The lantern threw orange light across stone walls slick with moisture.
Silas sat on an upturned crate, tunic off, arms braced on his knees. Leather hides hung from ceiling hooks, swaying in a draft he couldn't feel.
The air was thick. Ammonia from the curing vats. Iron-rust from old blood. Something chemical and sharp that burned the back of his throat.
None of it quite masked the copper stink coming from his own side.
The cut across his ribs was uglier than he'd expected. Six inches, maybe seven. Jagged at the edges where the officer's blade had caught on his tunic before biting through. Crusted with dried blood at the margins, still oozing where the scab cracked with every breath.
It throbbed in time with his pulse. He counted the beats.
One. Two. Three.
Jessa knelt beside him, needle in hand. Thread soaked in something that stung like vinegar. Her fingers were steady—pinch, pierce, pull. The rhythm was almost soothing if he didn't think about where she'd learned it.
Her hands are steadier than mine would be.
He gripped the crate edge and didn't flinch. The needle bit. The thread tugged. Each stitch felt like penance, though he wasn't sure for which sin.
Forty people. Maybe more. Crushed in a single riot.
My plan. My gate. My bodies.
Across the room, Taren was propped against a support beam. Too weak to stand, too awake to sleep. His eyes hadn't left Silas since they'd arrived—dark circles under them, cheeks hollow from days in the Pit.
He was watching like someone watching a loaded weapon. Trying to figure out if it was pointed at him.
He hasn't asked about the riot. He doesn't know. Or he's afraid to.
The lantern flickered. Shadows jumped across the walls. Jessa's needle rose and fell, rose and fell.
The rhythm should have been comforting.
The Void Citadel's mission timer is still ticking. I can feel it at the edge of my vision like a deadline written in fire.
He didn't look at it. Looking made the numbers real.
Instead, he counted stitches.
One. Two. Three.
Jessa tied off the last stitch and snipped the thread with a small knife. She still hadn't looked up.
Her jaw was tight. The skin around her eyes was red at the edges—she'd been crying, or fighting not to. Hard to tell which. She set the needle aside and wiped her hands on a rag stained brown with old blood.
The silence pressed in. Heavy. The kind of quiet that felt like a held breath before a blow.
This is the part where someone says something.
This is the part where I ask how she's doing, and she lies, and I pretend to believe it.
He didn't ask. She didn't offer.
The hides swayed on their hooks, creaking softly. Somewhere in the building, water dripped into a basin with a rhythm that should have been soothing.
It wasn't.
Jessa's hand trembled. Just once. A small thing—the needle she'd set down rolled half an inch on the crate. She steadied herself, took a breath, and continued wrapping bandages around his ribs.
Silas pretended he didn't see.
She's stronger than I gave her credit for. Or broken somewhere I can't see.
I should tell her it's not her fault. But I don't believe it about myself, so why would she believe it about her?
The bandages pulled tight. Jessa secured them with a small copper pin and finally sat back on her heels.
Still didn't look at him.
"You're the one who signed the transfer order."
The voice came from across the room. Taren.
Silas turned. The kid had shifted against the beam, wincing—ribs, probably, or whatever else Kael's hospitality had left behind. Bruises marked his arms in the shape of fingers. His lips were cracked. His voice came out hoarse, like he'd been screaming or hadn't used it in days.
Maybe both.
"Yes." Silas kept his voice flat. No point denying it.
"Why save me?"
The question hung in the air. Simple. Reasonable. Utterly impossible to answer honestly.
The honest answer: Your sister made a deal with me. Your life for access to people who could help me kill the regent.
The tactical answer: You were currency. Nothing more.
The answer I don't want to admit: Leaving you there would have made me something I'm not ready to become.
Silas opened his mouth. Closed it.
Taren watched him for a long moment. Then he nodded slowly—a small, tired motion—as if the absence of an answer was informative enough.
He looked away.
He deserves an answer. I don't have one I'm willing to give.
"Because someone asked" is true. It's also not the whole truth.
Some questions don't have clean answers.
The silence settled back in. Heavier now.
Then the side door exploded inward.
The hinges screamed. Cold air rushed in—smoke and copper and something burnt. Silas's hand found the Shank before his brain finished processing the crash.
Jessa was faster.
