“Get him up,” Captain Vance hissed, his hand never leaving the hilt of his heavy executioner’s blade.
He didn’t look back at the family, his eyes locked entirely on the mouth of the alleyway where the rain-slicked cobblestones of Rogue’s Haven met the main thoroughfare.
“The flare from that ring was bright enough to wake the dead.
If a patrol saw that silver light, we are all corpses.” John scrambled forward, his rough, calloused hands hooking under Thomas’s armpits to haul the seven-year-old to his feet.
Thomas’s knees buckled immediately, his small boots sliding on the wet filth of the alley.
His body felt hollowed out, as if the First Spellborn had reached inside and emptied his veins to make room for the cold weight of the vision.
“I have him, I have him,” John whispered, his voice trembling as he hoisted Thomas against his chest.
Martha wrapped her arms around Thomas’s shaking shoulders, pressing a frantic kiss to his sweat-dampened forehead.
“Thomas, look at me.
Look at your mother.
Are you whole?
Did it burn you?” Thomas tried to speak, but his tongue felt thick and heavy.
The word Arcanis sat like a hot coal at the back of his throat, demanding to be spoken, but the First Spellborns’ final warning echoed louder in his mind: Do not call to it.
He managed a weak nod, burying his face into the damp wool of his mother’s cloak.
“The ring is quiet,” Vance reported, throwing a sharp glance over his shoulder at the crude iron band on Thomas’s index finger.
The unaligned metal no longer thrummed; it looked like nothing more than a piece of discarded scrap.
“Whatever he did, he forced the seal closed.
Move.
Now.
They slipped out of the alley like shadows, blending into the thick, sulfurous fog that rolled off the lower canal docks.
Rogue’s Haven was a city built on top of its own ruins, a labyrinth of decaying stone where the dregs of the realm hid from the pristine, terrifying gaze of the High Houses.
Instead of fleeing through the outer walls into the lawless wastes, Captain Vance veered hard into the deeper, older underbelly of the city.
Vance led them down a flight of crumbling stone steps, through a drainage archway hidden by thick iron bars that he swung open with a muffled grunt.
This was his sanctuary—a reinforced, forgotten bunker nestled beneath the foundations of an ancient, collapsed watchtower.
Inside, the air was surprisingly dry and smelled of old iron and whale-oil lanterns.
Vance slammed the heavy timber door shut, sliding three thick iron deadbolts into place.
Only then did he let go of his executioner’s blade.
John laid Thomas gently onto a cot in the corner, covering him with a threadbare blanket.
The boy’s small child-sized chest was still heaving, his eyes wide as he stared blankly up at the stone ceiling.
The unaligned iron ring on his finger was completely quiet now, but the echo of the word Arcanis throbbed inside his mind.
He was still entirely too young to understand the heavy burden sleeping beneath his ribs, but inside this hidden bunker, they finally had a moment to breathe.