The apothecary's sanctuary in the lower guts of Cauldron's Apex smelled of ozone, rendered fat, and crushed mint. It was a smell Torin associated with dying men trying desperately to mask the rot of their own wounds.
He sat bare-chested on a slab of pitted iron. Heavy leather straps, thick as a draft horse's reins, hung loose around his wrists and ankles. The subterranean chamber vibrated with the ceaseless churning of the magma river far below, a rhythm that had sunk into Torin's bones years ago.
"You understand that the human soul is essentially a closed vessel," the alchemist muttered, his back to Torin.
His name was Mael. He was a frail, stooped creature wrapped in an oil-stained apron, his hands scarred from acid burns and chemical fires. He worked at a long brass table littered with glass tubing, brass calipers, and jars containing things that floated in murky, bioluminescent fluid.
Torin flexed his hands. The jagged cinders fused to his knuckles ground together with the sound of breaking pottery. "I didn't come here for a lecture. The Arch-Duke said you could give me the pressure. Do it."
Mael turned, holding a heavy brass syringe. The barrel was made of reinforced quartz, containing a thick, violently glowing violet liquid. It looked less like medicine and more like weaponized deep-root sap.
"I can give you the pressure," Mael said, his voice a dry rasp. He tapped the quartz barrel with a soot-stained fingernail. "This is an aggregate of Deeprot spore-extract, leviathan cerebrospinal fluid, and raw, unrefined lodestone dust. It doesn't teach you the Fifth Threshold, Torin. It forces your existing Aura to boil. It will artificially expand the capacity of your kinetic channels by ripping them open."
"How long will it last?"
"Three hours," Mael replied, stepping closer to the iron slab. "Perhaps four, depending on your baseline cellular density. During that time, you will hit with the force of a falling cathedral. You will be able to project your kinetic strikes through the air. You will be a god." The alchemist paused, his pale eyes flickering down to Torin's chest. "And when the aggregate burns out of your blood, your kinetic channels will collapse. You will lose ten years of your natural life. Your bones may permanently brittle. If you push the pressure too far, your heart will simply detonate."
Torin stared at the glowing violet fluid. He thought of the ledger tucked safely in the breast pocket of his discarded coat. Maeve's contract. Signed in blood.
"Strap me down," Torin said.
Mael nodded slowly. He didn't offer any platitudes. Men who fought in the pits didn't need pity, and men who worked for Malakor Vance couldn't afford it. The alchemist fastened the heavy leather belts around Torin's wrists, his biceps, his thighs, and finally, a broad strap across his chest, pinning him to the iron slab.
"Bite down on this," Mael instructed, forcing a thick piece of boiled leather between Torin's teeth. "If you bite your own tongue off during the expansion, you'll drown in your blood before you reach the gates."
Torin bit down, the leather tasting of salt and old spit. He locked his eyes on the soot-stained ceiling.
Mael found the thick, pulsing vein in the crook of Torin's elbow. He didn't bother with an alcohol swab. He aligned the brass needle, pressed his thumb against the plunger, and drove it in.
The pain was not immediate.
For three heartbeats, Torin felt nothing but a cold, heavy lump moving up his arm. It reached his shoulder. It slipped into his chest.
Then, the lodestone dust ignited.
Torin's back arched so violently the iron slab groaned. A muffled, guttural scream tore its way out of his throat, completely smothered by the leather gag. It felt as though Mael had injected a stream of liquid sun directly into his heart. His blood turned to boiling acid.
The kinetic Aura, which Torin had spent a decade painstakingly compressing into his bones, rebelled. The alchemical aggregate acted as a violently expanding catalyst. The pressure inside him multiplied—doubled, tripled, then shattered the theoretical limits of the Third Threshold.
Torin's vision whited out.
He wasn't on the iron slab anymore. The pain dragged his consciousness backward, plunging him into the nightmare he had spent his life trying to outrun.
He was seven years old. The air was thick with ash and the deafening ring of hammers. The Prime Anvil of the Volcano Citadel loomed before him, a massive block of black iron sitting in a pool of slow-moving magma.
Standing over him was Kaelen Varr. The Grand Forge-Master was a mountain of Sun-Forged plate, his face hidden behind a venting iron grate.
Purity is born in the fire, little slag, Varr's voice boomed, echoing in the vast, suffocating cavern. You think you are strong because you can carry a pickaxe? Dirt is not strength. Stone is not strength. Only the heat remains.
