Location: The High Spire, Sector 1
Current Altitude: 800 meters above the smog.
The air in Lady Vespera's conservatory did not move. It was not allowed to.
Here, far above the choking soot of the lower city, the walls were made of polished obsidian and the windows of diamond-glass. The room was filled with beautiful things: orchids from the Southern Isles, butterflies the size of dinner plates, and a young man named Thomas who had spilled tea on Vespera's dress three days ago.
Thomas was currently acting as a coat rack.
He stood by the door, his arm extended, holding a velvet shawl. He was perfectly still. His skin had been transmuted into a translucent, pale alabaster, hard as quartz but retaining the warmth of flesh. His eyes were wide, glassy, and fixed on the ceiling. He was not dead. He was simply... paused.
Lady Vespera, The Aspirant of Stasis, sat on a velvet chaise, sipping wine that had been vintage before the Revolution. She was a woman of sharp angles and impossible stillness. Her hair was white, pinned back with needles of platinum. She did not age, because she had forbidden her cells from dividing.
"The silence is exquisite tonight," she murmured. Her voice was like a bow drawn across a violin string—beautiful, tense, and capable of snapping.
She set her glass down. The liquid inside didn't ripple.
Thump.
A vibration traveled through the floor. It wasn't an earthquake; the Spire was stabilized by gravity-dampeners. This was something metaphysical. A ripple in the Aether.
Vespera stood up. She didn't rush; she simply transitioned from sitting to standing with fluid, seamless grace. She walked to the window, looking down into the swirling yellow abyss of the city below.
She felt it. A flare of violet light in the spiritual spectrum. A Resonance Core had been unearthed.
But it wasn't the Core that made her skin crawl. It was the taste of the mana that had touched it.
It tasted like rust. It tasted like endings.
"Entropy," she whispered, her lip curling in disgust. "The Rot is awake."
She turned to the shadows in the corner of the room.
"Grave-Walker."
The shadow peeled itself away from the wall. A figure emerged, wrapped in bandages and wearing a suit of sleek, silent leather. It had no face, only a smooth porcelain mask with a single eye painted in the center.
"Mistress," the figure hissed.
"A beacon has been lit in Sector 4," Vespera said, tracing a finger across the glass window. "Something foul has crawled out of the gutter. A rival Aspirant. One of the destructive castes."
She tapped the glass. A spiderweb crack appeared, but she ran her finger over it, and the glass reversed its timeline, becoming whole again.
"Go," she commanded. "Do not kill him yet. I want to know which one he is. If he is the Combustion, we will drown him. If he is the Rot, we will encase him in amber. Bring me the Core. And bring me his head, preferably while it is still thinking."
The Grave-Walker bowed and dissolved back into the shadows.
Vespera turned back to Thomas. She adjusted the shawl in his frozen hand by a millimeter.
"Perfect," she whispered. "Everything must stay exactly as it is."
Location: The Sump, Sector 5
Current Depth: 20 meters below street level.
Dante crashed through the heavy steel door of his sanctuary, slamming the deadbolt home.
He didn't stop moving. He was a creature of momentum. He grabbed a handful of salt from a bowl on the table and tossed it across the threshold—a crude ward against tracking spells. It wouldn't stop a Master Alchemist, but it would confuse the scavengers.
He collapsed into his chair—a dentist's chair he had salvaged from a ruined clinic.
"Safe," he wheezed.
The sanctuary was a converted boiler room in the sub-basement of an abandoned textile mill. It was hot, loud, and cluttered. Tables were piled high with beakers, rusted gears, half-disassembled clocks, and books with spines made of unknown leather. It smelled of ozone and old coffee.
Dante ripped his gloves off. His hands were shaking.
He looked at his shoulder. The repair he had made in the alley was holding, but it was ugly. The flesh he had stolen from the thug was slightly different in pigmentation—a patch of rough, sun-damaged skin stitched seamlessly into his own pale complexion.
"Rejection rate... minimal," he muttered, prodding the graft. "Genetic dissonance... manageable."
He felt a wave of nausea. He reached for a bucket beside the chair and dry-heaved. There was nothing in his stomach to expel. He didn't eat food. He was just retching from the metaphysical recoil of forcing another man's life force into his own matrix.
"God, I hate this," he spat, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. The silver jaw clicked softly.
He forced himself to sit up. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the prize.
The Resonance Core.
In the dim light of his workshop, it looked even more malevolent. It sat on the metal tray, humming with a low, headache-inducing frequency. The violet light pulsed in time with his own heartbeat.
Dante grabbed a pair of jeweler's goggles and pulled them over his eyes. He leaned in.
"Analysis," he commanded himself.
Object: Resonance Core (Grade A).
Origin: 3rd Era War-Homunculus (Siege Class).
Composition: Condensed Mana, Stabilized Mercury, crystallized suffering.
Status: Active. Leaking signal.
"It's a transponder," Dante realized, his blood running cold. "It's not just a battery. It's looking for its master."
He grabbed a pair of tongs and picked it up. He needed to shield it. Lead wouldn't be enough. He needed something alchemically inert.
He scanned his workshop.
"Dead Iron... no. Glass... too brittle. Wait."
He scrambled to a shelf and pulled down a heavy jar filled with a thick, viscous black sludge. Void-Tar. It was a byproduct of the sewers, a substance so polluted that it naturally dampened magical signatures because mana refused to travel through it.
Dante popped the lid and dropped the glowing sphere into the sludge.
Plop.
The violet light vanished. The humming stopped. The headache behind Dante's eyes faded instantly.
He slumped back against the desk, exhaling a breath he didn't know he was holding.
"That buys me twelve hours," he calculated. "Before the Core burns through the tar."
He looked at his reflection in a polished sheet of copper on the wall. The Silvergrin stared back—a monster with mismatched skin on his shoulder and a jaw that looked like liquid death.
He had a choice.
* Consume the Core: It would give him enough mass to stabilize for a month. He could perhaps even heal the jaw for a few hours. But the energy signature might burn him out from the inside. It was like trying to drink lightning.
* Weaponize the Core: He could build a bomb. A bomb big enough to level a city block. Good leverage.
* Sell the Core: The Black Market would pay a fortune. But whoever bought it would hunt him down to silence the loose end.
Dante ran a hand through his hair.
"First," he said to the empty room, "coffee. Then, we figure out how to stop the signal permanently."
He stood up to reach for his coffee pot, but stopped.
A piece of paper had been slipped under his door.
Dante froze. He had salted the threshold. He had checked the perimeter.
He walked over to the door, his movements fluid and silent. He picked up the paper. It was a high-quality parchment, smelling faintly of lavender and formaldehyde.
It wasn't a threat. It was an invitation.
"To the Gentleman who commands the Rot,
You have found something that belongs to history. I am willing to pay for its return. Or, I am willing to pay for your silence.
Meet me at the Midnight Market. Stall 44. Come alone. Or don't come at all, and I will send the dogs.
- The Weaver"
Dante stared at the note. "The Weaver." Another Aspirant? Or just a broker?
He looked back at the jar of Void-Tar.
The Law of Convergence was a cruel mistress. He hadn't even had time to drink his coffee.
Dante grabbed his Transmutation Daggers and slid them into his sleeves. He picked up a fresh vial of mercury and slotted it into his jaw.
The Silvergrin shifted, forming a sharp, predatory smile that had nothing to do with happiness.
"No rest for the wicked," Dante said.
He unlocked the door.