"We shall see," Vane murmured.
He stepped back, the tension between them snapping like a cut wire. Elian let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. He grabbed Bram's shoulder, his fingers digging into the thin fabric of the boy's tunic.
"We're leaving," Elian hissed, turning toward the narrow alleyway he had used to enter the square. "Now. Before he changes his mind."
He dragged the boy toward the shadows, his heart rate spiking. If he could just reach the tunnels beneath the apothecaries, he could disappear. He knew the dark better than any Sky-born soldier. He knew which grates were loose, which cellars connected to the sewers, and which shadows were deep enough to hide a man.
But as he reached the mouth of the alley, Elian slammed into a wall that wasn't there a moment ago.
It wasn't stone. It was pure, condensed shadow. A barrier of cold, swirling darkness that rippled like oil. Elian gasped, recoiling as the cold burned his skin like dry ice. He spun around.
Every exit in the square—every street, every alley, every rotted door frame—was sealed with the same wall of unnatural darkness. The crowd began to panic, people shouting and shoving against the barriers, trapped like rats in a barrel.
In the center of the chaos, Vane stood perfectly still. He hadn't drawn his sword. He had simply raised one hand, his fingers curled into a loose fist, black smoke trailing from his knuckles.
He wasn't just a Commander. He was a Shadow-Caster. A rare, lethal breed of mage usually born only to the nocturnal clans of the Obsidian Isles.
"What are you doing?" Elian shouted, his voice cracking over the roar of the falling debris. "Let them go! The heavy fall is coming!"
Vane turned his gaze slowly back to Elian. The amusement was gone from his face, replaced by a chilling scientific curiosity. He looked at the terrified crowd, then up at the sky where a massive, unstable canister of raw mana—likely a disposal tank from the alchemy labs—was tumbling end-over-end toward the square.
It was glowing a volatile, sickly green. Elian knew that color. It was spent reactor fuel. If that hit the ground, it wouldn't just crush people; the explosion would liquify half the district.
"I don't believe in luck, little spark," Vane called out, his voice magically amplified so it boomed over the screaming crowd. "And I don't believe in reactive charms."
He looked straight at Elian, his grey eyes locking onto Elian's violet ones across the distance.
"You blocked the debris once. I want to see if you can do it again."
"You're insane!" Elian screamed, stepping in front of Bram as the shadow of the falling tank grew larger, swallowing the light of the square. "You'll kill them all just to test a theory?"
Vane didn't blink. He crossed his arms, a cruel challenge etched into the hard line of his jaw. He was willing to let hundreds die just to force Elian's hand. He was trapping him in a moral checkmate: reveal his power and be hunted, or stay hidden and watch everyone burn.
"Show me the sun, boy," Vane whispered, the sound carrying on the wind like a death sentence. "Or watch them break."
The canister screamed as it broke the final barrier of air, seconds away from impact.
Time seemed to warp, stretching thin like pulled taffy. Elian saw Bram's eyes, wide and reflecting the sickly green glow of the approaching doom. He saw a mother clutching her child in the mud, resigned to death. He saw Vane, the High Commander, standing amidst his wall of shadows, his face an impenetrable mask of cruel expectation.
He was gambling with their lives. He was betting that Elian's morality was stronger than his fear.
Damn you, Elian thought, a flare of pure hatred igniting in his chest. Damn you to the Hells.
He didn't decide to move. His soul moved for him.
The instinct to protect was a physical ache, a burning wire pulled tight in his gut. Elian shoved Bram down into the muck and threw his arms upward, palms flat against the crushing weight of the air. He didn't reach for the small, scavenging scraps of mana he usually used to heat tea or knit flesh. He reached down, deep into the terrifying well of power he had spent twenty years suppressing.
It felt like uncapping a volcano.
"NO!" Elian roared, the word ripping from his throat raw and guttural.
The impact came a split second later. But the explosion wasn't fire and shrapnel. It was light.
A dome of blinding, incandescent gold erupted from Elian's skin. It expanded outward with the force of a shockwave, hitting the falling canister just ten feet above the crowd's heads. The collision was deafening—a sound like a god cracking a whip.
The green alchemical tank didn't just break; it vaporized. The volatile sludge inside hit Elian's barrier and hissed, boiling away instantly against the heat of a miniature sun. The golden dome held, rigid and unyielding, covering the entire marketplace square. The shadows Vane had cast to seal the exits sizzled and retreated, burned away by the sheer ferocity of Elian's light.
For ten heartbeats, the Soot-Wards were not grey. They were brilliant, painful white-gold. The mud turned to dry clay. The cold wind vanished, replaced by the dry, heavy heat of a desert noon.
Then, as quickly as it had come, the power snapped.
Elian collapsed.
His knees hit the ground hard, the impact jarring his teeth. The golden light shattered into a million motes of fading dust, drifting down like snow. The silence that followed was absolute. No one moved. No one breathed. The only sound was the high-pitched ringing in Elian's ears and the ragged gasps tearing through his lungs.
He stared at his hands. They were trembling violently, the fingertips smoking slightly. He felt hollowed out, scraped clean, as if the magic had taken a piece of his life force as payment.
