The mana-wagon was a rattling, groaning beast of rusted steel and groaning timber. Damian sat in the back, crammed between sacks of low-grade ore and a crate of squawking, plump tunnel-hens. The air was thick with dust, animal stink, and the sweat of the other passengers—a handful of miners, a furtive-looking tinker, and a family of dirt-poor farmers all sharing the cheapest transport out of the Stoneheart foothills.
He'd paid two silver shards for the passage, a fortune to these people, but a pittance from his blood-stolen hoard. He wore a scavenged, hooded miner's cloak, the fabric stiff with grime. Beneath it, his body was a lattice of healed wounds and deep, aching fatigue. The physical injuries were sealed, knitted by a combination of stolen potions and the cold, precise stitches of Shadow Mend. But the soul-damage was a different beast—a constant, hollow chill in his center, a feeling of being less. 61.9%. The number was a silent scream in his skull.
He'd been on the road for two days, putting distance between himself and the slaughteryard. Port Veridia was the goal. A vast, chaotic port city where the laws of empires and guilds blurred into a profitable grey. A place to disappear, to gather information, to find a path to the Shadow God bloodline before his soul unraveled.
The wagon lurched, entering a narrow pass where jagged cliffs rose on either side, shrouded in a clinging, grey mist. The driver, a grizzled dwarf with an ironwood pipe clenched in his teeth, cursed and pulled on the mana-brakes. The wagon groaned to a halt.
"What's the holdup?" one of the miners grumbled.
Then they saw her.
A single figure stood in the center of the rough track, silhouetted by the mist. She held a staff, its tip unlit. Her red hair was a wild, tangled banner around a face smudged with soot and dirt. A bloody, makeshift bandage was wrapped around her upper arm. She looked like she'd been dragged through the Abyss and back.
Mara.
She didn't look at the driver. Her eyes, burning with a tired, fierce intensity, scanned the open back of the wagon and locked onto the shadowed shape under the hood. She saw through the grime and the disguise.
The other passengers shifted nervously. This didn't look like a bandit. This looked like trouble of a more personal kind.
Mara took a step forward, her voice cutting through the mist and the quiet rumble of the mana-core. "You in the grey cloak. Get out."
All eyes turned to Damian. The miners edged away. The tinker clutched his bag.
Damian didn't move. He watched her from the shadows of his hood. She was alone. Exhausted. Wounded. Not an Imperial trap. This was something else.
When he didn't respond, she spoke again, louder, her words meant for him alone but heard by all. "They're looking for you. The Crimson House has watchers on every road to the major cities. Kael is leading a 'recovery' team himself. The Empire has posted a bounty for an 'unidentified magical terrorist' in Ironfall—five hundred gold coins, dead or alive. You can't run to a city. You'll walk right into a net."
The passengers gasped. Five hundred gold was a king's ransom. Eyes that had been fearful now gleamed with a dangerous, speculative light.
Damian slowly pushed back his hood. His face was pale, his expression carved from stone. "And you're here to collect it?" His voice was a dry rasp.
A flicker of anger crossed her face. "If I wanted you dead, I'd have led them here, not stood in front of you." She gestured with her staff to the mist-shrouded cliffs. "I know a place. A forgotten mining outpost, high up. Sealed when the vein died. No one goes there. You can disappear, heal, figure out your next move."
"Why?" The single word hung in the cold air.
Mara's jaw tightened. She looked at the ground, then back at him, her defiance mingled with something like shame. "Because Selene left us. She left you to die as a distraction. She left me with no order, like I was nothing. I'm not a tool to be discarded. And…" she met his eyes, the fire in her own guttering down to hard embers, "…you were right. In the Skimmer. About efficiency. About waste. What happened in Ironfall… that wasn't purging corruption. That was just waste. I won't be wasted. And neither will you. Not until you've paid back what you owe."
What you owe. She saw saving him as an investment in her own survival, in getting a return on the brutal lessons he'd forced her to learn. It was the coldest, most pragmatic reason she could have given.
It was the only reason he would believe.
The driver finally found his voice. "Listen, you two, take your drama off my road! I've a schedule!"
A miner stood up, a heavy pickaxe in his hand. "Five hundred gold is a lot of schedule-changing money, dwarf." Two others rose beside him. The greed was a tangible force in the wagon.
Damian stood up. He didn't draw his swords. He just looked at the three miners. He let a fraction of his will, the lingering chill of Killing Intent flooded their senses.
"Sit. Down."
The words were quiet. The miners flinched as if struck. The one with the pickaxe lowered it, his face going grey. They sank back onto the sacks, all fight bled out by a primal, wordless fear.
Damian turned back to Mara. "Lead the way."
He jumped down from the wagon, his movements stiff but precise. He tossed another silver shard to the terrified dwarf. "For the delay."
Mara didn't wait. She turned and strode off the road, beginning a steep, scrambling climb up a scree-covered slope into the mist. Damian followed, his Earth affinity giving him a sure-footedness she lacked.
They climbed in silence for an hour, leaving the road and any pursuit far below. The mist grew thicker, cold and wet on their skin. Finally, Mara stopped before a sheer rock face, overgrown with thorny bramble. She pushed through it, revealing a dark, horizontal crack—the entrance to a mineshaft, long abandoned.
"Inside," she said, ducking through.
The tunnel was narrow, descending sharply. The air was cold and stale, smelling of old stone and damp. After fifty feet, it opened into a small, rough-hewn chamber. The remnants of a camp were there—a rusted brazier, a moldy bedroll, a shattered crate. Someone had used this place before.
Mara lit a small, controlled flame in her palm, casting flickering light. She sank onto the crate, weariness finally overwhelming her. "We're safe here. For now."
Damian leaned against the wall, studying her. "How did you find me?"
"I didn't, at first," she admitted, not looking at him. "I hid after the split. Saw the Imperials flood the Warrens. Heard… the silence after." She swallowed. "I waited until dawn, then went looking. I saw the courtyard." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "I saw what you did. I knew you weren't dead. A trail that bloody… leaves a scent. I asked around the slums. A lone, wounded fighter buying passage to Veridia with imperial silver? It wasn't hard. I ran ahead, cut through the high passes to intercept this road."
"What about Liam and Noah?" Damian asked.
Mara's face darkened. "I don't know. The Smelter Stair was a warzone. Imperial clean-up crews were everywhere by midday. I heard… I heard they only found one body in the Warrens. The woman. The leader. The others were just… gone."
Damian processed this. The Empire had cleaned up his mess, hiding their embarrassment. They'd taken their dead, and presumably Liam and Noah if they'd been captured. But they'd left Elara. A message? Or had they been forced to retreat before they could collect all the pieces?
"We can't stay here forever," he stated.
"I know," Mara said. "But you need to heal. Properly. Not just the body." She gestured vaguely at him. "You look like death warmed over. And we need a plan. We're rogue assets now. The House will kill us as deserters. The Empire will kill us as terrorists. We have no one."
We.