The alley stank of rotting fish and piss. Kael pressed his back against the cold brick wall, breath coming in sharp gasps that clouded the frigid night air. His ribs screamed where Torvin's boot had connected earlier, and he was pretty sure at least one was cracked.
Three of them blocked the alley entrance. Torvin stood in the middle, cracking his knuckles with that smug grin Kael had learned to hate over the past six months. The man was built like a barrel with arms thicker than Kael's thighs, and he had the kind of face that looked like it enjoyed causing pain.
"Thirty silver, Rivyn," Torvin said, his voice carrying that casual menace of someone who knew they held all the cards. "That's what you owe Markus. Plus interest. Makes it forty now."
Kael's hand instinctively went to his empty coin pouch. He had maybe three copper bits to his name, and that wouldn't buy him a stale loaf of bread, let alone get these bastards off his back.
"I don't have it," Kael said, hating how his voice cracked. "I told Markus I'd have it by next week. I've got a job lined up at the docks and—"
"Next week." Torvin took a step forward. Orange light from a flickering street lamp caught the brass knuckles on his right hand. "You said that last week. And the week before. Markus is tired of waiting."
The two goons flanking Torvin spread out, cutting off any chance of running. One was tall and skeletal with dead eyes. The other was shorter but moved with the coiled tension of someone who knew how to fight. Both had the look of men who'd done this before.
Kael's heart hammered against his chest. He'd been in scrapes before, plenty of them growing up in the Outer Reaches, but this was different. These weren't street kids fighting over territory. These were professionals, and he was their job.
"Look," Kael tried again, raising his hands in what he hoped was a placating gesture. "Just give me three more days. I swear I'll have the money. All of it."
Torvin laughed, a sound like grinding gravel. "Three days. You hear that, boys? Kid thinks he can negotiate."
The skeletal one smiled, showing teeth that were more gaps than enamel. The shorter one just stared, expressionless.
Kael's mind raced. The alley was a dead end behind him, nothing but a brick wall and a pile of crates that wouldn't stop a determined rat. No windows low enough to reach, no doors, no convenient piles of weapons just lying around. Just him, three men who wanted to hurt him, and the cold certainty that talking his way out wasn't going to work.
"Here's what's going to happen," Torvin said, rolling his shoulders like he was warming up for exercise. "We're going to break a few things. Nothing permanent, mind you. Markus still wants his money, so we'll leave you functional. But you need to understand that debts get paid in this city. One way or another."
The panic that had been simmering in Kael's gut exploded into something sharper. His vision tunneled. His hands started trembling, and not from the cold.
Then he felt it.
That pull. That wrongness at the edge of his awareness that had been getting stronger over the past few months. Like reality had a loose thread and if he just pulled hard enough, everything would unravel.
Not now, Kael thought desperately. Not here.
But the feeling didn't care what he wanted. It never did.
Torvin moved. Fast for a big man. His fist came up in a brutal arc aimed at Kael's face.
Time seemed to slow. Kael saw every detail with crystalline clarity. The way Torvin's brass knuckles caught the light. The flex of muscle in the man's forearm. The cruel anticipation in his eyes.
And beneath it all, that pull grew stronger.
Something inside Kael snapped.
The air between them rippled. Not like heat shimmer, but something else. Something darker. For a fraction of a second, Kael saw through the world, saw the space between spaces, an infinite nothing that made his stomach lurch and his mind scream.
Torvin's fist hit the ripple and stopped.
Just stopped.
The big man's eyes went wide. His arm was buried up to the elbow in what looked like a tear in the air itself, a wound in reality that bled absolute darkness. No light escaped it. No sound. It was absence made manifest.
"What the—" Torvin tried to pull back.
The darkness pulled harder.
Torvin screamed. It was a high, terrified sound that didn't match his size. He thrashed, planting his feet and hauling backward with everything he had. The other two men rushed forward, grabbing him, trying to help.
Kael stood frozen, watching in horror as the thing he'd somehow created drank in Torvin's arm. Frost spread from the edge of the tear, crawling up the man's skin like living ice. The flesh beneath turned gray, then black.
"Let go!" the skeletal man shouted at Kael. "Make it stop!"
But Kael didn't know how. He didn't even know what he'd done. The pull in his mind had become a roar, drowning out thought, drowning out everything except the terrible hunger of the void he'd opened.
With a final, desperate heave, all three men threw themselves backward.
Torvin's arm came free.
Or what was left of it.
From the elbow down, there was nothing. Not a stump, not bone, just... nothing. The end of his arm terminated in that same absolute darkness, as if the rest simply didn't exist anymore.
Torvin collapsed, his scream cutting off into shocked silence. His face had gone the color of old parchment.
The tear in the air began to collapse in on itself, shrinking, folding into dimensions that shouldn't exist. In seconds it was gone, leaving only the stink of ozone and something else. Something that reminded Kael of cold and distance and the space between stars.
The skeletal man stared at Kael with naked terror. "Void Walker," he whispered.
Then they ran. The shorter one hauled Torvin to his feet and they fled, leaving a trail of frozen blood that steamed in the night air.
Kael stood alone in the alley, his whole body shaking. He looked down at his hands. They looked normal. Felt normal. But he could still sense it, that wrongness, coiled inside him like a sleeping serpent.
What am I?
The question had been haunting him for months, ever since the first time reality had felt thin around him. But now, staring at the spot where he'd unmade part of a man's arm, the question took on a new, terrifying weight.
He'd heard stories. Whispers in taverns and markets. Tales of Void Walkers, people who could touch the space between worlds, who wielded the raw nothing that existed before creation. Dangerous people. Hunted people.
Dead people, usually.
Kael's knees gave out and he slumped against the wall, sliding down until he sat in something he really hoped was just water. His breath came in ragged gasps and his vision swam.
He'd just revealed himself. In front of witnesses. In the middle of the Outer Reaches where information was currency and Markus had ears everywhere.
By morning, everyone would know. The Empire would know.
And then they'd come for him, just like they'd come for his parents.
Kael closed his eyes and tried to stop shaking. He failed.
Somewhere in the distance, bells began to ring. The city watch, probably responding to Torvin's screams. Kael forced himself to his feet, legs wobbling like a newborn calf.
He had to move. Had to run. Had to figure out what he was going to do before the world came crashing down around him.
Again.
Kael stumbled out of the alley into the narrow streets of the Outer Reaches, pulling his threadbare coat tight against the cold. The night swallowed him, but he knew it wouldn't hide him for long.
Nothing ever did.