The Veiled Concord part 2

The Banquet of Shadows
House Halden’s gate opened to a flood of lamplight and laughter that smelled of decay. Inside, the hall glowed with candles, thousands of them, their flames trembling in the draft as if frightened by their own persistence. The nobles of Eltareth mourned as they lived — lavishly, and with practiced sorrow.

Servants drifted between the mourners like gray ghosts, offering cups of black wine. The chandeliers dripped crystals like frozen tears. I moved among them unnoticed, a courier among courtiers, my mask another ornament in the theater of grief.

“A pity, about Lord Jareth,” murmured one. “His heart gave out, they say.” “So convenient,” said another. “The inheritance passed cleanly to his cousin. Merciful, really.” “I heard,” whispered a third, lowering her voice, “that an Imperial courier delivered him a letter just before the collapse. Carried a strange seal… half a veil.”

The laughter that followed was nervous. I felt the blood drain from my fingers. That letter had been mine. And the seal — Mara’s seal.

The Widow
I found Lady Elira Halden seated alone beneath her husband’s portrait, a dark silhouette framed by the candlelight. Her mourning dress was impeccable: jet-black silk, a veil like a spill of shadow across her shoulders. She did not rise when I approached; she merely studied the painted face above her.

“A tragedy,” I offered, because silence would have drawn attention.

Her lips curved faintly.

“Tragedy implies innocence.”

On the table beside her lay a folded letter — sealed with the half-veil insignia. She did not hide it. Instead, she poured two glasses of black wine and slid one toward me.

“You came faster than I expected,” she said. “Tell your mistress her efficiency is commendable.”

“You think I am hers?”

“Aren’t you?” She smiled thinly. “Eltareth only allows two kinds of messengers — those who deliver truth, and those who bury it. I suspect you are both.”

Her hand brushed the letter again. For a heartbeat, I caught the faint scent of burnt wax. The seal was charred around the edges. Someone had tried to destroy it.

“My husband dabbled in debts best left unspoken,” she said. “He deserved his end. But demons are poor accountants. They come to collect from the living, too. Tell your mistress — her silver burns.”

I left her then, her words echoing against the marble like the slow drip of poison.

The Silent Toast
The banquet reached its crescendo. Glasses raised. Laughter cracked like brittle porcelain.

“To the departed!” someone declared.

“To peace!” another shouted.

“To the future!” came the final cry — and with it, the lights trembled.

For an instant, the flames turned blue. Shadows rippled along the walls, bending wrong, as if trying to crawl free from their owners.

A nobleman — the cousin who had inherited Halden’s fortune — stiffened mid-toast. The goblet fell from his hand. His eyes rolled white, veins pulsing black beneath his skin.

Then, just as quickly, it ended. The lights steadied. The guests gasped, muttered, reassured themselves it was “just the wine.”

But I saw it — the faint whiff of sulfur, the thin smoke rising from his throat. Something had touched him, if only for a breath.

Eltareth was sick. And its sickness wore perfume.

Mara on the Balcony
Later, when the storm had thinned to a mist, I found Mara waiting on the balcony above the flooded courtyard. She leaned against the balustrade, her gray gloves glinting wetly in the moonlight.

“You saw it, didn’t you?” she asked without turning. “The rot under all that mourning.”

She drew two envelopes from her cloak — identical save for the wax seals.

“One sends Lady Elira into exile,” she said. “The other ends her life. Both will balance the books, in different ledgers. Which do you prefer to keep?”

She handed them to me, her eyes cold as rain.

“Mercy,” she whispered, “is only another form of murder. The only question is whether it’s slower.”

I stood there a long while, the paper growing damp in my hands, the city below flickering like a dying lantern. Somewhere in the distance, the bells of Saint Dhalis began to toll — not for the dead, but for the living who would soon envy them.

The Feast Ends
By dawn, the House of Halden had sealed its gates. Servants muttered of curses, of haunted letters and veiled visitors who left no footprints. Mara called it “balance restored.”

“The living forget their sins,” she told me, when next we met. “The Concord does not.”

