Black dust still swirled slowly around us, coating our cloaks with the heavy stench of sulfur and burnt stone.
The heat from our arrival had already given way to a creeping cold that bit deep into our bones. In the distance, through the reddish haze, a low, smoky silhouette rose against the purple sky.
Laura wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead with her sleeve, pulling her hood down to completely cover her black hair. Her red eyes scanned the horizon, sharp as blades.
"Storming that structure head-on would be suicide," she said, her voice low and thick with distrust. "We don't know how many soldiers are inside, or how their security works."
I followed her gaze, feeling the familiar weight of the Kazekiba resting gently against my waist beneath my cloak. The air here was thick and hard to breathe, as if the very planet was slowly dying.
"She's right," I replied, my voice steady and calm. "We blend in."
Arthur stood motionless like a statue carved from rock, his gray eyes narrowing as he studied the dark plumes rising into the polluted sky.
"That thing ahead is not Tsukumo's palace," Arthur stated, his deep voice cutting through the toxic breeze. He tilted his chin slightly, sniffing the air with analytical precision.
"The heavy scent of molten ore, bitter soot choking the oxygen, and the constant roar of heavy machinery… It's a massive factory."
"And it's built right in the middle of what's left of a village."
The giant turned his face toward us, his expression unreadable.
"Let's go to the village."
We walked in silence across the cracked, dead earth, our footsteps echoing softly over loose stones. The wind carried clouds of gray dust that stung our throats, and the sky—once a pale violet—gradually darkened into deeper, more somber shades.
As we drew closer, a low, steady hum began to reach us: a metallic drone mixed with the crackle of fire and the roar of towering smokestacks. The air grew heavier, thick with a sharp, clinging stench that burned our nostrils.
Then the structure came into full view: immense, built from blocks of dark stone and reinforced iron, with tall chimneys spewing thick columns of black smoke that spread across the sky. We had landed practically right beside it, just a few meters from its towering walls.
Laura stopped, her red eyes fixed on the construction.
"A factory… this big…"
I looked around, noticing how the massive building sat at the center of a cluster of small, cramped shacks huddled around it like shadows.
"This could work to our advantage," I said, adjusting my cloak over my shoulders. "We weren't dropped straight into the heart of power. Here we have space to observe, learn their patterns, and form a plan before moving closer to the main area."
Arthur nodded slowly, his gaze sweeping over the chimneys and the dirt paths leading to the main entrance.
As we approached, the first narrow alleys and dark stone walls began to emerge through the haze.
We reached the settlement just as daylight was fading completely, leaving the sky shrouded in deep purple and thick smoke hanging low over the rooftops.
Calling it a village was a cruel exaggeration.
Winding alleys squeezed between shacks built from blackened stone, covered in a thick layer of soot that stained everything around. There were no laughs, no raised voices, no sound of normal life. The silence was heavy and suffocating—the kind of silence where even breathing was controlled, as if any sound could summon death.
Children with faces smudged gray and hollow, empty eyes peeked through rotting wooden cracks. Men and women of different races walked with their heads down, shoulders hunched and bodies gaunt, as if carrying an invisible weight that consumed them day by day.
CLACK!
The sharp, cracking snap of a magnetic whip tore through the air, echoing across the dirt square.
We quickly ducked into the shadows of a narrow alley, hiding behind cracked stone walls. Three imposing figures marched through the center of the village, clad in heavy black armor that glinted faintly. On each breastplate was the same symbol: an iron fist wrapped in crackling energy.
One guard raised his boot and kicked an elderly man hard in the chest. The old man, dressed in nothing but tattered rags, fell to his knees, his hands scraped and bleeding as he tried to steady a cart loaded with stones that glowed with a faint, strange light.
"Get up, trash!" the soldier snarled, his voice distorted and metallic from behind his closed helmet. "The palace forges' quota hasn't been met! If this load doesn't reach the refineries on time, I'll use your bones for fuel!"
SNIKT.
A sharp metallic sound cut through the silence of our hiding spot.