A shadow fell over him.
It wasn't the magical darkness from before. It was a person.
Elian squeezed his eyes shut, fighting the nausea that rolled over him. He heard the squelch of expensive boots in the drying mud. Closer. Closer.
"Magnificent."
The word was spoken softly, devoid of mockery. It was the tone of a connoisseur admiring a rare painting.
Elian forced his head up. Vane was standing over him, towering like a monolith. The chaotic winds of the explosion had messed up his hair, a single dark strand falling over his forehead, making him look deceptively human. But his eyes were still steel, and they were burning with a terrifying intensity.
He wasn't looking at the crowd he had almost killed. He was looking only at Elian.
"You monster," Elian wheezed, struggling to push himself upright. His limbs felt like lead. "You... you would have let them die."
"I calculated the odds," Vane replied coolly. He crouched down, disregarding the filth on the ground, bringing his face level with Elian's. "I suspected you wouldn't allow it. People with eyes like yours... you have a fatal flaw. You care."
He reached out, his gloved hand taking Elian's chin. His grip was firm, possessive, forcing Elian to look at him.
"Do you know what you just did, Scavenger?" Vane asked, his voice dropping to a husky whisper that sent a shiver down Elian's spine, distinct from the cold. "That wasn't a simple shield. That was a Solar Flare. High-tier magic. Royal-tier."
Elian jerked his chin away from Vane's hand, scrambling backward on his hands and heels. "I found a relic!" he lied frantically, though the excuse tasted like ash in his mouth. "A sun-stone! I crushed it! That was all!"
Vane stood up slowly, dusting off his knees. He didn't buy it. Not for a second.
"Search him," Vane commanded.
Two armored guards materialized from the smoke, grabbing Elian by the arms and hauling him to his feet. Elian tried to kick out, but his strength was gone. He hung between them, limp and panting.
"No relics, Commander," one of the guards barked after a rough pat-down of Elian's cloak and tunic. "No stones. No wands. He's clean."
Vane smiled. It was a sharp, predatory thing.
"Clean," he echoed. He walked a slow circle around Elian, inspecting him like a prize stallion at an auction. "Which means the source is internal. You are a Source Mage."
The crowd, realizing they were alive, had begun to murmur. Eyes were darting between the terrifying Commander and the young man who had saved them. Bram was huddled by a crate, watching with wide, terrified eyes. Elian shook his head at him—a microscopic movement. Stay away. Don't let them see you know me.
"Let me go," Elian said, trying to inject venom into his voice, though it came out as a whisper. "I haven't broken any laws. Self-defense isn't a crime."
"Possessing unregistered magic of this magnitude is treason," Vane corrected calmly. He stopped in front of Elian, stepping into his personal space until Elian had to crane his neck to look him in the eye. "But I'm not going to arrest you for treason."
Elian blinked, confusion warring with fear. "What?"
"If I arrest you, the Inquisitors take you. They will strap you to a table, vivisect you, and drain your blood to see why it glows," Vane said matter-of-factly. He leaned in, his lips brushing the shell of Elian's ear. "And I don't want to share you with the Inquisitors."
Elian shivered. The heat radiating from Vane was overwhelming. He smelled of danger and power, an intoxicating mix that made Elian's head spin.
"Then what do you want?" Elian demanded.
Vane pulled back, his eyes scanning Elian's face, lingering on the smudge of dirt on his cheek.
"I have a problem at the Palace," Vane said, his voice returning to a professional, commanding tone. "A... security detail that requires a specific touch. Someone disposable. Someone powerful. Someone who doesn't exist."
He gestured to the guards. "Bind his hands. Not iron—use the silk-cuffs. We don't want to dampen him unnecessarily. Bring him to my carriage."
"You can't just kidnap me!" Elian shouted, struggling as the guards snapped soft, enchanted cords around his wrists. The silk hummed, suppressing his ability to summon the light again. It felt like a gag order on his soul.
"I am the High Commander," Vane said, turning his back on Elian and walking toward the edge of the square where a sleek, black carriage hovered above the mud, drawn by nightmare-steeds—horses made of smoke and obsidian glass. "I can do whatever I please."
He paused at the carriage door and looked back over his shoulder.
"Consider this a job interview. You saved these people today. If you want them to stay saved... if you want that boy, Bram, to survive the winter... you will get in the carriage."
Elian froze. He had seen Bram. He knew.
The threat hung in the air, heavy and suffocating. He wasn't just kidnapping Elian; he was leveraging his heart against him.
Elian looked at Bram, who was watching him from the shadows. If he fought, Vane would burn this entire district to the ground just to prove a point. He saw it in the Commander's eyes. Vane was a man who dealt in absolutes.
Elian slumped, the fight draining out of his shoulders.
"Fine," he spat.
Vane's smile returned, darker this time.
"Good boy."
The guards shoved Elian forward. As he stumbled toward the black carriage, leaving the smell of the Soot-Wards behind, Elian realized his life as a simple healer was over. He was walking into the lion's den.
But Vane didn't realize one thing.
He thought he had caught a rabbit. He didn't know he was bringing a bomb into the Glass Palace.