The wound in my side wasn't deep, but it bit with a cold, rhythmic pulse that reminded me I was still made of meat and bone. I tied the makeshift bandage tight, pulling the knot with my teeth until the world blurred for a second.
I looked at my construct-horse. It stood like a macabre statue in the middle of the alley, its brass joints locked in a permanent, mid-stride gallop. In the Dead-Zone, it was just three hundred pounds of scrap metal.
I couldn't leave the carriage. It was my only home, my only shield, and the only thing that kept me from being just another beggar in the gutters.
I grabbed the tow-harness and leaned my shoulder into the wooden frame of the driver's box.
"Move," I hissed through gritted teeth.
The carriage groaned. The iron rims shrieked against the stone, the sound echoing like a dying ghost in the windowless workshops around me. I pushed. My boots slipped on the purple sludge, my muscles screaming as I forced the dead weight toward the back of the district.
I wasn't heading for the chapel. I was heading for The Hollow.
The Hollow was a sub-basement beneath an old clock-tower, run by a man named Silas. He was a "Discard"—a former Royal Artificer whose hands had been broken by the Inquisition for "unauthorized soul-binding." Now, he lived in the dark, fixing things that shouldn't exist.
I reached the rusted iron grate of his workshop an hour before dawn. I pounded my hilt against the metal.
"Silas! Open up or I'm selling this horse for copper!"
The grate creaked open an inch. A single eye, clouded by cataracts and a flickering brass monocle, peered out.
"Kaelen?" the voice was like dry parchment. "You're late. And you smell like a High-City hit-squad."
"I had a passenger," I said, leaning against the damp brick wall. "The horse is dead-cold. I need a Spark-Core. Now."
Silas pushed the gate open, gesturing for me to haul the carriage into the dimly lit cavern. The air inside was thick with the smell of grease, ozone, and cheap tobacco. Rows of dismantled mechanical limbs hung from the ceiling like frozen puppets.
"A Spark-Core?" Silas chuckled, a wet, hacking sound. "In the Dead-Zone? You might as well ask for the King's crown. You know the price of refined mana since the Spires tightened the valves."
"I don't have silver," I said, reaching into my coat. I pulled out a small, jagged piece of the Stalker's broken red goggles. The glass still hummed with a trace of A-Rank resonance. "But I have this. It's military-grade scrying glass."
Silas's eye widened. He snatched the shard, holding it up to the dim lantern light. "Where did you get... never mind. I don't want to know. I'll give you a used Core. It's leaky, and it'll smoke if you go over ten miles an hour, but it'll get you out of the district."
He disappeared into the back of the shop, the sound of clinking metal following him.
I sat down on a crate of rusted gears, my head thumping. The silence of the Dead-Zone was beginning to crawl under my skin. I reached for my pocket, looking for a cigarette, but my hand stopped.
On the floor of my carriage, near the footboard, something was glowing.
It was a single, tiny drop of the golden mist from the Soul-Trace. It must have leaked when the Stalker was tearing at the curtains. It sat on the dark wood like a fallen star, pulsing with a faint, rhythmic chime.
I reached out and touched it with my fingertip.
A memory that wasn't mine flashed through my brain: The smell of baking bread. A warm hand ruffling hair. A laughter that sounded like bells.
I jerked my hand back, my breath catching. The memory felt clean. Too clean for a place like this.
"Here," Silas said, limping back with a fist-sized brass sphere that hissed with contained energy. "It's a 'Vulture-Core.' Salvaged from a crashed scout-drone. Don't push it too hard, or the horse will explode."
He stopped, looking at my face. "You look like you've seen a ghost, Ferryman."
"I have," I said, standing up and wiping the golden residue onto my trousers, though I could still feel the warmth of the memory on my skin. "The whole city is a graveyard, Silas. Some of us just haven't realized we're dead yet."
I slammed the new Core into the horse's chest-cavity. The gears shrieked, then settled into a low, unstable hum. The horse's eyes flared a sickly, flickering green.
"Thanks, Silas."
"Don't thank me yet," the old man whispered as he closed the grate. "The Hand is offering a ten-thousand silver bounty for a black carriage with iron rims. By tomorrow, every beggar in the Sinks will be looking for you."
I climbed back onto the driver's box. The sun was trying to bleed through the smog, turning the sky the color of a fresh bruise.
"Let them look," I said, snapping the reins. "I'm the only one who knows where the shadows go at night."
As I drove out of the Hollow, I looked at the Ivory Gate in the distance. It didn't look like a silhouette anymore. It looked like a target.