A massive, armored hand clamped down on the back of Torin's neck. He was lifted off his feet, kicking and screaming, the terrifying heat of the anvil blistering his face before he even touched it.
Give your hands to the Forge. Bleed the weakness out.
Varr forced Torin's hands down. Down into the glowing, white-hot coals sitting atop the anvil.
The memory of the pain merged flawlessly with the alchemical fire currently tearing through his veins. Torin watched his own flesh blacken and crack. He smelled the sickeningly sweet scent of his own burning fat. He felt the volcanic cinders physically fusing with his metacarpals, replacing his weakness with an agonizing, permanent weapon.
You are a Spark now, Varr whispered, the sound like grinding tectonic plates. Burn until there is nothing left to hurt.
Torin's eyes snapped open.
The white-out cleared, replaced by the dim, flickering light of Mael's apothecary. Torin was thrashing against the leather straps with such terrifying force that the iron slab was physically lifting off the floor.
His body had changed.
The thick, heavy musculature of his arms and chest was engorged, the veins standing out like thick ropes. But they weren't blue. The veins running up his neck and across his shoulders pulsed with a violent, kinetic orange light. The air in the small room was distorting around him, a massive, suffocating heat-mirage radiating off his skin.
He was at the Fifth Threshold.
"Hold him!" Mael shouted, though he was the only other person in the room. The alchemist scrambled backward, shielding his face from the sheer kinetic pressure Torin was bleeding into the air.
Torin spat the leather gag out. It hit the floor, chewed completely in half.
He didn't wait for Mael to unbuckle the straps. He simply flexed his arms, pulling his hands inward. The heavy leather restraints snapped like dry twigs. The broad strap across his chest tore from its iron rivets with a deafening crack.
Torin sat up.
He looked down at his hands. The cinder-fused flesh was glowing from the inside out, tiny cracks in the blackened skin revealing the blinding kinetic pressure contained within. He felt bloated. Terrifyingly heavy. He felt as though if he stomped his foot, he could crack the foundation of the city.
"Breathe," Mael cautioned, staying near the far wall. The alchemist's eyes were wide with a mixture of scientific awe and stark terror. "Do not strike anything. If you release the pressure here, you will bring the ceiling down on us."
Torin slid off the slab. His brass-plated boots hit the stone floor, and the impact sent a visible, rippling shockwave through the dust. He took a slow, deep breath, forcing the violent, thrumming energy to settle just beneath his skin. It was like trying to hold a wild stallion by a frayed rope, but he managed it. The glowing orange veins dimmed to a dull, angry red.
He picked up his canvas coat from a nearby stool and shrugged it on, wincing as the rough fabric rubbed against his hypersensitive skin. He checked his breast pocket. Maeve's ledger was still there.
"Where is the guide the Arch-Duke promised?" Torin asked. His voice was deeper, vibrating with suppressed force.
"Waiting for you at the northern exhaust gates," Mael said, wiping sweat from his forehead. "You have four hours, Torin. Find Varr. Hit him. And then... make peace with whatever gods you pit-rats pray to."
Torin didn't say goodbye. He turned and walked out of the sanctuary, the stone floor faintly cracking beneath every heavy step.
The northern exhaust gates of Cauldron's Apex were a rusted, labyrinthine nightmare of venting pipes and massive, slowly turning fans that pushed the city's toxic smog out into the Scorchlands. The noise was a constant, deafening roar.
Waiting in the shadow of a massive brass manifold was a figure wrapped entirely in tattered, ash-stained cloaks.
As Torin approached, the figure stepped out into the dim light of a flickering gas lamp. It was a woman. Or at least, she had been once. Her face was heavily scarred, the skin around her eyes pale and sickly from a lack of true sunlight. She wore no armor, only layers of supple leather. Strapped to her back was a slender, curved blade made of dark glass.
"You're the Spark," she said. Her voice was flat, devoid of any inflection. It wasn't the disciplined calm of the Inquisition; it was the hollow, terrifying emptiness of a Shroud-Runner.
"I am," Torin said, stopping a few paces away. The heat radiating off his body made the woman blink, but she didn't step back. "You're taking me to the Vanguard."
"My name is Jax," she said, pulling a dark cloth mask up over her mouth and nose. "I don't care about your life story. I don't care why you're glowing. The Arch-Duke paid me a small fortune to walk you through the Paladin patrols and get you within striking distance of the Slag-Father. If you lag behind, I leave you. If you draw their attention before we reach the command tent, I leave you. Understood?"
