By morning, the town had given the monster a face.
Not his real one. That would've been too kind.
The sketch was nailed crooked to a cracked stone wall near the market — ink soaked from last night's rain but still clear enough to be hateful. Broad shoulders. Half-shadowed face. One eye drawn as a blank white circle, the other a dark pit. Jagged lines around the mouth like someone trying to represent metal without ever having seen it.
Underneath, in a shaky hand:
METAL DEMON.
REPORT ANY SIGHTING.
Kaiden stared at it from the mouth of an alley, hood low.
They hadn't gotten his jaw right. Or the proportions. Or anything, really.
But the feeling was dead on.
"Charming likeness," Mara muttered at his shoulder.
Rein snorted. "I'd frame it if it didn't make me a target."
Jex hovered back, eyes flicking between the drawing and Kaiden's shadowed profile.
Sylen tore the notice down in one clean motion.
"Souvenir?" Kaiden asked.
She rolled it up and shoved it under her coat.
"Fuel," she said. "Paper burns."
More posters clung to nearby walls. Some newer, some already half-torn. A few had been defaced — horns scribbled on, extra fangs added, someone's idea of a joke about demons.
Most had not.
"They've been busy," Mara said. "This wasn't here last night."
"Word spreads fast when people are scared," Rein muttered.
"Or when someone wants them scared," Kaiden said.
He turned away from the wall.
The streets buzzed more tightly than before. Conversations cut off when cloaks passed by. Mothers dragged children inside faster. Soldiers watched faces more openly, hands never far from weapons.
Somewhere behind all that, a rumour had taken root:
They made a metal demon.
Not just "a demon," not just "a construct."
A demon made of metal from a human corpse.
"Doesn't die," he'd heard one woman whisper at a water pump earlier. "They shot it, burned it. It still walks."
"Rust in its veins," her friend had added, crossing herself.
He'd walked past with his hood up, listening to people talk about him like a ghost story.
It should've felt distant.
It didn't.
"You're limping again," Sylen said under her breath.
"Adapting again," Kaiden replied.
His repaired leg held, but every so often the joint twitched a fraction off. as good as it was, wasn't permanent salvation.
Nothing here was.
They drifted back toward the poorer quarter — not the full slums where they'd started, but the hungry edge of it. Close enough to the gate to matter, far enough to pretend to be civilians.
Jex peeled off to watch intersections. Rein drifted a step behind Kaiden, heavy presence like a moving wall. Mara hugged her satchel, thumb rubbing the edge of a folded schematic through the fabric.
"We need more scrap from near the foundry ruins," she murmured. "If we're going to reinforce the inner ring, the junk we have here won't carry the load."
"Later," Kaiden said. "The town's jumpier. We rush now, we get eyes we don't want."
He didn't add: and if my Core throws another fit while I'm knee-deep in glyphs, we're all ash.
They cut through a narrower side lane.
Halfway down, Jex dropped from a low roof in front of them, breath quick.
"Patrol grid changed," he said. "They're sweeping in pairs now. Human-hunter, rebel-hunter. Not just watching the gate."
"Hunting something specific," Sylen said.
"Us," Rein said flatly.
Jex nodded, then hesitated.
"They called it 'the metal demon,'" he added. "Like it's a thing, not a person."
"Points for accuracy," Kaiden muttered.
Jex's mouth twitched, but there was no humour in it.
"They're setting up choke points," he said. "Rooftop archers, alley nets. If you fit the height from the sketch, you get a closer look."
"Then we keep to the shadows," Sylen said. "And we don't let him walk alone."
Kaiden almost argued.
Then didn't.
They slipped deeper into the warren of smaller streets.
The first trap they saw was sloppy — a tripline hidden under dirty cloth, connected to a hanging bundle of scrap that would've crashed down and made noise more than harm. Annoying, not lethal.
"Testing," Mara murmured. "They want to see who reacts too fast."
"I'll break their fingers if they test me again," Rein growled.
Sylen cut the line with a flick of her knife as they passed, letting the bundle drop early. It crashed into the dirt, no one near to hear.
The second trap was smarter.
