Panic was the worst state of mind for navigation. Kael ran on instinct. His knowledge of the slums was useless with the ongoing harsh, intense obstruction of his vision. An alley that should have been a straight path seemed to curve. The sound of his own breathing echoed a half-second late.
The shouts of the guards were getting closer, coming from mutiple directions. They were steering him. He slipped into the narrow space between a cooperage and a tenement. The air was thick with the smell of freshly cut wood and mildew.
Barrels were stacked high against the back wall. To his right, an iron gate thick with rust and chained shut blocked the path.
He was trapped.
"I saw him! Down here!" The voice was young and familiar. It was Patrolman Rennick, a rookie Kael had trained three months ago.
Pairs of boots pounded against the stones. Rennick appeared at the alley's entrance, his face torn with emotions. His eyes locked on Kael, and his determination faltered for a moment. "Kael? Good lord, it's true."
Kael racked his brain for options. Fighting meant hurting a boy he had once considered a student. Surrendering meant a sham trial and a beheading. The barrels beside him seemed to shrink with every moment that passed by. His skull seemed to split.
Two more guards appeared behind Rennick, their faces blank. "Stay where you are."
Kael turned away from them and ran toward the chained gate. He had no plan. His hands gripped the cold iron. He thought of nothing but the street on the other side, his need to be there overwhelming everything else.
A sharp crack split the air.
Under his right hand, the thick iron clamp did not just bend, it had been fractured. A thin crack formed across the metal, and in a few moments, the chain crumbled into orange dust.
For a moment, Kael stared at the rust-colored powder that lay on his palm. His mind refused to believe what had just happened. The guards stared too, their mouths hanging open with shock.
That one moment was enough. Kael tore the gate open. He turned and saw Rennick's stunned expression. "How...?"
Kael was no longer qualified for the title, fugitive. He was something much worse now.
Whatever he'd done had exhausted him. His headache came back, and this time, with much more intensity. The world began to blur, objects overlapping until they were impossible to make out. He leaned against a wall, his breath uneven.
Running in this state would kill him. This power was eating away at something inside him. He could not depend on it. He needed a place to stop for a while and think.
He thought of the places the Guards never went. The places where the law had no meaning anymore.
The thought came to him immediately: the Warrens.
Decades ago, a massive granite quarry at the city's edge was abandoned. The Warrens was a man-made chasm, a vertical slum that descended into the depths of the earth. It was the city's underbelly. The bridges were barely held together, and people there lived without any hope or law to govern them. The Guards only ever came by during plagues or riots. If the Spire was the city's most prominent feature, the Warrens was its deepest shame, the perfect place for someone in Kael's situation to vanish into.
With a destination fixed in his mind, Kael regained his purpose, and his vision was back to normal. He clung to his one certainty, and used it to keep his mind stable and the ground below him solid.
The alleys led him to leaning buildings that seemed like they held each other upright. The alleys shrank until they were nothing more than cracks in the walls.
And finally, he stood before it.
Kael looked back one last time at Veridia. The Justicar's Spire rose in the distance, standing proud and resilient. It had once been his guiding star. Now it was only a shape in the dark.
He took a breath and stepped forward into the chasm.