I thought of Lady Elira’s calm eyes, of the cousin’s convulsing body, of the way shadows seemed to breathe when no one watched.

Eltareth was a city of graves pretending to be a city of men. And I — I was its courier.

Delivering peace. Delivering death. Delivering silence.

All written in the same ink.

Ashes Beneath the Courtyard
The rains had not stopped since the Mourner’s Banquet. Eltareth’s streets gleamed with oil and soot, the downpour washing nothing clean—only spreading the city’s grime thinner. Beneath the silvered spires of the Upper City, the Veiled Concord stirred again.

Mara Seyne met me in silence that morning. Her candle was nearly burnt through, the wax pooling into a small lake of hardened white upon her desk. “Another courier task,” she said at last, though the tone in her voice carried none of the earlier nonchalance. “But this time, we deliver to the dead.”

The parchment she handed me was black-sealed, the wax stamped with the emblem of the Imperial Ministry—an eye half-shuttered by wings.

“You will find the ashes in the courtyard crypt of House Barnel. Bring them here. Quietly.”

Her phrasing was simple. The task was not.

The Descent
House Barnel had been extinguished years ago—its manor a burnt husk, its heirs scattered. But the courtyard crypt beneath remained sealed by decree, marked with Imperial sigils. Even the crows avoided the place, as if memory itself refused entry.

I arrived at dusk, the city’s skyline painted red and gray. The rain had eased into mist. My boots sank into the soft, waterlogged earth as I crossed the courtyard. Vines had claimed the marble archways, crawling toward the roofless heavens like desperate hands.

Inside, I found an altar of black stone. A single urn sat at its center—its surface etched with runes older than the Empire itself. Around it, faint circles of salt and ash whispered of forbidden rites.

As I reached for the urn, a voice came—not from the crypt, but from within my own thoughts.

You disturb the pact, courier.

The air grew heavy. A flicker of shadow coiled near the urn’s base, taking the vaguest form of a human face—mouth open, eyes hollow.

I drew my dagger—not out of fear, but out of instinct. The presence felt neither living nor dead, but something suspended between both.

We were promised peace, it said. Now they send thieves to wake us.

I realized, with growing dread, that these were no mere ashes. They were remains bound to a pact—a soul held in suspension beneath Imperial edict. Someone wanted this spirit silenced, utterly and finally.

The Choice Beneath the Stone
The seal of the urn bore both the Imperial mark and another—subtler one: the symbol of the Veiled Concord. A double sanction. A double betrayal.

I could destroy the urn now, ending whatever torment lingered here. But to do so would defy the contract. And defying the Concord meant consequences measured in blood.

I knelt by the altar. The rain from above filtered through the cracks in the ceiling, striking the urn in slow, rhythmic drops.

If I delivered this, I would be complicit in erasing something—someone—the Empire feared to remember. But if I broke it, I might draw their gaze too early.

I hesitated long enough for the shadow to whisper again:

You serve them still. Even when you know not whom you serve.

Its tone was neither accusation nor plea. Just weary truth.

In the end, I resealed the urn in my cloak. I did not break it. But I did not bow, either.

Return to the Concord
When I returned to Mara, the rain had grown violent again—hammering the windows like fists. She stood at the same desk, the same candlelight flickering across her face.

“You retrieved it?”

I nodded, placing the urn upon the table. The wax seal glistened faintly in the dim light.

Mara’s expression didn’t change, but her eyes flickered—just once—with something colder than satisfaction. “Good. The Empire will sleep easier.”

She dismissed me then, but as I turned to leave, she added softly:

“Eltareth was built on old pacts, courier. Some made with gods. Some with worse.”

Outside, thunder rolled across the necropolis. The storm carried the scent of ash. And somewhere deep beneath the city—below its stones and tombs—I thought I heard something stir.

Whispers from the Ossuary
The city of Eltareth does not sleep; it decays in silence. Beneath its marble plazas and perfumed gardens, catacombs spread like veins of rot through the stone. The living walk above in ignorance, while the bones below remember everything.

