The city of Odis appeared on the horizon like a jagged wound on the earth. Built inside the ribcage of a long-dead colossus, its towers were made of obsidian and bone, illuminated by flickering neon arrays of "Ghost Qi" that cast eerie shades of violet and green over the crowded streets. This was the sanctuary of the lawless, where the Empire's decrees were used as scrap paper.
As Yun, Shara, and Meilin passed through the rusted gates, the atmosphere hit them: a mixture of ozone, incense, and the copper tang of blood.
"Stay close," Shara warned, her hood pulled low. "In Odis, if you don't look like a predator, you're immediately treated as prey."
They hadn't walked three blocks toward the blacksmith's district when a group of men blocked their path. They wore leather armor reinforced with "Void Ore" plates, and their leader, a man with a cybernetic eye that pulsed with a sickly yellow light, held a humming chain-blade. They were the Bone-Grinders, the gang that controlled the flow of materials in the lower district.
"New faces," the leader rasped, his yellow eye scanning Yun. "And high-quality ones. The ladies look like they belong in a Jade Pavilion, and the boy... he smells like a walking treasure chest."
"We are just passing through," Yun said, his voice calm, but with that underlying vibration he had learned from Haku.
"In Odis, 'passing through' costs a tax," the leader sneered, stepping closer to Meilin. "Maybe the red-haired one stays for a night as payment?"
Meilin's hands ignited, but before she could lash out, Yun placed a hand on her shoulder. He looked at the leader, not with anger, but with the focused Will he had practiced. He didn't see a man; he saw a temporary arrangement of atoms that shouldn't be there.
"Your tax is a lie," Yun whispered.
He didn't move. He didn't even blink. But suddenly, the leader's cybernetic eye began to smoke, and the heavy Void Ore plates on his armor simply... evaporated. The gang members gasped as their leader's weapon turned into gray mist in his hands.
"What... what did you do?!" the leader screamed, falling back in terror.
"I decided your aggression was irrelevant to my path," Yun replied. The violet mark on his neck glowed faintly. "If you move again, I will decide your heart is irrelevant to your body."
The Bone-Grinders scrambled away, their bravado shattered by a power they couldn't even label as Qi.
"You're getting better at that," Meilin said, a smirk returning to her face. "But we just made a lot of enemies in a very small city."
"Let them come," Yun said, looking toward the district of smoke and hammers. "We have a blacksmith to find."