The interior of the Oakhaven Manor was worse than the exterior. Rain dripped through the rotting rafters, splashing onto a table that looked like it had been chewed by giant rats. Cyprian ignored the damp, peeling back his left sleeve with trembling fingers.
The skin of his forearm was angry and red. Embedded just beneath the surface was a web of hair-thin copper filaments, converging on a small, rectangular housing made of blackened brass.
"What in the Hells is that?" Garrick asked, hovering in the doorway. The big man was holding a moth-eaten blanket and a bottle of what smelled like industrial solvent.
"An External Circuit," Cyprian muttered. He used a small pair of silver tweezers to adjust a loose wire. "Since my gates are... unresponsive, I have to bypass the biological path. I'm essentially using my nervous system as a conduit for refined Ichor-dust."
He paused, the tweezers hovering in mid-air. A strange sensation washed over him—a cold, hollow feeling at the base of his skull.
Where did I learn the conductive properties of copper-alloy? He "remembered" studying it in the Royal Academy. He could see the dust-covered library, the face of a gray-bearded tutor named Master Elvin. But when he tried to focus on the tutor's face, it blurred, turning into a featureless mask of white porcelain. The memory felt like a painting he had looked at too many times, the edges fraying and the colors bleeding together.
"Where'd a Thorne get a mind for engineering?" Garrick asked, leaning against the doorframe. "Usually your lot just yells until things catch fire or people start bowing."
"I... I spent a lot of time in the family archives," Cyprian said, though the words felt like they belonged to someone else. "Hidden texts. Ancient methods."
The explanation was weak. He knew it. He was a Thorne of the Gold-Ichor line. He should have been practicing sword-forms or learning the nuances of Blood-Auras. Instead, his hands moved with an uncanny, practiced grace over the delicate machinery, his fingers twisting wires into "Logos-Patterns" he couldn't recall ever seeing in a Thorne library.
He felt a brief, sharp flash of suspicion. Why was he so comfortable with the smell of solder and grease? Why did the sound of a gear clicking into place feel more "natural" to him than the hum of a Golden Gate?
Stop, he told himself, shaking his head to clear the mental fog. It doesn't matter. The villagers are starving, the bandits are coming, and the Spring Tithe is a death clock. If the knowledge works, I'll use it. I don't have the luxury of an identity crisis.
He snapped the brass housing shut. A faint blue light pulsed once beneath his skin, then faded.
"You said Oakhaven has a problem with bread," Cyprian said, turning to Garrick. "Show me the grain stores. And tell me about the bandits. Who leads them?"
Garrick took a long swig from his bottle, his one eye narrowing. "Leader goes by 'The Butcher.' Rank 4 Sterling-Plate. He used to be a Knight of the Border Guard until he realized stealing from peasants paid better than protecting them. He's got two Rank 2s under him and about fifty Iron-Blood thugs."
Cyprian stood up, his headache finally receding into a dull thrum. Rank 4. Sterling-Plate. A man who could shatter stone with a punch and move faster than a commoner could blink.
Against that, Cyprian had one broken sergeant, a village of hostile peasants, and a copper circuit that nearly fried his brain every time he used it.
"A Rank 4 requires a certain amount of Ichor-output to maintain his aura," Cyprian mused, his mind already sketching a battlefield in the air. "If we can't pierce his armor, we'll have to make the armor too heavy for him to wear. Sergeant, does this village have a blacksmith?"
"We have a man with an anvil and a hammer," Garrick grunted. "But no coal. And no iron."
Cyprian smiled, a cold, sharp expression that looked strangely out of place on his noble face. "We don't need iron. We have the Black-Iron Forest. And I have a recipe for something that burns hotter than a Dragon's breath."
He looked back at the copper wires beneath his skin. He didn't know where the recipe came from. He didn't know why his mind was suddenly filled with the chemical ratios of sulfur and saltpeter.
But as the first real plan of his exile took shape, the suspicion faded. He wasn't a noble, and he wasn't a commoner. He was an architect. And he was going to rebuild this world, one gear at a time.