The air inside the mill shattered.
It didn't break like glass; it broke like a fever. The heavy, suspended silence that Ylaeth had woven snapped back into the chaotic noise of reality—the groan of rusted metal, the hiss of the wind, and the sharp intake of breath from the two Purifiers.
They didn't hesitate. They were professionals, the King's scalpels designed to excise tumors from the state. They wore masks of smooth, burnished silver—featureless save for thin breathing slits.
The Purifier on the left—the one who had tried to impale Ylaeth—blurred. He didn't run; he simply ceased to be here and became there. His silver spike, humming with a lethal kinetic charge, aimed for Ogdi's throat.
Ogdi didn't have time to think. But he didn't need to.
"Duck," Azad's voice drawled in the back of his mind, lazy and unimpressed. "Or don't. I suppose losing a head is one way to learn spatial awareness."
Ogdi's instinct screamed. He didn't try to block. He fell.
He collapsed his knees, dropping his center of gravity just as the silver spike sliced the air where his jugular had been a microsecond before. The wind of the strike stung his skin like a whip crack.
Ogdi slammed his hand onto the floor. The black sigil on his palm—the mark of the Dragon he had consumed—pulsed with a hot, sickly ache.
He didn't want to wish the Purifier away. That would cost too much. He needed to be smaller. Surgical.
Edit the Friction.
He pushed his will into the Lattice. He visualized the floor beneath the Purifier's boots. He didn't imagine it breaking; he imagined it slick. Frictionless. Zero purchase.
A sharp pain stabbed behind Ogdi's left eye—a migraine spike, the immediate invoice for the edit.
The Purifier, expecting resistance from the concrete to pivot for a second strike, suddenly found himself standing on absolute zero. His momentum betrayed him. His feet slid out with violent speed.
He crashed face-first into a rusted loom, the sound of bone meeting cast iron echoing through the mill like a gunshot.
"Sloppy," Ylaeth murmured.
She was moving now, dancing through the dust motes. The second Purifier swung a heavy, serrated blade at her.
She didn't dodge. She just wasn't when the blade landed.
She stepped to the left, but her afterimage remained for a full second, absorbing the strike. By the time the blade passed through the ghost, she was behind him.
"A riddle," she whispered, placing a finger on the back of the Purifier's neck. "I devour mountains, I bite steel, but I have no teeth. What am I?"
The Purifier froze. Not because of magic, but because Ylaeth had threaded her will into the localized entropy around his armor.
"Time," she answered herself.
The metal of the Purifier's neck-guard turned orange. Then brown. Then it flaked away like dead skin, aging a hundred years in a heartbeat. The leather straps disintegrated.
The Purifier roared, spinning around, the sudden degradation of his armor throwing him off balance as plates of steel crumbled into dust.
"Ogdi!" Ylaeth shouted. "The thread is loose! Cut it!"
Ogdi scrambled to his feet. The first Purifier—the one who had slipped—was already recovering, snapping his dislocated nose back into place with a sickening crunch. These men didn't feel pain. They were conditioned to ignore it.
"They are boring me," Azad sighed, the mental voice vibrating with ancient disdain. "They fight like clockwork toys. Break the spring, boy. Stop playing with the gears."
Ogdi looked at the recovering Purifier. He felt the vast, terrifying potential of the Sovereign power coiling in his chest. He could turn the man to glass. He could teleport him into the sun.
But the cost...
No, Ogdi thought. I don't need to be a god. I just need to be an architect.
He saw the loose cables hanging from the ceiling—remnants of the mill's old power grid. Heavy, industrial copper.
"Edit the Trajectory."
He reached out. He didn't touch the cables. He grabbed the concept of their swing.
"Fall," he commanded.
The Lattice groaned. A nosebleed started instantly, warm liquid running down Ogdi's lip.
The heavy industrial cables whipped down from the darkness. They didn't fall naturally; they fell with predatory precision, guided by Ogdi's rewritten physics.
THWACK.
The cables slammed into the first Purifier, wrapping around his limbs like pythons. The momentum pinned him against the stone pillar.
"Now, Ylaeth!" Ogdi yelled.
Ylaeth spun. She looked at the trapped man. She didn't use a riddle this time. She just snapped her fingers.
