A drop of rusty water struck the warped, tin windowsill.
Rian flinched, immediately letting fly a string of curses. He pried one eye open. The smog of the Underworld, thick and yellowish like spoiled milk, choked the morning light. His attic hovel sat in perpetual gloom.
He sniffed. The damp air still carried the acrid stench of ozone and scorched flesh—his own flesh.
He sat up abruptly on his pallet, kicking off a musty blanket. His right arm throbbed with a dull, tearing pain. He looked at the skin running from his elbow to his neck. Calloused, black veins—looking like cracks in parched asphalt—stood out in sharp relief against his body. He raked his dirty fingernails across them, scratching hard until the skin reddened.
It itched like hell—a sign he'd overdone it again yesterday.
"Damn it all," he growled, delivering a sharp kick to an empty bottle on the floor.
The glass shattered against the opposite wall. Rian didn't even blink. He brushed back the matted hair falling over his eyes and glanced at his forearms.
The thick copper bracelets were still there. The shards of quartz embedded in the metal were clouded with matte soot. He pulled a pocketknife from his pocket and, with angry, jagged energy, began scraping the grime off the crystals. The Zealots in the safe, wealthy districts had their little bells and prayers; he had this shit. His own primitive fuse.
Whenever he tapped into the power, absorbing energy from another dimension by tearing open a rift for a fraction of a second, the copper would sear him to the bone. A physical signal to run before the Ether burned him from the inside out—a brutal reminder to stop.
The blade slipped off the quartz, leaving a shallow scratch on the brown metal. Rian cursed again, louder this time. He folded the knife with an unnaturally quick flick of his wrist. He lacked the patience for precision work. In fact, he lacked the patience for much of anything.
He scooped his coat off the floor, heavy with patches and countless, hastily mended pockets. Glass clinked softly inside. He slid his hand into the stiff, grime-caked fabric and pulled out several vials.
Empty.
Every last one of them.
Yesterday, he'd risked his life to snatch a bit of raw energy directly from the source, and now he didn't even have the product to hawk as a drug on the black market. No one in the slums would pay him for empty promises.
He stood up, jerking the coat onto his shoulders. A muffled roar drifted up from the street below, followed immediately by the sound of splintering wood. Someone from the local gangs was trying to prove who ran the place again.
Rian spat on the floor. He was hungry, sleep-deprived, and furious.
He adjusted the fastening at his throat. He glanced toward the corner of the hovel, where a bent metal cup sat—the only thing he'd stolen from this hole that was worth more than a rag. Maybe half a copper coin. And the rent was two silver by the end of the week.
"Bloody perfect," he muttered to himself.
He pushed the door off its rusted hinges and stepped out onto the stairs.
The stairwell was narrow, dark, and reeked of urine. Wooden steps groaned under every footfall. Rian descended quickly, sticking close to the wall. On the second floor, he passed an old woman in a tattered robe who watched him with a hollow gaze. He said nothing.
On the ground floor, Gredo was waiting.
Massive, bald, and with a face covered in a web of fine scars, his belly spilled out from beneath a stained undershirt. Gredo was the owner of this dump. He owned half the tenements in the block and held the debts of half the slums.
He sat on a creaking chair by the entrance, a thick wooden club resting against his knee.
"Rian," he said in a deep, gravelly voice. "Two days until the end of the week."
"I know."
"Two silver."
"I know, Gredo."
"Because if you don't pay, I'll toss you onto the cobbles. And I'll take everything in that hole—including that metal cup."
Rian clenched his jaw. Of course he knew about the cup. Gredo knew everything.
"I'll pay."
"Better for you if you do."
Rian bypassed him and shoved open the heavy wooden exit door. He stepped out into the street.