The night in the Ebony Marches was skeletal and cold. Milo, huddled near the dying embers of the campfire, used his watch to decipher the stubborn, shifting scripts of the [Astral Smithing Grimoire]. Under the flickering oil lamp, the diagrams seemed to writhe like living veins.
Milo's Discovery
His eyes snagged on a passage he had never noticed before. It didn't speak of hammers or heat, but of Harmonic Resonance.
"The Seven are not merely weapons. They are the severed limbs of a dislocated god. He who dons the Gauntlets shall feel the agony of the other pieces if they are profaned."
Milo went cold. Nameless wasn't just sensing the next artifact; he was acting as a sensory receiver for the "pain" of the stolen relics. A marginal note added a darker warning: "The Bow and the Daggers are apex predators; if they fall into impious hands, they shall actively stalk the other Bearers."
The "Master" wasn't just collecting items—he was using the ones he already had to turn the world into a giant radar to hunt Nameless down.
The Field of Lamentations
The next morning, they reached the source of the blue smoke. It wasn't a signal. It was the smoldering remains of a mass funeral pyre.
The sight was stomach-churning. Dozens of corpses bearing the Dragon Circle insignia littered the scorched earth. It hadn't been a battle; it was a clinical execution. Limbs had been severed with the same surgical precision Nameless remembered from the Ice Dungeon.
"I... I can't. I'll watch the wagon," Milo stammered, his face ashen as he turned away to heave.
The Last Breath
Nameless, Mir, and Mira moved among the dead. The stench of charred meat and ferrous blood was thick.
"They were looking for something," Mir whispered, noting how systematically the luggage had been ransacked.
A wet rattle rose from a pile of debris. A man—or the scorched husk of one—lay there. He was carbonized from head to toe, his cracked skin revealing the raw agony beneath. His eyes were gone, but his lips moved like an automaton.
"They went to the city... They went to the city..."
He drew his final breath seconds later. Nameless stood up, his gaze hardening into shards of ice. "The Master doesn't have peers," he said. "He only has tools or obstacles. And we are the obstacles."
The Iron Bastion: Keranos
The Kingdom of Keranos loomed before them—a titan of steel and steam. Its towering iron walls were patrolled by sentinels in Magitech Plate, their polished glass lenses scanning every soul for "biological anomalies." In this realm obsessed with technological purity, draconic traits were a death sentence.
The Torture of Metamorphosis
To enter, the sisters had to maintain a perfect human masquerade. For Mir, the tactician, it was a test of iron will. She retracted her scales and narrowed her pupils, though her skin remained unnervingly pale.
"It's unstable," she hissed to Nameless. "If I lose my temper, my mana will shred this skin like wet paper."
For Mira, it was a literal purgatory. Her fiery temperament fought the restriction at every turn. Throughout the day, her horns would sprout or her tail would flick out the moment her focus wavered.
"Breathe, Mira. Think of ice. Think of silence," Milo whispered repeatedly, acting as her anchor.
Only at dusk, exhausted by her own failures, did she finally "slide" into a human form—an athletic woman with hair the color of a dying sun and the eyes of a caged predator.
The Singing Anvil
They passed the gates as a weary caravan of metal merchants. Inside, Keranos was a labyrinth of copper pipes, hissing steam, and the rhythmic grinding of gargantuan gears.
They secured a room at "The Singing Anvil," a low-profile inn in the worker's district.
"We stay grouped," Mir commanded. "If the Executioner is here, he'll hunt us one by one. Together, we have a chance."
The Tarnished Emerald
The next morning, the group split. Mir took Milo to scout the city's infrastructure, while Nameless and Mira headed for the lower sectors. They learned that "visitors from Solis" had recently leased an entire block near the Central Forge, but the area was under total lockdown.
The Broken Piston Tavern
They reconvened at noon in a rowdy dive bar. That was where they saw her.
She was a Dark Elf, carrying trays far too heavy for her slender arms. Despite the soot covering her, she possessed a tragic, ethereal beauty. Her moss-green hair hung in tangled mats, but when she looked up, Nameless froze.
Her left eye was a vibrant forest green; her right was a void of absolute pitch-black.
"Luthier! You mongrel, get over here!" roared a bloated man in the corner, flanked by a plate-armored guard and a mage with ink-stained fingers.
The man deliberately overturned his glass, forcing the elf to her knees to mop the spill, before delivering a brutal kick to her ribs. The sound of the impact made Nameless's table vibrate.
The Blacksmith's Fury
Mir reached out to restrain Mira, but the explosion didn't come from the dragoness. Milo—usually the shadow of the group—slammed his fists onto the table and stood up.
"STOP IT!" Milo's voice cut through the tavern's roar. "This is inappropriate and utterly subhuman!"
The man sneered. "Subhuman? Kid, are you blind? She isn't human. She's a Dark Elf. She's vermin. I do what I want with my property."
Draconic Justice
The armored guard stood up, reaching for his hilt. He lunged at Milo to teach him a lesson, but Nameless was a blur. Without even tapping his magic, he caught the brute's wrist. A sickening snap echoed, and with a fluid twist, Nameless slammed the colossus into the floor as if he were made of straw.
The tavern went silent. The master, panicked, screamed at his mage: "Burn them! Kill the brat!"
The mage began his incantation, but his eyes suddenly rolled back. He collapsed face-first before a single syllable left his lips. No one saw Mir move, but a tiny, silver needle glinted between her fingers for a split second before vanishing.
The aggressor stood alone, trembling. Mir and Mira rose in unison, their gazes promising a slow descent into hell. They seized the man by his collar and dragged him into the dark alleyway outside. For several minutes, the only sounds were muffled thuds and pathetic whimpers.
When they returned, straightening their cloaks as if they had merely stepped out for air, a fearful silence greeted them. They turned to the Dark Elf, who stared up with her heterochromatic eyes, filled with pure disbelief.
"We're done with our meal," Mir said, tossing a few coins onto the table. "We're taking the girl. Does anyone have an objection?"
Not a single soul dared to breathe.