Mara Seyne summoned me to the Concord’s lower chambers—a rarity. Few apprentices ever descended past the antechamber of the guild’s sanctum. The air grew colder with each spiral step, the torchlight bending as though reluctant to illuminate what waited below.

She was not alone this time. A man cloaked in gray stood beside her, his face half-hidden by the hood, his gloved fingers resting on a ledger carved of bone. His voice carried the polished indifference of the bureaucracy.

“The Ministry requests retrieval of a record,” he said. “From the Ossuary Vaults beneath Saint Dhalis. It is… inconveniently misplaced.”

A retrieval, they called it. But the way Mara’s gaze lingered on the man told me this was no ordinary errand. The Ministry had begun to lean too close to the Concord’s secrets. And now, someone needed to tidy up the bones.

The Descent into the Ossuary
The Vaults of Saint Dhalis were built before Imperial Era—when death was worshiped, not feared. The temple above was serene, all incense and gold leaf; below, the ossuary waited, endless and hollow.

The door to the lower crypt was sealed by wards of salt and sigils. The Concord’s insignia—the veiled eye—had been etched faintly on the fourth stone. A sign for those who knew where to look.

I entered under cover of prayer, disguised as a penitent mourner. My courier’s seal hung discreetly beneath my cloak, its silver glint swallowed by candlelight. The deeper I went, the thicker the air became—damp, heavy with the scent of wax and long-dead incense.

The walls were lined with skulls—some marked with Imperial runes, others left bare, as if anonymity were mercy.

At the heart of the vault lay the Ossuary Chamber—a circular hall where bone pillars curved like ivory trees, their roots intertwining across the ceiling. At its center stood an altar, upon which rested a tome bound in cracked leather and sealed with a single black feather.

That was the ledger I sought.

But as I approached, the whispering began.

The Whispers
At first, it was only wind moving through hollow corridors. Then the whispers formed words—soft, rasping, almost tender.

You carried the ashes… now you carry the silence. Why do you serve them, little courier?

The voice was neither human nor wholly spectral. It spoke from within the bones, from beneath the marble itself.

They bury the truth beneath your feet.

I reached for the tome. The seal pulsed faintly—alive, aware. My hand trembled as the air warped around me, the candle flames stretching into long, distorted tongues. Shadows slithered across the bone walls, coalescing into shapes half-formed.

Break the feather, the whisper urged. See what they hide.

But I remembered Mara’s warning from the last task: “Eltareth was built on old pacts.”

And perhaps this—this voice, this presence—was the price of those pacts.

I could break the seal and unveil what the Ministry wanted buried, or take the tome intact and preserve the silence they paid for.

The decision felt heavier than the dagger at my hip.

The Choice in the Dark
I looked again at the feather. It shimmered faintly, black with a trace of violet—an omen’s color. I could sense the faint pulse of power trapped beneath, a residue of forbidden magic.

If I broke it, I might learn what lay beneath the Concord’s veil. Or I might unbind something that remembered the world before kings and empires.

The whispers pressed closer now, wrapping around me like fog.

Mara knows. The Empire knows. Only you remain blind.

My hand hovered, then closed around the tome.

I did not break the feather.

But as I turned to leave, the whisper exhaled softly in my ear:

Then I will find you again, courier.

Return to the Veiled Concord
Mara awaited in the candlelit chamber, her expression unreadable. The gray-cloaked envoy had gone.

“You retrieved it,” she said, touching the tome’s seal with something close to reverence—or fear.

“Yes,” I replied. “It whispered.”

Her eyes flicked to me sharply. “You heard it?”

I nodded.

For a moment, she looked as though she might speak further. Instead, she simply said, “You’ve done well. Forget what it said. Whispers cannot harm what does not listen.”

She dismissed me with a faint gesture. But as I turned, I caught sight of her gloved hand trembling—ever so slightly—over the black feather.

Outside, the bells of Saint Dhalis tolled midnight. The city exhaled a long, mournful sigh. And beneath my feet, I swore the catacombs still whispered my name.