Between Kaz Brekker and Inej Ghafa and Nina Zenik and Matthias Helvar and Jesper Fahey and Wylan Van Eck as romantic.
Ketterdam was a place carved out of the darkness, and no one knew its shadows better than Kaz Brekker. He thrived in the blackest corners of the Barrel, where secrets and sins were currency, and power was something palpable, something you could taste in the fog-laden air. It was on one such murky night, when the revelries of the Crow Club spilled out into the streets in a cacophony of irreverence, that Kaz found himself standing on the precipice of the unknown.
Whispers had reached his ears of something ancient stirring beneath the city, a power old as the very cobblestones he trod upon. Kaz had dismissed it as nothing but superstition—until those whispers had begun to ring with truth. Now he stood before a crumbling doorway, tucked away in an alley that the city had forgotten, where lie the undisturbed dust of centuries. The chill that gripped the air wasn't from the sea. No, this was something else. Something from within.
Inej Ghafa, the Wraith, watched Kaz from the shadows, a silent guardian of his back. Her Suli intuition told her that whatever lay beyond that door was more than just foul air and rotting wood—it spoke of a danger that she could not see or hear, but could sense as clearly as the blade in her hand. It was unlike anything she had encountered since joining the Dregs, yet she followed Kaz without question. Her trust in him was as sure as her faith in her saints.
The sound of their footsteps echoed off the cold stone, mingling with the distant laughter of drunkards and the moans of the wind. Kaz’s crow-headed cane tapped rhythmically, a sinister metronome leading them deeper into the bowels of the earth. When they finally reached the heart of the hidden chamber, Kaz raised his lantern, revealing a sight that seized the breath in Inej’s throat. Etched onto the floor was a pattern of symbols and lines, covered in a film of dust and grime, yet unmistakably sinister in its design.
Nina Zenik and Matthias Helvar arrived moments later, the witch and the drüskelle brought together by fate and something stronger than the chains that once bound them. They exchanged wary looks as they surveyed the darkened vault. Nina’s fingertips traced the air, her Grisha senses reaching out, feeling the hum of something that shouldn't be. Matthias remained tense, his soldier's discipline making him a silent sentinel, his haunted eyes reflecting a battle not yet fought.
Jesper Fahey sauntered in, his twin pistols glinting with eagerness, followed closely by Wylan Van Eck, whose curious gaze was drawn to the mechanisms in the walls, evidence of a past long abandoned and innovations lost to time. "What is this place?" Wylan’s voice broke the heavy silence, asking what all of them were thinking.
Kaz looked at each of them, his Crow Club cronies in whom he found a semblance of family, though he would never admit it. "A forgotten chapter of Ketterdam," he said, his voice barely above a whisper, "and possibly the source of its making...or its undoing."
As they pondered the meaning of his words, the symbols on the ground began to glow, faintly at first, then with a brilliance that forced them to avert their eyes. A gust of wind, cold and ancient, swept through the chamber, and Kaz and Inej's hands found each other's in the blinding light—a grip that was both a lifeline and a tacit confession of their deepest fears and unspoken desires.
The light subsided as quickly as it had appeared, leaving a pulsing glow shrouding the symbols. But it was what stood in the center of the room that held Kaz’s crew transfixed—a specter clad in tattered robes, its eyes aglow with otherworldly flame.
"Kaz, what have we awakened?" Inej's voice barely concealed the tremor that ran through it.
But Kaz Brekker, the mastermind who thought he had seen all the tricks in the book, had no answer. This time, they had stumbled upon a game for which the rules were unwritten, and the stakes, as yet, unknown.