Chapter 3: The Sovereign's Shadow
Carson didn't crawl back to his crevice. He didn't cry. The rain in New Seattle was acidic, stinging the open gashes on his face, but he didn't feel the burn. He felt nothing. Inside his chest, where his heart had been shattered by Maya's laughter, there was only a vast, echoing silence.
He dragged his broken body toward the 4th Street Bridge—a rusted, groaning relic of the Old World that spanned the gap between the industrial slums and the sparkling spires of the Upper Sector.
Beneath the bridge lived a man the street-rats called "Old Man Hobs." To the world, Hobs was a tragedy: a stuttering, reeking drunkard who traded stories for scraps of synthetic bread. Carson had known him for three years, often sharing a dry corner of the bridge when the peacekeepers cleared the alleys.
But tonight, as Carson collapsed into the mud near Hobs' feet, the smell of cheap rot-gut liquor was gone.
"The girl... she was a fine whetstone, wasn't she?"
The voice didn't sound like Hobs. It was deep, resonant, and vibrated in Carson's very marrow.
Carson looked up through one swollen eye. Hobs wasn't slumped. He was standing perfectly still, his back straight as a spear. The flickering neon light from a nearby billboard caught his eyes—they weren't the clouded eyes of a drunk. They were a piercing, electric gold.
"You knew?" Carson wheezed, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth.
"I knew that a blade cannot be forged without heat," Hobs said. He stepped forward, and the puddles around his boots began to ripple in perfect, geometric circles, despite the chaotic rain. "New Seattle thinks it is a city of technology. They play with their 'Tiered' weapons and their cybernetic toys, never realizing they are ants building a nest on the back of a sleeping dragon."
Hobs reached out a hand. He didn't touch Carson. Instead, he made a plucking motion in the air.
Suddenly, the pain in Carson's ribs vanished. It didn't just fade; it was extinguished. Carson felt something cold and sharp slide through his veins—a sensation like liquid silver.
"What... what are you?" Carson gasped, standing up with a grace that should have been impossible for a man with a shattered chest.
"I am a ghost of an era your history books deleted," Hobs replied. He looked at the distant Zenith Spire. "I am the Sovereign of the Emerald Cauldron. And you, Carson McCain, have a 'Martial Root' that hasn't been seen since the stars were young. You can die here as a ghost-washer, or you can come with me and learn why the sky fears the earth."
Hobs turned and walked toward a solid concrete pylon of the bridge. As he touched it, the air rippled like a heat haze. A door—not of metal, but of shimmering light—appeared where there was only stone.
"If you step through, Carson, the boy who loved Maya is gone forever. Only the Sovereign will remain."
Carson didn't look back at the Lumina Grand. He didn't look back at the life that had discarded him. He stepped into the light.