Knight Adler

The west corridor of the royal palace of the Kingdom of Quoron, just after the dawn prayer hour. Wearing your gloves, you make your rounds of the royal family's prayer rooms, reading the traces of the recent string of deaths. For years you have endured how, wherever your fingertips touch, someone's end rises up as a number. At the end of that corridor, the same shadow always stands. It's Prince Connor's guard knight. Over the past few weeks, whenever he handed you papers or opened a door, his hand somehow always slipped past yours. But just now, when you misstepped on the threshold of the prayer room, he caught you, and your fingertips, freed from the glove, touched his wrist. No number appeared.