The ridge ended in a massive, jagged fissure that looked as if a titan had slammed an axe into the floor of the canyon.
The drop was thousands of feet down, choked by a dense, unmoving fog that smelled sharply of copper, burning oil, and stale groundwater.
“Welcome to the Maw,” Captain Vance said, pausing at the precipice.
He pointed his massive, notch-bladed executioner’s sword down into the gloom.
“The front door to the only place left on the continent where the High Houses can’t tell you when to breathe.” Following a narrow, steep stone staircase chiseled directly into the vertical cliff face, the family descended into the dark.
As they went deeper, the wild, chaotic world-mana of the surface world began to grow heavy and dense, compressed by the weight of the mountain above.
To seven-year-old Thomas, walking right behind his father, the descent was a sensory overload.
Without his linen blindfold, he could see millions of faint, colorful threads of magic leaking out from the stones—pulses of old earth arrays and stagnant shadow-pools that had drifted into the cracks of the world.
At the bottom of the steps stood the outer checkpoint of Rogue’s Haven.
It wasn’t a grand gate, but a massive barricade constructed from the rusted hulls of crashed imperial airships, spiked timbers, and heavy iron chains.
“Halt, Vance,” a voice rasped from the shadows of a reinforced iron turret.
Three figures stepped out onto the blood-stained stone path.
They didn’t wear the polished, uniform runic armor of the Oakhaven garrison.
These were Wildlands mercenaries—their gear a mismatched patchwork of stolen imperial steel, beast-hide leathers, and crudely etched weapons.
The leader was a gaunt man with a prosthetic arm made of clockwork gears and dark bronze, his eyes glowing with an unstable, unnatural purple hue—a clear sign of a corrupted Shadow Core.
“The toll has doubled today, Captain,” the gaunt man sneered, his mechanical fingers clicking rhythmically.
His eyes slid past Vance, locking instantly onto John, Martha, and the small, silver-eyed child.
“And you’re bringing baggage.
Low-born refugees from the border tier.
They don’t look like they have two copper shards to rub together.” “They’re with me, Silas,” Vance drawled, his hand resting casually on the hilt of his massive iron blade.
“And my regional clearance covers my guests.” “Not anymore it don’t,” Silas countered, and the two mercenaries behind him drew their jagged shortswords, their bodies flaring with a sluggish, aggressive green Poison mana.
“The Under-Boss issued a new decree this morning.
No unregistered mouths from the Empire get through the Maw without paying the Blood Tax.
One silver coin per head, or we keep the kid for the pit-fights.” John instinctively tightened his grip on Thomas’s shoulder, pulling the seven-year-old behind his broad weaver’s frame.
Through the gaps in his father’s coat, Thomas stared at Silas.
His silver sight instantly bypassed the mercenary’s arrogant posture and cut straight into his torso.
In the center of Silas’s chest, Thomas saw his magical core—it was a jagged, fractured violet sphere.
But it wasn’t whole.
A thick, pulsating black rot was slowly expanding across the violet energy, bleeding down into the bronze prosthetic arm.
Silas’s clockwork limb wasn’t powered by gears; it was being driven by a leaking, highly unstable reservoir of shadow-mana that was slowly poisoning his own nervous system.
If that black rot spread another fraction of an inch, the entire arm would violently detonate.
“Your arm,” Thomas whispered, his small child-voice cutting through the tense, silent standoff Silas froze, his purple-glowing eyes snapping down to the seven-year-old.
“What did you say, street rat?” “The dark magic inside your metal arm is broken,” Thomas said calmly, pointing his small, dirt-stained finger directly at the center joint of the bronze prosthetic.
“It’s eating the purple ball in your chest.
If you try to swing that sword, the black fire will leak out and break your shoulder.” Silas’s face went completely pale.
The sneer vanished from his lips, replaced by an expression of pure, unadulterated terror.
For months, he had been secretly suffering from severe, agonizing chest pains whenever he channeled his shadow-mana, a secret he hadn’t shared with a single living soul in Rogue’s Haven, knowing his rivals would slaughter him if they knew his core was destabilizing.
“How…
how do you know that?” Silas whispered, taking an involuntary step back, his mechanical arm violently twitching as the gears whirred in a erratic, high-pitched panic.
Captain Vance looked down at Thomas, a slow, dangerous smile spreading across his scarred face.
He casually kicked a loose stone off the path, letting it fall into the dark abyss below.
“The kid has good eyes, Silas,” Vance drawled, his voice carrying a cold, lethal promise.
“Now, are you going to let us through, or do you want to find out if the boy is right about your arm exploding when I take your head off?”