The first lie the Guild tells you: Power can be earned.
It can't.
Kaelen adjusted the satchel against his hip, feeling the weight shift. Inside was a Spark, low tier by guild standards, nothing special. He unhooked the flap for a moment, letting his gaze fall on it.
A crystal vial, the size of his thumb, throbbed faintly in its velvet pouch. Its green light pulsed like the heartbeat of something small and caged, threads of brightness swirling within, fracturing and reforming in slow, hypnotic loops. If he stared too long, it almost looked like it was breathing.
His pass let him carry it for the job, but every breath reminded him the power wasn't his. Guild couriers didn't own Sparks. They borrowed them, issued one per month, for emergencies only, and each one was tied to your badge. Use it without cause, and you'd better have a story the Guild liked.
If he broke it, lost it, or, Saints forbid, used it without Guild sanction, the investigation or fines alone could drown him.
Ever since he'd awakened his Soulfire, it had never felt like his own. The Guild measured it, rationed it, and leased it back through scraps of work, deliveries and errands that burned ore but built nothing. His flame was just another tool on their ledger, never the power it should have been.
He fastened the satchel again and kept walking, boots clicking on the slick stone. The rain had been falling since dusk, turning the gutters into slow, winding streams. Tonight's job was simple: carry a locked case to a Guild drop point six blocks west. No complications. No deviations. No interest in anyone else's business.
Being a courier wasn't glamorous. The Guild liked to call them the "arteries" of the city, steady, vital, unnoticed until something went wrong. In truth, it meant running anything from sealed crates to black-sealed letters to places the Guild couldn't trust ordinary messengers to reach, so they used awakened. Couriers carried what others couldn't or wouldn't, and they were trusted only so far as the record showed they'd never peeked, never tampered, never asked questions.
It wasn't hero's work. It was knowing the fastest streets, the quietest alleys, and when to take the long way around. It was delivering packages without ever wondering what was inside, because the moment you did, you became a liability.
He shifted his route to avoid Cutter's Row, where the gangs got twitchy after dark. Passed the skeleton of an old warehouse, burned by a fire last winter. He'd already mapped three detours in his head, each one shaving seconds off if things went bad.
The street beyond lay hushed and hollow, the kind of quiet that made you notice your own footsteps.
In that stillness, he caught the faint metallic scent that always seemed to follow a Spark. Even sealed in velvet, its pulse was there, not just light, but a pressure, like it wanted to be used.
The second lie: Once you borrow it, you're one of them.
You're not.
Kaelen learned that on his first day.
Rain slid from the eaves of East Docks Hall in slow, steady lines, pooling in the cracks of the cobblestones. He stood in his new-issue coat, too broad in the shoulders, too short in the sleeves, trying not to look like a recruit waiting for orders.
That was when the old Enforcer came in. Two Guild rankings above a courier. Flanked by a pair of Enforcers in their black-collared coats. Lorrin. Thirty years in service, silver pin on his collar, Guild-issued cane tapping a steady rhythm on the wet stones. His face had the weathered calm of someone who'd run the streets long enough to stop fearing them.
Kaelen might never have remembered his name if not for what happened next. The badge hit the cobblestones first.
The clerk behind the counter didn't raise her voice. She didn't have to. One neat stamp on a folded slip of parchment, a clipped gesture toward Lorrin, a flash of light from the Guild brand on her forearm, and it began.
The Sparks bled out of him. Not in any way you could see at first, but in the way the air seemed to thicken, the way his shoulders sagged. Like steam from a cracked kettle, invisible until you noticed the warmth was gone. The faint shimmer along Lorrin's forearms winked out. His hands began to tremble. His spine curved, joints stiffening as if the years he'd outrun had caught him in a single breath.
The cane that had been an ornament became a crutch. His boots scuffed against the stones as he bent to pick up the badge. Thirty years of sanctioned service, stripped away as neatly as a stamp on a form.
That was the thing about borrowed power, it was never yours to keep. You carried it in your bones, breathed it in every heartbeat, but the moment they decided the debt was too high or your usefulness too low, they pulled it out of you like yanking thread from a seam. And once it's gone, you never touch it again.
The scream cut through his thoughts.
Sharp. Human. Close.
Kaelen stopped mid-step. He'd heard plenty of trouble in these streets before, the brawl of drunks, the crack of a fist on bone, even the wet sound of knife work, but this was different. It wasn't just pain. It was pleading.
Before he even decided to, he was moving toward it.
A left turn. The streets pinched narrower here, brickwork leaning in overhead like the city wanted to hide what happened inside it. Rainwater slicked the stones, pooling dark in the gaps. The air smelled of wet rope and rot, the kind of scent that clung to the docks long after the tide rolled out.
Another scream, higher now, ragged at the edges.
The alley opened into a service yard hemmed in by sagging walls. A woman knelt against the far side; wrists bound by a chain of shimmering smoke that writhed and tightened like it was alive.
