He woke to a hard surface and the sound of power humming through walls.
Cold metal bit his wrists and ankles. Blue light pulsed inside the cuffs, rising and falling in a steady rhythm that matched the two sentry pylons outside his cell. A thin line of pressure wrapped his chest—not enough to hurt, just enough to remind him the room owned the air.
Dren took a breath, slow and even. Ribs sore, right shoulder tight, a bruise under the collarbone. Nothing broken. Lightning moved under his skin in a faint crawl and met resistance at the cuffs, bled into them, and came back emptier. Siphon loop. Efficient.
He sat up.
The cell was a rectangle of clear material etched with hair-thin conduction channels. The ceiling carried three thick conduits that pulsed blue on a five-count. Each pulse made the cuffs brighten a shade, then dim. Floor seams were tight. Corners were clean. The place was built by people who had practiced keeping element-wielders inside and alive.
Beyond his wall, a corridor ran past a row of cells. He counted five occupied in his field of view. An older man with sand-veins asleep on his slab. A woman curled around frost-burnt hands. A kid—fourteen, maybe—staring at his palms as tiny sparks hopped between his fingers and died. All of them wore the same cuffs. All of them looked tired.
Two guards leaned at a desk opposite Dren's cell, armor threaded with the same blue conduits as the ceiling. Suppression spears rested on the table. They watched him the way men watch a fire that's almost out.
He tested the cuffs with a one-percent pulse—barely more than a thought.
The metal drank it. The inner ring brightened clean, flickered, and returned an equal and opposite push that cancelled the rest. He let it happen. He watched the timing. Two heartbeats to full absorb. One heartbeat to return. Half a heartbeat before the ring fell dark again.
Dren stored the numbers.
He flexed his hands and rolled his shoulders to see what hurt and what was lying about it. The healing he didn't ask for had already started. The Sable Vow left gifts where it left damage.
"Walker's up," one guard said.
The other didn't look away. "He's not local."
Dren stood and stepped to the wall. "What's the charge?"
The nearer guard grinned without humor. "Existing."
Before Dren could answer, a shout rose at the far end of the block. A guard had a prisoner—thin, shaking—pinned against a wall with a spear haft across the throat. The man wasn't fighting. He was just in the way.
"Leave him," someone said from another cell. The guard shoved harder.
Dren crossed to his door, planted both hands on the clear wall, and called out without raising his voice. "You're choking him."
"Mind your cell," the spear guard snapped, not turning.
Dren looked at the desk pair. "You going to let him kill a bound man?"
They hesitated just long enough to admit they'd heard him. Then the closer one shook his head once, annoyed, and reached for a bell pull.
The spear guard didn't notice. He pushed. The thin man's eyes rolled.
Dren stepped back from his wall, set his weight, and kicked.
The cell door didn't open. He didn't want it to. The impact boomed. Every head snapped his way. The two sentry pylons surged from blue to white and the cuffs answered with a hard clamp that drove pins into his forearms. He took it, jaw tight, and spoke across the block while the system thought it had just won.
"Let him breathe," he said. "Or when these come off, you and I have a problem."
The spear lifted two inches. The thin man coughed and slid to the floor. The guard started to turn toward Dren.
"Don't," the desk guard said, bored. "Orders are to bring him upstairs with a pulse under control. I'm not signing for a torn trachea."
The spear came off the prisoner's throat. The guard backed away, scowling.
Dren let the cuffs finish their cycle. The pain dropped to a hum.
Boots approached from the left—measured, confident. The two desk guards straightened at the same time without looking like they were trying to look neat. Dren turned his head.
She came in first.
The woman from the valley—blue lightning alive along her wrists, hair tied back, armor repaired and resealed. The current around her was calm and exact, humming just above the room's baseline like it refused to match anything but her. She walked with tempo: not fast, not slow, precise. Two escorts followed, helmets smooth, visors down.
Behind them, the corridor seemed to darken by a shade. Not much. Just enough to make the edges cut deeper.
A third figure stepped in and stopped in the shadow of the doorframe. Taller than the others by a head. Armor matte-black from crown to boot, plates layered and sealed, no insignia. The faceplate was a clean, featureless oval that took the light and gave nothing back. The left hand kept the right gauntlet loosely by the wrist, as if holding it down on principle. No visible weapon. He didn't need to show one.
The two desk guards snapped fists to breastplates. "Right Hand. Left Hand."
Titles, not names.
The woman's eyes moved once across the block—cells, guards, pylons, Dren—and then returned to him like she'd finished her inventory and put him at the top of the list.
"Stand," she said.
He was already standing.
Her gaze flicked to the cuffs and back. "You fell from orbit," she said. Not a question.
"Looks that way."
"Your current is forged. Not born."
"Long story."
"We prefer short ones," she said.
Silence held for a breath. She watched his face for tells, then shifted to the practical.
"Designation?"
"Dren Mako."
"Origin?"
"Not here."
The corner of her mouth wanted to move. It didn't. "The tear wasn't ours," she said. "Did you make it?"
"No."
"Do you know who did?"
"No."
"Will more follow you?"
"Maybe." He held her eyes and let the honesty sit where lies usually go.
She took that in, then nodded once—information logged. She turned to the desk. "Open Three."
