The smell hit me first. It wasn't the ozone of magic or the rot of the sewers. It was the metallic tang of old blood and the sour reek of unwashed straw.
I couldn't move. My wrists were chafed raw, bound by cold iron shackles to a stone wall that wept moisture. The darkness was absolute, save for the rhythmic, terrified breathing of the man chained next to me.
Creeeeak.
The heavy oak door opened, spilling a rectangle of torchlight across the uneven stone floor. A silhouette stepped in—a man in a hooded leather apron holding a pair of heated tongs that glowed a dull, angry cherry-red.
He didn't speak. He just walked toward me, the tongs hissing as they cut through the damp air.
I tried to pull away, but the chains held fast. I tried to scream, but my throat was parched, silent. The heat of the iron drew closer to my face, close enough to singe my eyelashes. I knew this kind of pain. I knew exactly how long it took for the nerves to burn away.
I braced myself, waiting, hoping for the guitar riff. Waiting for Dire Straits or Fleetwood Mac to shatter the reality and tell me this was just a dream.
Silence. Just the hiss of the iron and the thudding of my own heart.
The tongs touched my skin.
….
"GAAAAH!"
I bolted upright in the tangled sheets of the dorm bed, a scream dying in my throat, replaced by a ragged gasp. My hand flew to my cheek, expecting blistered flesh. Smooth skin. Cold sweat.
I sat there in the early morning sun, hyperventilating, the phantom smell of burning skin lingering in my nose.
'Ronan,' I wheezed, my mental voice shaking. 'Where were you?'
There was a pause in our shared mind, a heavy, guilty silence.
'What do you mean?'
'The music… I need… please don't stop playing the music…'
'I... sorry, Murph,' Ronan said quietly. 'I didn't know it meant so much.'
I slumped back against the stone wall, waiting for my pulse to drop below lethal levels. 'It.. It helps with the nightmares, that's all.'
That hadn't felt like a movie. That had felt like yesterday.
'Without the music... it's too real… It's like being back in the box. And I can't go back, Ronan.'
'I promise, Murphy,' Ronan said, his voice solemn. 'I will not forget again. I swear it.'
'Thanks, buddy''
I took a shower down the hall in our common bathroom. I didn't have to, but I needed to, if that makes sense. I had to get my head screwed on straight because I had a business to run.
For the past week, the arched colonnade near the Dining Hall had effectively become my office. I'd spent an hour lurking in the shadows, watching the Jester operation evolve from a desperate hustle into a well-oiled machine. Lastlight's weather had been our silent partner, remaining permanently set to 'dramatic drizzle,' and the relentless mud had quickly become our Employee of the Month.
Business was, in a word, lucrative.
The system was simple. New Clients received a bag with their first purchase. I had several more made over the last few days since we had run out of bags within hours of the launch. Some people just kept the bags. It made sense; they were pretty sweet, but the rest would fill their bags with dirty laundry and drop them off with Jesters at fixed times and locations. Said Jester, call him Jester Alpha, would take the bag and place their hand inside. Jester Beta flash-cleaned it and gave the signal to hand it back. While Jester Gamma took the coin. We're still working on better names. We immediately figured out that if we let the clones pick their own names, we would end up with shit like "Nick Slaughter" and "Mitch Buchannon". Which I could respect to a degree, they were awesome names, but it was also a mouthful. We ended up using the ones Ronan wanted, and since I also couldn't think of anything better in the moment, that's what we have for now.
We cleared a hundred gold crowns in the first week. However, business died off sharply after that.
I checked the mental ledger. Henry Black and his spectral enforcer, Knuckles, had been paid in full. The "High Risk" interest was gone. The next two weekly fifty-gold extortion payments to the Academy Bursar were already paid. The fifty gold academy application fee covered our first term's tuition, but I was sure we would need to drop another fifty gold on tuition in a few months.
Regardless, for the first time since waking up in the alley, we were solvent.
'Look at the intake,' Ronan observed, sounding like a proud, if slightly morally conflicted, factory foreman. 'Volume is down seven per cent from yesterday.'
'Market saturation,' I noted, watching a spotless Lysander Thorne walk past the Jesters without stopping. 'The rich kids are running out of dirty clothes. We cleaned their entire wardrobes in the first rush. Now we have to wait for them to get them dirty again.'
'A pity we cannot... encourage the mud,' Ronan mused.
'Careful, Paladin,' I smirked. 'You're sounding like a capitalist. Next, you'll be suggesting we sabotage the drainage system.'
'I would never,' he huffed. 'However, relying on the weather is a poor strategy.'
'We're fine,' I said, turning away from the operation as the bell tolled. 'The debt is under control. Once we have a buffer, we start spending on the dorm. House Argent leaks like a sieve. I want heavy curtains, new mattresses for the squad, and comfortable furniture for the common room.'
'Fortifying the keep,' Ronan agreed. 'A sound investment. Morale is a resource.'
I had big plans for House Argent, which meant I needed a lot more gold.
Academics, unfortunately, could not be solved by a clever scam and a bag of gold.