"Just point me at the big bastard in the welded armor," Torin rumbled.
Jax turned without another word and slipped through a narrow gap in the iron grating that covered the exhaust tunnel. Torin followed, having to turn his massive shoulders sideways to squeeze through.
They emerged onto the exterior cliff face of the canyon. Below them, the Cinder River churned, casting a hellish, shifting red glare against the black basalt walls. Above them, the sky was a bruised, starless expanse, utterly dominated by the returning, suffocating glare of the Panopticon. The brief respite of the Eclipse was over, and the Scorchlands were baking once again.
Jax moved with unsettling grace. She didn't climb so much as she flowed over the jagged rocks, her hands finding handholds with a practiced, thoughtless rhythm. Torin followed, his alchemically enhanced muscles making the climb trivial, though he had to consciously hold back his strength to keep from crushing the handholds into powder.
They reached the canyon lip and hauled themselves over the edge.
The Ash Sea stretched out before them, a rolling desert of black glass and pulverized pumice. The wind howled, carrying the abrasive dust that could strip the flesh from a man's bones if he stood still too long.
A mile out, Torin saw them.
The Branded Vanguard.
It wasn't a patrol. It was an army. Hundreds of Paladins, encased in their massive, welded Sun-Forged plate, marching in perfect, terrifying unison. From this distance, they looked like a river of slow-moving magma, the cherry-red glow of their armor seams illuminating the ash around them. Above the marching columns, massive siege engines on iron treads belched thick black smoke into the air.
They were marching directly toward the canyon of Cauldron's Apex.
"Varr isn't wasting time," Torin muttered, his hands clenching.
"The Vanguard believes the Eclipse was a divine test," Jax said quietly, her eyes fixed on the distant army. "They believe the Arch-Duke's demonic engines caused the Light to falter. They are coming to cleanse the canyon. Completely."
Torin felt a sudden, sharp pang of guilt. Maeve's contract was in his pocket. He was going to save his sister. But the thousands of other slaves, the pit-rats, the laborers who kept Cauldron's Apex running... they were going to be slaughtered by the Paladins. Varr didn't take prisoners. He took fuel for his forges.
Not my problem, Torin told himself, forcing the thought down. I can only carry one life out of this hell.
"Where is he?" Torin asked.
Jax pointed toward the center of the massive formation. "The Grand Forge-Master doesn't walk with the infantry. He rides in the Cathedral."
Torin squinted through the heat distortion and the blowing ash. In the heart of the Vanguard, towering above the marching Paladins, was a colossal structure. It was a mobile fortress, built on massive, iron-spiked treads. It looked exactly like a cathedral of Aethelgard, but forged entirely of black iron and brass. Huge smokestacks jutted from its vaulted roof, venting continuous plumes of steam.
"How do we get close to that without a hundred Paladins boiling us alive?" Torin asked, the immense reality of the suicide mission finally settling in.
"We don't walk through them," Jax said, pulling a long, slender vial from her belt. "We walk under them."
She uncorked the vial and poured a few drops of a pale, glowing liquid onto her fingertips. She touched her temples, her chest, and then reached out and pressed her damp fingers against Torin's forehead.
The sensation was instantaneous and nauseating.
The violent, boiling rage of the alchemical aggregate in Torin's blood was suddenly smothered by a heavy, suffocating blanket of absolute apathy. The vibrant colors of the Scorchlands muted into dull grays. The roaring wind sounded distant, as if he were underwater. He looked at his own hands; the angry red glow of his veins was still there, but it felt entirely disconnected from him, like looking at a drawing of a fire rather than feeling its heat.
"The Shroud of Vespera," Jax murmured, her own voice sounding hollow and far away. "I am sharing the veil with you. Do not think about the heat. Do not think about your anger. Do not think about the man you are going to kill. If you feel anything strongly, the Shroud will break, and the Paladins will see your Aura shining like a beacon."
Torin swallowed hard, forcing his mind to go blank. He thought of the stone of the fighting pits. He thought of the taste of stale water. Dull things. Gray things.
"Follow my steps exactly," Jax ordered.
She stepped out from the cover of the rocks and walked directly toward the marching army.
Torin followed.
