Warden Cassel Dorn moved like a man who'd never had to repeat an order. Every step was measured, coat falling just right over broad shoulders, platinum badge set against the black-and-silver trim so there was no mistaking it for anything lower. Kaelen had only seen a Warden twice before, both times at a distance. Highest operational authority in Brassrest's Central Branch. Not the Guild leader, that seat belonged to the Brassrest's Administrator, an office job, political, but still the top of the food chain in the field. You didn't see many Wardensoutside Central.
Behind him stepped a man Kaelen recognised instantly, crooked grin, gold badge catching the light. Jerrod. Guild Handler. Rank Three Ascendant. They'd grown up in the same neighbourhood, though "grew up together" wasn't quite right. Jerrod was older. He had been the kind of guy who could talk his way out of anything… or into the kind of trouble that needed talking out of. And now he'd become a Handler at age twenty-six one of the youngest in Brassrest City.
Same crooked grin, same loose stride after all these years, that made it seem like the room bent out of his way rather than the other way around. Kaelen's gaze slid from silver to platinum, filling in the ladder between. Couriers like him sat at zero, no combat clearance, no say in their own assignments, Sparks only issued for Guild-approved runs. Leash established early, before a Soulfire user figured out how to slip it.
Kaelen had learned most of it in the orphanage before awakening. National standard education, they said, to prepare youths if they sparked, and to make them respect badges.
On paper, the ladder was simple:
Awakened was the start. That's Soulfire, raw. Join the Guild, and you got a plain steel badge, Courier. Push your Soulfire to Resonant, and suddenly you were a guild "initiate," flashing bronze. The Guild slaps badges on top, so folk know where you stand in their pecking order.
The rest were Enforcer (Eminent), silver; Handler (Ascendant), gold; Warden (Dominus), platinum; Sentinel (Paragon), black enamel with platinum trim.
In practice, each jump was a gulf. Higher ranks didn't just hold more Sparks, their Soulfire could take stronger ones, use them longer, bend them in ways you couldn't imagine from the bottom rung. Even the gap between Resonant and Ascendant was enough to make most fights one-sided.
Kaelen knew it firsthand. If his run-in with Veyr had been a fight instead of a rescue, he wouldn't have lasted ten seconds. SkyStep had bought him moments, only because Veyr didn't have the reach to pin him before the charge burned out. Moments that, by some twist of luck, had been enough., And the event he's still racking his head to try and explain…
He'd heard enough from other Awakened to know that climbing meant trials. It was the world's way of offering Soulfire a chance to climb higher, if you dared. Step in, and it might expand, burn purer, grow stronger. Refuse, and it stayed where it was. The Guild only held the keys, pretending the choice was theirs to grant.
New Awakened without backing, never really knew what trials were, but whispers filled the gaps. Kaelen knew advancement was tied to Trial Seeds, he'd heard the term before, but not much else, only that you get dragged into places of nightmare: a week in a Spark-dead zone; hunting a mutated beast alone; crossing a collapsed area where the air itself fought you. He wasn't sure which tales were true, but the part about people not coming back… that part, he believed.
Another truth he believed: without a powerful Spark burning in your Soulfire, you didn't come back.
Sparks were found raw in the world, but Guild-issued ones always came in sealed crystals, runes etched deep into the surface, stabilising the tether as it bound to your Soulfire. Those runes were the Guild's leash and its safety net. Black-market Sparks didn't have that. Not in his corner of the world anyway. Unstable seals and tethers. No monitoring. Some lasted months. Some burned out in days… and some burned out the user instead. Which made the thing inside him, altered, unregistered, a very bad secret to be sitting on.
Kaelen collected himself when he heard the Warden approach and take a seat.
The Warden's eyes settled on him. "Sit."
Jerrod leaned against the wall, casual as ever, but Kaelen could feel the shift in the room.
This wasn't a routine summons.
Kaelen sat, the chair legs scraping faintly over the worn boards. The Warden didn't waste time.
"You were assigned a run last night. East Docks to the Foundry Quarter in the West Docks. Route takes you three blocks from an incident site."
Kaelen kept his face still. "That's right."
Jerrod tilted his head. "Funny coincidence, huh?" His grin was there, but it didn't reach his eyes.
The Warden ignored him. "We've got residue, high-tier Spark. Not chainwork. Not local signatures. You see or hear anything?"
Kaelen had gone over this in his head on the walk here, testing the words until they felt natural. "Nothing direct. But I felt it. Surge in the air, like pressure before a tether snap. Not close enough to see it, but close enough to know I didn't want to be in range if it went bad. Used my Spark to put some distance between me and the pull."
Jerrod's eyebrow twitched. "That's a lot of caution for a Courier."
Kaelen shrugged. "It's what keeps me out of your paperwork."
The Warden's gaze lingered a moment longer before he spoke again. "Guild logs show you're sanctioned for Tier Two SkyStep. Full charge?"