The guard pulled the lever. Dren's door slid aside with a clean hydraulic sigh. An ozone smell drifted in and out like a breath.
The black figure—the Left Hand—did not move. If the armor contained breath, it didn't share it.
Dren stepped to the threshold and stopped. The cuffs tugged at his current in time with the pylons. He ignored it.
"By order of the King," one of the escorts said, formal. "You'll be presented."
"Later," the woman said without looking at the guard. Then, to Dren, "You attacked my city on entry."
"I landed."
"You made a crater."
"Entry cost," he said. "I didn't light your forest."
Her eyes warmed a fraction. "Noted."
A shout from two cells down pulled their attention—the spark-finger kid had dropped to his knees, clutching his stomach, sparks panic-firing between his hands with nowhere to go. One of the desk guards rose half an inch, annoyed at the interruption.
"Don't," the woman said, and crossed to the boy's door. "Open Five." It slid. She entered, crouched, and set two fingers an inch over the boy's cuff ring. The blue around her hand thickened. The kid's sparks steadied and then went out. He gasped and looked up at her like she'd just moved a mountain off his chest.
"Breath in," she said. "Hold. Out." She waited, then stood and left him calmer than she'd found him. "Close Five."
When she turned back, Dren was already watching the details: her control, the way the cuffs answered to her field, the immediate obedience of the room when she spoke. Right Hand wasn't a courtesy. It was a job.
She stopped in front of him again. "You're bleeding," she said.
"Not for long."
"You heal fast."
"Faster when I'm not being drained to keep your ceiling pretty."
That almost got a smile. Almost.
She stepped aside. The black-armored figure moved for the first time—three silent paces forward. The air felt colder with him closer, though the room temp hadn't changed. Dren didn't see the man breathe. He didn't hear the armor move. He heard nothing but the pylons and his own pulse.
"Left," the woman said by way of introduction, to Dren. "He speaks for the King on matters of force."
Left lifted his head by a degree. The blank faceplate gave Dren back a stretched version of himself with no eyes. When he spoke, the voice came out flat and filtered, like the armor preferred to do its own talking.
"Raise your right hand," Left said.
Dren didn't move. "Why."
"To watch what you do to break orders," Left said. Not threat. Procedure.
The blue around Dren's cuffs brightened a notch, the pylons answering. He considered the angles, the distance, the two escorts with suppression spears waiting for any excuse to make a story, and then lifted his right hand to chest height, slow and easy.
Left turned his own gauntlet palm-out and held it a handspan from Dren's raised fist. No touch. No visible field. A quiet hum rolled through the space between them and pressed gently against Dren's knuckles.
Siphon test, Dren thought. Not from the cuffs. From him.
Left's head tilted a measure. "Forged," the filtered voice said, matching the Right Hand's earlier conclusion. "Tuned to a pattern this city doesn't use."
"You get that a lot?" Dren asked.
Left said nothing. He lowered his hand. The pressure disappeared without echo.
The woman spoke. "You're not executed in the block," she said, practical as a written order. "You're seen."
"By Malvorn," Dren said. He watched her face for any crack when he said the King's name. He got none.
"By the King," she said evenly. "When called."
Dren's jaw twitched. "You his right hand."
"I am."
He looked past her to the black figure. "And he's the left."
A short nod from the featureless helm.
"Strongest you've got?" Dren asked, without heat.
Left didn't answer. He didn't need to. The room had answered that question when he walked in.
"Escort," the woman said to the guards. "Full suppression, no strikes unless he moves first."
They formed up without complaint—two ahead, one behind, spears angled low. The cuffs pulsed, and the corridor locks clicked open in sequence down the hall like a mouth preparing a word.
Dren didn't step yet. He looked at the ceiling conduits—five-count flashes, synced to the pylons; the faint hiss of vents that dumped cold air when the cuffs pulled too hard; the floor seam that looked like it had been lifted and relaid in a hurry two meters from his door. He mapped it. He'd only need it if everything else failed, and everything else had a habit of failing at exactly the wrong moment.
He met the Right Hand's eyes again. "You have a name?" he asked.
She held his gaze. "Later," she said.
"Works," he said, and stepped into the corridor.
They moved out. The block doors cycled open and shut ahead of them, letting the party pass and locking again with clean clicks behind. Prisoners watched through clear walls and didn't speak. The pylons' hum faded as they turned a corner and entered a wider hall where the conduits thickened and the blue light ran stronger—closer to the palace heart.
Left took the rear position without asking for it and without any sound to mark the change. Dren looked back once. The blank faceplate looked back at him with nothing.
He looked forward again and walked.
At the end of the hall, a set of double doors waited, bands of blue threading through their metal like veins. Two standard guards stood to either side, spears grounded, eyes locked straight ahead.
A bell tone sounded—clear, measured.
"By order of the King," one guard intoned. "Present the prisoner."
The Right Hand glanced at Dren and then at the doors. The blue along her wrists brightened. The veins in the door flared in answer. Bolts slid. Locks retracted.
She spoke without looking away from the opening seam. "Walk in, Walker," she said. "See before you decide."
The doors swung wide on oiled hinges, spilling bright, heat-heavy light into the corridor.
Dren stepped through.