Drazhar

The Shrine of the Lamenting Blade was deathly still. Candles guttered in their sconces, their flames sickly blue, casting warping shadows along the obsidian walls. Incubi stood like statues—motionless sentinels cloaked in silence and steel—as Drazhar descended the steps of his sanctum, glaives resting upon his back like wings folded in judgment.

At the foot of the shrine's entryway waited a gilded palanquin, borne by hunched thralls and flanked by a retinue of sneering Hekatrix guards. Their master stood before it all—a Kabalite noble of middling influence, his face frozen in a rictus of false reverence. He bowed low, his voice oily with ambition. “A gift, my lord of blades. A creature most rare... found drifting amid the ruins of a shattered Imperial vessel. The Mon-Keigh was not quite Mon-Keigh. We thought it might... amuse you.”

Two guards dragged the prisoner forward. Shackled, drugged perhaps, but not broken. Tall for a Mon-Keigh, wrapped in ragged remnants of once-utilitarian gear. They moved oddly—shoulders set in a way that didn’t match standard human frame, and though the restraints bound them tightly, something about their gait unsettled the room.

The Incubi stirred. Only slightly. Only enough to betray that they too sensed something… anomalous.

Drazhar paused before the prisoner. His presence was not one of menace, but inevitability—like the moment before a blade falls. He tilted his head, just barely. He did not speak.

He did not need to.

With a flick of his fingers, the prisoner was taken from the noble’s hands, who bowed again, deeper this time, and backed away with false grace.

The Shrine’s doors groaned open. Drazhar turned, already walking. The prisoner was brought behind him.

No praise. No dismissal. Only silence—and an interest sharp as a knife’s edge.