Night lay heavy upon Celestine's manor, the kind of deep, unbroken stillness that seemed to press against the windows and smother the air. The corridors were dark, their chandeliers extinguished, the world outside hidden behind velvet curtains. The staff slept. The guards dozed at their posts. Even the wind seemed to respect the hour.

Only one figure moved.

In the kitchen, Tristain, the head butler of the Princess' household, knelt in a corner where the light from a single oil lamp pooled faintly across the stone floor. In his hands was an unassuming tool of his own design, a thick wooden handle capped with three layered sponges, each made for a different task. At the press of a small brass lever, the head would rotate: a metallic mesh for scraping stubborn residue, a soft sponge for fine polishing, and a bone-dry layer for absorbing spills.

It was not the sort of implement one expected to find in the hands of a man of his position. Tristain was under no obligation to scour the kitchens at this hour, and certainly not the hidden corners where no one but he would ever look. The kitchen had already been cleaned twice that day to his exacting standard. But Tristain's relationship with cleanliness was not merely professional... No, it was personal.

Since boyhood, order and polish had been a kind of solace to him. In the Liberatorium, when he was still young and far from the life of a butler, he would insist on making camp each night in some semblance of order. Even in mud, even in rain, there would be a clean space to rest. Companions mocked him for it at first, until they learned that a man who could sleep in order could also wake in readiness.

That was one reason he worked now, long after the rest of the household had surrendered to dreams.

The other was less benign.

During Celestine's last Tale, an assassin had found their way into the manor. Not the first—the seventh since her start as a Liberator.

Three times, Tristain had intercepted such intruders himself, steel in hand. Three times, they had slipped past him entirely, prowling the silent halls like spectres until vanishing with the first light of dawn. And once, one had encountered another of Celestine's companions, a young woman recovering from injuries sustained on a previous Tale. They attacked her without hesitation. She survived long enough for Tristain to arrive, but the memory of finding her blood on the marble floor had not faded.

The pattern was always the same: they came when Celestine was away. They touched nothing, took nothing, left nothing, except the certainty that they could come and go as they pleased.

It unsettled him more than he cared to admit. Celestine's manor was on a floating island, her home a fortress in the clouds, guarded and patrolled. It was a place most would consider untouchable. That they could reach it at all meant they had influence, and perhaps within the high ends of the Liberatorium itself.

And if his instincts were correct, they were not after trinkets or secrets. They wanted bodies. Anyone tied to the Princess, anyone whose death might chip away at her resolve.

That was unacceptable.

The metallic sponge rasped in a tight, controlled motion as he worked along the seam where floor met wall. His hands moved with mechanical precision, but his ears were trained on the silence... And then, there it was.

A sound so faint it might have been mistaken for settling wood, or the gentle shift of cooling stone. But Tristain knew the house, knew its breaths, its murmurs, its sighs. This sound was none of those things.

He paused mid-scrub.

His eyes closed for a moment, and a quiet smile curved his lips, the smile of a man who had been waiting for precisely this.

His intuition had been right.

He did not set the tool down, for that would waste precious seconds. Instead, he shifted his grip, the improvised handle now angled in his palm like a short staff, and moved.

His stride was silent, his pace swift. In moments, the kitchen was behind him, its warm lamplight shrinking to a golden sliver as he slipped into the wider hall. The manor at night was a different creature entirely: the walls seemed taller, the ceilings higher, the air colder. Moonlight poured in thin ribbons through stained-glass windows, scattering fractured patterns of lilies, swords, and strange winged beasts across the polished marble of the first floor.

He passed the dining room, long as a ballroom, where the carved chairs seemed to lean toward one another as though whispering. Past the trophy gallery, where rows of mounted relics glimmered faintly—shields from distant Tales, crystal jars still holding the shimmer of captured Sol, and paintings whose subjects shifted ever so slightly when one wasn't looking. He slipped by the grand stair, its banister a twisting length of whitewood carved into the likeness of a serpent swallowing its own tail.

Through all of it, Tristain's eyes were fixed ahead, toward the faint disturbance he had heard.

The trail brought him to a narrow corridor, less traveled than the rest, where the scent of damp earth began to thread faintly through the air. At the end stood a plain, darkened doorway, plain only in shape, for its purpose was singular: the clean room.

Here, after tending to the gardens, one would scrub away every trace of soil before stepping back into the manor proper. It connected directly to the garden's glasshouse, its walls lined with tall panes that looked out onto the greenery beyond.

And there, beyond that glass, stood the intruder.

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A tall, shadow-clad form loomed against the faint reflection of the moonlit garden, its presence swallowing light rather than casting shadow. The face, if one could call it that, was a bleached skull. From the hollows of its sockets burned a pair of eyes, red and sharp as molten glass. Wisps of black fabric, more like smoke than cloth, clung to its frame and bled into the air, curling and vanishing as if devoured by the night.

Symbols, faint at first, then flickering to life, glowed in the dark around it. Crosses, inverted and burning in an otherworldly crimson, shimmered across the stone at its feet, over the glass wall, even drifting lazily in the air between them.

It moved a single step closer to the door, and the glass seemed to shiver.

The crimson cross burned against his sleeve before he even realized it had drifted close. Then came the pain, sudden, sharp, and deep. The muscle in his upper arm ruptured as if split by an invisible blade, hot blood spraying in a fine arc across the polished stone floor.

Tristan hissed under his breath, the sound more like irritation than fear, and dropped to one knee, his free hand clamping over the wound. His jaw clenched, eyes squeezed shut against the hot rush of agony.

When they opened again, the intruder was gone. Gone from in front of him, at least.

