Alric closed the distance in a single, fluid stride. "What is missing?"
Thorleif dragged a thick, calloused finger just above Thidrik's collarbone, pointing to a raw, angry red line carved into the dead man's flesh. "This bastard wore a massive, black pearl necklace dredged up from the southern oceans. It was his lucky charm. He swore it was practically fused to his skin; the man didn't even take the damn thing off to bathe. But it's gone."
Without waiting for permission, Alex leaned right over Thorleif's massive arm. His eyes swept over the faint red line with the cold, detached precision of a seasoned surgeon.
"It was violently ripped off," Alex stated, his voice ringing with absolute, clinical certainty. "There is a fresh abrasion right here—essentially a severe rope burn. The clasp didn't just break, and it certainly didn't fall. Someone intentionally wrapped their fingers around it and yanked it completely free. And they did it in one, flawlessly smooth motion."
Emily slowly slid her half-drawn sword back into its scabbard, her brow furrowing in deep confusion. "So, it was a robbery? But look at his belt. His pockets are still bulging with coin. In the middle of all that pitch-black chaos, they only took a necklace?"
Alric's gaze slowly shifted to meet Alex's. In that fleeting second, the veteran knight and the young prodigy arrived at the exact same, chilling conclusion.
"No," Alric said. His voice was somehow colder than the freezing gale still blowing through the tavern doors. "This wasn't a robbery. It was a trophy."
The word trophy hung suspended in the heavy, smoke-filled air like a drawn blade.
But if Alric had hoped the deduction would clear the dark clouds of suspicion from Thorleif's face, he was entirely mistaken. The Guard Leader's expression only darkened further. Exhaling a heavy, rattling breath, Thorleif straightened up to his full, towering height and slammed the iron-shod base of his axe into the floorboards with a deafening thud.
"Maybe he left his precious trinket back in his quarters, or locked it in the captain's cabin on his ship," Thorleif growled, his icy eyes darting to each member of the group, one by one. "Or maybe he just dropped it in a drunken stupor. Your little theory doesn't prove your innocence, Knight. Hell, in that absolute darkness... maybe one of you slit his back and pocketed the pearl."
Emily bristled, her hand instantly darting back toward her hilt, ready to lunge forward.
But Alric stopped her dead in her tracks with a single, sharp flick of his wrist.
Alex, however, didn't even bother to stand up from the corpse. Calmly wiping a smear of the dead man's blood off his fingertips onto the edge of the wooden table, he interjected with an unnerving, sociopathic calm.
"I don't believe you looked closely enough at the ligature marks, Master Thorleif," Alex said. His tone was utterly devoid of emotion, sounding exactly like a royal physician diagnosing a terminal illness. He casually pointed a finger back at the raw, bruised ring around Thidrik's throat. "This abrasion is incredibly fresh. It was torn away with immense force at the exact moment his blood pressure plummeted—meaning the second his heart was punctured. The friction burn on the epidermal layer proves it without a shadow of a doubt."
Alex finally stood up straight, his dark eyes locking onto the giant Akran.
"It didn't simply fall off. It wasn't left behind in some tavern room. That necklace was wrapped around Thidrik's throat the moment he drew his final breath, and the killer tore it from his flesh as he died. You are more than welcome to search us to the bone. You won't find it."
Thorleif's heavy jaw clenched so tightly the muscles bulged beneath his scarred cheeks. The boy's hyper-technical, unflinching certainty was deeply infuriating—but the Akran warrior simply could not find a single flaw in his ironclad logic.
Alric seized the heavy silence, twisting Thorleif's hesitation into an absolute advantage.
"Our hourglass is already bleeding sand," the Holy Knight stated, his voice a commanding whip crack. "You gave us until dawn. So take us to Thidrik's galleon, or take us to his quarters. Bring your guards. If we tear the place apart and find that black pearl tucked away... you can string us up on the docks right then and there. But if we go there and the necklace is gone, and we find the rotting skeletons in Thidrik's past that drew this assassin to your port... then the direction of this hunt changes immediately."
Thorleif stared long and hard into the unyielding iron of Alric's gaze. The Law of the Docks was absolute, but the people of Akrafjall possessed zero patience for twisted mind games. If this man was bluffing, he was staking five lives on a spectacular lie.
"Fine," Thorleif finally rumbled, his voice scraping like two boulders grinding together. "We are going to Thidrik's captain's quarters aboard the Silent Revenge. But make one wrong move, give me one single reason to doubt you... and I will hurl your severed heads into the ocean before the sun even thinks about rising."
The moment they pushed past the tavern's heavy doors and stepped out into the crushing night air, the mythical gale known as Cheyra's Breath violently assaulted them. The freezing wind didn't just bite at their skin; it slashed right through their clothes, chilling them down to the bone marrow.
Thorleif took the vanguard. Holding a sputtering pitch-torch high in one hand and resting the heavy shaft of his executioner's axe casually over his massive shoulder, he marched with a slow, thudding rhythm. Flanking him were two equally colossal Harbor Guards, their hands resting firmly on their weapons, their eyes scanning the dark alleys on high alert.
Behind them, the five Mountain Killers followed in suffocating silence.
Alex pushed himself to keep pace with Alric's long, sweeping strides, but the night was absolute pitch, and the ancient cobblestones were coated in a treacherous, slick layer of frozen sea salt. For a brief second, his boot lost traction, and he stumbled hard. He caught himself just before hitting the frozen stone, but the cold was so vicious that he had to clench his jaw with agonizing force just to keep his teeth from chattering. His temples throbbed from the strain.
Beside him, Nicolas was physically trembling—a pathetic, violent shuddering fueled just as much by the lingering terror in his chest as the freezing wind.
The village streets were entirely abandoned, resembling a ghost town more than a bustling port. Thick, heavy fishing nets hung strung up between the weathered wooden houses, swaying violently in the gale like the colossal webs of some unseen, monstrous spider. The sickly, flickering orange glow of Thorleif's torch cast long, warped shadows that danced frantically across the stone walls.
And then... everything unraveled in the space of a single, drawn breath.
Annie's hollow eyes suddenly snapped impossibly wide.
That familiar, terrifying "nothingness" she had felt inside the tavern just before Thidrik's heart was pierced—it was back. But this time, the psychic void was so overwhelmingly dense, so suffocatingly close, that it felt like a rusted iron nail had just been violently driven straight through her frontal lobe.
Her lips parted. "Watch—!" But before the psychic warning could even materialize into sound, the darkness struck.
Emily's raw, battle-forged instincts reacted a fraction of a second faster than Annie's voice. Before her conscious mind could even put a name to the lethal threat, her body was already moving.
Lunging violently forward, her fingers instinctively clamped around the hilt of her longsword. "Get down!" she roared, her fierce command tearing through the freezing silence of the night.,
Throwing her entire body weight toward Thorleif, she desperately tried to close the gap, her blade sliding a mere half-inch out of its scabbard.
But she wasn't fast enough.
Neither Emily's blazing speed nor her desperate warning could outrun time.
There was no dramatic clash of steel. There was no battle cry.
There was only a sickening, razor-thin whistle slicing through the howling wind.
Thwip.