The Northeast Ward was its own patchwork. Scholar's Row stretched the widest, lecture halls beside open fields ringed with ward-lines, where experiments rattled in containment frames and the air shimmered with stray Sparks. Beyond it lay the Sluiceyards, all iron gates and aqueduct channels, the city's water bent to Guild design. And closest to the Iron Bridge stood Ironcross, a tangle of workshops and smoke feeding back toward East Docks. Kaelen had run this way before, but the ward always felt like three worlds welded together, book ink, crackling wards, and ash.
The job slate sat light in Kaelen's pocket, but two crowns was heavier than most courier runs ever paid. Lira had called it "nothing dangerous." Which, in Guild terms, meant "we're not sending anyone ranked higher than you." He wasn't complaining. A half-day run to the Northeast Ward archives was still better than being pulled back into a Warden's office.
He cut through the swell of late-morning traffic, boots scuffing against slick cobbles. The air smelled of fresh bread and wet stone, undercut by the faint sting of forge smoke. A paper vendor barked headlines over the rattle of a printing press; a glassblower's apprentice darted past carrying a tray of cooling bottles; a pair of pickpockets melted into the crowd when they spotted a constable's badge.
Crowns for a courier job usually meant distance, danger, or both. This one was close enough to walk if you had the legs for it and supposedly tame, just "noisy," as Lira had put it. The kind of word people used when they didn't want to call something trouble.
He passed a spark-carriage rolling by on iron-bound wheels, its driver perched high, hands steady on the control rods that didn't need horses. The Guild-charged mobility core set in its undercarriage, gave off a faint hum as it fed power into the axle through runed channels. Official transport. Expensive. Not the kind you saw in Ironcross often.
As he wove between stalls, his eyes kept snagging on small details, a pair of Enforcers standing at a corner, one scanning the crowd while the other scribbled in a ledger; a side street cordoned with yellow ribbon. Maybe unrelated. Probably unrelated. But he caught himself walking faster anyway. Routine was better. Routine was safe.
The streets began to pinch inward, shopfronts crowding close, their awnings stained by years of smoke and rain. Ironcross' market chatter had a sharper edge than East Docks, here, haggling was a blood sport, and every coin squeaked before changing hands. The air was heavy with tannin and wet leather, the scent spilling from open workshop doors.
Kaelen reached the Clerk building on Mill Row, narrow stone, tall windows, a brass seal over the door worn smooth by years of petitions. A queue of tradesmen and sour-faced shopkeepers spilled down the steps, clutching ledgers like shields. Kaelen cut past them toward the dispatch window.
"Guild run," he said, showing the brass token.
The clerk behind the grille, a thin woman with ink to the knuckles, checked the token's glow, then slid a wrapped tube across the sill. Wax seal, twined cord, the city's crest stamped deep. She added a slate with neat columns and held out a run-stamp the size of a matchbox.
"Mark and time."
Kaelen pressed his thumb; the stamp flared, copying his token's code and the minute mark onto the slate. The clerk scratched the same into a paper ledger for good measure.
"Riverfront archives," she said. "Use Backwater Lane and cut east at Tanner's Bend. The Iron Bridge checkpoint's snarled to the teeth; tax scribes are counting air molecules today."
"Thought it was 'nothing dangerous,'" he said.
She snorted. "Dangerous? No. Annoying? Absolutely. Parcel's chain-stamped, random search exempt with a Guild token. They'll still try. Don't let 'em."
He tucked the tube under his coat, the wax cool against his ribs, and stepped back into the flow.
Northeast ward pressed in as he went: narrower streets, damp brick, wash-lines sagging between windows. A pair of constables moved a cart by inches while a scribe measured crates with a brass stick and a holy certainty. The queue at Iron Bridge stretched half a block, curses layered under the patient shuffle of feet.
Kaelen slipped right before the crush, down a lane that smelled of river mud and boiled dye. A fishmonger shouted about fresh catch; two kids kicked a rag ball against a wall painted with a half-scrubbed Guild poster.
Ahead, a side door slammed open, and two Enforcers stepped out, silver badges catching light, talking in clipped tones. One of them was folding a map, the other scanning a list on a waxed board. The top corner bore the Black Cord insignia. Kaelen kept his head down and pace even, cutting left before they could turn his way.
