Adrian peered at the dark line of trees, his muscles tensed. What in the name of the spirits just happened? Shadowlash had wrecked Trailseeker, leaving Adrian at its mercy…only to abruptly turn tail and flee. It didn’t make any spirit-cursed sense.

Shoving aside his confusion, he rushed across the meadow to Trailseeker’s side. Though the daemon remained as stoic as ever, Adrian sensed its thinned aether through their bond. Closing his eyes, he rested a hand on Trailseeker’s strangely slick back, allowing his aether to trickle out.

While daemons could channel their aether into incredible techniques, daemon masters primarily used their aether for support, whether to provide their daemon with a temporary boost or to restore a crippling wound. When his arm began to sag and his eyes droop, Adrian cut off the flow of energy. After what he’d already spent on his own wounded arm, he didn’t have enough left in his reserve to fully heal Trailseeker as well.

He gave Trailseeker’s head a furtive stroke. “Sorry, buddy. You deserve a better master.”

Most daemon masters probably would’ve been disgusted by such a display of affection for a species that had slaughtered countless thousands over the centuries. Despite everything, however, Adrian couldn’t help but harbor a certain fondness for his daemon. It might be a merciless killing machine, but it was his merciless killing machine. And that seemed like it ought to count for something.

He focused on his link with Trailseeker and recalled the daemon so it could finish recovering within him. Gradually, Trailseeker’s corporeal form dissolved into a cloud of pure aether. The blue energy flowed into Adrian, sinking into his flesh and settling alongside his own reserve.

Trailseeker seen to, he crested the hill and strode toward Crastley’s cottage. He might be obligated to report a daemon like Shadowlash to the Watcher Division, but he’d search the place first so that no one—especially not Seymour—could claim he’d shirked his duty.

Crastley’s cabin appeared in much better repair than the bridge. The wooden slabs forming its façade were worn yet sturdy, with a single door facing the river. Something about the building seemed off, however, and it took him a moment to identify what. No windows. He’d have thought the view of rolling hills and blooming meadows the primary draw of living out here.

His frown deepened when he discovered the front door ajar. Watcher Seymour had said Watchers had already been out here to take care of Crastley’s corpse. They must not have bothered locking up again when they’d finished. Typical.

The door opened onto a single cramped room. Bright light streamed in from outside, highlighting a small stove and table near the front and a bed in the back. Overflowing bookshelves crowded the rest of the space.

Idly browsing the titles, Adrian spotted a plethora of history books on everything from the Daemon Wars and Serenity Corp’s fortuitous discovery of bondstones to the League’s initial formation out of the shattered remnants of civilization across the Tranquil Peninsula and the monumental effort to construct the Bulwark along the League’s exposed eastern border.

Mixed in with those tomes were treatises on daemons. He stopped to examine one that lay open on the table. Crastley had scribbled so heavily over the pages, it was difficult to make out the original text. Notes filled the margins, and many sections had been circled or crossed out.

He flipped to a random page.

The inherent unpredictability of daemonic mutations consistently frustrates the Keeper Division during breeding efforts. Where one daemon sprouts wings, another born under identical conditions might possess three heads—or no heads at all! Many blame the chaotic nature of daemons and the savageness of their wild aether, cultivating multiple daemons with the expectation of culling those with undesirable traits or techniques.

Crastley had drawn a large X through the entire passage and written a single word in the margin beside it: Wrong. Similar comments were sprinkled throughout the rest of the book.

Adrian paused on another section, this one circled several times.

Since most daemons possess unaspected aether, they respond similarly to external aether regardless of its elemental affinity. However, the occasional daemon may demonstrate a heightened reaction. Seeker Bradigan posited this the result of aetheric resonance—the closer the alignment between the aether and the daemon’s aetheric composition, the more favorable the response. For example, a daemon closely attuned to fire might react negatively when exposed to aqueous aether since it resonates at a diametrically opposed frequency.

Little of it made sense to Adrian. He knew the basics taught to all fledgling daemon masters, but he was far from a Seeker. He started to read another lengthy passage when something tickled the edge of his awareness—a strong source of aether beyond the cabin, near the absolute limit of his aethersense’s range. As soon as he tried to focus on the aura, however, it vanished.

A shiver of unease raced down his spine. It could’ve been a fluke. Auras constantly fluctuated based on the hidden rhythms of the world. He’d been fooled before by a rock or tree with unusually dense aether that briefly pinged as worthy of interest. Still, his mind turned at once to Shadowlash. The daemon had fled without warning—it might just as easily return.