Tristan's instincts flared just in time to register the shadow behind him, a silhouette framed by dozens of floating crimson crosses, each one tilting lazily in the air, their glow casting shadows along the walls. The assassin's long, spindly fingers had narrowed to needle points, all five pressed together into a single tapered spike aimed at the precise spot between Tristan's shoulder blades.

The strike fell.

And hit nothing, for Tristan was already gone.

A ripple in the air and he stood behind the assassin, unruffled despite the fresh blood trickling from his bicep to the pristine floor. "Fortunate," he murmured, voice steady. "This section is easy to clean. My blood here means very little."

The assassin turned, robes trailing behind him like a shadow. Fingers extended, he slashed again. Tristan lifted his weapon, thick-handled, three-headed sponge on a stick.

The metallic sponge setting met the assassin's blade-hand with a sharp clank, sparks leaping from the collision. The air between them shook with the impact, but Tristan's stance didn't shift an inch.

The assassin's hollow sockets flared brighter, and then they were in motion.

They tore through the manor's corridors like two storms crossing paths. The assassin's strikes were blurs, each swing or stab followed by the sudden appearance of a floating cross that were silent, slow-moving traps that, when brushed, split skin like wet parchment. Tristan wove between them, turning the sponge with deft, precise movements, switching settings mid-spin.

The metallic sponge caught and deflected the assassin's stabbing fingers, the scraping sound like nails on stone. Tristan countered with the soft sponge, deceptively quick, jabbing it into the assassin's ribs with enough force to send the figure skidding back across the marble.

He crashed into the trophy gallery. A cross cut one of the crystal jars in two, releasing a swirling wisp of preserved Sol that drifted aimlessly toward the ceiling. Tristan sidestepped another slash, spinning the handle so the dry sponge setting extended. He swung it like a club, smacking the assassin square in the skull with a thump so undignified that even the crimson crosses seemed to hesitate in their glow.

The assassin reeled, shook it off, and retaliated with a whirling slash that severed the heads from three suits of ornamental armor in one fluid motion.

"You do realize," Tristan said calmly between deflections, "That every scratch you leave will need immediate attention. You're only wasting my time."

The assassin responded with a flick of his wrist, sending a row of floating crosses toward Tristan like a tide of scarlet razors.

They spilled into the grand dining hall. The long table became an obstacle course; Tristan vaulted over chairs while the assassin slithered beneath, slicing legs from the furniture as he passed. A red cross zipped past Tristan's ear, close enough to slice a few strands of his silver hair.

Tristan switched to the metallic sponge again, catching another stabbing hand and twisting sharply. The assassin hissed, or perhaps that was the air, as the bones in his fingers audibly popped, making him jump back.

He retaliated by hurling three crosses into the chandelier above. Glass and crystal rained down in shimmering arcs. Tristan swept the soft sponge upward, batting the falling shards neatly into a single pile midair before stepping over it without looking, before dashing into the assassin.

They crashed through a set of double doors into the music room. The assassin's claws raked across a grand piano, leaving five deep grooves in the glossy surface. Tristan's eye twitched.

"That was tuned this morning."

The dry sponge came down like a hammer on the assassin's shoulder, the impact driving him to one knee. But he surged back up with startling speed, both hands now pressed together into twin blades that whirled toward Tristan's midsection.

Metallic sponge again, block, twist, and counter.

They spiraled through the chamber, every clash sending a spray of red sparks or a dull, comedic squelch.

The chase drove them into the greenhouse outside. Moonlight filtered through the glass ceiling, glinting off hanging vines and the neat rows of rare blossoms. The assassin's crosses wove through the air between the plants, cutting leaves and petals with surgical precision.

Tristan darted between them, sponge handle spinning like a quarterstaff, each setting change punctuated by a clean click. He jabbed the soft sponge into the assassin's sternum, sending him stumbling back into a bed of exotic white flowers.

"That soil is imported," Tristan said sharply, switching to the dry sponge and sweeping the assassin's legs from under him. "Do not get blood on it."

The assassin rolled, planted a hand, and whipped a kick upward that cracked against Tristan's jaw. The butler staggered half a step, the first time he'd moved involuntarily. His eyes narrowed.

"Very well."

The assassin darted forward, crimson crosses now numbering in the dozens, filling the air in a spinning storm. Cuts began to open along Tristan's arms, his ribs and his cheeks.

He kept moving. Every setting of the sponge now came into play, metal to parry, soft to bludgeon, dry to knock the crosses out of the air before they could connect.

But the assassin pressed harder, driving him back against the central column.

A cross nicked Tristan's neck. Another grazed his thigh. Blood marked his uniform in red smears, but his eyes never wavered from the assassin's glowing sockets.

Then, with the faintest sigh, Tristan shifted his grip.

The metallic sponge setting locked into place. He stepped into the assassin's next lunge, deflecting the bladed fingers just enough to create an opening, and swung.

The sponge's metal edge cracked against the assassin's skull with a sound like stone breaking. The crimson crosses around them winked out all at once, leaving only the sound of labored breathing and dripping blood.

The assassin staggered back two steps… then crumpled, the red glow in his eyes dimming to nothing.

Tristan stood over him, chest rising and falling, every inch of him marked with thin, shallow cuts. Blood ran freely down his arms, dripping from his fingertips onto the already-ruined floor.

He exhaled once, before glancing down at the sponge in his hand. With a single motion, he switched to the dry setting and began mopping up the nearest pool of blood.

"Easy enough to clean," he murmured, before dragging the unconscious assassin by one ankle toward the clean room.

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