A handcart jammed the alley ahead, axle cracked, boxes everywhere. He weighed the minutes, the pay. No acrobatics. Blink only.
He breathed once, and for the first time since last night he let SkyStep answer. The Tier‑Two spark came on different. Not wrong, but the moment it flared, the air felt denser, like the space itself shifted under his boots to meet him halfway. the lift was cleaner, the pull sharper, like the space to the next foothold folded a fraction in his favour. One light-footed rise onto a crate, a second touch off a lintel, and he was passed before anyone looked up.
Farther past than he meant to be.
The tether hummed, clean, controlled. Too clean. Under it, that new, cold thread, the thing stitched beneath his Spark now, traced the motion as if testing it, learning it. A thought trying to form… then it went still.
He didn't know what to make of that.
Was it augmented?
The strength was there, but it felt… deeper, like the step had reached into something he'd never touched before. As if all those months he'd only been skimming the surface, and now the Spark was showing him what it could really do, or worse, what something else could do through it.
Last night's fight had been the first time he'd ever touched Tier Two, and that was different enough. For the past two years, it had always been FleetingStep, Tier One: Ember, used in short, exact bursts. He'd learned to channel his Soulfire into the Spark and then bleed it down into his muscles only where it counted: ankles, calves, hips. Never waste charge firing through the whole body when a fraction of it could get the job done. That was how you made the charge last, precision over brute force.
Back then, in the orphanage, when he wasn't up to no good with Jerrod and the others in the neighbourhood, he'd hole up in the library. Not much else to do when you were an orphan with no one to spend time with. He'd pore over worn medical texts and scraps of old Guild manuals. Most of it was beyond him, but enough stuck. He learned how the body shifted under strain, how power flowed through joints and tendons, how Soulfire had changed those mechanics over the centuries. None of it made him stronger, but it gave him a map, and a map meant you knew where to place the weight, where to cut the current, how to make one drop of Spark burn like three.
But still, he hadn't figured out how to be more precise on his own. Someone had helped him, an old Enforcer he'd crossed paths with two years ago, not from Brassrest, but from Marrowgate to the north, passing through on a mission. The man had noticed him at the East Docks, still raw from his Soulfire awakening, on his first few issued sparks, and had offered a few words when no one else bothered.
Not training, exactly, just a handful of corrections, a trick or two for reading the Spark's pulse before moving. For a few months, whenever they happened to pass each other, the Enforcer would throw him some small pointer, telling him that if he could weld the theory he'd buried himself in with the practical tricks of real field work, it would make a world of difference.
Then, one day, he just wasn't there anymore.
Kaelen found himself staring past the alley mouth for a moment. Wonder how he's doing now.
SkyStep now… it felt like that map had been redrawn without him seeing it. And the question was whether the change was giving him more ground to stand on or moving it out from under his feet.
He huffed under his breath. Looks like I'm not as precise as I thought.
Backwater Lane opened to the river stink and open sky. The archives' dome showed ahead through the haze in an open area, pale stone ringed by narrow gardens and a fence that pretended to matter.
Inside, the reception clerk barely looked up before scanning his token. She turned the sealed case in her hands, reinforced steel corners, double wax seals stamped deep with Guild marks, then checked a slip of parchment pinned to the top.
"This one's headed next door," she said. "Guild containment yard. You'll walk it over yourself."
Containment yard? That wasn't his route. "Thought this was an archive run."
"It is," she said, scribbling his details into the ledger. "Archive requisition, the yard needs it first. Sign here."
Kaelen's eyes lingered on the case. Guild-issue, important. Probably trouble. He signed anyway.
The clerk rose from her seat and came around the desk, motioning for him to follow. They stepped out a side door into a narrow lane that opened onto a fenced compound sprawling wider than he'd expected, tall ward-lights ringing the perimeter, the tang of charged stone in the air. Rows of reinforced pens lined one side; a watch platform jutted above them. Somewhere inside, something hit metal hard enough to send a dull vibration through the ground.
"You've got a mobility Spark, right? Active?" the clerk asked over her shoulder.
He frowned. "Why?"
"They might need you."
Kaelen exhaled through his teeth. He had a feeling this was about to turn into unpaid overtime.
Somewhere ahead, from deep inside the yard, an inhuman shriek cut through the air.