The air around the cables shimmered.
"Acceleration."
The copper cables tightened. Not slowly. Instantly.
There was a wet, tearing sound. The Purifier didn't scream—his lungs were compressed before he could draw breath. The armor crumpled. Then the man crumpled.
Uncompromising gravity met accelerated time. The result was a grotesque implosion of biology.
The second Purifier, seeing his partner reduced to a broken heap, stopped.
He looked at Ogdi. Then at Yleath.
He didn't attack. He reached into his coat and pulled out a small, glass vial filled with a swirling crimson smoke.
"Witness," the Purifier said flatly.
He crushed the vial in his hand.
"Don't breathe it!" Ogdi screamed, covering his mouth.
But it wasn't poison.
The red smoke didn't expand. It shot straight up, punching through the rotten roof of the mill and exploding into the night sky like a flare.
A beacon. A blood-red scar against the moon.
"Well," Azad chuckled darkly. "Now you've kicked the hornet's nest. I hope you enjoy running, Sovereign. Because the King doesn't send two of these dogs. He sends the pack."
The Purifier who crushed the vial slumped over, foaming at the mouth. A suicide signal. His job was done.
"We have to go," Ogdi said, grabbing his chest. The phantom pain of the spike was throbbing, a reminder of the death he had cheated.
Ylaeth looked at the red light fading in the sky. Her eyes were dark, swirling with that unnerving nebula mist.
"The timeline just shifted," she whispered. "The probability of survival dropped. Drastically."
"Then we edit the odds," Ogdi spat, wiping the blood from his nose. "Move."
Exterior – The Alleyway
They burst out of the mill's side door, lungs burning in the cold night air.
Murik was waiting for them in the shadow of a dumpster. The old man looked better—still ragged, but the crushing weight of the Dragon was gone from his shoulders. He held a piece of rebar like a club.
"You're alive," Murik breathed, relief washing over his face. He looked at Ylaeth, and his eyes widened. "The Riddler. You actually found her."
"We found trouble," Ogdi corrected, not slowing down. "We need to get underground. The subways."
"No," Murik said, grabbing Ogdi's arm. His grip was surprisingly strong.
"What?"
"Look," Murik pointed. Not at the subway entrance. But at the horizon.
Ogdi turned.
From the high vantage point of the Eastern District, they could see the sprawl of South Farren—the slums, the tenements, the place where Ogdi had grown up.
It was glowing.
Not with streetlights.
Fire.
Thick, black columns of smoke were rising from a dozen different sectors. It wasn't a riot. It was a grid. The fires were perfectly spaced, forming a burning ring around the poorest districts.
"The King," Ogdi whispered. A cold horror settled in his gut, heavier than any Exchange debt.
"He isn't waiting for your rebellion," Azad mocked softly. "He's purifying the board. Why govern the sick when you can simply burn the hospital?"
"They're sealing the exits," Ylaeth said. She wasn't looking at the fire; she was looking at the Lattice over the city. "I can see barriers rising. He's turning South Farren into a kiln."
Ogdi thought of Nala. He thought of the café. He thought of the thousands of people trapped in that ring.
"We can't run," Ogdi said. His voice was quiet, trembling with a rage that felt cold and sharp.
"Boy," Murik warned. "You have a nosebleed and a death wish. You can't fight an army."
"I don't need to fight an army," Ogdi said. He looked at his black-stained hand. He looked at Yleath.
"I need to kill the man holding the torch."
He turned to Ylaeth.
"Can you track the source of the barrier? The anchor point?"
Ylaeth closed her eyes. She hummed that low, vibrating note.
"The geometry is complex," she murmured. "But... yes. It's not the Palace. It's the Tower of Silence. The broadcast station."
"Then that's where we go," Ogdi said.
"That's suicide," Murik said, though he didn't drop the rebar.
"Seems like it," Ogdi answered. He started walking, his limp vanishing as adrenaline—and Azad's power—flooded his veins.
"Good," Azad whispered. "Fear is useless. Rage... rage is a fuel source I can work with. Let's go topple a tower, little architect."
The Tower of Silence – Perimeter
The Tower was a monolith of black steel jutting out of the city center. It was the nerve center of Calmarith's surveillance state, a jagged needle stitching the sky.