I sat in the back of Professor Vex's Runic Theory class, staring at a piece of parchment that looked like a spider had dipped its legs in ink and died of a seizure.
"The Runic syntax for 'Flow' acts as a logic gate," Vex droned from the front, tapping the chalkboard. "It directs the Aetheric current. If the angle of the intake stroke is off by even a degree, the mana dissipates as heat. Or, in Mr Sunstrider's case, likely explodes."
A ripple of laughter went through the class. I ignored it, chewing the end of my quill.
To everyone else, this was intuitive. They saw runes as religious songs—a language of the soul. To me, it was coding.
'It's an If/Then statement,' I thought, tracing the jagged line of the Ignis rune. 'If mana input > X, then vent heat. Else, channel to combustion chamber.'
'You are over-analysing the geometry,' Ronan sighed in my head. 'You are trying to treat magic like plumbing.'
'Magic is plumbing, Ronan. It's just pipes made of light. If I can figure out the pressure variance...'
I sketched a modification to the rune, adding a small stabilising loop to the "vent" I had argued about days ago.
'That won't work,' Ronan warned. 'You're closing the loop too early.'
I pushed a tiny trickle of mana into the ink. The rune flared orange, hissed, and then scorched a perfect, tiny circle through the desk.
"Sunstrider!" Vex barked, spinning around. "Are you attempting to burn down my classroom again?"
"Just testing a hypothesis, Professor," I said, covering the smoking hole with my elbow.
"Restitution Detail," Vex sneered. "Add it to your tab."
I sank lower in my chair. I was slowly getting it—my "engineering" approach was clumsy, but when it worked, it was efficient. The problem was that I wasn't a programmer to begin with. Sure, I had a few classes in high school, but I was no expert.
Every day, the sun set, and the orange jumpsuits came out.
Restitution Detail—or the "Slag Squad"—had become the anchor of my day. It was gruelling, dirty work, but there was an honesty to it that the classroom lacked.
We were deep in the sub-basement of the Library, replacing the massive, humming mana-cores that powered the ventilation system. The air down here was thick with dust and the thrum of ancient machinery.
"Pass me the wrench," Grace said, her voice echoing in the crawlspace. She was hanging upside down from a pipe, her welding goggles reflecting the blue glow of the core.
I handed it up. "How's the structural integrity?"
"Garbage," Grace grunted, cranking a bolt with a bit more aggression than necessary. "The Guild Artificers use a standard 'Lock-Step' array. It's rigid. If one rune fails, the whole chain fails. It's lazy. It's... unfeeling."
She dropped back to the floor, wiping grease on her orange sleeve. She caught me looking at her.
"My family, House Voss... they're purists," she muttered, her eyes darkening. "They treat Golems like machines. Input, output. Obedience."
"And you don't?" I asked, leaning against a stack of crates.
Grace scoffed. "I want to expand them. I want them to understand why they were protecting us, not just that they had to." She looked at the wrench in her hand. "Runes, unfortunately, just aren't there yet. I did my best, but during the demo, my prototype stopped its attack sequence to shield a stray cat that wandered onto the testing range. My father called it a 'critical failure'. He had it scrapped for parts right in front of me."
She shoved the wrench into her pocket. "They called it a glitch. That's why I'm here, Murphy. To prove that it's possible. If I can expand rune inscription to a new level of understanding. If I can just..." She stopped mid-sentence, looking defeated.
I nodded slowly. The Heretical Mechanic.
"What about the big guy?" I asked, nodding toward Kael.
The giant Berserker was sitting on a crate in the corner. He wasn't working. He was holding a tiny, dead moth he'd found near the light fixture. He was staring at it with an expression of profound, crushing gentleness.
"Kael?" Grace lowered her voice. "He's Iron-Reach. You know the stories?"
I hesitated. My knowledge of this world's geography was basically limited to the sewers and the school.
'Ronan?'
'Barbarians from the Frozen Waste,' Ronan supplied instantly, his voice grim. 'They possess a bloodline trait called the Red Haze. It creates a berserker state where they feel no pain and distinguish no friend from foe. In the War, we used to point them at the enemy and run the other way.'
"The Red Haze," I said, parroting the intel. "Unstoppable rage. They don't stop until everything is dead."
"He woke up too early," Grace whispered. "When he was a kid. He had a tantrum. The Haze took him. By the time he came back... his family's hut was kindling. His brother never walked right again."
She looked at Kael, who was now using a single, massive finger to stroke the moth's wing.
"He's terrified, Murphy. Not of the dark, or monsters, or nobles. He's terrified of his own hands. That's why he paints. That's why he barely speaks. He thinks if he lets go for even a second, the monster comes back."
I looked at my squad. The engineer who loved machines too much, the sky-knight who couldn't fly, and the warrior who was afraid to fight.
"We're a real piece of work, aren't we?" I murmured.
"We're scrap," Grace corrected with a crooked grin. "But you can build anything with scrap if you have the right blueprint."
Back in House Argent, the real work began.
The room was locked. The heavy curtains I had bought with the laundry money were drawn tight. The fake gold scheme was over; we dealt in real coin now, so there were no clones needed to maintain illusions.
