.

Mara’s orders were simple: “One of the cloth walks with shadow. Find the truth before the blade finds him.”

She had handed me the sealed parchment from an anonymous client — though I had begun to learn that anonymity in the Concord was often just another mask for the Empire.

The Whispering Bells
Brother Ardan was a name spoken carefully among the clergy. Pious, humble, tireless — the kind of man who made others feel small by the ease of his virtue. They said he distributed bread to the poor and sermons to the guilty. And yet, the letter claimed he was aiding a coven devoted to the demon Rethmor, Lord of Whispers.

The temple was a maze of incense and echo. Candles trembled in the drafts like anxious eyes. I moved through it with the practiced gait of a courier, my false insignia marking me as a messenger from the cathedral archives.

Ardan greeted me in the reliquary. He was older than the rumors suggested, his hands calloused from work, not wealth. When he smiled, I saw nothing of a heretic. But the Concord had taught me — masks are made of kindness as easily as cruelty.

I delivered the parchment he was meant to sign — a fabricated registry of sacred texts. He nodded politely, then offered me tea. The scent was earthy, not poisoned.

When I asked about Rethmor, he flinched — not in guilt, but in pain. “The demon’s name should not be spoken here,” he said quietly. “Even lies can feed it.”

The Forged Scripture
Night fell heavy over the temple’s courtyard. In the scriptorium, I found the evidence Mara’s informant had described — a scripture fragment bearing the demon’s sigil hidden among Ardan’s writings.

But something was wrong. The ink was too new. The parchment too fine.

As I compared the handwriting, the deception bared itself: the marks were deliberate, the strokes rehearsed. Someone wanted Ardan to hang.

The culprit revealed himself not by blade but by vanity. A rival priest — Father Kelric — watched me from the alcove, his robe too rich for humility. His ambition reeked stronger than the incense.

“Brother Ardan is a danger to our faith,” he whispered. “Surely even outsiders see that.”

“I see only your trembling hands,” I replied.

He laughed nervously. “The Empire rewards loyalty, courier. Be wise where you place your faith.”

The Choice
I waited until the moon hung above the spires like a pale coin — a fitting hour for decisions that bought one man’s life at the cost of another’s.

In the stillness, two paths opened before me:

1. The Blade. End Ardan’s life swiftly, leave the seal of the Concord upon his altar. The deed would please Mara, and the guild’s faith in my obedience would deepen. In Eltareth, truth was less valuable than trust.

2. The Candle. Expose the forgery — a single anonymous note to the city watch, penned in a trembling hand, naming no names but pointing the light where it belonged. The Empire would notice. The guild might not approve.

I made my choice beneath the silent eyes of the saint’s statue. Whether the temple awoke to mourning or relief depended on what my conscience — or conditioning — chose to remember.

When I returned to Mara, she was alone again, tending to the black candles that lined the crypt.

“Balance is the first casualty of conviction,” she murmured. “Did you tip the scales?”

I gave her no answer — only the empty parchment she had given me, its seal unbroken.

She smiled faintly. “Good. Silence is our sharpest weapon.”

The Mourner’s Banquet
Rain descended over Eltareth in slow, deliberate strokes — the kind of rain that remembered every sin it touched. It crawled down the stone faces of the mausoleums, blurred the lamplight of the upper terraces, and left the whole city smelling faintly of iron and incense.

The House of Halden stood quiet amid the storm, its spires rising like candle stubs above the necropolis mist. Ten days had passed since the death of Lord Jareth Halden — a nobleman whose heart, it was said, had failed him. I knew better. I had delivered the letter that stopped it.

Mara Seyne met me beneath the awning of a shuttered apothecary, her gray gloves slick with rain. Her voice was the same — calm, measured, and precise enough to cut glass.

“You ended a man’s life with ink,” she said. “Now you will dine with those who toast his memory.”

From within her sleeve, she produced a porcelain mask, white as bone and painted with faint cracks. Its smooth expression mirrored the city’s — beautiful, unfeeling, and half-broken.

“House Halden holds a memorial banquet tonight. Attend it. Listen. The Empire suspects more than grief stirs there. You will wear the courier’s face, not the assassin’s. Say nothing you cannot deny.”

She turned, her cloak brushing the cobblestones like whispering paper.

“And if you must kill,” she added, “make it look like remembrance.”