Chapter 25: Intruders (3)

The soft thrum of magic filled the air as Vaelira finally lifted her eyes from the book.

She closed it with a calm snap.

“I was just getting to the part where they describe carbon-mana resonance,” she muttered, voice laced with disappointment. 

Her outstretched hand caught the floating sword without looking—its metallic hum rising like a held breath.

“Four of you,” she said, rising to her feet in one fluid motion. 

“And you think this is brave?”

One of the intruders chuckled, drawing twin knives. 

“It’s not bravery, sweetheart. It’s efficiency.”

“Not even pretending to have honor. How quaint.”

Another smirked. 

“Let’s not drag this out.”

In a blur, they moved—fan formation, one left, one right, two straight in.

Vaelira didn’t flinch.

Her sword flashed up in an arc, clang—parrying the first blade as her body twisted with the movement, the wind of her step shoving the second attacker back. 

A third came low, aiming for her legs.

She dropped her stance and spun, catching his dagger between the flat of her sword and the heel of her boot. 

With a grunt, she kicked the blade out of his hand and slammed the hilt of her sword into his chest, sending him tumbling into the wall.

Crash.

“Wha—?” 

One of them gasped, only to get a glancing blow across the cheek as Vaelira rebounded off the dresser behind her.

Thud.

The four regrouped, breathing heavy, eyes wide in disbelief. 

None of them said a word—but their glances screamed a shared thought:

‘This wasn’t supposed to happen.’

The smallest of them nodded once. 

The tall one closest to the door gave a sharp signal.

‘Go.’

In an instant, one peeled off, sprinting to the hallway while the remaining three closed in again, blades flashing like fangs.

Vaelira’s eyes narrowed. 

She shifted her footing—her right foot slid back, her left angled forward, sword held horizontal just below the shoulder. 

Her stance—once flowing and reactive—hardened into something precise. 

Sharp.

Predatory.

The attackers moved together, their coordination impeccable. 

Slashes, feints, and low kicks came in a flurry, but Vaelira danced between them with chilling focus. 

Sparks bloomed as metal struck metal. 

She parried high, dodged low, let her opponents trap themselves in their own momentum.

But their teamwork kept her moving—never settling, always defending. 

Their blades struck inches from her arms, her cheek, her side.

They were good.

Not good enough—but good enough to stall.

Her sword screeched against a curved dagger, deflecting it into the bookshelf behind her, sending tomes tumbling. 

Another attacker swept at her legs; she vaulted over him, landing between the three as her sword carved a shallow groove in the floor.

And then…

The lights flickered.

Then dimmed.

No one noticed it at first. 

But as the three circled her again, their eyes began to squint against the growing darkness. 

The candelabras seemed to burn lower, shadows bleeding out into corners they hadn’t been in moments ago.

“What the—?”

“Is it… getting darker?”

Vaelira’s blade gleamed even as the room dulled.

She exhaled slowly.

***

The shadows in the room no longer obeyed the candlelight.

They crawled like living things—stretching against the flickering glow, sliding across the walls and floor with the slow hunger of a predator readying to pounce. 

The dark didn’t fall in a curtain.

It seeped in.

The air turned thick. 

Heavy. 

Suffocating.

The three intruders faltered—not outwardly, not with their feet or hands—but in that tiny pause before a breath, that hitch in timing that didn’t exist moments ago. 

Their lungs filled slower. Their limbs moved just a shade too late.

Vaelira, in contrast, stood untouched by the growing weight of the room. 

The darkness bent around her—not shielding her, but acknowledging her.

A single candle on the desk flickered violently, struggling to burn against the unseen force. 

The shadows around her blade stretched outward like black veins as she pivoted her stance once more, posture steady, even elegant.

No words were exchanged.

The three moved again.

Left flank, right strike, center low sweep.

They’d danced this dance before—hundreds of times, in tighter corridors and harsher weather, against faster, larger, more aggressive targets.

But none of those targets were like her.

Vaelira met the center strike first, steel screaming as she slid her broadsword along the attacking blade and twisted—redirecting it up just enough to force her attacker off balance. 

She moved before he recovered, stepping into the one on the left and shouldering him into the bookshelf, blade swinging from the hip in a clean arc.

He dodged—barely—but not in time to stop the blade from catching the hem of his cloak, tearing it clean.

The right striker closed in, aiming for her side. 

She responded with a sharp reverse parry, knocking the blade away, then smacked his shoulder with the flat of her sword. 

He staggered, cursing under his breath.

Their coordination never failed like this. 

They were supposed to fill gaps, catch overlaps, watch each other’s blind spots.

But she was making new gaps. 

Creating blind spots.

Her blade didn’t just block—it dictated.

She fought with complete composure—no rage, no flourish, not even visible adrenaline. 

Just calm, relentless precision.

She used everything—deflecting a dagger with the handguard, slamming the hilt into a ribcage, baiting slashes that would scrape the edge of a desk or wall, only to trap the attacker in their own momentum.

Worse still, she wasn’t trying to kill them.

She was toying with them.

That was the most terrifying part.

One of them gasped as his dagger was knocked loose, the weapon skittering across the floor into the dark.

His comrade lunged to cover him—only for Vaelira to step in-between, blade gliding upward with a crisp clang, stopping an inch from his throat.

The man froze, wide-eyed.

She didn’t press the edge forward.

She just held it there, staring.

The others watched, unmoving, sweat trickling down their faces despite the room’s chill.

