The silence in the square was heavy, a physical weight that pressed down on the onlookers. Leornars turned his back on the trembling noble, his cape snapping in the wind like a closing curtain.
He knelt before the demi-human girl. The jagged scars on her back were weeping, the crimson staining her tattered tunic. With a flick of his wrist, the iron shackles binding her wrists didn't just break—they dissolved, the metal weeping away into grey mist.
"You are safe," Leornars said. His voice, previously a blade of ice, had shifted into something grounding and resonant. "Can you stand?"
The girl—a fox-kin with matted auburn fur and eyes wide with lingering terror—shook her head feebly. She didn't look at his face; she looked at his boots, as if waiting for the next blow to fall.
"He... he will come for me," she whispered, her voice a ragged thread. "The Baron... he doesn't just own the land. He owns the 'contracts'."
Leornars reached out, his hand hovering inches from her shoulder, offering warmth without forcing contact. "No one owns a soul in my presence. Not the Baron, and not the King of Asheviliah."
The girl finally looked up, her lip trembling. "You don't understand, Great One. It isn't just a whip in a square. There is a cellar... beneath the Old Weaver's District. They call it the 'Gilded Cage.'"
Leornars paused. "The Gilded Cage?"
"It's a ring," she choked out, a sob finally breaking through. "Slave trading. They take us—the demi-humans, the orphans, the ones Asheviliah says don't 'fit' the census. They brand us with magic that binds our breath to our masters. There are dozens of us down there right now. They're being prepared for the auction at the Winter Gala. The Baron's son... he wasn't just punishing me. He was 'breaking' me for the highest bidder."
The air in the square suddenly dropped ten degrees.
Leornars stood up slowly. The calm, calculated King of Avangard was still there, but something else was rising beneath the surface—a primordial darkness, the sheer gravity of a man who had built a nation out of the ashes of the forgotten.
His expression didn't just harden; it darkened into something void-like. His eyes, usually sharp and observant, now seemed to pull the very light out of the afternoon sun.
"Stacian," Leornars said. He didn't turn around. He didn't have to.
"Sire?" Stacian appeared at his side, her face pale. She knew that look. It was the look Leornars wore when he stopped being a diplomat and started being a disaster.
"Find the Old Weaver's District," Leornars commanded. Every word felt like a hammer blow against an anvil. "Seal every exit. If a single 'contract holder' tries to flee, weave them into the cobblestones. Do not kill them yet. I want them to watch."
"And the Baron's son, Sire?" she asked, glancing at the whimpering boy on the ground.
Leornars looked at the noble one last time. It wasn't a look of hatred—it was the look a gardener gives a parasitic mold.
"Leave him," Leornars said darkly. "He is going to lead me to his father. I find that when a 'system' is this rotten, it is best to burn the manor with the lords still inside."
He turned back to the girl, his shadow stretching across the entire square, looming over the buildings of Asheviliah like a coming storm.
"You said they brand you with magic?" he asked quietly.
"Yes," she whispered.
"Good," Leornars replied, a faint, terrifying shimmer of invisible threads beginning to pulse around his fingers. "Then I have a frequency to track. I am going to tear this 'Gilded Cage' out of the earth."