She had a knife out before he'd even turned toward the sound. Blade up, body low, already moving toward the threat with the muscle memory of someone who'd done this before.
A figure lurched through the doorway.
Movement. One figure. Small. Stumbling.
Silas catalogued on reflex: Young woman. Early twenties. Runner's build—lean and wiry, built for speed. Light blade at her hip, not drawn. Messenger satchel across her chest, strap torn. Covered in ash and blood.
She caught the doorframe to stop herself from falling. Left a red smear on the wood. Then her legs buckled and she slid halfway down, fingers leaving crimson tracks.
Not a threat. Stand down.
But his hand stayed on the Shank anyway.
The woman's face came into focus. Blood from her eyes. Blood from her ears. Blood from her nose, pooling in the hollow of her upper lip before dripping down her chin. Capillaries burst from the inside out.
Something crushed her from the inside. Or someone.
Her gaze found Silas. Sharp blue eyes—familiar, somehow, in a way that scratched at the back of his mind.
"Varis..."
The word came out wet. More blood leaked from the corner of her mouth.
I know those eyes. Where do I know those eyes?
Jessa's knife lowered.
"That's Renya..." Her voice cracked. "Corin's sister."
Corin. The scarred man. The one with the crossbow.
The memory clicked: the cellar, the planning session. A young woman with the same sharp blue eyes as the scarred rebel leader. Same jawline. Watching him with the same intensity.
"Ren—" Jessa moved toward her, voice catching. "She was supposed to signal if things went wrong."
Instead, she's here. Bleeding.
Renya tried to push herself upright. Her arms gave out. She slid further down the doorframe, leaving more red on the wood.
Jessa caught her before she hit the floor.
"Listen..." Renya's bloodstained hand gripped Jessa's arm. Tight. Desperate. Each word cost her something she couldn't afford. "Listen to me..."
Corin is dead. She knows. She came here anyway.
Whatever she saw was bad enough to make her run through the streets with her insides likely torn apart.
She came to tell us something. I'm going to listen.
Jessa lowered Renya against the wall, cradling her head to keep it from hitting the stone. Blood painted dark tracks down Renya's cheeks from her eyes, streaking through the ash on her skin.
"Varis..." Renya's voice was a wet rasp. Each word came with a cough, and each cough came with more blood. "He has a Heart. A Mythic Heart."
"Mythic Heart..." Silas murmured, keeping his face blank.
Jessa glanced at him. "You know about them?"
Play dumb. Learn more.
"Heard the term. Never seen one."
"One in three die trying to bond them." Jessa's voice was flat, informational, the way someone sounds when they're trying not express what they feel. "The survivors become something else. No idea when Varis bonded his. But he's been hiding it ever since."
Hiding it. All his years as regent, and no one knew he had a Heart.
Until today.
Renya coughed. Spat blood to the side. Her chest heaved with the effort of breathing.
"He stepped forward. Raised his hands. And they—"
More coughing. Worse this time. She curled in on herself, each spasm wrenching her body.
"They just... folded." Her eyes were distant now, seeing something that wasn't in this room. "Like paper. The dock workers. The vendors. Everyone."
Folded.
The word hit Silas like a fist.
He saw it—bodies caving inward, ribs snapping, reaching for weapons they couldn't lift. Screams that couldn't complete. Forty people, maybe more, compressed into something that fit in the space between one heartbeat and the next.
He blinked. The image stayed.
Forty people. Crushed.
My plan. My gate.
My bodies.
How can I kill a man who can fold me like paper?
Renya's breathing was getting worse. Wet. Labored. Each inhale gurgled in her chest like something was loose inside.
"Corin charged."
Her voice cracked on her brother's name.
"He drew blood." A trembling breath. "Actually cut him."
Silas remembered the scarred man in the cellar. The cynical blue eye. The hands that cleaned the crossbow without looking down. The kind of soldier who'd seen enough to stop hoping and kept fighting anyway.
He charged a man who could crush him with a thought. And he drew blood.
He knew he was going to die. Charged anyway.
And he actually cut him. Actually drew blood from a Mythic Heart user.
"But then..."
Renya trailed off. Her eyes went distant, seeing something none of them could see. Her mouth moved, but no sound came out.
Her brother's name died on her lips.