I sat alone in the centre of the room on a soft carpet I bought for the room, legs crossed.
'Tonight is the night,' Ronan announced. 'The foundation is set. The walls are cured. We push for Dark Blue.'
I closed my eyes. Ronan took the lead, guiding the Solar Crucible. We didn't just breathe in the Aether; we dragged it in. The mana rushed into my channels, a roaring river of energy.
My Core—currently a solid, humming sphere of bright blue—began to vibrate.
'Compress!' Ronan commanded.
He visualised the sphere shrinking and pushed against the internal pressure, forcing the mana to occupy less space. It fought back. It felt like he was trying to crush a diamond with his mind. The heat in my chest spiked, turning from a warm glow to a searing furnace.
'Hold it!' Ronan roared over the mental strain. 'Help me hold it! Do not let it expand! Force the density!'
I gritted my teeth, sweat pouring down my face. The pain was a high-pitched whine in my nervous system.
Crack.
Not a break. A shift.
The bright, cheerful blue of the Core deepened. It darkened, turning the colour of the ocean at midnight. The vibration stopped. The heat vanished, replaced by a feeling of immense, heavy depth.
I gasped, opening my eyes. The air in the room seemed to ripple around me.
'Dark Blue,' Ronan whispered, satisfied. 'The rank of a true Adept.'
I checked the internal gauge. The difference was staggering. It wasn't just that the tank was bigger; the fuel was better.
'Look at the math,' I realised, stunned. 'The capacity has doubled. But the efficiency...'
'It is exponential,' Ronan confirmed. 'With a Dark Blue Core, the structural integrity of the Echo is absolute. If you cast a standard clone using thirty per cent of your mana... it won't decay.'
'Won't decay?'
'Not for a full day,' Ronan corrected. 'A single clone can now exist for twenty-four hours without needing to meditate. It is stable.'
'And if I leave one clone here to meditate?'
'The input from a Dark Blue meditation cycle matches the output of an active clone perfectly,' Ronan calculated. 'One battery keeps one soldier in the field indefinitely. We have achieved equilibrium.'
'Let's test the limit,' I said, standing up. 'Maximum output.'
I reached for the Art. I didn't summon one clone. I summoned the squad.
Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.
Six new clones materialised, joining the room.
Wait. Not just six.
I pushed harder. The new, deeper reservoir responded.
Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.
Twelve.
Twelve identical Murphys crowded into the small stone room. It was suffocatingly tight. We were shoulder to shoulder, a sea of grey tunics and tired faces.
Despite the crush, the atmosphere instantly shifted into something bizarrely genteel.
"Charming soirée," one clone murmured, swirling an imaginary wine glass with his pinky out.
"Oh, delightful," another replied, affecting a posh accent while smoothing down the front of his filthy tunic. "And I must say, I simply adore your outfit. Is that... 'Standard Issue Grey'? It really brings out the exhaustion in your eyes."
"You simply must introduce me to your tailor," a third chimed in, leaning over my shoulder to critique a fourth clone. "The stitching is atrocious, but the hopelessness? Exquisite."
Then, a gasp cut through the polite chatter. The crowd parted as best they could in the crushed space.
"Did you..." one clone whispered, pointing a trembling finger at another version of himself. "Did you just step on my foot?"
"It was an accident, old boy," the accused clone said, holding his hands up defensively.
"An accident?" The first clone scoffed, his voice rising to a theatrical screech. "I saw the way you looked at my toes! You did it on purpose! You're jealous of my arch!"
"Jealous? Of those flat paddles?" The accused clone laughed cruelly. "I have the exact same feet, you bounder! And mine are significantly cleaner!"
"The scandal!" a clone in the back shouted, clutching his chest. "He insulted the royal feet!"
"Have at you!"
"Ruffian!"
"Cad!"
Suddenly, the politeness evaporated. A clone slapped another across the face with a wet thwack. Another put his neighbour in a headlock. Within seconds, the room dissolved into a grey, writhing mosh pit of identical limbs, curses, and slap-fighting. It was like watching a mirror shatter in slow motion.
'Twelve,' I breathed, pinching the bridge of my nose as I watched myself punch myself in the kidney. 'We could run the laundry, the slag detail, and a fight club simultaneously.'
The noise was becoming unbearable. A chorus of twelve identical voices screaming twelve different insults.
"Dispel," I muttered, waving my hand with zero ceremony.
Pop. Pop. Pop-pop-pop.
The clones vanished instantly in puffs of smoke, leaving the room blissfully, suddenly empty.
In the silence that followed, a chill ran up my spine. My Danger Sense gave a low, throbbing warning. Not an immediate threat, but a looming one.
I walked to the window, enjoying the lack of elbows in my ribs, and peered through the gap in the new curtains.
Across the campus, the lights in the Azure Spire flickered.
'Something is coming,' I whispered.
'Tomorrow is the Grand Assembly,' Ronan reminded me. 'The Headmaster summoned the entire student body. Attendance mandatory.'
We were stronger than ever. We were rich. We were armed.
But as I looked at the Spire, I couldn't shake the feeling that the game was about to change rules again.