The Twilight Accord does not meet in towers.
It gathers in silence — in places the world forgets.
Revan followed the guide down an unlit stair behind an abandoned bell-forge in the low districts of Iskarra. The stone changed the farther they went — from quarried steps to smooth, black glass, then to something older. Something grown.
At the bottom of the stair was a door without hinges, without handle — only a circle of iron set into the stone.
The guide placed her hand on it. Whispers curled through the air like smoke.
"He bears the shadow that chose no master," she murmured.
The door opened.
Inside: the Vault of Knives.
A cavernous, torchless chamber lit by hovering blades — each suspended in shadow, glinting coldly, humming with sealed magic. Hundreds of them. Some still bloodstained. Some still alive.
Revan didn't flinch. He'd been here before.
This was where the Accord decided who lived, who vanished… and what stayed buried.
The Pact Table
At the center of the vault stood the pact table — an obsidian ring traced with dozens of pact-signatures, layered one over the other like fossilized promises.
Five Accord masters sat in silence, cowled. No names. Just Presences.
The sixth seat was left empty.
"The Hollow Crown is real," Revan said. "Someone is collecting its pieces. I've seen the sigils lighting up one by one."
No reaction. Not yet.
"The ley prisons are stirring," he added. "The seals are bleeding out magic into the wild. If the Crown is restored, the wielder won't just channel the leyline — they'll rewrite its laws."
Still, the silence stretched.
Then a voice — cold, quiet, female — broke it.
"And you would have us trust the testimony of one who turned from us. Who fled."
Revan's shadow twisted behind him, rising.
"I didn't flee. I chose not to become what you did. There's a difference."
A second voice — lower, dry — spoke next.
"So why return?"
Revan stepped forward, the light from the suspended knives glinting across his face.
"Because if someone binds the leyline again, you won't be able to hide in the dark anymore. There won't be a shadow to move through."
A long pause.
Then: a sigil was drawn in the air — a spiral pierced by a dagger. The Accord's mark of conditional alliance.
It hovered for a beat.
Then burned into Revan's palm.
"You walk with the Accord again," said the dry voice. "But not as one of us."
"Then as what?"
"As bait."
Outside the chamber, as Revan ascended into cool night air, the guide caught up with him. She handed him a sealed case.
"Your contact in the Mire will find you. She was Accord once. Long ago."
"Name?" Revan asked.
"She won't give it. But you'll know her. By the way the forest moves."
She stepped back into the dark.
Revan stood alone for a long time, watching the stars above the shattered city sky.
Then he looked down at his palm.
The Accord's brand still smoldered.
Not a bond. A warning.
"Bait, huh," he muttered.
"Fine. But if they bite—"
The shadow around him rose like a blade.
"I bite back."