Cold.
It wasn't the clean, sharp cold of the Echoing Gorge or the biting mountain wind. This was a greasy, industrial chill—the kind that smelled of hydraulic fluid, ozone, and sterilized death. My eyes felt like they were glued shut with dried mercury. When I finally forced them open, the world was a blur of harsh, flickering fluorescent lights and iron grating.
Bzzzt. Hummmmmm.
I tried to move my hands, but my wrists were pinned to a vertical slab of cold steel.
Clink.
The sound of the iron lock on my soul manifested in the physical world. A heavy, matte-black bracer encircled my right wrist, etched with glowing red runes that felt like they were drinking my blood. Every time I tried to tap into that gold-silver well inside me, the bracer pulsed, sending a jolt of agonizing static directly into my brain.
"I wouldn't do that, Lady Valendris," a voice rasped. It was a voice I knew, but it had been stripped of its aristocratic polish. It sounded like metal grinding on bone.
I turned my head slowly, my neck popping with a sickening crack.
Standing in the shadow of a massive steam-pipe was Vane. Or what was left of him. Half of his face was gone, replaced by a jagged plate of dull brass. His left arm was a mechanical claw, the gears clicking with a rhythmic, insect-like precision. He looked like a nightmare stitched together in a basement.
"Vane," I croaked. My throat felt like I'd swallowed a handful of glass shards. "I saw you... I saw you vaporize."
"The Guild is very good at recycling its assets," Vane said, his one human eye twitching. He stepped into the light, his metal boots heavy on the floor. Clang. Clang. "You destroyed my body, little girl. But the Council has invested too much in my mind to let it drift into the void."
"Where is he?" I demanded, my voice gaining a desperate edge. I struggled against the shackles, the iron lock on my wrist glowing a furious, bloody crimson. "Where is Kaelen?"
Vane gestured with his mechanical claw toward a glass cylinder at the far end of the room.
Hiss. Glug.
Inside the cylinder, suspended in a thick, viscous blue fluid, was Kaelen. He looked smaller in the tank, his hair floating like seaweed. Dozens of thin, silver needles were embedded in his chest and arms, siphoning the blue "Scion" blood directly out of his veins and into a series of tubes that disappeared into the ceiling.
"Kaelen!" I screamed, but the sound died in the cavernous room.
"He is undergoing the Disposal Protocol," Vane explained calmly, as if he were describing a weather report. "He failed his primary directive. Now, he serves a secondary purpose. His blood is an excellent stabilizer for the Iron Weave we are currently grafting into your nervous system."
"You monster," I hissed, my vision blurring with tears of rage. "You're killing him."
"We are refining him," Vane corrected. He walked over to a control panel, his metal fingers dancing over a series of glass levers. "And we are refining you. The gold entity you manifested in the gorge... that was a fascinating anomaly. Pure, unrefined Essence. We've spent centuries trying to find a vessel that wouldn't shatter under that pressure. It seems the key wasn't the lock, but the breaking of the lock."
"I'm not a vessel for you to study," I snarled. I felt the gold fire stir deep in my gut, fueled by the sight of Kaelen in that tank.
Vrrrr-POP.
The iron bracer on my wrist flared, the red runes biting into my skin. I screamed, my back arching against the steel slab. It felt like my nerves were being threaded with white-hot wire.
"The Iron Weave is designed to punish the use of magic, Isyra," Vane said, his voice devoid of pity. "The more you fight, the more you suffer. It's a beautifully simple feedback loop. We call it 'The Penance'."
"Fuck... your... penance," I panted, my forehead resting against the cold steel.
I looked at Kaelen again. His eyes were closed, his face peaceful in the blue stasis fluid. He didn't know I was here. He didn't know they were draining his life to keep me in a cage.
Clunk-thud.
The entire room shuddered. The airship—The Sovereign—was banking hard. Through a small, reinforced porthole, I saw the black sky. We were high—thousands of feet above the clouds. The mountains were nothing but jagged teeth in the dark.
"We are heading to the Citadel," Vane said. "The High Council is eager to meet their new Architect. Once we arrive, the Iron Weave will be finalized. You will be the first of a new breed, Isyra. A god with a leash."
"My mother..." I whispered. "Elowen. Did you kill her?"
Vane paused, a flicker of something—disgust? fear?—crossing his half-human face. "The 'Unregistered Entity' escaped. She vanished into the lower tunnels before the airship could lock on. But she is irrelevant now. She is a ghost of the old world. You and Thorne are the foundation of the new one."
I looked at the tubes connecting Kaelen to the ceiling. If his blood was stabilizing me, then we were still synchronized. Just like he said.
Thump... Thump...