The walk across the Ash Sea was a surreal, terrifying dream. They approached the outer flanks of the Vanguard. The Paladins were massive, towering over Torin even with his enhanced bulk. The heat radiating off their welded armor was intense enough to singe the hair on Torin's arms, but the Shroud dampened his physical reaction to it.
They slipped between two marching Paladins.
The gap was less than three feet. Torin could hear the rhythmic, wet rasp of the men breathing inside their iron cages. He could smell the roasted pork stench of their own searing flesh. One of the Paladins turned his blocky, visored head slightly, staring directly at the space where Torin and Jax were walking.
Torin's heart spiked. The alchemical pressure in his blood surged, eager to punch a hole through the man's breastplate.
Jax shot her hand back and gripped Torin's wrist, her fingers cold as ice. The spike of apathy forced Torin's heart rate back down. The Paladin grunted, turning his head back to the front, and continued marching.
They were invisible. Not physically gone, but rendered so fundamentally uninteresting and devoid of presence that the human brain simply refused to register them.
For an hour, they navigated the moving labyrinth of the Vanguard. They ducked under the massive iron treads of supply crawlers, stepped over the dragging chains of chained Ashen hounds, and wove through tight columns of silent, marching zealots.
Finally, the iron treads of the mobile Cathedral loomed before them.
It was staggeringly huge. The treads alone were the size of small houses, churning the black glass into powder. The heat radiating from its underbelly was like standing in front of an open furnace door.
"The ramp," Jax whispered, pointing to a heavy iron grate dragging along the ground at the rear of the structure.
They broke into a heavy jog, catching up to the dragging ramp. Torin leaped up, his heavy boots clanking against the iron, but the sound was completely lost in the deafening roar of the Cathedral's engines. Jax scrambled up behind him.
They found themselves in a massive, dark staging bay in the lower levels of the fortress. Racks of massive cinder-blades and heavy shields lined the walls. The air was thick with smoke and the smell of hot oil.
Jax leaned back against a rack of weapons, pulling her mask down. She looked exhausted, her pale skin slick with sweat. Maintaining a Shroud strong enough to cover two people in the middle of a holy army was tearing her mind apart.
"I can't hold the veil inside the structure," Jax gasped, her chest heaving. "There are warding runes carved into the walls. They scatter illusion magic. You're on your own from here, Spark."
Torin nodded, reaching up to wipe the soot from his eyes. "How do I find him?"
"Go up," Jax said, pointing to a heavy spiral staircase made of wrought iron. "The Grand Forge-Master will be at the apex, in the primary sanctuary. He never leaves the Prime Anvil."
Torin looked at the stairs. He could feel the clock ticking. The violent pressure in his veins was beginning to ache, a deep, structural throb in his bones that warned him the aggregate was reaching its peak. If he didn't vent this kinetic energy soon, his heart would burst in his chest.
"Get off the crawler, Jax," Torin said, not looking back at her. "When I hit him, the shockwave is going to crack this whole structure."
He didn't wait to see if she obeyed. He stepped onto the wrought iron stairs and began to climb.
The interior of the Cathedral was a monument to brutalist architecture. There was no art, no tapestry, no comfort. Everything was iron, brass, and fire. As Torin ascended, the temperature rose steadily. By the time he reached the third level, the canvas coat he wore was singeing at the edges. He tore it off, leaving his torso bare, his violently glowing orange veins providing the only light in the dim stairwell.
He passed a pair of Vanguard guards standing outside a heavy set of double doors. The Shroud was gone, but Torin didn't try to hide.
Before the guards could even raise their massive weapons, Torin blurred into motion. He didn't punch them. He simply walked past them, dragging his cinder-fused fingertips across the iron of their breastplates. The compressed 5th-Threshold Aura bled out of his fingers like a scalpel, slicing cleanly through the thick steel and into the flesh beneath. The two massive men collapsed, cut open from shoulder to hip, dead before they hit the floor.
He reached the apex.
The doors to the primary sanctuary were made of solid, unblemished quartz, designed to let the Panopticon's light filter perfectly into the room.
Torin didn't open them. He placed his flat palm against the center of the quartz. He let a fraction of the pressure out.
The doors exploded inward, thousands of razor-sharp shards of crystal spraying into the sanctuary like grapeshot.
Torin stepped through the ruined archway, the heat mirage radiating off his body warping the air so violently that the room looked like a painting left in the rain.
The sanctuary was vast, circular, and dominated by a massive, open forge in the center. The fire burning in the pit was not red or orange; it was a blinding, unnatural white.
