Silas’s mechanical hand froze mid-click.
The whirring of the internal bronze gears dropped to a low, pathetic whine.
The two mercenaries behind him looked at each other, confused by their leader’s sudden paralysis, their green poison-mana flickering uncertainly.
“Step back,” Silas commanded his men, his raspy voice suddenly sounding thin and desperate.
“Boss?” one of the mercenaries asked, frowning.
“It’s just a low-born brat and a couple of weavers.
We can take Vance if we focus the poison lines—” “I said step back!” Silas roared, his organic fist slamming into the iron barricade.
The impact rattled the rusted airship plating.
He kept his purple-glowing eyes locked onto Thomas, his breathing shallow.
He knew the child wasn’t bluffing.
Just that morning, a sharp, icy numbness had crept up his neck from his mechanical shoulder—the exact symptom of a collapsing core.
Silas swallowed hard, his gaze shifting up to Captain Vance’s scarred, mocking face, and then to John, who still held the boy protectively.
“Go through,” Silas muttered, adjusting his tattered leather cloak to hide the twitching bronze limb.
“The toll is…
waived.
For Vance’s guests.” “Wise choice, Silas,” Vance drawled.
He didn’t lower his hand from his massive executioner’s blade, keeping his body positioned between the guards and the family as they began to walk past the spiked barricade.
As Thomas passed the gaunt gatekeeper, Silas leaned down, the stench of stale copper and alchemical rot rolling off his clothes.
“Hey.
Kid,” he whispered, his voice trembling so low the other mercenaries couldn’t hear.
“The black fire…
can it be stopped?” Thomas paused, his liquid silver eyes reflecting the dim purple glow of the man’s unstable core.
Through his silver sight, he could see that the black rot wasn’t just a disease; it was a physical blockage of stagnant shadow-mana that had nowhere to go because the bronze arm’s runes were poorly chiseled.
It was like a kinked hose back-flowing into a pump.
Thomas felt the silver vortex in his own chest pulse.
A strange, instinctual understanding washed over his seven-year-old mind.
If he touched that bronze shoulder, his void could easily swallow the stagnant black rot, clearing the blockage in a heartbeat.
But it would also reveal his power to everyone at the gate.
“Thomas, come,” John whispered urgently, tugging the boy’s arm.
Silas stared at the child, a mixture of profound relief and unsettling awe washing over his gaunt features.
He stood up straight and slowly raised his mechanical arm, signaling the guards in the iron turret to open the inner spiked portcullis.
The heavy iron chains groaned, lifting the jagged gate to reveal the sprawling, subterranean cavern of Rogue’s Haven.
As the family walked through the threshold, Vance leaned down toward Thomas, his colorless eyes gleaming in the dark.
“You just bought us a very powerful, very terrified ally at the front gate, kid.
But remember what I told you.
In this city, a secret is a currency.
You just gave Silas a free taste.
Next time, make them pay in blood or silver.” The path opened up into a breathtaking, terrifying underworld.
Thousands of makeshift stone dwellings, glowing neon mana-lanterns, and crowded black markets stretched across a cavern so vast it had its own internal weather.
Above them, massive stalactites hung like the teeth of a sleeping dragon, dripping mineral water onto the lawless city below.
They had officially entered the belly of the beast, and the real training was about to begin.