Laura's silver claws slid from between her fingers, her muscles tensing beneath her cloak, and her red eyes burned bright in the darkness, overflowing with primal, murderous fury.
Before she could take a single step, I grabbed her shoulder firmly, my fingers digging into the thick fabric of her clothing.
"Let go," she hissed through gritted teeth, her breath coming fast and hot. "I'll tear that bastard's head off."
"Not now, Laura," I replied, my voice cold and sharp, holding back the rage that burned in my own chest at the cowardly scene. "If you kill those guards, the whole village will pay the price. We didn't come here to be blind executioners—we came to tear down everything that keeps this system standing."
She clenched her fists until her knuckles turned white, the sound of her bones cracking softly, but she retracted her blades and stepped deeper into the shadows, breathing hard to steady herself.
Arthur said nothing.
Leaning against the filthy wall of the cramped alley, we watched as thick smoke from the colossal factory swallowed what remained of the sky. The constant grinding of gears and crashing metal made the ground vibrate beneath our boots.
"We'll split up to cover more ground. Find out how this machine works, map the patrol routes, and meet back at the ruined hut on the southern edge of the village."
"Understood," Laura nodded.
With a silent leap, she grabbed the edge of a nearby tin roof and vanished into the shadows.
Arthur adjusted his heavy cloak over his broad shoulders and walked with slow, measured steps, blending perfectly into the stream of larger slaves and laborers heading toward the factory gates.
I was alone.
Over the next few hours, I slipped through the foul, winding alleys of the settlement. The entire village orbited the factory like a parasite clinging to a mechanical heart.
From the cover of a dark alley, I watched the shift change. Men, women, and even children of races I had never seen before marched with magnetic shackles around their ankles. Their emaciated bodies were covered in open wounds and black dust. They dragged metal carts piled high with rough, glowing ore—loads far too heavy for their thin arms, which trembled with every step.
Farther from the alleys, Arthur crossed the loading dock gates.
The giant looked like just another exhausted worker. The ground here shook violently, matching the rhythm of the underground forges.
Arthur walked in silence, his gray eyes taking in every detail. The air was so toxic it scraped at the throat. All around was the sound of gasping breaths, dragging chains, and sickly coughing.
A few meters away, a man with scaly skin and broken horns lost his strength. His legs gave way and he collapsed to his knees, spitting a pool of black blood onto the stone ground, unable to push his cart of raw ore.
The black-armored guard patrolling the area didn't even raise his magnetic whip. With cold, bureaucratic disgust, he simply kicked the trembling man's body into a nearby waste ditch and pointed to the next person in line.
"Take his load. Move!" the guard ordered.
No one stopped to help. The flow of the death line continued.
Arthur didn't move a muscle in his face, but he reached into the ore being carried nearby. It was unlike anything he had ever seen—darker than obsidian, incredibly dense.
He squeezed his fingers with such restrained fury and strength that the hyper-hard rock crumbled into fine dust.
They're just waiting for bodies to break so they can throw them away like garbage, he thought.
High above, Laura moved like a ghost along the rusted tin walls.
Her scarlet jacket and tactical pants helped her blend into the dark, reddish haze from the smokestacks. Moving with the agility of a cat, she climbed to the roof of the main storage warehouse and slipped into one of the massive ventilation ducts.
The heat inside was unbearable, thick with the stench of stale sweat and sulfur. Laura crawled through the shadows until she reached a rusted grate that gave a clear view of the factory's inner courtyard.
Her red eyes glowed in the dark.
Down below, the sharp crack of whips echoed through the warehouse. Three of Tsukumo's guards were brutally beating a dark-skinned elf who had dropped a crate onto the conveyor belt.
"Pick that shit up, you useless piece of filth!" one guard roared, driving his heavy boot straight into the worker's ribs. The sickening crunch of bone made the elf cry out in muffled pain.
The guard grabbed the injured elf by his dirty hair and slammed his face into the rough stone that had fallen.