Resummoning a mostly recovered Trailseeker brought him a small measure of comfort. The daemon obediently lifted its snout, flaring aether to enhance its senses with Bolster Body.

Nothing.

He commanded Trailseeker to remain vigilant while he checked behind the bookshelves and under the chairs, scanning for hidden daemons or anything else out of the ordinary. It didn’t take long to complete a circuit of the small space. By the end, all he’d learned was that Crastley was a reclusive man who enjoyed defacing scholarly works.

As he was turning toward the door to depart, something on the floor caught his eye. Frowning, he kneeled before a bookshelf. Scratches marred the paneling there, the wood considerably more worn than the planks around it. Unsure what instructions to give Trailseeker—search for anything interesting seemed far too vague—he closed his eyes and reached out via their bond.

The world around him faded as his consciousness melded with his daemon’s. A few seconds later, he blinked. His vision had taken on a faint blue tinge, his senses sharpened as he studied the ground through Trailseeker’s eyes. With his aether-enhanced sight, it only took a moment to spot a small patch of discolored wood cleverly concealed in the bookshelf’s base.

He released his meld with Trailseeker and flowed back into his own body. After a brief hesitation, he bent and touched the patch. It pressed inward with a click. A section of floor slid aside, revealing a wooden staircase descending into darkness.

Adrian’s pulse quickened as he studied the opening. What do we have here? Stretching out his aethersense, he scanned the blackness below and came up blank. Hopefully, that meant nothing waited down there to murder him.

He snagged a candle and pack of matches from a nearby shelf, probably left there for exactly this purpose. When he turned back to the hidden staircase with a lit candle, his gaze caught on the cabin’s open door.

Better safe than sorry.

Latching the door shut, he took a steadying breath before descending the stairs with Trailseeker in the lead. A grinding sound echoed behind him, and he whirled to find the trapdoor resealing itself via some hidden mechanism. Before panic could properly take hold, he spied another switch on this side to unlock it. Guess we continue then.

The staircase gradually opened into a stone chamber far larger than the cabin above. Most of it remained shrouded in darkness, his flickering candle revealing only a few paces around him.

A small knob protruded from the wall at the base of the stairs. Curiosity overruling caution, he twisted it. With a faint hiss of gas, lanterns burst to life across the cavern, illuminating what looked like a laboratory. Overturned tables, broken instruments, and scattered papers littered the ground, either carelessly discarded or intentionally smashed to pieces.

Adrian gaped at the wreckage. Had the Watcher Division done this? They were certainly capable of such wanton destruction if it suited them. Yet, what possible motive could they have? Even Watcher Seymour wouldn’t be so careless during a routine assignment.

More likely, the Watchers hadn’t discovered this place at all. But if they weren’t responsible…then who or what was?

He stooped and retrieved a torn scrap of paper. Indecipherable glyphs surrounded a partially sketched daemon. Like the notes and books upstairs, it meant nothing to him. His aether, however, thrummed as if in primal recognition of the symbols.

“What were you up to down here?” he muttered.

Trailseeker suddenly tensed, its snout jerking toward the stone ceiling. Frowning, Adrian dropped the paper and closed his eyes, melding again with his daemon’s mind. It didn’t take him long to comprehend what Trailseeker sensed, fresh fear jolting him.

Shadowlash had returned. Spirits knew why the daemon had spared them only to reappear now. Somehow, however, he doubted it would be so merciful a second time.

Releasing his meld, he glanced at Trailseeker. He could try the same diversionary maneuver as before. If his daemon invested its entire reserve into a Bolster Body, perhaps it could hold Shadowlash’s attention long enough for him to slip past. But then what? He’d never be able to outrun it.

He raked his eyes over the laboratory. Plenty of enigmatic devices lay scattered across the floor, but none struck him as a viable weapon. Not that he’d know what to do with one anyway. Few daemon masters outside the Watcher Division bothered with personal combat training when they had bonded daemons to fight in their stead.

The bondstones rattling around in his pack were equally useless. He’d never be able to activate one in a daemon as powerful as Shadowlash without subduing it first…which brought him full circle to the impossibility of winning such a fight.

Wood creaked ominously from the top of the stairs, and the trapdoor rattled. Spirits below, the feral daemon had found them!