He died for nothing. He died for his beliefs.
Renya came here to tell us how he died. That's the only ending she can give him.
She will never finish that sentence. Neither will I.
Renya's breathing stuttered. Stopped. Started. Stopped again.
Her hand went slack in Jessa's grip.
For three heartbeats, Jessa didn't move. She just held the cold hand, staring at the face that looked too much like her dead friend's.
Then she reached up and closed Renya's eyes. Gentle. Practiced. Like she'd done this before. Too many times before.
She folded Renya's hands across her chest. Set the messenger satchel aside. Stood.
Turned away.
Didn't cry.
Jessa's jaw clenched. Her hands stayed at her sides.
"She came here to tell us." Her voice was quiet. "She made her life count."
Another body I helped create. Another name I didn't learn until too late.
Renya. Corin's sister. Same blue eyes. Same watchful stillness.
She was a runner. She ran here to die.
Someone will have to tell their family. If they have one.
Silas looked at the body against the wall. At the blood tracks from her eyes. At the hands folded across a chest that would never rise again.
All these deaths, yet my mission continues. It always does.
The silence stretched. Outside, the city sounds filtered through the walls—distant shouts, cart wheels, the aftermath of something terrible being swept under the rug.
Jessa turned back to face him. Her eyes were dry. Her voice was steady.
"Caia Calder. The one in black-and-gold armor—the Hawk-Crest commander. That's his adopted daughter."
Silas's mind caught on the name. Caia Calder.
The image came unbidden: the knight on the training terrace, watching him out of the records office. Severe face. Dark eyes. The same woman who'd decapitated Garran Holt in the plaza without a change of expression.
"She's Surge-class," Jessa continued. "No Heart—just fifteen years of training. Crown ranking for top-tier fighters."
Surge-class. Seems like a power rank, like my Rank 1 according to the Citadel. I'll remember that.
Two problems, then. Varis had the power. Caia had the sword.
Dagger Mastery already saved my life against Kael. What would I be with more skills?
He thought of the Toxin Mastery seed sitting dormant in Storage. The skill bloom attempt from earlier, the Citadel's dry rejection.
Ten Memory Shards required. I've got five.
Halfway there.
He reached inward, grazing the System interface. The numbers glowed at the edge of his awareness like old friends who couldn't help him.
[Free Attribute Points: 2.0]
From Jed, I got 0.5. From Kael, 0.8. That Officer gave 0.7.
Not spendable. The Citadel doesn't plan to strengthen me mid-mission. It feels like its watching to see if I survive.
What kind of power can the Citadel offer at higher ranks? Can I gain something like a Mythic Heart?
He filed the question away. Later. If there was a later.
"There might be others," Jessa said. "Sparkweave kept cells separate. Safe houses I never knew about."
"Then there are people left to lead." Her jaw tightened. "I just have to find them."
Jessa's already transitioning from runner to leader. I'm still calculating assets and liabilities.
Two problems. Varis has the power—a Heart that folds crowds. Caia has the sword—fifteen years of training to kill.
If she's the sword and he's the Heart, separate them.
The lantern had burned lower. The tannery was darker now, shadows pooling in the corners. Outside, the afternoon was slipping toward evening. The riot was over. The cleanup had begun.
Silas stared at the far wall, cataloging options he didn't have.
If I can't kill him with a mob, I need something official.
An execution order. Something the Crown would recognize. Something even Caia would enforce.
He thought of the Shrike—out there somewhere, carrying the evidence he'd dispatched.
Where are you? When are you coming back?
The mission timer pulsed at the edge of his awareness.
[2 days 8 hours]
Still more than two days. But not by much.
Time to make them count.
"The mission hasn't changed."
Jessa looked at him. The mask cracked for a moment—anger, or grief, or both.
"The mission was supposed to change everything."
"It still might." Silas met her eyes. "Just not the way we planned."
He stood. The stitches pulled at his side. He didn't wince.
"We wait for dark. Then we plan."
The lantern flickered. In the corner, Renya's body stayed still.
I have a knife and a system that rewards killing. He has power that crushes crowds.
If the Citadel wanted this to be easy, it would have sent someone stronger.
It didn't. It sent me. That's either a test to become an Enforcer or a death sentence.
Either way, he'd find out soon enough.