"You think the palace army is forged from what? Dirt?! The capital forges never stop burning! If this load isn't delivered on time to make new weapons, we'll use your blood to cool the blades!"
Laura ground her teeth.
SNIKT.
Her silver claws slid from her gloves, piercing the duct metal with a low hiss. Rage boiled through her veins. The urge to smash through the grate, drop onto the patrol, and slit all three guards' throats nearly blinded her. But she swallowed her hatred, forcing her breathing to steady, remembering Suki's words.
When the agreed time was up, I slipped through the shadows to the edge of the village and entered the ruined stone hut.
Arthur was already there, leaning against the wall, his expression grimmer than usual. A soft thud on the roof announced Laura's arrival moments later. She climbed quickly down through a hole in the collapsed ceiling.
"It's a slaughterhouse disguised as a mine," Arthur began, his rough voice barely contained. "The ore they extract is incredibly dense. I saw slaves collapse under the weight of the loads at the docks, and anyone who couldn't keep up was simply kicked alive into the waste pits."
Laura's jaw tightened, her crimson eyes glowing beneath the hood of her dirty cloak.
"I was in the ventilation ducts above the main warehouse. It's a war production line. The guards beat an elf nearly to death just because a crate fell and delayed the quota."
"They screamed that the palace forges never stop for a second—they even threatened to use the workers' blood to cool the army's new blades."
"I watched the shift changes near the stone barracks. The guards follow a strict, exhausting pattern, but there's a fifteen-second gap between patrols along the side alleys. They're organizing refined ore here in the factory to be sent via large convoys straight to the capital."
We crouched behind the broken stone wall of the hut, processing the scale of Tsukumo's operation, when the unnatural nature of this planet revealed its darkest face.
It was sudden and brutal.
The toxic purple sky simply went dark, as if a giant master switch had been thrown overhead. The light vanished completely. Total, absolute darkness, accompanied by freezing cold, crashed down over the planet like a guillotine in less than ten seconds.
Screams of panic echoed through the dirt streets outside, and the frantic crack of whips tore through the night. Slaves began running blindly, being herded fiercely back into their stone homes before the darkness could freeze them alive.
"Stay low!" I hissed, pulling Laura by the shoulder away from the broken window.
The darkness inside the hut was suffocating, but before I could close the rotting wooden door, the structure creaked violently.
Two silhouettes stumbled inside, falling to their knees on the dirt floor.
An elderly man, his skin covered in soot and scars, held a trembling, terrified boy tightly in his arms. The child's eyes went wide in the dim light when he saw our shapes, and he opened his mouth to scream.
I moved faster than the wind.
Gliding silently across the floor, I covered the boy's mouth with my gloved hand, raising a finger to my own lips.
"Shh," I whispered, my gaze locking onto the old man's frightened eyes. "Don't make a sound."
Outside, the sound of heavy metal boots crushing frozen earth echoed just centimeters from the half-open door.
"Search the ruins in the southern sector!" a distorted, metallic voice snarled in the alley. The magnetic whip cracked through the air. "If any trash got locked outside, let the cold finish them off!"
Laura crouched in the corner, tension running so high I could almost hear her claws humming, ready to strike. Arthur stood like a statue merged with the darkness of the wall.
The patrol's footsteps marched away, fading gradually until they were swallowed by the howl of the toxic night wind.
I slowly released the boy.
He gasped for breath, immediately clinging to his grandfather's tattered robes.
The old man looked at the three of us, studying our heavy cloaks that hid our armor and weapons. He coughed dryly, straightened his hunched posture, and forced a weak, toothless smile.
"You have nothing to fear from us, strangers," the elder murmured in a raspy voice, feeling his way along the stone wall. "What's left of this place… is our home. You're welcome to stay."
He placed his calloused hand on the boy's dirty hair.
"I'm Kael. And this is my grandson, Elian."
I relaxed my shoulders and pushed back my hood.
"Suki," I introduced myself, my voice low and calm so as not to startle them. I gestured toward the shadows behind me. "These are Laura and Arthur. We won't hurt you."
