The air in the Soot-Wards didn't just smell; it had a texture. It coated the back of Elian's throat like a layer of grease, tasting of sulfur, unwashed bodies, and the metallic tang of "slag"—the magical waste that rained down from the floating city above.
Elian pulled his charcoal-colored scarf up over his nose, narrowing his eyes against the biting wind. He adjusted the strap of his satchel, checking the weight. It was light. Too light.
"We need to move, Elian," a small voice whispered from his elbow.
Elian looked down. Bram, a street urchin no older than ten, was shivering against his leg. The boy's tunic was little more than a patchwork of rags.
"Patience, Bram," Elian murmured, his voice a soft baritone that seemed to cut through the chaotic noise of the crowd. He placed a hand on the boy's shoulder. Elian's hands were rough, scarred from years of scavenging and fighting, but his touch was gentle. "The Drop hasn't started. If you run out there now, the Guards will whip you for sport."
Elian looked up. High above the smog and the jagged tenements of the slums, the Sky Palace of Aethelgard gleamed like a second sun. It was a disc of white marble and gold, floating effortlessly on a cushion of magic. Up there, Prince Lysander was likely sipping wine that cost more than Elian's entire life. Down here, thousands of people were crowded into the Drop Zone, waiting for the Palace to open its waste chutes.
It was harvest day. The day the rich threw away their trash, and the poor fought to the death for it.
Elian wasn't here for himself. He was a healer—an unlicensed, back-alley stitcher of wounds. He needed mana-shards. Even the broken, depleted crystals discarded by the nobility contained enough residual energy to cauterize a wound or heat a bowl of soup for a dying patient.
"I see the vents opening!" a man shouted nearby, his face scarred by mana-burns.
A low, mechanical groan echoed from the sky, vibrating in Elian's teeth. The massive bay doors on the underside of the floating city began to part.
"Stay behind me," Elian ordered Bram, his body tensing. He wasn't the biggest man in the square, but he was lean and coiled like a whipcord. Under his grey cloak, he hid a jagged metal pipe—his only weapon. "Do not break formation."
The crowd surged. The sky darkened as the debris began to fall. It was a glittering rain of refuse—shards of glass, torn enchanted silks, broken furniture, and the coveted glowing crystals.
Elian moved. He didn't scramble like the others; he weaved. He danced through the crushing press of bodies, his eyes scanning the mud for the faint blue glow of medical-grade shards.
A large brute of a man shoved a woman to the ground, raising a boot to stomp on her fingers to steal the fragment she had reached for.
Elian didn't think. He lunged. He caught the brute's collar and used the man's own momentum to swing him into the mud.
"Find your own," Elian snarled, standing over the woman. He offered her a hand, pulling her up.
"Thank you," she gasped, eyeing him with wide, fearful eyes.
Elian nodded once, pulling his hood lower. He turned to find Bram, but the crowd had shifted.
Then he saw him.
Bram had spotted a large Fire-Core fragment—a prize that could heat a tenement block for a month. It had bounced into the center of the kill-zone. The boy was running for it.
But he wasn't looking up.
A massive chunk of masonry—a discarded gargoyle from the Palace ramparts—was plummeting straight for the boy. It fell silently, heavy and lethal.
"Bram!" Elian shouted.
He couldn't reach him in time. The physics were impossible. The rock was seconds away.
Elian's heart stopped. The instinct to protect, the same instinct that had made him a healer in a world of killers, overrode his survival instinct. He didn't run toward the boy. He reached out with his soul.
He shoved his hands forward, palms open.
Stop it.
The air around Elian screamed.
High Commander Vane hated the Wards.
He stood on the balcony of the Observation Outpost, a sleek black structure hovering just above the rooftops of the slums. He leaned against the railing, swirling a glass of amber liquor, watching the chaos below with eyes the color of cold steel.
"Animals," his lieutenant muttered beside him. "Look at them fight over garbage."
Vane didn't answer. He took a sip of his drink. He didn't despise the poor for being poor; he despised them for being boring. It was always the same. Greed. Violence. Desperation. There was no strategy, no elegance. Just a muddy brawl.
He was about to turn away, to go back to the Palace where the Prince was likely whining about his silk sheets, when a flash of movement caught his eye.
Down in the thick of the press, there was a figure in a grey cloak.
Vane narrowed his eyes, his vision magically enhanced. The figure moved differently than the others. While the mob pushed and shoved with brute force, this one flowed. He was water moving through stone.
Vane watched as the hooded figure dropped a man twice his size with a simple, efficient judo throw, then paused to help a fallen woman.
