Kael didn't sleep.
He sat near the fire pit at the back of the den, surrounded by the hum of alchemical circuits and the smell of rusted copper. Rei dozed on a rolled mat beside a crate, her breathing shallow, twitching now and then. She'd been through too much. He knew she carried more weight than she let on, more than she ever spoke aloud. But tonight wasn't about her.
It was about the core.
It pulsed again in his chest, not pain, not heat, but presence. A rhythm. A call. He stared into the dim flames, fingers spread, palm upward. With each pulse, faint veins of red light shimmered just beneath his skin, flickering like cracks in a stone egg. They vanished as quickly as they came.
He clenched his fist. No reaction. Opened it again. A brief flare. The core was learning him as much as he was learning it.
What had Niva said?
"Don't use the power until you know what it costs."
But it wasn't a weapon he'd picked up. It was inside him now. How could he avoid using it when every step, every breath, lit it like a wick?
Footsteps approached…cautious, deliberate. Niva.
She knelt beside him without a word, wrapping herself in her coat. For a while they sat in silence. The fire popped. Somewhere above, water dripped through the ceiling like a ticking clock.
Then she spoke.
"You know what House Veyren does to thieves?"
Kael didn't respond.
"They cut your hands off, burn the stumps, then leave you in the gutters as a warning."
Still he said nothing.
Niva glanced at him. "But not you. Not this time. Not for what you stole. They'll take you alive. They'll peel back your skin to see what the core did. Then they'll carve it out of you piece by piece."
Kael finally turned. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because you're not going to run. That makes you either brave, or an idiot. And I've never liked idiots."
A shadow of a smile touched his lips. "I've been called worse."
She nodded, then reached into her coat. From it she pulled a curved dagger…. small, sharp, and pulsing with the same faint glow Kael had seen in advanced core tools. She held it out to him.
"What is it?"
"A tracker cutter. Not just for skin. It severs magical tethers. If there's a lock on your location, a mark, a whispering thread from whoever had the core before you… this severs it."
Kael took it. It hummed in his palm.
"Where?"
"Right under the sternum. One quick slice. Let the blade drink. If they've tagged you, the core will bleed black for a moment."
He pulled his shirt up. The mark was there…. not a wound, but a brand, right above his heart. A sigil he didn't remember receiving. It pulsed with each heartbeat like ink alive.
Kael didn't hesitate.
The blade went in fast… a sharp sting, then heat. The sigil flared bright, flared red, then burst into smoke. The blade drank it all and turned from silver to soot-black.
He dropped it to the ground.
Niva's voice was quiet. "Now they can't follow your scent. For now."
Rei stirred at the noise. Her eyes blinked open and settled on Kael. "You cut yourself?"
"He was tagged," Niva said. "They knew exactly where he was."
Rei sat up, jaw tense. "We need to move. We're wasting time."
Kael stood. "When does the bell ring?"
"An hour," Niva said. "But you won't hear it down here. It's muffled by the wards."
She stood too, pacing to the table again, then sweeping everything off. Beneath it was a hidden layer…another map, this one etched on stone instead of paper. She brushed dust from its surface.
Kael and Rei stepped closer.
"This is old," Rei said.
"Before the city. Before the walls." Niva traced a path with one finger. "You'll go through the Hollow Verge, avoid the Spines, and cut through the Shatterfold. Then you reach the Academy. Or what's left of it."
Kael studied the terrain. "What's in the Shatterfold?"
"Memories," Niva said. "Fragments of people who used cores wrong. It bends time. Twists reality. Don't stop. Don't speak to anything."
Kael frowned. "Speak to what?"
"You'll see."
She handed him a compass…. jagged and glowing with blue light.
"This'll guide you around temporal folds. It's not perfect. But if it spins, don't move. If it hums, run."
Kael slipped it into his coat. "Thanks."
Rei was already packing supplies. Rations. Canteens. Cloaks. Kael moved to help her, and together they filled two travel packs.
When they finished, Kael turned to Niva one last time.
"What happens if I lose control?"
She looked at him long, hard. "Then I hope I never see you again."
Kael nodded. Then he and Rei climbed the steps in silence, pushing into the early morning fog of Varn's lower tiers.
The Blood Bell rang out as they reached the street.
Not one note. Not two.
Three.
Three chimes meant a full lockdown. An active hunt. The bell's toll echoed through the stone corridors of the city like the voice of judgment itself. Every district would know. Every Watch Captain. Every mercenary. Every Veinwarden.
Rei cursed under her breath.
Kael looked up at the red sky. Already, airships hummed like insects in the clouds.
"They want me that badly?"
"You're carrying a relic," Rei said. "You're not a man anymore, Kael. You're a symbol."
"Of what?"
"Power someone else didn't control."
They slipped into the crowd. No one noticed them yet, not with the cloaks pulled tight and their faces shadowed.
But Kael felt eyes.
Not human ones.
He turned briefly, scanning rooftops. A shape flickered past…tall, lean, draped in metal and bone. It was gone in an instant.
"Rei," he murmured. "We're not alone."
"I know," she said. "Keep walking."
They passed through the smoke vents and into the old lifts… gear-driven platforms that groaned under their weight. As they rose, Kael looked down one last time.
Varn spread out like a corpse, bleeding light and sound from every wound. And high above it all, in a spire blacker than night, House Veyren watched.
The Veinbound had awakened.
And the city would burn before it let him go.