Standing before the fire, holding a heavy iron hammer over a glowing piece of slag, was Kaelen Varr.
The Slag-Father was larger than Torin remembered. He was fully encased in his legendary Sun-Forged armor, the plates overlapping seamlessly, the joints welded tight. The armor itself seemed to be breathing, expanding and contracting slightly with the terrifying internal heat of the man inside. His helmet was a featureless bucket of iron, save for the heavy grating over the mouth and eyes, venting continuous, whistling jets of white steam.
Varr did not flinch when the doors exploded. He didn't turn around. He simply brought the hammer down on the slag with a deafening ring.
"A Spark returns to the fire," Varr's voice boomed, vibrating off the iron walls. He slowly turned his massive, armored head toward Torin. "You carry the taint of the Arch-Duke's alchemy in your blood. I can smell the rot of the deep-roots on you."
"I carry enough pressure to crack you open like a nut, old man," Torin growled. He stepped into the room, raising his fists. The cinders fused to his knuckles ignited, blazing with the 5th-Threshold kinetic energy.
Varr fully turned, resting the head of his massive hammer on the floor. "Malakor sent a pit-rat to assassinate the Forge-Master. He insults the Light. You cannot pierce this armor, boy. It was quenched in the blood of an Ashen Overlord."
"I don't need to pierce it," Torin said, dropping his center of gravity. "I'm going to punch right through it."
Torin launched himself forward.
The stone floor cracked beneath his boots. He crossed the forty feet separating them in a fraction of a second, aiming a devastating right hook directly at the center of Varr's breastplate.
Varr moved with a speed that defied his massive bulk. He brought the haft of his hammer up, catching Torin's fist in a block.
The impact was apocalyptic.
The 5th-Threshold kinetic shockwave detonated outward. The air pressure in the sanctuary violently inverted, blowing out the remaining quartz windows and shattering the heavy iron braziers lining the walls. The sound was like a thunderbolt striking a bell.
Torin's fist ground against the iron haft of the hammer. The force was staggering. Varr, a man who weighed nearly a ton in his armor, was pushed backward, his iron boots gouging deep trenches into the solid stone floor.
But the hammer didn't break.
Varr dug his heels in, stopping the backward slide. The steam venting from his visor turned into a high-pitched scream.
Your strength is borrowed! Varr roared, pushing back against Torin's fist. It burns fast, but it burns out!
Varr twisted the haft of the hammer, throwing Torin's arm wide, and brought his heavy, armored knee up directly into Torin's stomach.
The blow would have completely pulverized a normal man's spine. Torin's enhanced Aura absorbed the brunt of it, but the blunt force still lifted him off his feet and sent him crashing backward. He hit the iron wall of the sanctuary hard enough to dent it, sliding down to the floor, gasping for breath.
Torin coughed, spitting a thick wad of blood onto the floor. The aggregate in his veins was screaming. His heart was hammering a frantic, uneven rhythm against his ribs.
Varr stalked forward, raising the hammer high above his head.
"The Eclipse was a warning," Varr preached, his voice echoing in the ruined room. "The world has grown complacent. It hides behind ledgers and glass walls. The corruption must be burned away. Starting with Malakor Vance, and ending with the heretics in the Wold."
Torin pushed himself up, his vision blurring. He was outmatched. Malakor's alchemists had been wrong. Even at the 5th Threshold, the sheer, immovable mass and fanatical Aura of the Grand Forge-Master was too much. Varr wasn't just wearing armor; he was an extension of the volcano itself.
Torin looked at his hands. The orange glow was beginning to flicker, threatening to die down. His time was running out.
He thought of Maeve. He thought of the heavy iron collars they put on the children in the deep-seams.
I can't go back down there, Torin thought, a cold, absolute resolve settling over him. I won't let her stay in the dark.
Torin didn't stand up. He stayed low, crouching like a cornered animal.
Varr brought the massive hammer down, aiming to crush Torin's skull.
Torin threw himself forward, diving directly inside the swing radius of the hammer. The massive iron head smashed into the floor where Torin had been a millisecond before, sending a shower of stone shrapnel into the air.
Torin drove his shoulder into Varr's midsection. It was like tackling a brick wall, but it stopped the Forge-Master's momentum just long enough.
Torin brought both of his cinder-fused hands up, slamming his palms flat against the chest plate of Varr's armor, directly over the man's heart.