I closed my eyes, trying to drown out the hum of the ship and the pain of the Iron Weave. I focused on the blue light. I didn't reach for the gold. I didn't reach for the catastrophe. I reached for the boy.
Kaelen, I thought, projecting my consciousness into the blue fluid. Wake up. You bastard, wake up.
Inside the tank, Kaelen's finger twitched.
Bloop.
A single bubble rose from his mouth.
Vane didn't notice. He was busy looking at a scrolling ticker of data on his screen. "Fascinating. Your output is stabilizing. The Scion blood is working even better than the simulations predicted."
"Vane," I said, my voice low and steady.
He turned, his brass eye whirring as it zoomed in on my face. "Yes?"
"You said the more I fight, the more I suffer, right?"
"That is the mechanical reality, yes."
"Well," I said, a wild, dangerous smile spreading across my face—a smile that belonged to the girl with the silver teeth. "I've always been a bit of a masochist."
I didn't try to break the shackles. I didn't try to fight the Iron Weave. I accepted it. I pulled the red, agonizing energy of the runes into myself, letting it mingle with the gold and the silver. I let the pain become a fuel.
SCREECH.
The iron bracer began to glow white-hot. My skin began to smoke. The smell of burning flesh filled the room, but I didn't scream. I laughed.
"What are you doing?" Vane shouted, his mechanical claw snapping open in a defensive posture. "Stop! You'll short-circuit your own heart!"
"My heart is already broken, Vane!" I roared.
The red light of the Iron Weave turned a violent, screaming magenta. The shackles on the wall began to melt, the steel dripping like wax onto the floor.
KRA-KOOM.
The slab I was pinned to exploded outward. I hit the floor on my hands and knees, the iron lock on my wrist now fused to my skin, a permanent, glowing scar. But I was free.
I stood up, my hair a wild halo of static and gold light. I felt the ship groan around me, the engines straining against the sudden surge of mana I was pulling from the very air.
"Guards!" Vane yelled into his comm-link. "The asset is—"
I didn't let him finish. I moved like a blur, my hand catching him by his metal throat. I didn't use a blade. I didn't use magic. I used the raw, kinetic force of my own rage.
CRUNCH.
I slammed him into the control panel, his brass face-plate denting inward. Sparks showered us both as the electronics fried.
"The tank," I hissed, leaning into his face. "Open it. Now."
"I... I can't," Vane wheezed, his mechanical eye flickering. "The sequence... it's automated. If you break the glass... the pressure will crush him."
I looked at the cylinder. Kaelen's eyes were open now. He was looking at me through the blue fluid, his hand pressed against the glass. He looked terrified. Not for himself, but for me.
Tack. Tack. Tack.
The sound of boots on the grating outside the door. The guards were coming.
I looked at Vane, then at the tank, then at the black sky through the porthole.
I didn't have a key. I didn't have a plan.
I turned back to the control panel, my hand hovering over the master release lever—the one marked with a skull and a warning in the Guild's ancient, secret language.
"Isyra, don't!" Vane screamed, his metal arm flailing. "That's the hull purge! You'll kill everyone on this deck!"
I looked at Kaelen. He nodded, a small, sad smile touching his lips behind the glass.
I grabbed the lever.
"Then I guess we're all going for a swim," I said.
I pulled.
WHOOOOOOOSH.
The floor didn't just drop. The entire side of the airship was sucked outward by the pressure differential. The roar of the wind was deafening, a black wall of cold air invading the room, dragging everything—Vane, the guards, the equipment—into the abyss.
The glass cylinder shattered.
SHATTER-SPLASH.
The blue fluid exploded into the room as Kaelen was ejected from the tank. He tumbled across the floor, and I lunged for him, my fingers locking around his wrist just as his body began to slide toward the gaping hole in the hull.
We hung there, suspended over the black void of the world, thousands of feet above the ground. My other hand was hooked around a support beam, the iron lock on my wrist groaning under the weight of us both.
"Isyra!" Kaelen yelled, the wind whipping his words away. "Let go! You can fly! You can't carry me!"
"I am not... letting go!" I screamed, the gold light in my eyes fighting the darkness of the sky.
But as I looked down, I didn't see the ground.
I saw a fleet of smaller ships rising from the clouds below. They weren't Guild ships. They were black, sleek, and adorned with the silver crest of the Valendris family—the one my mother had used.
And from the lead ship, a grappling hook shot up, its iron teeth digging into the hull of The Sovereign right next to my hand.
A voice crackled over a loud-hailer from the fleet below.
"Daughter! If you want to live, you have to jump!"
I looked at Kaelen. I looked at the black sky.
And then, I saw the needle.
A single, golden needle—the size of a spear—launched from the upper decks of the dreadnought, aimed directly at the center of my back.
I didn't have time to dodge. I only had time to choose.
To be continued...