A child ran straight into Kaiden's side.
He'd been watching rooftops, windows, reflection angles — not looking down.
Small body. Sharp impact. The kid bounced off like he'd hit a wall.
Kaiden's hand shot out on reflex.
He grabbed cloth before the boy could fall.
"Careful," Kaiden said.
The boy scowled up at him.
Dark hair. Too-big shirt. Face smudged with dirt except for clean tracks under his eyes, like he'd been crying recently and then wiped it badly.
Kaiden knew that face.
Not exactly. Not the details. But something about the shape of the jaw, the stubborn set of the mouth, the way the boy's eyes narrowed like he expected to be yelled at —
For half a second, Kaiden was back in his old apartment building's hallway.
A kid from two doors down slamming his door, music too loud, mother shouting in a language Kaiden didn't understand. The boy glaring past him once as Kaiden squeezed by with a briefcase and too much self-importance, thinking: not my problem.
This kid had the same look.
Wrong world.
Right expression.
"You alright?" Kaiden asked.
The boy jerked his arm free.
"I'm fine," he snapped. "Watch where you're going, you giant—"
He stopped.
Looked up at the hood, at the shadow over Kaiden's face.
Something in his eyes shifted from irritation to fear.
He'd seen the posters.
"Hey," Kaiden said softly. "I'm not—"
The boy took a step back.
Boot scraped stone.
A line hissed near the wall — thin, almost invisible until it moved.
Kaiden saw it too late.
The boy's heel hit the tripwire.
A sharp crack rang out as a signal flare spell shot skyward from a hidden tube, streaking red.
"Damn it," Sylen hissed.
"Back," Rein snapped.
Voices shouted from a nearby street.
"Signal! South lane!"
"Move!"
The boy stared at the rising flare, horror dawning on his face.
"I didn't—" he started.
"I know," Kaiden said.
He scooped the kid up one-armed and shoved him into a narrow alcove behind a stack of broken crates, dropping low to shove their bodies into the shadow.
The boy wheezed.
"What are you—?"
"Stay down," Kaiden said. "Don't move. Don't talk. Whatever happens, you didn't see anything."
Boots thundered into the lane seconds later.
Two human soldiers and one demon rebel in mismatched armour skidded to a halt at the scorch mark where the flare had launched.
"Which way?" one demanded.
"Could've been a rat," another muttered. "Or kids."
"Or it was him," the rebel snapped. "We can't afford to ignore any trigger. Spread out."
Kaiden held still.
Very still.
The boy's small, rapid breaths hit his ribs through the coat.
If they looked into the alcove—
They didn't.
One soldier jogged past, sword half-drawn. The other two split off down side alleys, shouting for others to close the net.
Sylen slid up beside the stack, half of her body a shadow, knife already in hand.
Mara and Jex ghosted along the other side of the lane, staying out of the worst light.
When the hunters were far enough, Sylen hissed, "Clear. Move."
Kaiden stepped out, pulling the boy with him.
The kid yanked free again, trembling now.
"You— you could've—"
"Left you?" Kaiden said. "That was the idea. Alive."
The boy swallowed.
"Are you… him?" he whispered. "The… metal demon?"
Kaiden almost laughed.
"Do I look like a demon?" he asked.
The boy looked at the half-glimpsed plating under Kaiden's sleeve.
"Yes," he said.
"Fair," Kaiden muttered.
He knelt.
His joints complained. He ignored them.
"You set a trap here?" he asked. "For me?"
The boy shook his head quickly.
"They told us to pull lines if we saw anyone big in a hood," he blurted. "Said there's a… thing. Said if we don't help, it'll kill us anyway."
Mara flinched.
"Meaning us," she said under her breath.
Kaiden kept his gaze on the boy.
"You have a name?" he asked.
"Lorn," the kid muttered.
"Lorn," Kaiden repeated. "Listen. You didn't set that off. I did. That's on me. You go home. You stay away from walls with drawings on them. And if someone tells you they need you as bait again…"
He let the sentence hang.
The boy's chin wobbled stubbornly.
"You'll kill them?" he asked.