Interesting, Vane thought. Morality in the Wards? That's a rare suicide note.
He watched as the hooded man turned, searching for something. Then, Vane saw the child running into the death zone. He saw the falling gargoyle.
"Dead," Vane whispered, diagnosing the situation instantly. "The boy is paste."
He expected the man in the grey cloak to look away. To flinch.
Instead, the man did something insane. He planted his feet. He threw his arms out.
Vane swirled his drink, waiting for the inevitable splat.
BOOM.
Vane's glass shattered in his hand.
He didn't drop it; the sheer pressure wave that erupted from the square below cracked the crystal in his grip.
Down in the mud, a dome of blinding, molten gold had materialized over the child. The two-ton stone gargoyle hit the barrier and didn't just break—it disintegrated. It turned to dust, vaporized by the intensity of the heat.
The shockwave knocked half the crowd off their feet.
Vane gripped the railing, ignoring the liquor dripping down his leather gloves. His heart, usually a slow, steady drum, skipped a beat.
That wasn't a charm. That wasn't a stored spell.
That was raw, channeled Solar Magic.
"Commander?" the lieutenant asked, shielding his eyes from the afterglow. "What the hell was that? An explosion?"
"No," Vane whispered, a slow, predatory smile curving his lips. The boredom that had plagued him for years evaporated instantly.
The golden light faded. The man in the grey hood collapsed to his knees, clearly exhausted.
"That," Vane said, pushing himself off the railing and adjusting his sword belt, "was an invitation."
He vaulted over the railing, dropping three stories down into the mud below. He landed in a crouch, his obsidian armor absorbing the impact.
He rose to his full height, the crowd parting before him in terror. The Queen's Wolf had arrived.
Vane ignored the peasants. He walked straight toward the figure kneeling in the mud.
As he got closer, the man looked up. The hood fell back slightly.
Vane paused.
He had expected a grizzled warlock. A veteran.
Instead, he was looking at a boy—no, a young man—with a jawline sharp enough to cut glass and eyes... gods, his eyes. They were violet. A deep, startling purple that burned with defiance even as his body shook with exhaustion.
He was beautiful. In a dirty, broken, dangerous way.
Vane stopped a few feet away. The air around the boy was still hot, smelling of ozone and roasted almonds.
"You missed a spot," Vane drawled, gesturing to the dust settling on the boy's shoulder.
Elian couldn't breathe. His lungs felt like they had been scoured with sandpaper. He stared at his hands, which were trembling violently.
I used it. I used the Light.
He scrambled to his feet, grabbing Bram by the scruff of the neck and shoving him behind his back.
"Go," Elian rasped. "Run."
"Well, that was dramatic," a deep, smooth voice came from the fog.
Elian froze. He knew that voice. Everyone in the Wards knew that voice. It was the voice that sentenced rioters to the gallows.
Elian looked up into the cold grey eyes of the High Commander.
Vane towered over him. Up close, the man was terrifying. He was clad in black armor that seemed to suck the light out of the air. He didn't have a helmet, revealing a face that was handsome in a cruel, aristocratic way.
Elian instinctively stepped back, putting more distance between them. "It was a relic," he lied quickly, his voice hoarse. "A shield-stone. I found it in the slag."
Vane took a step closer. He didn't look like a guard arresting a criminal. He looked like a guard dog cornering a thief. He looked... hungry.
"A relic," Vane repeated, testing the word. He tilted his head, his eyes scanning Elian's body—from his muddy boots to his heaving chest, lingering on his mouth. "Strange. Relics usually crumble after a blast like that. Yet here you are, standing."
"I got lucky," Elian spat.
"I don't believe in luck," Vane murmured. He reached out.
Elian flinched, expecting a blow. But Vane simply brushed a thumb over Elian's cheekbone, wiping away a smudge of soot. The touch was electric. Elian felt a jolt of heat that had nothing to do with magic zip down his spine.
"You have violet eyes," Vane noted, his voice dropping to a whisper that only Elian could hear. "And you smell like the sun."
"And you smell like tyranny," Elian countered, slapping Vane's hand away.
The crowd gasped. No one touched the Wolf.
Vane didn't strike him. He smiled. A genuine, terrifying smile.
"Feisty," Vane said. "I like feisty."
He leaned in, invading Elian's personal space until Elian could count the silver flecks in his irises.
"The Drop is continuing, little spark," Vane whispered. "If you survive the next volley... perhaps I won't arrest you for treason."
Vane stepped back, crossing his arms. He wasn't leaving. He was going to watch.
Elian looked up. Another load of debris was falling. And Vane was blocking the only exit.