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Chapter 120 - Crossing the Middle Ring

The road into Caldemount's middle ring was a ribbon of half-ruined cobbles and shadowed alleys, a place where the city's old prosperity and new ruin braided into one. Solis and Vaidya kept to the hedgerows and unused tram lines, moving by a choreography of breath and bone. The potion's fire still hummed under Solis's ribs — a small, hot interval of clarity — and he measured himself against it like a man counting the beats of a heart.

"Keep your head low," Vaidya murmured, eyes on a paper map folded into a tiny square. He pointed to a narrow lane between a collapsed watchtower and an abandoned tannery. "We will cut through here. Patrols usually hug the main arcides. We have to move under cover of the scavenging runs and the fog from the river works."

Solis nodded. The air tasted of metal and far-off smoke. He tightened the leather strap across his chest where his battered axe sat, and tucked a short dagger into his left boot — a habit from Devon's dual-wield drills even when a real second blade was missing. His left hand had learned to do work. The little movements he'd practiced for weeks felt less clumsy now.

They had nearly passed the tannery when a shadow detached itself from behind the broken archway across the way — a rider in armor the color of a storm cloud, the sigil of Kreg's dark riders cloven into the pauldrons. The man's horse snorted. The rider raised a visor and the harsh line of the face beneath was lit from a scorch glow. There were four more; they unfolded like a trap.

"Dark knights." Vaidya's voice was a string tightened. "They have found us."

Solis's fingers wrapped around the axe haft. He could feel the aura at the edges of his senses — the potion's work: a ribbon of heat running from spine to throat, clear and dangerous. He kept it consciously low. Thirty percent, he thought, because Devon had drilled into him the cost of every extra ten. Thirty percent gave him sharper reflexes, clearer sight, more force behind each strike without tipping into the draining burn he had felt under Razille's touch.

The riders moved with practiced slowness — not charging, but probing, as if their job was to smell the city for a pulse. The nearest knight dismounted with a soft, leather-thud and stepped forward, a spear like a black reed held in a single hand.

"Stop," the knight said in the cold, clipped tone of men trained to be absolute in command. "Turn and come with us. No trouble if you're compliant."

Vaidya's mouth formed a small, guilty line. "We're not—" he began before Solis cut across him, voice flat and quiet.

"Not today," Solis said. He stayed low, feeling the world with his feet. "We aren't looking for trouble."

The knight smiled in a way that meant he did not believe an ounce of it. He made a step forward, and the small net of patrols tightened.

The first blow came because someone behind the tannery dropped a barrel and the sound punched like a shout. Routine became panic. One of the dark riders stamped a boot and barked an order; the men formed like black flowers opening.

Solis moved.

At thirty percent his aura was flaring — not a blaze, but a sharpened edge. It took the jag out of brute strength and put it into speed and alignment. He stepped forward, axe low, and attacked the spear's line instead of the man. The tip of the spear screamed past his left ear as he ducked and pivoted. He used his left hand — the one Devon trained — to sweep a small dagger across the ankle of the nearest footman; it wasn't meant to kill, only to unbalance. The man staggered, and Solis used the opening to plant the axe butt into the rider's thigh and twist. The rider howled, dropped the spear, and fell.

Vaidya had not been idle. He scraped a chalk sigil in a flash on the cobbles — a sigil quick-bound with willow dust and a pinch of charred runewire. A second sigil flared with a thin blue light and fog curled from it like a borrowed breath. It was not a fire; it was a blind. The rider nearest to it blinked, looked down at his boots as if roots had sprouted, and cursed. That gave Solis the opportunity he needed to break another guard's arm and duck behind a low stone wall.

The dark knights moved like correctable devices. They were disciplined, their blades singing with a different pitch; each cut was clinical, practiced. They used long spear arcs and short sword jabs in a rhythm that wanted to capture and pin. Solis answered with the quiet, precise strikes that Devon had drilled into him. He didn't bring the full force of his aura to bear; he kept the brim low so that the drain, if it came, would be slow. He blocked an armored gauntlet with the haft of his axe and ran his foot in a sweep, tripping a horse's leg. Vaidya hurled a short charm — a flash of sickly green smoke — into another patrol's eyes and used the pause to pull a fallen rider's spear to throw it aside.

They were not brute opponents. They were cunning. One of the knights, seeing their resistance, drew a shiver of metal and moved with a step that tried to trap Solis's center. Solis pivoted and felt his aura as a steadying force: the axe's weight was not heavier, but his wrists were sharper; the weapon's arc cut bone and metal without losing his balance. The potion gave him a kind of economy — less energy wasted on brute force, more focused on finishing cuts that didn't overextend.

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