The planet's cold began to bite relentlessly at our skin, stinging our lungs through our clothing. Little Elian wrapped his arms around himself, his lips already turning blue, shaking uncontrollably.
"Come here, Elian," I called to the boy with a gentle wave. "Let's get this cold taken care of."
The child hesitated for a moment, but Kael nodded slowly. Elian stepped toward me, his large eyes wide and curious.
Together we gathered bits of dry wood and dead roots that had fallen from the collapsed ceiling onto the dirt floor.
"Stack the stones around like this," I instructed, guiding his small, dirty hands to pile the rocks. "We need to contain the glow so the firelight doesn't leak through the cracks in the walls. Otherwise, they'll find us."
Elian nodded seriously, helping build the barrier.
I struck a small spark and the fire came to life. The warmth illuminated our faces, revealing the scars—not just on Kael and the boy, but across the entire planet.
The faint heat of the fire began to push back the deadly cold that filled the hut.
Elian held his hands out toward the flames, his thin, sharp shoulders finally stopping their trembling. In the orange glow, I could see the boy's features more clearly.
He couldn't have been more than ten years old, but severe hunger had carved deep shadows into his cheeks. His skin, pale gray, was layered with thick black soot, and small, dull horns—already chipped at the base—sprouted through his matted, thin hair. His eyes were large and glassy yellow, reflecting the fire with a mix of fear and childish fascination.
Kael sat just behind the boy, coughing dryly and quietly, trying not to make noise.
The old man was the living, cruel portrait of what Ruitan's machine did to its people. His spine was permanently curved, deformed by decades of carrying impossible weights. His face was lined with deep wrinkles and crisscrossed with scars—undeniable marks left by magnetic whips and burns from molten ore.
He had only his right eye; the left was completely sealed shut by a thick, pale scar. The hands resting on his knees were little more than bone and calluses hard as stone, trembling slightly—not from cold, but from chronic exhaustion.
Kael watched the fire for a moment, then lifted his good eye to look at us. The elder's weary gaze studied our faces, Arthur's rigid posture near the door crack, and Laura's sharp eyes beneath her hood.
"You're not from here, are you?" Kael asked, his voice rough, almost a torn whisper. "No one who works these mines has that look in their eyes anymore."
"We came from very far away, Kael," I replied, choosing my words carefully so as not to reveal Lavinsk or our lineage.
"I can't say exactly who we are or where we come from. But I can promise you one thing: we're here to help. We came to break this machine."
Kael let out a heavy sigh, the sound thick with skepticism forged by years of slavery. But as he looked at his grandson warming himself, a tiny spark of hope seemed to glimmer deep in his clouded pupils.
"We are few, but we have enough power to cause real damage," I continued, leaning forward slightly, the firelight reflecting in my eyes. "But to do that, we need to understand exactly what we're up against. Any information you can give us about how the factory or the palace works would be very useful."
The old man nodded slowly. He picked up a dry stick from the ground and began tracing rough lines in the dusty earth illuminated by the embers.
"Everything you see here revolves around the heart of the factory: the Three Forges and the Main Armory," Kael explained, his voice trembling slightly as he spoke the names. "We dig that black ore from the ground until our hands bleed. Then we drag it all to the center of the complex."
He pointed the stick at the lines he had drawn.
"The Three Forges are colossal and never go out. Never. The heat near them is so intense it can melt the skin off anyone who gets too close. That's where the empire's smiths melt the raw ore and forge steel under extreme pressure. Every black armor piece, spear, whip, and sword used by Lord Tsukumo's army is born there."
Laura moved a little closer to the fire, her tactical mind already calculating routes.
"And once the weapons are ready? How do they get them to the palace?"
"They're taken to the Main Armory first," Kael replied, coughing dryly. "It's the most fortified structure in the entire complex. Surrounded by elite guards and thick steel walls. The weapons are cataloged and inspected inside. After that, large, heavily guarded convoys leave the armory and travel straight up to the castle gates."