"Maybe," Kaiden said. "Maybe I'll be busy. So don't count on me. Count on yourself. Don't stand where other people want you to die."
Lorn stared at him for a long second.
Then he grabbed the hem of Kaiden's coat.
"You smell like smoke," he said.
"Everyone here does," Kaiden replied.
"Not like this," the boy said. "its different"
Kaiden's Core gave one uneasy thud.
He gently pried the boy's hand off his coat.
"Home," he said. "Now."
Lorn bolted, vanishing into the maze.
Rein exhaled slowly.
"You really going to let him run around with the knowledge that you saved him?" he asked. "That's one more mouth to tell stories."
"Good," Kaiden said. "Let him tell them how the monster stopped him from dying for free."
"That's not the story people like," Rein muttered.
Sylen's eyes tracked the direction Lorn had gone.
"You recognised him," she said quietly.
"Not him," Kaiden said. "Someone like him. Back… before."
Mara opened her mouth, then closed it.
"We should move," she said instead. "They'll sweep again."
They did.
Within an hour, the town felt tighter.
Checkpoints appeared on main roads — wooden barriers, barrel stacks, soldiers with sketches in hand. They stopped tall men in cloaks more often. Kaiden watched, from a rooftop this time, as one unfortunate traveller got yanked out of a line and shoved against a wall.
The soldiers compared his face to the drawing.
Too narrow. Wrong jaw.
They let him go with a shove that nearly knocked him down.
"Hunters are tired already," Jex murmured. "Tension makes people sloppy."
"Tension also makes people dangerous," Sylen replied.
On the far side of the square, near a different poster, an old woman spat on the ground.
"They made a metal demon from a man," she told her neighbour. "Stitched him from scrap. You can see the welds in the dark, they say."
"Demons wouldn't waste forge-fire on one man," the neighbour scoffed.
"Humans did," the old woman said. "We just lost him."
Kaiden turned away.
"Enough sightseeing," Mara said. "We have work."
They slipped back toward the gate district, using every blind angle Sylen had memorised.
Even there, the net was drawing in.
Pairs of human mages walked the perimeter of the circle now, sigils glowing faintly on their hands. Rebels kept to shadows, trading glances heavier than coin. Someone had chalked fresh warning symbols on nearby walls, the universal language of "this place kills."
Mara knelt by the rubble-lined edge of the outer ring.
"We keep to the plan," she said. "Small splices. No obvious pattern. If they feel us, we're done."
Kaiden crouched beside her.
His Core hummed — not spiking, just… aware.
He laid another strip of makeshift conduit into place, fingers deliberate. No tremor. No tunnel. Just the memory of Lorn's too-familiar face lingering behind his eyes.
"Do you ever think we should just walk?" Jex whispered from his watch spot. "Leave the gate. Leave this town. Let them solve their own disasters."
"Yes," Kaiden said.
He pressed power through the metal, fusing it to stone.
"Then why don't we?" Jex asked.
"Because if we walk," Kaiden said, "someone else finishes what we started. And they won't hesitate where we do."
"Meaning?" Rein asked.
"Meaning they won't bother trying to save anyone when they light it," Mara said quietly.
Sylen watched Kaiden's profile as he worked.
The poster drawing hadn't captured his expression.
The real thing was worse.
Less monster.
More… tired.
"You're on half the walls in this place," she said softly. "Rumour says you don't die. That you're made of scrap and rage."
"And?" Kaiden asked.
"And you just hid a kid and let him go," she said. "They don't tell that part."
"They never will," he said.
He finished the weld and drew his hand back.
Smoke curled up from the seam.
Above them, the sky darkened with the promise of another artillery storm.
Down here, in the cracked heart of a stubborn town, the hunt had begun — not just for Kaiden, but for whatever was left of the man under the metal.
Somewhere beyond the walls, along the torn threads of leylines Arvan had once touched, something watched and waited.
Kaiden didn't see him.
Didn't need to.
He could feel, in the wrongness of the air whenever the gate shivered, that whatever had yanked him off his path wasn't done with him yet.
For now, the town had its monster.
And the monster had work to do.