Kaelen let the pause be just long enough to seem like he was thinking, not hesitating. "Eighty-something percent. Blink use only. Just enough to clear the block."
It was the truth, the part of it they could see. Guild scans targeted the tether. If SkyStep looked normal, the rest should stay buried. But that knot was there in his chest anyway, tight and insistent. If the overlay registered… if they decided to dig deeper…
The Warden finally leaned back. "We'll run a check."
Jerrod stepped away from the wall, glancing at Kaelen like they were back on a street corner, swapping news. "Don't worry. If you'd stuck around for the fireworks, we'd be pulling you out in a stretcher."
Kaelen managed the smallest ghost of a smile. "Guess I'll keep my bad timing."
They moved him into one of the side rooms, smaller than the main hall but built for function.
Copper plates lined the walls, each etched with spiralling runes that pulsed in a slow, steady rhythm.
A low pedestal sat in the centre, ringed with a thin silver band inlaid into the stone floor. The band hummed faintly, the kind of sound you felt in your teeth more than heard.
A rune-clerk was already waiting, sleeves rolled up, his plain bronze badge catching the lamplight. "Step onto the mark. Hands at your sides."
Kaelen obeyed, keeping his expression neutral.
The clerk turned a crystal sphere in its brass frame, so it faced him directly. Its surface was clear at first, then clouded with drifting sparks of light that swirled inward toward the core. "Channel enough to light the inner ring," the clerk said. "Don't push past that."
Kaelen let the SkyStep answer, just a thread of it, enough for the tether to flare in the crystal.
The runes brightened, feeding lines of light into the plates on the walls. A moment later, the air in the room seemed to thicken, pressure settling over his skin.
He felt it then, that second tether, the overlay. It shifted beneath the scan like something sliding into shadow. No warning, no strain, just… gone from sight. His pulse ticked faster anyway. If the thing slipped the wrong way, if it flared instead of hiding,
The clerk frowned at the readout. Kaelen kept his gaze on the far wall.
"Tier Two mobility Spark," the clerk called. "SkyStep. Charge at eighty-six percent. Tether stable."
The Warden's voice came from behind him. "Anomalies?"
"None recorded."
Kaelen released the breath he'd been holding.
The clerk rotated the sphere back into its neutral position and gestured for him to step off the mark. "You're clear."
Jerrod was leaning in the doorway when Kaelen came out, arms folded, grin tilted just enough to be unreadable. "Guess you weren't in the fireworks after all."
Kaelen didn't answer.
The Warden jotted something into his ledger and shut it with a snap. "Stay reachable. We may have follow-up questions."
The Warden didn't leave immediately. He stood by the desk, thumbing through a small black ledger, the edge of his platinum badge catching the lamplight.
"You've known him a while."
Jerrod tilted his head, lips twitching into the barest grin. "Since before he could see over the fence. His parents were still alive then; I remember his mother yelling for him from the street. That stopped… about ten years ago, I think. After that orphanage was close to my parents' place in South Ward. Used to hang around, get underfoot."
The Warden glanced up. "Family?"
"Only one I ever heard about was a younger sister. Orphanage split them up after his parents died. She got adopted out of the city, maybe further. Haven't heard him talk about her since." Jerrod shrugged. "He doesn't have much left that ties him anywhere."
The rune-clerk moved closer, checking his slate. "Kaelen Veris. Age eighteen. Soulfire awakened at sixteen, flagged by Guild-administered test. Almost two years as a Courier, East Docks Branch. Clearance for Tier Two mobility Spark granted two months ago. No combat clearance."
"Proficiency?"
"Ninety-one percentile in charge efficiency. Casting precision above Courier average. Duration control, above average. Reputation says he's reliable, doesn't take unnecessary risks."
The Warden looked from the notes to Jerrod. "So why hasn't he advanced to Resonant?"
Jerrod smirked faintly. "You know how it is. Branch only pushes trial slots to people they want in a fight. Kaelen's not one of their golden boys, and he's not asking for it, either. He'd rather keep breathing than gamble on a bad trial draw."
The clerk nodded without looking up. "Records match that. No volunteer requests filed. No offers extended."
The Warden shut the ledger with a soft snap. "Then we watch and wait. Until we know more."
Kaelen let the door shut behind him, the Guild's noise fading into the muffled hum of the street. He kept his pace steady until he was sure no one was watching, then slipped into a narrow alley between shuttered warehouses.
His heartbeat was still too fast. Passing their questions without a hitch should have eased it, but the Warden's eyes lingered in his head like a weight.
He reached inward, the way he'd done a hundred times before, and the familiar lattice of runes flared against the dark of his mind. SkyStep's pattern was there, tether steady. Eighty-six percent charge.
But beneath it, like the faint ghost of another script, sat the new set, compact, alien, stripped of the unreadable symbols it had shown him before. Simplified. Or hiding.
Kaelen shut his eyes, trying to pin down what it meant.
Nothing answered.
With a low breath, he pushed the thought aside and stepped back into the street. One problem at a time.