Arthur crossed his arms, his giant silhouette blocking the cold wind trying to slip through the door crack.
If we want to weaken Tsukumo before facing him directly, I thought, staring at the rough map drawn in the dirt, we can't just storm the palace blindly. We need to cut off his army's legs first.
"Where exactly is this Main Armory located, Kael?" I asked.
Kael coughed again, adjusting his hunched posture before resuming his drawing with the thin stick.
"They aren't spread out as they seem," the old man explained, sketching three large circles pressed close together. "The Three Forges are built right next to one another, forming a ring of pure heat and metal. The Main Armory sits directly beneath them, connected by massive chains and conveyor belts."
He paused for a moment. His hand trembled slightly before he drew a deep, sharp mark right in the center of the forges.
"And right in the middle of all this… rising like a parasite at the heart of our world, stands Lord Tsukumo's castle," Kael whispered, his voice breaking with the fear etched into his soul.
I tilted my head, studying the crude map drawn in the dust.
"From down here, with all this smoke in the air, it's almost impossible to get a real sense of just how massive that structure is," I commented, remembering the dark blur we had seen on the horizon.
"The soot is meant to blind us," Kael agreed, his good eye reflecting the faint firelight. "It falls thick, choking us and hiding the base of the castle and the forges most of the time. It's as if they want us to forget what we're looking at."
"But… there are certain days. When the main smokestacks have to slow production to maintain the heavy machinery. On those days, the smoke isn't so thick," Kael continued, his gaze growing distant and dark.
"When that happens and you look up, the sight is a nightmare. You can see the sheer scale of the Three Forges spitting living flame, and rising high above everything else, dominating the center of it all, the black steel towers of the castle tearing through the sky. It's a sight built to crush any hope in those who work in the mud. To remind us constantly who the absolute god is up there, and that we will never leave this place."
Arthur leaned his broad shoulders against the stone wall, his giant silhouette casting a long shadow across the hut.
"They use the very terrain and industry as psychological warfare," the Morokian observed with tactical detachment.
Laura gave a sharp, dangerous smile beneath her dirty hood.
"Intimidation only works on people who are afraid to fight back," she whispered, her crimson eyes fixed on the map in the dirt. She looked directly at me.
"Suki… the forges form a ring around the palace, and the armory holds everything they produce. If we blow up the Three Forges and turn that armory into rubble…"
"Then the castle at the center becomes isolated," I finished, my mind already visualizing the attack. A cold smile matched Laura's.
The deadly silence that followed our strategic realization was suddenly broken by a loud, rumbling sound entirely devoid of heroism.
Elian's stomach growled.
The boy's large yellow eyes went wide, and he buried his soot-stained face in his grandfather's rags, shrinking down in embarrassment. The tension in the room vanished instantly. Laura's expression softened just a little, and Arthur let out a slow breath through his nose, uncrossing his arms.
My cold smile turned into something warm and familiar.
The sound reminded me of days back in the village, when my friends and I would play until we were nearly faint with hunger.
"I guess planning the fall of an empire works up an appetite," I said, standing up and adjusting my cloak. "I'll go out and hunt something for us."
Elian peeked out from behind Kael's arm. His glassy eyes lit up with sudden curiosity.
"Can I go with him, Grandpa?" the boy asked, his voice barely a whisper. "I know the shortcuts through the rubble. I promise I'll be quiet."
Kael instinctively pulled the boy closer, his good eye wide with fear. The thought of letting his grandson out into the planet's toxic darkness seemed to tear at his heart.
"It's dangerous out there, Elian. The patrols…" Kael murmured, trembling.
I stopped at the door and looked directly at Kael. Our eyes met. I said nothing, but my posture and the calm in my gaze carried an absolute promise: No harm will touch him while I am there.
The old man swallowed hard. He glanced at my sword hidden beneath my cloak, then at the determination in his grandson's face. Slowly, his calloused hands released the boy.