Ogdi, Ylaeth, and Murik crouched on a rooftop three blocks away.
The streets below were swarming. Not with police or Purifiers.
Hollows.
They were soldiers, but they moved wrong. Their limbs jerked in unison. Their faces were covered in smooth, white porcelain masks with no eye holes—just blank, polished ceramic. They marched in perfect, terrifying silence, weapons held at identical angles.
"The King's personal guard," Murik hissed. "They say he had their souls removed so they couldn't disobey."
"They don't have souls," Ylaeth confirmed. "They are empty vessels filled with command codes. I can't get to them through riddle. They have no minds to confuse."
"I can't edit them either," Ogdi realized. "Living matter is too expensive to rewrite in large numbers. The Exchange would kill me before I dropped ten of them."
There were hundreds guarding the entrance.
"We need a distraction," Ogdi said.
He looked at the environment. The streets were narrow. The buildings were old brick.
And then he saw it.
A main water line running along the side of the adjacent building. A massive, pressurized iron artery feeding the district.
Ogdi smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. It was the smile of an editor finding a plot hole he could exploit.
"Murik," Ogdi said. "Can you draw?"
Murik looked at his hands. "I... I don't know. The Dragon is gone."
"I don't need a Dragon," Ogdi said. "I need a Wall. Can you sketch in the air?"
Murik flexed his fingers. "I can try. Shadows stick to intention, not just walls."
"Good," Ogdi pointed to the street behind the soldiers. "If I burst that pipe, thousands of gallons of water are going to flood that street. I need you to create a barrier to channel it. Force the water into the soldiers. Wash them away."
"Water?" Murik frowned. "You want to attack them with plumbing?"
"Uncompromising realism," Ogdi muttered. "Water is heavy. Fast water breaks bones."
He looked at Ylaeth.
"When the water hits, can you freeze it?"
Ylaeth's eyes lit up. "Flash freeze? Yes. But the timing has to be perfect."
"I'll give you the timing," Ogdi promised.
He stood up on the edge of the roof. He looked at the pipe. It was thick iron, bolted to the masonry.
He raised his hand. The black sigil itched furiously.
"I claim the flaw," Ogdi whispered.
He didn't wish for the pipe to break. He wished for the rust on the bolts to accelerate.
Exchange.
SNAP.
A sharp, audible crack echoed from Ogdi's wrist. He gasped, clutching his arm. A stress fracture. The bone had paid the price for the iron's failure.
CREAAAAK.
The bolts on the main line sheared.
BOOM.
The pipe exploded. A geyser of high-pressure water erupted, tearing chunks of masonry from the wall. It roared down into the street like a tidal wave.
"Draw, old man!" Ogdi shouted through the pain.
Murik stood up. He didn't look at the roof tiles. He raised his hands toward the empty air above the street. His fingers moved frantically, sketching lines of pure darkness against the night sky.
Manifest.
A barrier of solid shadow—thick, jagged, and absolute—erupted from the pavement below, following the lines Murik drew in the air. It blocked the water's escape route, funneling the deluge directly toward the army of Hollows.
The soldiers turned, their blank porcelain masks reflecting the onrushing flood. It was too late. The water hit them with the force of a collapsing building. Bodies were thrown like dolls, armor crunching against brick.
"Ylaeth!"
Getting the signal, she jumped from the roof. She fell toward the chaotic, swirling flood.
Mid-air, she whispered.
"What runs but never heats up?"
She slammed her palms together.
CRACK.
The sound was deafening, like a thunderclap trapped in a box.
The entire street—the churning water, the flailing Hollows, the debris—froze instantly.
It was a sculpture of violence trapped in ice. Soldiers were caught mid-flail, encased in jagged, translucent glaciers. The roar of the water vanished, replaced by the eerie creaking of settling ice.
Ogdi jumped down, sliding down a frozen cascade of water. He landed on the ice, clutching his broken wrist.
"The door is open," he said, looking at the unguarded entrance of the Tower.
"Elegant," Azad purred. "Brutal. And highly efficient. You might survive the night after all."
Ogdi walked toward the Tower. His arm throbbed with a white-hot rhythm, but his mind was cold.
"Let's go tell the King he's fired," Ogdi said.