Kahn kicked the iron grate loose, exposing the dark throat of Solis's sewer system. The stench clawed upward in a hot breath—human waste, industrial oil, and the rot of a city decaying from the inside out.
The Guildmaster shoved Gin and Amber toward the abyss.
"I'm not coming with you."
Kahn's voice was the edge of a blade. He drew his longsword, the steel catching the tunnel's sickly light. "The Tracker locks onto my scent. I'll draw her into the forest. Time is the only currency we have left."
"Kahn, no!"
Amber's protest died in the air.
Kahn tore the heavy bronze medallion from his neck—the broken compass, sigil of the Guild—and crushed it into Gin's palm.
"Low Harbor. Main tunnels. Always left. The Vagamundo is there, northern sector. Rurik's in command."
His gaze anchored onto Gin's. "Show the symbol. Say the cargo is aboard. Leave—with me or without me."
"They'll tear you apart before they ever find us," Gin said. His voice cut the air, cold as steel.
"Then run."
Kahn stepped back. "Keep the girl alive."
The iron grate slammed shut with finality.
Kahn vanished in the opposite direction, his retreating steps deliberately loud—bait dragging the storm after him.
Gin and Amber plunged into darkness.
The sewer was a gauntlet of filth. Slime-slick stone threatened to send them sprawling with every step, while the only light came from distant cracks overhead, casting sick beams across black water rising to their ankles.
Gin led.
Adrenaline masked the cost, but the new body was a powerful engine running on an empty tank. Ten minutes of sprinting through the fetid humidity was the limit. Gin's breath didn't fail like his old, diseased lungs—it was a muscular collapse. Legs that had felt like steel turned to lead. Hunger roared, a tearing pain that folded him in half.
He stopped, bracing his hands on his knees.
"Gin!"
Amber was at his side.
"I can't—"
The words broke apart. His body shook, devouring itself for fuel.
He tried to straighten, but balance was a distant memory. Above them, the echoes of the hunt rippled through the tunnels. If they stayed, they would die like rats in their own filth.
Amber looked at him.
In the dimness, her green eyes carried a faint luminescence of their own. She saw the inhuman tremor running through his muscles, the deadly pallor creeping back into his skin.
"I'm sorry, Father," she whispered. "You told me to hide it."
Amber pressed her hands to Gin's chest.
There was none of the white violence from the night before. What flowed from her palms was pure warmth. A golden light, thick as melted honey, wrapped around him. It did not invade—it invited. It streamed into his chest, slid along his nerves, and settled deep in his spine, where the white creature slept.
It felt like being fed after a lifetime of starvation.
The knot in his stomach went silent, replaced by a vibrating fullness. His muscles swelled with clean energy. His senses snapped into perfect focus—he heard water dripping a hundred meters away; saw the exact texture of slime clinging to the walls.
Gin flinched sharply—not in aggression, but disorientation.
"What did you do?"
He stared at her hands. The light vanished, leaving her breathless.
"I gave you some of my breath," she said, looking away. "Come on. Always left."
Amber staggered back before she understood why.
The ground seemed to soften beneath her feet, as if reality itself had lost density for a heartbeat. The warmth that had left her hands didn't fade into the air—it was pulled from her. Drawn out. The current she had known since childhood, gentle and obedient, found no limit inside Gin's body.
It was like pouring water into a bottomless fissure.
Fear struck dry and sudden.
She wasn't in control.
Something inside him had taken more than she offered—and still hungered. Amber clenched her fingers into her palm, a fine tremor rippling up her arms. This wasn't ordinary exhaustion. It was the primal sensation of opening a door she might not know how to close.
They moved again, but the rhythm had changed—predatory now.
Gin led at a speed that bordered on impossible. Twenty minutes later, the stench of rot gave way to salt and pitch. The tunnel ended in a wide mouth that vomited sewage into the northern sector of Low Harbor.
They halted in the exit's half-light.
The Vagamundo was there—its sleek hull tied to the pier.
But the path was blocked.
Not by an army.
By a man.
Kael sat atop a barrel, relaxed, a sledgehammer resting on his shoulder. Around him, the dock was a silent slaughterhouse. Four Guild members lay scattered across the planks. None were dead.
Kael had worked with a craftsman's patience: bones twisted at impossible angles. Knees crushed. Arms reduced to useless weight. Pools of dark blood stained the wood, but the groans were low—smothered by shock.
Kael was enjoying himself.
With one massive hand, he held Rurik—the first mate—by the throat, swinging him like a rag doll. The sailor's face was a mask of blood.
Amber stifled a scream. Her terror was palpable, a vibration in the cold air.
Fear found no purchase in Gin's chest.
He studied the scene—the exposed bone, the executioner's almost lazy ease—and something cold settled into his chest. This wasn't combat. It wasn't domination.
It was performance.
Kael didn't break bodies to win. He prolonged pain because he could. Every shattered bone was deliberate excess, a choice. The violence served no purpose beyond itself.
And that made Kael infinitely more dangerous.
Kael turned his head. He smiled—a grin that never reached his empty eyes. He dropped Rurik into the water with a wet splash and rose, tightening his grip on the hammer's handle.
"There you are, little rats," Kael said. His voice sounded like grinding stone. "Luna said the scent was wrong. She was right."
Gin crushed the bronze medallion in his fist until the metal bit into his skin.
As the giant began to walk toward them, Gin tried to understand the reason behind such cruelty.
And found none.