The basement workshop was a sanctuary of organized chaos, a stark contrast to the filthy, unpredictable chaos of the Gutter outside. For the first time since entering Silveridge, Kai didn't feel the immediate, pressing need to flee. The hidden door and the layer of earth and stone above them muffled the city's oppressive hum. Here, the only warmth came from a single enchanted glow-stone on Elara's workbench, and the cold he radiated was merely a part of the environment, not something he had to desperately hide.
Elara gave him space, busying herself with sorting through a box of gears and copper wire, but her sharp eyes missed nothing. She watched as Kai slowly unclenched, the visible tension in his shoulders easing minutely. A fine layer of frost had already begun to form on a nearby rack of metal tools.
"Truce?" she asked after a long silence, gesturing to a second stool near the bench.
Kai gave a slow, cautious nod and sat. The stool creaked under his weight, which felt denser, more substantial than it should.
"Good." Elara leaned forward, her elbows on the bench, her expression all business. "First, ground rules. No using your... 'cold' in a way that could be detected from the street. The Inquisitors have sensoria—devices that sniff out magical fluctuations. A big burst, and we'll have company. Second, you help me with heavy lifting and anything that requires a... unique touch with metals. Third, you answer my questions when you can. Not who you are or where you came from. Just about the energy itself. Deal?"
"Deal," Kai's voice was quiet, the echo almost gone. In this enclosed space, he could afford to be less guarded.
"Excellent." She pushed a small, complex device toward him. It looked like a brass spider with several articulated arms, all frozen in place. "This is a prototype automaton for delicate salvage work. The central joint is fused. The smith who sold me the alloy swore it was flawless, but it clearly had a hidden flaw. It won't budge."
Kai looked at the device, then at her. "You want me to break it?"
"I want you to un-fuse it," she corrected. "Heat would warp the delicate gears. Force would snap them. But extreme, localized cold... that makes metal brittle, contracts it. You could shatter the fused part without damaging the surrounding mechanisms. Precision."
He understood. This wasn't just a test of his power; it was a test of his control. He picked up the brass spider. It was cool in his hands. He focused, not on unleashing a wave, but on directing a needle-thin stream of cold into the tiny, seized-up joint. He visualized the molecular structure of the metal, the points where it had welded itself together.
A faint, crystalline tink sounded. A fine dust of metallic shards, no larger than grains of sand, fell from the joint.
He handed it back to her. Elara took it, her eyes wide. She gently moved one of the legs. It pivoted smoothly, perfectly.
"Fascinating," she breathed, turning the device over in her hands. "No thermal transfer to the surrounding area. The energy was directed with surgical accuracy. It's not magic as the Arcanum defines it. Theirs is about addition—adding heat, adding force, adding light. Yours is about... subtraction. Taking away energy until motion itself stops."
Her analysis was unsettlingly accurate. She was piecing together the nature of his power without him saying a word.
"The Inquisitors," Kai said, changing the subject. "Their weapons. They feel... warm."
Elara's face darkened. "Sun-steel. Alloyed with gold and infused with light-based enchantments. Designed to disrupt magical energies. To them, all magic is a perversion, but especially the cold. They see heat and light as holy, life-giving. Cold is stagnation, death, heresy. A man who commands frost is the ultimate blasphemy." She looked at him pointedly. "You're not just a fugitive. You're a religious offense."
The weight of her words settled in the room. It wasn't just a chase; it was a crusade.
For the next two days, a fragile routine developed. Kai stayed in the basement, his presence a secret. He practiced his control, learning to shape the frost into simple, temporary constructs—a claw, a lock-pick, a thin blade that would melt away moments after he stopped concentrating. Elara provided him with food and information, her scavenging runs now doubly important.
In return, he became her most unconventional tool. He repaired priceless, frozen clockwork she could never have fixed. He flash-cooled molten metal for her experiments, creating alloys with a grain structure no ordinary forge could achieve. A symbiotic relationship formed, built on mutual need and a shared, dangerous secret.
On the third morning, Elara returned from her rounds looking grim. She tossed a crumpled poster onto the workbench. It was a rough sketch of a face with white hair and piercing eyes. The word "ABOMINATION" was stamped across the top in angry red letters. Below, it promised a reward of one thousand gold crowns for information leading to the capture of the "Glacial Wraith" responsible for the death of a King's Inquisitor in Frostfall.
"They're upping the price," she said quietly. "That kind of coin... every cutpurse and bounty hunter in the city will be looking for you. Your description is everywhere."
Kai stared at the poster. The artist had captured the coldness in the eyes perfectly. "The Warding Stone," he said. "Is it still working?"
"It's hiding the 'song,'" Elara said, tapping the stone she had now studied and re-enchanted. "But it can't change your face. We need to get you out of the city. Soon."
"How?"
Elara chewed her lip, thinking. "There's a way. A smuggler's route through the old aqueducts that leads outside the walls. It's dangerous, and it costs. A lot. Fifty gold crowns, just for passage."
It might as well have been a million. They had barely enough for food.
"I might have a solution," Elara said, her voice dropping. "But it's a risk. A big one. There's a man. A collector. He pays exorbitantly for... unique artifacts. The kind the Arcanum would confiscate and the Inquisitors would burn. I have something. Something my father was working on when they came for him."
She went to a hidden panel under the floorboards and retrieved a small, lead-lined box. Opening it, she revealed an object nestled in black velvet. It was a compass, but instead of a needle, it had a sliver of obsidian that floated in a clear, viscous fluid. As Kai looked at it, the sliver of rock trembled and slowly pointed directly at him.
"It doesn't point north," Elara explained, her voice hushed. "It points towards sources of profound negation. The absence of life. The void. My father theorized it could find ancient tombs, places of mass death... or creatures of pure entropy." She looked at Kai. "Like you."
Kai understood. This device could lead the Inquisitors right to his doorstep. It was incredibly dangerous. And incredibly valuable to the right, amoral buyer.
"Selling it will draw attention," Kai stated.
"Everything we do now draws attention," Elara countered. "This is the fastest way to get the coin we need to get you out. It's a gamble. But staying here is a death sentence. The net is closing."
Kai looked from the terrifying compass to the wanted poster. They were trapped between the hunters and a desperate, dangerous deal. Elara was risking everything—her safety, her father's legacy—for a fugitive she barely knew.
"Where do we find this collector?" Kai asked, his voice low.
Elara met his gaze, her own resolve firm. "The Spire District. The heart of the city. We'll be walking right into the lion's den."
The safest move was to run now, to take his chances in the alleys. But that was the thinking of prey. Aurelis's voice whispered in his memory, not with words, but with a feeling of cold approval. The dragon did not flee. It advanced.
"Then we go," Kai said.
The Artificer's gambit was set. They would sell a tool that could find a monster to buy a monster's freedom.