Empty the vessel, Torin thought, closing his eyes.
He didn't just strike. He completely unsealed his kinetic channels. He took the entirety of the boiling, volatile alchemical pressure raging in his blood and pushed it all outward in a single, sustained pulse.
The orange glow in Torin's veins flared so brightly it was blinding, turning his skin translucent.
The Empty Hand technique bypassed the armor entirely. The compressed kinetic force phased through the welded Sun-Forged plate and detonated directly inside Varr's chest cavity.
Varr froze.
The steam venting from his helmet abruptly stopped.
For a terrifying, agonizing three seconds, the two men stood locked together. Torin's hands pressed flat against the unyielding iron, pouring every ounce of his borrowed life force into the strike. He felt the muscles in his own arms begin to tear, ripping away from the bone under the sheer recoil of the pressure. He screamed, a raw, bloody sound of absolute exertion.
Then, the armor gave way.
Not from the outside. From the inside.
The kinetic pressure inside Varr's chest grew too massive for the welded suit to contain. With a sickening, metallic screech, the seams of the Sun-Forged plate violently burst outward.
A geyser of boiling blood, pulverized bone, and superheated steam erupted from the ruptured seams in Varr's back and chest. The Grand Forge-Master's massive body went rigid, lifted an inch off the ground by the sheer force of the internal explosion, before violently crashing backward onto the stone floor.
He didn't twitch. He didn't speak. He was dead before he hit the ground, his organs completely liquidated by the strike.
Torin collapsed.
The alchemical aggregate burned out. The kinetic channels in his body collapsed with a horrific, snapping sensation. The orange glow faded from his skin, leaving him pale, shivering, and agonizingly mortal.
Both of his arms were broken. The recoil of the strike had fractured his ulna and radius in multiple places. He lay on his back, staring up at the vaulted ceiling of the Cathedral, his breathing shallow and ragged.
He had done it. He had killed a god.
He rolled his head to the side, looking at the ruined, steaming corpse of the man who had tortured him as a child. There was no grand satisfaction. Just exhaustion, and the terrifying realization that he was now trapped in the center of an army of fanatics without his powers.
Heavy footfalls echoed on the stairs outside the sanctuary. The Vanguard guards had heard the explosion. They were coming.
Torin gritted his teeth, awkwardly reaching across his chest with a trembling, broken hand to touch his breast pocket. Maeve's ledger was still there.
"Get up," Torin wheezed to himself, spitting blood. "Get up, you stubborn bastard."
He managed to roll onto his stomach, using his elbows to drag himself toward the massive, open windows at the rear of the sanctuary. The Cathedral was still moving, rolling slowly across the Ash Sea. If he could reach the window, he could throw himself out. It was a hundred-foot drop, and with broken arms, it would likely kill him. But it was better than being captured by the Vanguard.
He dragged himself across the floor, leaving a smear of blood on the polished stone.
The heavy iron doors of the sanctuary were violently hauled open.
Torin stopped, bracing himself for the heavy thud of Paladin boots and the searing heat of cinder-blades.
But the footsteps that entered the room were light. Precise.
Torin looked over his shoulder.
Standing in the ruined doorway was a tall man in an immaculate, silver-and-white coat. His face was pale and perfectly calm, marred only by a single, stitched cut across his left cheek. He held a longsword made of translucent glass-steel, the blade completely devoid of blood.
Cassian Vane looked at the smoking, ruptured corpse of the Grand Forge-Master, and then looked down at the broken pit-fighter bleeding on the floor.
The Inquisitor slowly sheathed his sword with a sharp, metallic click.
"You make a profound amount of noise for an assassin," Cassian said, his voice flat and perfectly calm over the roar of the Cathedral's engines.
Torin stared at the white coat, his heart sinking. The Truth Inquisition. He had survived the Paladins only to be caught by the Sovereign's finest hound.
"Are you going to arrest me, or kill me?" Torin spat, struggling to push himself up on his elbows.
Cassian walked slowly into the room, stepping carefully over the shattered quartz. He looked at Torin's blackened, cinder-fused hands, and then up at Torin's defiant, bloodied face.
"Neither," Cassian said softly. "The Panopticon is broken. The Emperor is blind. And I am very, very far from home."
Cassian knelt beside Torin, offering a clean, unblemished hand.
"My name is Cassian Vane. And I think, Torin of the Deep-Seams, that we need to have a conversation about the dark."