Three months in the slums and Cassian Vale had already disappeared.
Not literally. His face still haunted the alley whispers, his name still hissed between broken teeth. But he was no longer the man they cast out. He had become something else.
In the abandoned workshop beneath Section K, he had rebuilt everything; except his face.
He'd learned to eat without being noticed. Learned which gangs ran which corridors. Which doors leaked steam in the wrong rhythm. Which pipes you could tap to send a message across the district.
And which ones carried death.
He was building again. Slowly. Carefully. Nights full of scavenged coils and old welders, hands blistered from jury-rigging rigs that should never hum again. He wasn't ready yet. But soon.
That night, he was elbow-deep in a melted spellglass console when he heard it.
A flutter.
Not air. Not feathers. The sound of hinges and wings.
Cassian froze.
Then looked up.
It landed on the pipe above him; black metal, clockwork bones, and filament feathers that caught the low aetherlight like obsidian. One eye glowed faint red, the other socket burned out. A shadowbird.
He hadn't seen one since the siege of Hollowspire. They were banned. War relics from an era when communication meant sabotage. Shadowbirds were smart too smart. They learned voices. Sniffed blood. And if tampered with improperly, they exploded.
This one bowed.
Cassian rose slowly.
"I'm not in the mood to be blown up," he muttered.
The bird clicked once.
And then, with a sharp chirr of gears, it opened its chest.
Inside was a scroll. Sealed in black wax. Marked with the sigil of House Vale.
His father's sigil.
Cassian didn't breathe as he took it.
The bird did not explode.
Instead, it let out a low chime; and disintegrated. Feather by feather. Gear by gear. Until nothing remained but the faint scent of burnt brass and something older. Aether-oil.
Cassian stared at the letter for a long time before breaking the seal.
To my bastard son,
If you're reading this, then I am dead—and you've survived longer than I predicted.
Cassian exhaled once, through his nose. That sounded right.
I gave the order to spare you not out of pity, but necessity. You are a volatile element, Cassian. Too rare to destroy. Too dangerous to keep. What you become now is no longer my concern.
But I owe you something. The truth, perhaps. Or a piece of it.
I knew you were innocent.
Cassian's eyes stopped.
The day of the sabotage, your prototype was switched. But the switch was ordered using your seal—my seal, duplicated. There are only four people in the kingdom who knew how to replicate it. One of them is dead. One sits in the Council of Chain Lords. One is Elira Lynden. And one… was me.
Cassian's hand tightened.
Did I do it? No. But I allowed it.
Because I thought you needed to be broken, before you could rise.
This city is sick, Cassian. Not with poverty. Not with rebellion. With order. Aurelith survives by chaining brilliance to bloodlines. But brilliance cannot be contained. Not forever. I believe you are proof of that.
Cassian sat down slowly, the letter trembling in his hand.
I leave you my name. It will do you no good.
I leave you my fortune. You will never see it.
But I leave you one more thing. Beneath the workshop—three levels down—sealed in iron, is the last piece of my heresy. A prototype I never dared activate. If you can reach it, it's yours.
Destroy it. Or use it. I'm past judgment now.
But whatever you become next... be clever enough to finish what I could not.
—Duke Aldren Vale
Cassian stared at the signature for a long time. The ink shimmered faintly. A blood-signature. Real. Verified.
Not a forgery. Not a trap.
He looked at the hatchway to the sublevels.
Three floors down.
No maps. No lift. Just darkness, rust, and whatever nightmares his father had hidden away.
Cassian folded the letter, placed it into a brass-lined drawer, and stood.
Then, without a word, Cassian reached for the lantern—old oil, patched glass, wick trimmed sharp as habit. He didn't need light to see.
But light made things look at you.
He strapped the shockblade across his back, the handle still faintly sparking from the last time he overcharged it. It had no official owner anymore. Just a history of slashed throats and stolen corners.
The lower hatch groaned as he turned the wheel lock. Dust hissed out like a sigh.
It hadn't been opened in years.
Cassian stood at the threshold, staring down a rust-streaked ladder vanishing into blackness below. No sound. No breath of air. The silence was wrong—sealed silence, like the walls were still deciding whether to let him pass.
His father's voice echoed in his mind:
"If you can reach it… it's yours."
He exhaled once.
Then he descended, one rung at a time, into the dark throat of legacy and ruin.
The air grew colder by the foot, thick with iron mold and the sour tang of old aether decay. The lantern sputtered in protest, casting pale circles of gold across the curved walls, which were ribbed with long-forgotten glyph circuits. Some blinked faintly as he passed, triggered by proximity or blood, whispering ancient permissions.
Cassian kept moving. Slow. Silent.
The shaft narrowed.
At the bottom, the ladder gave way to a circular chamber lined in brass and bone-colored ceramic. The walls shimmered faintly with anti-scrying lacquer. A vault. No doors, no exits. Just a single raised pedestal in the center.
On it something sat, shrouded in a metal cocoon of delicate filigree.
Cassian approached, each footstep echoing like a verdict.
It was a bird.
No; the bird.
The same shadow-tech courier that had disintegrated three floors above.
Now here. Whole again. Waiting.
Its red eye blinked.
Cassian's pulse stilled.
"Impossible," he murmured.
The bird unfolded its wings with a soft chik-chik, cocked its head, and spoke.
Not in chirps.
In his father's voice.
"If you're hearing this… they've found the real Cassian."
Cassian froze.
The bird's voice continued, crisp, precise, pre-recorded:
"You were never just my bastard. You were the experiment."
"The Chain runs deeper than the nobles know. And you, my son, were never just born of blood."
The pedestal hissed.
A panel slid open at the base of the floor, revealing a sealed vault box; marked with the sigil of Riftforging.
Cassian stared down.