"The only thing nobility fears… is something they can't control."
---
By sunrise, the slums of the Ash Ring felt different.
The air had weight.
Birds avoided rooftops. Dogs barked at corners and shadows. The scent of ozone lingered near the gutters. Most slum dwellers didn't notice—too busy fighting off sleep, hunger, or the next fist. But some felt it deep in their bones.
Something ancient had stirred.
---
Elric kept to the alleys that morning, hood pulled low. Every nerve in his body buzzed from the spell he'd cast. He still felt the aftershock—not exhaustion exactly, but displacement. Like something had cracked open inside him and never fully closed.
The Demon Crest on his chest no longer throbbed, but he could feel it under his skin like coals under ash—waiting. Watching.
He returned to the collapsed bell tower and buried the Codex under loose stone and scrap metal. No sense carrying it with him in broad daylight. If anyone saw it…
He shivered.
> No one can see this. No one can know.
---
By midmorning, the Mage Enforcers arrived.
They didn't ride carriages or announce themselves. They dropped from skywalks on silent gliders—cloaks trimmed with white-gold runes, their eyes hidden behind arcane goggles that scanned for residual mana.
Six of them.
Armed.
Focused.
Hunters.
Elric spotted them from a rooftop where he was foraging for copper wiring. They moved too cleanly, too quickly, for patrol guards. One waved a hand over the ground and released a swarm of silver locusts—detection runes in insect form. The swarm scattered through alleys and down chimneys.
Elric froze.
> They're not just searching. They're tracking.
---
He bolted down the back slope and slipped into the shadowed crisscross of slum corridors. Children stared. Adults looked away.
He made his way to Mina's shack—a narrow alcove pressed between two stone walls where rain rarely reached. She was one of the few people he trusted. A wiry, fast-talking girl with knotted braids and fingers quicker than most pickpockets.
She sat cross-legged, sorting bits of glass and copper into a satchel.
"Elric," she said without looking up. "You look like you swallowed thunder."
"You have to leave," he said.
"Why?"
"They're here. Mage Order. Tracking something."
She laughed. "And when aren't they?"
"I'm serious, Mina. Something happened last night. A spell was cast. A big one."
Now she looked up.
"Elric… what did you do?"
He hesitated.
Nothing. He couldn't tell her. Not yet.
Before he could answer, a pulse of light flared across the sky.
Not natural light—Arcane Beaconlight.
White, harsh, and hot as judgment. The Enforcers had activated a null zone.
The beacon's radius turned the air static. Anyone with a spellcore or enchanted item within its field would trigger a reaction—flare, overload, or rupture.
And they were closing in.
---
"We have to go. Now," Elric hissed.
Mina didn't argue. She grabbed her satchel, slung it over one shoulder, and followed him into the alley.
But they were too late.
A voice like thunder cracked overhead.
> "Halt. Mage Enforcers. You are within an active breach zone."
Elric turned to run—Mina pulled him back. "Split. Meet at drainhole seven."
He nodded—and bolted.
She ran the other way.
---
He ducked under a collapsed fence, squeezed through rusted pipes, climbed a cracked chimney—every shortcut etched into his survival instincts.
But even so…
They were faster.
A streak of gold light slammed into the ground behind him, cracking stone. A figure landed in a crouch, then stood tall—Enforcer robes, glaive tipped with lightning, goggles gleaming.
Elric raised his hands, backing away.
> Don't cast. Don't give them a reason.
The Enforcer stared at him for a long moment.
"No crest. No surgeprint," the man muttered. "Still…"
He activated a scanner crystal.
The device beeped.
"Residual demonic flux... minimal."
> No. Please. Not Mina.
Elric forced himself to breathe. Steady. Calm.
Then the Enforcer's communicator flared.
> "Target acquired. Female, age fifteen. Surgeprint unstable. Possession suspected. Binding in progress."
Elric's stomach dropped.
> Mina!
He didn't think.
He just ran.
---
He followed the flare trail, every step burning. When he reached the alley near the old kiln tower, two Enforcers had already pinned her—arms shackled with rune-steel, face in the dirt.
She screamed as one held a branded dagger to her back.
"Demonic residue confirmed," said the one with the brand. "This one will be taken for cleansing."
"No!" Elric shouted, bursting into view.
The Enforcers turned—but too slow.
The Codex pulsed.
Ashbind.
It roared through him without warning. The crest on his chest ignited.
Chains of flame burst from the ground, wrapping the nearest Enforcer's arm, searing through the armor. He screamed as the magic chain devoured his warding runes.
"Null surge!" someone shouted. "He's the source!"
Mina rolled, kicked the other in the gut, and scrambled free.
Elric took her hand.
They ran.
---
They didn't stop for four blocks. Down storm drains. Through collapsed market ruins. Into Drainhole Seven, a forgotten cistern near the edge of the district.
Only when the sounds of pursuit faded did they collapse, panting and bruised, behind the rusted bars of the drainage cave.
Elric leaned against the stone, sweat dripping from his brow. The crest on his chest dimmed.
Mina stared at him, eyes wide with fury.
"That wasn't a cheap scroll," she whispered. "That wasn't even black-market magic."
He didn't speak.
"...What was that, Elric?"
He looked at his hands.
And for the first time, he told someone the truth.
"I found a book. A cursed one. It called itself the Demon Art Codex. It gave me a crest. Not a real one—a dark one. It... does things."
She didn't move.
"Elric," she said slowly, "you cast something that made a Mage Enforcer's sigils collapse. That's not magic."
"I know."
She grabbed his shoulder.
"You don't understand. Demon Magic erases crests. That's what happened in the old wars. That's why it was banned. Not because it was evil—because it was stronger. Because it could make a noble nothing."
Silence stretched between them.
Elric closed his eyes.
"I didn't mean to use it."
"But you did."
Mina stared at him for a long time. Then her face softened.
"They'll hunt you now," she said quietly. "They'll come with spellbrands and memory wipes and cleansing fires. They don't care who you are. Or what you meant."
"I know."
"What are you going to do?"
Elric's voice was quiet. Low. Flat.
"I'm going to hide."
He looked up at the city skyline—the towers of light and crystal and power stretching far above the slums.
"And when I'm ready…"
His demon crest pulsed once.
"…I'm going to make them remember what it feels like to be powerless."
---