Kaelen the Smith went entirely rigid. The iron rings in his beard gave a faint, terrified jingle as his thick fingers clenched tightly around the edge of the wooden counter. He looked around the dimly lit Sunken Vaults, ensuring no other black-market brokers or enforcers had overheard the boy's raspy query.
"You're a mad little bastard, aren't you?" Kaelen whispered, his rough voice dropping to a harsh, gravelly hiss. "Master Brock isn't just some merchant. He's the third seat of the Miners' Guild. You touch his hoard, and the Guild won't just kill you—they'll grind your bones to mix with the mortar for the new smelting kilns."
Ezekiel didn't flinch. He didn't blink. He simply reached out a pale, thin hand, picked up the black-iron hunting blade the dwarf had offered, and tucked it smoothly into his new sinew belt. He waited. The silence radiating from beneath his hood was heavier than the threat of the Guild.
Kaelen spat onto the brick floor, cursing under his breath in the old dwarven tongue. He leaned in closer, the stench of stale tobacco and grease rolling off him.
"Brock's main hoard isn't in the town vaults," the smith grunted, keeping his eyes fixed on Ezekiel's shadowed face. "He's greedy, even for a dwarf. He's been skimming the highest-grade specular obsidian—the kind that's dense with primordial Amalgam—straight from the deepest veins of the eastern shafts. He stores it at the old Guild processing depot near the northern tracks. He's got an entire warehouse packed to the rafters with crates of it, waiting for the Church's next special transport."
[Versum System: Quest Log Updated] Objective Located: Master Brock's Illicit Obsidian Depot (Northern Tracks) Target Focus: Primordial Amalgam Extraction
"Why?" Ezekiel asked, his hoarse voice cutting through the market's ambient noise. "Why does the Church want the deep stone?"
"Because the Church is building something massive in the capital, you foolish rat," Kaelen muttered, crossing his massive arms. "They call it the Grand Aegis. They need the deep obsidian to store high-density holy runes. Brock provides the raw, unrefined black glass, and the Church pays him in pure capital gold—and promises him exemption from the royal tithing laws. The gold thread on his luxurious coats? That's paid for by the blood of the miners who die pulling that volatile stone out of the dark."
A dark, icy understanding crystallized in Ezekiel's mind. The very stone that the dwarves were enslaving humans to mine, the very stone that was saturated with the Amalgam he needed to evolve his magic, was being sent to feed the magic of the Church that had branded him a cursed imp.
The circle was closing.
"The security?" Ezekiel asked.
"Heavy," Kaelen warned, shaking his head. "Guild enforcers on the perimeter. Human mercenaries with repeating heavy crossbows. And Brock's personal runesmith has placed proximity wards on every entrance. If a single soul touches the door without the Guild signet, the whole place rings like a cathedral bell."
"Good," Ezekiel whispered.
Before Kaelen could ask what that meant, the boy melted backward. He didn't run; he simply stepped into a blind spot between the canvas drapes of the stall, using a slight distortion of the oil-lantern light through his passive refractive aura. By the time Kaelen blinked, the counter was empty, save for the white-and-crimson Inquisition dagger gleam.
Ezekiel slipped out of the Sunken Vaults, ascending the damp stone stairs back into the soot-choked midnight of Oakhaven.
The rain was still falling, washing the coal dust into the gutters. Ezekiel pulled the leather-plated tunic tight against his chest, feeling the solid weight of his new iron blade. He began his march toward the northern tracks. Four years ago, Master Brock had thrown a piece of cold meat pie into the mud, treating Ezekiel's life as a worthless, disposable joke.
Tonight, Ezekiel was going to show the master of the Miners' Guild the true price of the gold thread on his coat. And he would pay for it in the very black glass that made him rich.