## CHAPTER ONE: THE NAME THEY CARRIED
Rain fell like shards of glass on Refugee Processing Center #47. Mud sucked at Dain's worn boots as he scanned the snaking ration line, his gaze sharp as the hidden knife against his ribs. Hunger was a familiar beast, but the coiled tension in the air was new – the metallic tang of fear, the low murmur of desperation thick enough to choke on.
"Next!" The clerk's voice was a rusty hinge, barely audible over the drumming rain and the distant thump of Concord patrol boots. He didn't look up, his face a grey smudge beneath a hood slick with water.
Dain stepped forward. "Dain."
A grunt. A metal stamp slammed down on a blank iron rectangle. The etching needle whirred, spitting sparks. The clerk shoved the card across the scarred wooden counter without looking. Dain picked it up. It was cold, heavier than it looked.
**DAIN VARETH**
*Threat: Bronze*
*Power: Unassigned*
*Assignment: Quarry Battalion Gamma*
*Vareth.* The name landed like a stone in his gut. He'd never heard it before. He glanced at the clerk, but the man was already waving forward the next in line – a boy about his own age, maybe seventeen, with eyes the color of storm clouds and a stillness that felt out of place amidst the squalor. "Kael," the boy said, his voice quiet but clear.
The same stamp. The same whirring needle. The clerk pushed another card forward.
**KAEL VARETH**
*Threat: Bronze*
*Power: Unassigned*
*Assignment: Quarry Battalion Gamma*
Kael's fingers paused over the card. His storm-grey eyes flicked to Dain's, then down to the matching surname etched onto both IDs. A silent question hung between them, heavy as the rain. Neither spoke. Names were weapons or shackles in the Iron Wastes. This one felt like both.
Dain tucked his ID into his threadbare tunic. The cold metal bit through the fabric. He moved towards the ration dispensers, Kael falling into step beside him, a wary shadow. The line shuffled forward. Above them, nailed haphazardly to a waterlogged notice board, a bounty poster flapped violently in the wind. Most of it was torn, but the vital parts screamed out in stark, printed ink:
**WANTED: VEYNE [REDACTED]**
**THREAT LEVEL: CRIMSON**
**BOUNTY: 20,000 CONCORD MARKS**
**LAST SEEN: GLASS WASTES**
**APPROACH WITH EXTREME CAUTION**
Where the portrait should have been, there was only a charred hole, as if the face itself had been burned away.
The ration counter was manned by a Concord enforcer, his polished black armor streaked with rain, face hidden behind a visored helmet. He held a small, humming device with a needle. "Finger," he barked at the woman in front of Dain. She flinched but extended a trembling hand. The needle pricked. A droplet of blood welled, smeared onto a strip. The device flashed green. "Rations: Standard," the enforcer droned, handing her a meager packet.
Dain stepped up. The enforcer didn't look at him. "Finger."
Dain extended his hand. The needle jabbed. His blood, dark red, beaded on his calloused fingertip. The enforcer pressed it to the strip.
It didn't flash green.
It sizzled. A tiny wisp of acrid smoke curled upwards. The blood droplet seemed to boil for a fraction of a second before the device emitted a sharp, discordant *bleep* and flashed a violent, pulsing red.
The enforcer froze. His helmeted head snapped up, the dark visor fixing on Dain. "You." The single word was thick with sudden tension. "Stay right there." He fumbled for the comm unit on his shoulder. "Captain! Bio-anomaly at Ration Point Seven! Possible Inheri—"
Dain moved. Not with thought, but with the raw instinct honed by a lifetime of sharp edges and sharper consequences. His hidden knife was in his hand, a dull gleam of iron in the grey light. He didn't stab; he slashed upwards, a brutal, efficient arc across the exposed throat beneath the helmet's rim.
The enforcer's words choked into a wet gurgle. He stumbled back, clutching his neck, black-gloved fingers slick with sudden crimson. His comm unit crackled, a distorted voice demanding status. He crashed to his knees, then onto his face in the mud, the device falling from his spasming hand. His own ID card skittered across the ground.
Silence slammed down, thick and suffocating, broken only by the drumming rain and the dying man's wet gasps. A hundred pairs of terrified eyes locked onto Dain.
Kael was beside him instantly, his storm-grey eyes wide but calculating. "We're dead," he breathed, the words barely audible.
Dain wiped his blade clean on his pants, his gaze scanning the perimeter. Guards were already turning, drawn by the commotion. Alarms began to blare – a harsh, mechanical wail that cut through the rain. "We were always dead," Dain growled, the words tasting like ash. "Now we run."
He scooped up the fallen enforcer's ID. It read: *Enforcer R. Telvos. Status: Active*. As he touched it, the text flickered, dissolved, and reformed:
**CAUSE OF DEATH: TERMINAL TRAUMA**
**ASSOCIATED ID: VARETH, D.**
**THREAT REASSESSMENT: SILVER**
They turned to bolt towards the camp's ragged perimeter fence, but a gaunt figure stepped into their path. It was the clerk. His hood was thrown back now, revealing a face etched with deep lines and eyes that held a terrifying weariness. He held out two objects: simple, worn sheaths holding blacksteel daggers.