This fight was already going on too long.

They’d felled men twice her size in half this time.

It wasn’t the weapon—daggers versus broadsword was familiar territory. It wasn’t her size or strength.

It was the way she moved.

The way she turned every object into an advantage.

And the way the room itself seemed to obey her.

Their boots slid slightly on the slick wooden floor—something that hadn’t happened a minute ago. 

Their fingers twitched too slowly around their hilts. 

Their eyes kept losing focus for split-seconds as the dimness spread.

Something was wrong.

Not just with her.

With this place.

One of them swallowed hard, muscles aching.

They couldn’t keep this up.

Every block with a dagger drained more strength. 

Every missed hit added weight to their bones.

And still—Vaelira hadn’t so much as taken a heavy breath.

Her blade shifted again—lowering an inch.

Their legs locked. 

Fight or flight.

One thought haunted all three now:

‘They were one mistake away from losing a limb. Maybe a head.’

And all they could do… was pray that the runner got back in time.

Before this turned into a massacre.

***

Vaelira on the other hand really didn’t want to ruin the carpet.

It was genuine distress—right up there with the danger to life and limb currently present in the form of three dagger-wielding attackers flanking her.

But the carpet in question was a delicate handwoven import from the north, dyed with real ashbloom and midnight root. 

And if any of these men so much as bled on it—

Clang!

She deflected a blow from the left, turned her body, and kicked off the small table beside her, angling herself just so to avoid knocking over the reading lamp.

The sword snapped to her hand mid-airl, as her slippers—slippers—slid slightly on the polished wood.

She nearly cursed.

“This blasted hem,” Vaelira muttered under her breath as she adjusted her footwork again to avoid stepping on her own nightgown. 

‘Why didn’t I change before picking up the book?’

One of the attackers lunged. 

She pivoted, blade singing. 

He barely got his arm out in time.

Sloppy, she thought with the sort of clinical disdain usually reserved for chipped porcelain.

The three of them had some coordination. 

She’d give them that. 

Fluid movement, predictable spacing, no shouting or callouts—very soldier-esque. 

But the moment they tried to force her into a corner, she could feel it:

They weren’t trained soldiers.

But they were trained together.

She deflected another blade and stepped sideways to keep her weight centered on the rug and not the first edition tome beside her bed.

‘Are these three… co-dependent?’

She thought, genuinely confused.

She caught a dagger with the fuller of her blade and flung it aside. 

The attacker swore.

Definitely not city thieves.

Thieves were usually jittery. 

They took cheap shots and bolted when someone shouted. 

These three weren’t talking, weren’t panicking, and weren’t running—not yet, anyway.

Another sequence of strikes came her way. 

She blocked two, ducked the third, and very gently backhanded one of them into a chair.

“Okay. You’re not thieves,” she murmured to herself. “You’re too clean. Too silent. And too… well-coordinated.”

She kicked the chair—after checking it wasn’t antique—into another attacker and glanced briefly at the door.

Her face remained impassive, her blade still, her body perfectly composed.

But inside?

“Bandits,” she concluded flatly, internally sighing.

And if there were three bandits in her reading room—scuffing her floors, breathing on her books, and bleeding precariously close to her rug—there were likely more bandits outside.

Which meant her quiet night was now officially over.

She let her blade fall into a low guard and drew a slow breath as the three reoriented themselves around her, circling warily. 

One rubbed his wrist where she’d slapped the dagger from his grip. 

Another adjusted his stance, sweat running down his brow despite the cold.

She stared at them with the flat, disapproving look of a librarian catching someone dog-earring a page.

‘They’re stalling,’ she thought. 

‘Buying time for the runner.’

One of them had slipped out, no doubt to fetch more rats from the nest.

She side-stepped a feint and swatted away a probing jab with the side of her blade, barely even watching it.

Which meant she’d have to end this fast, and preferably—

Her slipper slid on a thin film of wax.

She caught herself with a graceful spin, but her eyes twitched.

The light continued to dim unnaturally. 

Shadows stretched longer than they should, and a faint, creeping pressure began to coil at the edges of the room like fingers wrapping around a throat.

They definitely felt it.

The shortest of the three began breathing audibly. 

Another glanced at the door, jaw clenched.

Vaelira, meanwhile, simply tilted her head.

“You three have commendable teamwork,” she said calmly, her voice quiet and clear. 

“But that can only take you so far.”

The trio didn’t respond.

They didn’t need to respond.

Their feet shuffled. 

Their posture broke. 

Their unity—frayed. 

The tension in the air was no longer just the spell-induced gloom or the strange pressure creeping in—it was the dawning, ice-cold realization that they weren’t fighting a tired noblewoman surprised in her sleep.

They were fighting something else entirely.

Vaelira raised her sword in a new stance. 

One they hadn’t seen yet. 

Her nightgown flowed with the movement, almost like a cloak.

The shadows behind her seemed to lean in.

And she smiled, the smallest, most polite, most terrifyingly composed smile imaginable.

“Let’s finish this before the hallway runner gets ideas.”

***

Author’s Note:

Hello Hello ( ^_^)／

Thank you for reading and following along—it means a lot!

We’re about to step into a stretch of chapters with a lot more heat: faster pacing, sharper blades, and choices that bite. ヽ(O_O )ﾉ

If you’ve been waiting for things to ramp up… buckle in. (⌐▨_▨)

Appreciate you being here.

More soon!