"Stay close to him. Don't let go of his hand for any reason," Kael instructed, his voice thick with emotion.
"I promise," Elian replied, already hurrying to my side.
We slipped outside, plunging into Ruitan's freezing blackness.
We headed toward the edge of the settlement, moving away from the reddish glow and mechanical roar of the Three Forges, until we reached what was once a forest.
The ground beneath our boots was not soft earth, but hardened ash and shards of volcanic glass that crunched with every step. The trees were carbonized trunks, dead for decades, their twisted branches reaching toward the purple sky like dying hands. There was no green foliage—only sickly gray undergrowth that smelled of sulfur and rusted metal.
Ruitan's entire ecosystem had been drained dry by Tsukumo's forges. All that remained was waste.
We walked in silence for several minutes. Elian stayed pressed close to my leg, his eyes alert as he scanned the darkness.
"You don't walk like the people in the village," Elian whispered suddenly, his small voice breaking the silence of the dead woods.
I looked down, slowing my pace slightly. "What do you mean?"
The boy stepped around a black, petrified root. "Everyone else walks looking at their feet. We try to make ourselves small so we don't get noticed. But you, the lady with the red eyes, and the giant… you walk looking forward. And up. You aren't afraid of them."
I stopped and knelt down to meet Elian's eye level. I remembered the terror I had felt facing that dragon, the paralyzing fear during my first days training with Silver.
"We are afraid, Elian," I answered honestly, my voice soft but serious. "Anyone with sense is afraid of people who rule through pain. But fear is just your body's warning to keep you alive. What we've learned is never to let fear force us to our knees."
The boy stared at me, processing the words as if the idea of not surrendering was something completely foreign to him.
Before he could reply, my ears caught the faint scratch of claws against dry leaves, about twenty meters to our right.
I raised my hand, signaling Elian to stay perfectly still.
I focused my vision into the darkness. Between the dead bushes, I made out the shapes of two animals. They were rabbits, but monstrously large—almost the size of medium dogs. Yet like everything else on this planet, they were a reflection of starvation: just pale skin stretched tightly over protruding ribs, searching desperately for any bark or root to eat.
They were painfully thin, but they would make a warm, nourishing broth.
"Stay here," I whispered to Elian.
The boy's eyes went wide. "But they're fast—if you run, they'll bolt back into their burrow—"
He didn't even have time to finish his sentence. I unleashed a tiny fraction of my aura.
The wind whistled, and in the blink of an eye, I was back standing in front of Elian, holding both giant rabbits by their long, faded ears. The movement was so precise and silent that the animals never had time to react before I snapped their necks in one quick, painless motion.
Elian's jaw dropped. He stared at the empty spot where the rabbits had been, then back at me, his yellow eyes nearly popping out of their sockets.
"How… how did you do that?!" he gasped, shocked, reaching out a trembling hand to touch the animals' fur to make sure they were real. "You vanished! You were faster than the light from the forges!"
I gave a small smile and adjusted the rabbits over my shoulder.
"I told you we're here to break this machine, didn't I?" I said, ruffling his thin hair with my free hand. "Now let's go. Kael must be worried. And we've got dinner to make."
I pushed open the rotting wooden door with my shoulder, stepping back into the hut with Elian right behind me, clutching the hem of my cloak. The fire's warmth was an immediate relief against Ruitan's choking, toxic wind.
Arthur remained in the same spot, a silent wall watching over the crack in the door. In the opposite corner, Laura crouched beside a dented, rusted metal bucket filled halfway with murky water she had just finished filtering.
"You took long enough," she muttered, lifting her red eyes and wiping sweat from her forehead. "I had to run nearly five miles east through the shadows just to find a well that wasn't completely dried up. The soil of this planet is a dead sponge."
"At least we brought the main course," I said, dropping the two gaunt rabbits onto the ground near the fire.
Laura looked at the carcasses, cracked her neck, and extended one claw from her index finger.
Despite all the rage she showed in battle, Laura was by far the best cook among the three of us.
I sat near the fire and watched.
