Chapter 282: The Four Assassin Maids

The three assassin maids stared at him after asking for his name. Luke froze. For a fleeting second, he considered saying his name was Christine. But the thought died as quickly as it came. If even one of them knew the real Christine, he’d be finished. Worse, what if one of these women was Christine herself?

His chest tightened, the air ripped from his lungs like he had been struck by an invisible fist.

“There’s no need,” Lucy replied, voice wrapped in a calm she didn’t feel. “My duty is only to serve.”

The maids exchanged brief glances, then seemed to understand.

“Thank you for your work,” one of them said.

Another stepped closer, resting a hand lightly on Lucy’s shoulder. The touch was soft, but carried a weight that unsettled more than a blade at her throat.

“May the empire of Master Lakarion be eternal,” she whispered with reverence, her eyes fixed directly on Lucy’s.

Luke’s muscles locked. Sweat prickled along his nape.

“May the empire of Master Lakarion be eternal!” he repeated, trying to mimic the same conviction he had heard.

The women nodded, satisfied, and walked away. Their steps echoed down the corridor until they were swallowed by silence. Only then did Luke let himself breathe. But relief brought no comfort. The weight they left behind was worse than the tension in the main hall. He crouched again, scrubbing the floor with exaggerated focus. Every motion said: this is all I am, just a maid doing her work. If one of them turned back, they would see only that. He couldn’t risk a crack in the mask.

Minutes crawled by like hours. At last, convinced the danger had passed, Luke made a small gesture. The mop, bucket, and rag vanished into his storage. In the same instant, his body dissolved into mist. Darkness folded around him like an old cloak. The fog slid across the floor, then drifted up the wall toward the hidden opening behind the painting. His vaporous form seeped into the drilled gap, tendrils of shadow slipping through stone until he emerged on the other side.

The passage was choked with rubble. Broken stone, splintered beams, and scattered debris filled the corridor as though a collapse had buried it long ago. It wasn’t natural. Someone had piled this mess here to block intruders. Luke pressed forward, his mist weaving through cracks and narrow gaps, pushing patiently through the wreckage until…

There. A faint glow, barely visible, flickered in the dark. Drawn to it, he slid past the final heap of stone and emerged into a concealed chamber. The sight stole his breath. His heart thundered.

“I made it,” he whispered, reshaping into flesh and bone.

The room was eerily familiar, almost a mirror of the second fortress’s chamber. Torches mounted on the walls painted everything in trembling light. At the center rested the mechanism itself, a wheel of glowing runes that seemed to pulse with its own heartbeat. Luke stepped closer, cautious, every sense sharp. The smell of damp stone mixed with a tang of charred wood, clinging to the air.

The torches threw restless shadows across the walls, making the carved designs writhe and shift like living things. For an instant, Luke swore they were watching him. In the second fortress, the murals had shown twisted, deformed beings bowing to a figure with six eyes. That alone had been disturbing enough. But here, the scene was different. The six eyed figure appeared again, this time seated on a towering throne, a sovereign gazing down in silence. The lines were sharper, the presence more regal, almost divine. Beneath the throne, streams of runes spread outward like roots, burrowing into the stone itself.

Luke narrowed his eyes. Among the countless runes, one glowed brighter than the rest. His system flared, translating only a single word.

“The Architect…” he whispered.

But before he could draw closer, the glow began to fade, smothered like a candle in the wind. When he glanced back at the throne, the rune’s translation was gone, erased as if it had never existed. He drew a slow breath. There was no time to chase every mystery. He had a mission, and getting lost in riddles would only kill him. Luke stepped up to the mechanism, the great wheel etched with runes. Raising his hand, he recited the enigma with a steady voice:

“When the night hides its first glimmer, the cycle begins in the absence of light. Return to the first sanctuary, where darkness is the key to uncover the secret.”

The words echoed, heavy and strange, and for a heartbeat he thought the runes pulsed in reply. His gaze slid to the side wall, to the sequence of moons carved in perfect order. Exactly as Evangeline had described. Beneath each moon, the phases repeated, a code hidden in lunar cycles. He stopped before the crescent moon mural, remembering the first mechanism. That had been the starting point, the key to unraveling the puzzle. The logic was merciless in its simplicity. Each riddle tied to the moon’s rhythm.

This time, the answer was obvious. “When the night hides its first glimmer… the cycle begins in the absence of light.”

Only one moon was born in perfect shadow. No glow, no reflection, no witness in the sky.

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“New Moon,” he muttered, certain.

He leaned in, tracing the sequence with his eyes. The order revealed itself: New Moon, Full Moon, Waxing Crescent, Waning Moon.

A memory of his mother slipped in uninvited. She had loved the stars, the moon, the endless night sky. Even her last name had something to do with it. Luke shook it off. He couldn’t afford nostalgia now. Pulling paper from his storage, he scribbled furiously, capturing every symbol and line.

“I’m not stupid enough to rely on memory here,” he growled under his breath.

Still, before moving on, his gaze strayed back to the throne. The six eyed figure sat there, silent and absolute.

“I’m never coming back here. Not dressed as a woman, not as a man. Never again,” he muttered, trying to smother his own tension with humor.

Artemis chuckled inside his mind, a soft, mocking laugh.

“You’re breaking the game itself…”

“The world belongs to the clever,” Luke shot back, never lifting his eyes from the paper.

Without wasting another second, his body unraveled into mist. Darkness claimed him, his form scattering into shadowed particles that slid between stone and wood. The return path felt narrower now, more suffocating, as though the fortress itself was trying to hold him captive. Every crack in the wall, every narrow gap the mist seeped through left him with the unsettling sense that he was abandoning secrets better left buried. At last, he reached the wall. The small hole was exactly where he remembered. Luke let only a sliver of his mist drift through first, curling past the edge of the framed painting to scout the other side.

Silence. No footsteps, no voices.