Morwen moved through the city's underbelly with a gnome-like certainty, her form a shuffling shadow against the grimy brickwork. Kaelen followed, his heart still a frantic drum against his ribs, every distant shout or clatter of armor making him flinch. They left the main thoroughfares behind, diving into a labyrinth of narrow passages and crumbling culverts that smelled of damp earth and rust.
"Keep up, boy," Morwen grumbled over her shoulder, not breaking her pace. "The Hounds don't take tea breaks."
After what felt like an eternity of twisting turns, she stopped before a massive, circular grate set into the base of a moss-covered retaining wall. A sluggish, foul-smelling stream trickled from its center. The iron was ancient, thick with rust and grime.
"Home sweet home," Morwen announced, gesturing with her chin. "The Rusted Chain. Only link some of us have left."
She didn't open it with a key. Instead, she knelt and began feeling along the grime-slicked bars with her bare hands, muttering to herself. "Third bar from the left, count seven rivets up… ah." She pressed hard on a specific spot. With a groan of protesting metal, a section of the grate—a cleverly disguised hatch—swung inward.
A wave of warm, stagnant air washed over them, carrying the scent of unwashed bodies, woodsmoke, and something metallic. Morwen ducked inside. After a terrified glance behind him, Kaelen followed.
He straightened up and found himself in a vast, cavernous space. It was an old overflow cistern, long forgotten by the city above. Makeshift dwellings were carved into the curved walls or built from scavenged planks and scrap metal. A central fire pit smoldered, its smoke curling up towards a network of cracks and vents in the distant ceiling. Dozens of people moved in the dim light, their faces gaunt and their clothes patched, but there was a weary competence to their movements.
And they were all staring at him.
A man with a face crosshatched with angry, acid-burn scars straightened from tending the fire. His eyes, hard and flinty, locked onto Kaelen. "What's this, Morwen? Bringing strays home now?" His voice was a low rasp.
"Found him cowering behind the crates in the Gutterway, Bramble," Morwen said, unfazed. "Awakening went sour."
A woman with hair the color of weathered bark stepped out of the shadows. Her fingers, Kaelen noticed with a start, ended not in nails, but in sharp, dark thorns. She looked him over with a cold, analytical gaze that made him want to shrink into his tunic. "How sour?"
"The 'Decay' is kind of sour," Morwen said.
A ripple of tension went through the chamber. Bramble's hand twitched toward a hatchet at his belt. The thorny woman's eyes narrowed.
"The Church's new favorite heretic," Bramble growled. "He'll bring them down on us like a rockslide."
"The Church was always coming," Morwen retorted, her voice sharp. "They don't need an excuse. They just need a direction." She turned to Kaelen. "Bramble there… his Aspect lets him secrete a potent acid. The Church calls it a 'Corrosive Blight.' They burned his village to the ground for it. He was the only one who escaped."
Kaelen looked at the man's scarred face, the raw hatred in his eyes. It wasn't just directed at him; it was an old, deep-burning thing. This wasn't a villain. This was a victim.
Morwen pointed to the thorny woman. "Thorn. Her touch can inject a paralyzing toxin. 'Witch's Touch,' they call it. Her family sold her to the Church for a bounty. She was in a containment cell for two years before we found her."
Kaelen's fear was suddenly eclipsed by a cold, sinking horror. This wasn't a hidden village. It was a refuge. A last stand for people like him. People the world had decided were mistakes.
"I… I didn't know," he mumbled, the words feeling utterly inadequate.
"Of course you didn't," Morwen said, not unkindly. "The world doesn't advertise what it does to its monsters." She gestured around the cistern. "Welcome to the Unattuned, boy. The parts of the song the Church decided to delete."
Just then, a small boy, no older than ten, scurried over and tugged on Morwen's shawl. He had wide, dark eyes that seemed too large for his thin face. "Is he staying?" the boy whispered, his voice barely audible.
"Seems so, Wisp," Morwen said, her tone softening a fraction.
The boy—Wisp—looked at Kaelen, his head tilted. Then, without warning, the boy's outline shimmered like a heat haze, and he simply… faded from sight.
Kaelen jerked back in shock.
A moment later, Wisp reappeared a few feet away, a shy smile on his face. "I can do that," he whispered.
"His parents left him at the edge of the woods," Morwen said flatly, her earlier softness gone. "Hoping the beasts would be kinder than the Church."
The last of Kaelen's self-pity evaporated, replaced by a thick, cloying shame. He had been so consumed by his own terror. He'd never stopped to think that there was an entire world of "Heretics," each with a story more tragic than his last meal of gutter-bread.
He was led to the fire and given a bowl of thin, greasy stew. It was the most wonderful thing he'd ever tasted. As he ate, Morwen laid down the law.
"You pull your weight. No exceptions. Bramble will put you to work. You do what he says, when he says it. Your power isn't a curse here, boy. It's a tool. You'll learn to use it, or you'll get us all killed." She fixed him with a stern look. "And you don't go outside. Not until we're sure you're not being followed."
The next few days were a blur of hard labor and exhaustion. Bramble, despite his clear misgivings, was a fair taskmaster. He put Kaelen to work hauling water, sorting salvage, and reinforcing weak points in the cistern's walls. The work was backbreaking, but it was simple. It left no room for thought, for panic, or for the memory of Lila's shocked face.
It was during a break, while Kaelen was staring at a rusted metal bar that needed straightening, that Bramble tossed him a pair of thick leather gloves.
"Here. See if that fancy 'Decay' of yours is good for anything besides scaring priests."
Kaelen looked at the bar, then at his hands. He remembered the altar, the crumbling stone. The fear.
"I… I can't control it," he admitted.
Bramble snorted. "Then you're useless. And we don't keep useless things down here." It wasn't a threat, just a stark fact.
Gritting his teeth, Kaelen pulled on the gloves and picked up the bar. He focused on a single, rust-welded joint. He reached for the void within him, not to unleash it, but to listen. He felt the metal, the oxidation that had fused it shut. He found the fatigue, the weakness.
He let the smallest trickle of power flow into that precise point.
There was no dramatic burst. The rust didn't vanish. Instead, it turned a powdery, vivid orange, becoming incredibly brittle. A light tap from Bramble's hammer and the joint fell apart, the bar now straight and usable.
Bramble stared at the clean break, then grunted. "Hmph. Not bad." It was the closest thing to praise Kaelen would ever get from him.
It was a tiny victory. A minuscule point of control in the chaos of his existence. He wasn't a hero. He wasn't even a proper revolutionary. He was a scared boy learning how to be a useful monster in a world that hated him.
But as he looked around the cistern at Thorn quietly whittling a dart with her sharpened fingers, at Wisp playing a game of peek-a-boo with himself, and at Bramble sharpening his hatchet, he felt something unfamiliar.
It wasn't safety. It wasn't happiness.
It was the faint, fragile sense that he might not be entirely alone in the dark.