With surgical, lethal precision, Laura made a clean cut from the neck down to the groin of the first animal. Her hands, agile and used to blood, peeled back the pale skin in quick, fluid motions. She opened the belly and removed the organs carefully to avoid rupturing the stomach and ruining the flavor. The sharp scent of raw iron filled the cramped air, but it was soon replaced by the sizzle of water beginning to boil in the bucket she had balanced cleverly over the hot stones.
She chopped the lean meat into dozens of small pieces to cook faster and feed more, tossing everything into the water along with some dried roots.
In less than thirty minutes, the aroma of thick, nourishing soup filled the hut, completely overpowering the sickly stench of sulfur.
We served Kael and Elian first, using two dented aluminum bowls the old man carried in his tattered robes.
It was a heartbreaking sight. Neither of them had eaten meat or a proper meal in days—perhaps weeks. Elian held his bowl with both trembling hands and began swallowing the hot broth and chunks of meat almost without chewing, tears mixing with the soot on his face. Kael ate slowly, but with a quiet desperation, closing his good eye with every sip as if giving thanks to gods who had long abandoned this planet.
"Slow down, boy, or you'll just throw it all back up," Arthur warned in his deep voice, though he extended his own canteen of clean water toward the child.
Kael set down his empty bowl, breathing easier. The soup's warmth seemed to bring a faint touch of color back to his ashen skin.
"We haven't had something warm like this since before the forges took everything," the old man murmured, his voice thick with gratitude. He looked down at his own calloused hands, rubbing his deformed fingers. "If it weren't for our bloodline… if we weren't hybrids, I swear we would have starved or frozen to death in this filthy place long ago."
Laura, who was drinking broth straight from a thermal camping cup, paused and raised an eyebrow. She looked at the small chipped horns on Elian's head and the scaly skin visible on the old man's arms.
"Hybrids?" she asked, tactical curiosity sharpening her tone. "What kind of race can endure being worked to the bone like this and still stand against this climate?"
Kael coughed dryly and ran a hand over his grandson's thin hair, pulling the boy closer.
"We are the result of what Tsukumo's empire deemed useful to withstand the infernal heat of the forges," the old man explained, his heavy gaze returning to the crackling fire. "We are humans crossed with draconics."
"Draconics are no ordinary beasts," Arthur stated, his deep, rumbling voice filling the hut and breaking the trance I had fallen into. "They are beings directly bound to the realm of Queen Virkta—one of the absolute rulers of Lavinsk. If Tsukumo is kidnapping and breeding humans with her people to create forge slaves… he is truly playing with forces far beyond his station."
Laura narrowed her red eyes, stirring her soup with the tip of her dagger.
"To toy with the bloodline of Queen Virkta's realm is to invite the wrath of a goddess."
I forced my fingers to relax around my metal bowl. "Kael," I called, my voice coming out a little rougher than intended.
The old man stopped eating and lifted his soot-streaked face. "Were you here when it all began?" I asked, meeting his sad, clouded gaze. "Do you remember when Tsukumo first arrived on Ruitan?"
Kael's scaly, calloused hand trembled slightly. He set his bowl of broth down onto the dirt floor. Outside, Ruitan's toxic wind howled through the cracks in the rotting wood, but inside the small hut, silence fell heavy and absolute.
Elian stopped drinking his soup, huddling closer to his grandfather's arm.
The old man fixed his good eye on the glowing embers at the center of the fire. The orange light danced across the thick scar sealing the left side of his face. Suddenly, Kael's posture shifted; he no longer looked like a slave broken by a lifetime of labor, but like a ghost being forced to relive his worst nightmare.
"I remember every moment," Kael whispered, his voice distant, weary, and dark, as if sinking into the depths of his own memories. "Ruitan's sky was not this choking purple haze back then. Our land was green, filled with clear rivers…"
He closed his good eye, and the firelight seemed to dim, swallowed by the shadows of the past.
"…Until the day the sky tore open, bringing with it a great evil."