The man holding the other end wore the black-and-silver coat with a silver badge of a Guild Enforcer.Enforcers were SoulfireEminent, far above an Awakened courier like Kaelen. Sparks pulsed faintly under the skin of his forearms, the marks of high-tier enhancement. His stance was loose but balanced, and the chain in his grip tightened with a slow, deliberate pull. No wasted motion. No change in expression.
Kaelen's breath caught. He knew that face, Brann Veyr. Not because they'd ever spoken, but because you didn't forget the kind of man you stayed out of the way of. The kind whose very presence made the air feel heavier, like the street itself leaned away from him. A man who'd walked past a bleeding courier outside East Docks two winters ago without so much as a glance. Cold, professional, unshakable.
"Tell me where it is," he said. His voice was low, calm, the kind of calm that was worse than shouting.
"I told you," Her words cracked into a choked gasp as he yanked the chain. "I don't have it!"
Veyr didn't raise his voice. "You and your friend took something that doesn't belong to you. Now, he's already paid his part." He twisted the chain another notch, the movement precise, clinical. The woman made a sound halfway between a gasp and a sob. "I'm giving you the chance to pay yours."
The woman's gaze flicked to the ground, then to him again. "I don't know where it is."
He leaned in, loosening the chain just enough for her to drag a shallow breath. "Guild sanction covers my time here. How long that lasts depends on you." His tone was flat, not a threat so much as a schedule being explained. "Your friend lasted less."
Her eyes flicked up, desperate, searching his face for a crack of mercy.
There wasn't one.
His gaze didn't waver. "Keelbrand doesn't forgive theft. He doesn't forget it. You took from him, and this.." he tapped the chain, the iron links rasping against her throat, "..is what you bought. You'll pay until he decides the debt's done."
Her jaw clenched. "Do your worst."
Kaelen froze in the shadow of the archway.
The chain snapped tight. She made a sound caught somewhere between a scream and a sob.
Kaelen's stomach tightened. He didn't know her. Didn't know the "friend." Didn't know what they'd taken. But the tone, the quiet satisfaction, was something he'd heard before. Different alleys, different men, a dozen jobs where Guild authority wasn't justice, but a weapon.
The Spark at his side gave a faint thrum, just enough for him to feel it in his palm through the satchel's leather. The clasp shifted, clicking softly in the quiet.
The Enforcer's gaze flicked up and found him. His eyes narrowed slightly, a slow focus settling on Kaelen before he spoke.
"Identification," he said, clipped and even
Kaelen's reply came without thought, the words falling into place like they'd been drilled there. "Courier. Level zero. On delivery to West Drop."
The Enforcer's eyes dropped to the satchel. "Then keep walking."
Rain pattered in the pause that followed, loud enough to make Kaelen hear his own pulse.
The woman's eyes found his. Wide. Desperate. Wordless.
Kaelen's mouth went dry. Thoughts tripped over each other, the rules, the fines, the inevitability of losing everything. The understanding that crossing an Enforcer was the kind of mistake you didn't survive.
He stepped back. Turned. Took three slow paces away.
And stopped.
He took in the space in a heartbeat, the gate, the cover, the gap Veyr would have to close. Most couriers never learned to see it that way. He had.
The third lie: The Guild protects its own.
They don't.
They protect their Sparks. Their image. Their grip on the city. Kaelen had seen Guild uniforms walk past bleeding couriers and in the street because helping them wasn't in the job order. Seen contracts rewritten so the client's loss became the courier's fault. Seen funerals where the Guild sent only a clerk to reclaim the badge.
He'd seen Enforcers shove dockside families out of their own homes to make room for ward-posts or drag men into cells for debts owed to someone else. Watched them break stalls apart with the same care they'd give to sweeping ash, while children clung to the wreckage. To the Guild, it was all the same, bodies, coin, Sparks, pieces to be tallied and cleared from the ledger.
And here, in the back alleys of East Docks, he was watching it again, an Enforcer using Guild authority like a cudgel. Against someone who couldn't fight back.
Kaelen's hand drifted to the satchel. The pale-green Spark pulsed faintly against his palm, waiting for his will.
Using it without clearance was enough to get him investigated, maybe end his career.
Using it against a Guild Enforcer, was enough to end him outright. No trial. No warning. Just the quiet, clean erasure of a name from the books. Dead, and forgotten.
His fingers stayed on the flap. He should turn. Walk away. Pretend he never saw this. That was the Guild way. That was the smart way.
But something inside him refused to move. A stubborn, coiled thing that had been growing in him since the day he first awakened his Soulfire, since he'd first seen Lorin collapse in the rain. Since every time he'd been told to keep walking. Since every night he'd passed someone in the gutter and pretended not to see.
It pressed against his ribs now, sharp enough to hurt. The fear was still there, cold, rational, begging him to stop, but it was losing.
The Enforcer twisted the chain again. The woman's gasp cracked the air.
Kaelen's jaw clenched. He tasted copper.
Tonight, he chose different. Not a runner's silence. Not a courier's bargain. For once, he would use what he'd been given for more than delivery. For once, he would burn his Soulfire, to protect, to drag someone else out of the dark instead of leaving them in it.
"Let her go."
The Enforcer turned, smile thin. "You're making a mistake, boy."
Kaelen broke the seal.