The pressure inside Thomas’s seven-year-old chest did not burst outward; it pulled inward, acting like a sudden, violent vacuum.
Supervisor Kael’s heavy, granite-textured hand was still crushing the young boy’s collarbone when the silver vortex broke its seals.
Kael didn’t even have time to register the shift.
The moment the silver energy leaked past Thomas’s skin, the ambient brown earth-mana sustaining Kael’s stone-like flesh was violently, ruthlessly sucked into the child’s body.
“What the—” Kael gasped.
The words died in his throat.
The granite texture on his arm dissolved in a fraction of a second, leaving his flesh stark white, brittle, and completely drained of its elemental defense.
The bones in Kael’s wrist snapped under the sudden, terrifying pressure of the magical void.
The silver vacuum didn’t stop there; it reached out, instantly draining the brown mana from the reinforcing runes of the nearby iron transport carts.
The heavy vehicles groaned, their axles fracturing instantly under their own weight.
Kael screamed, a high-pitched, agonizing wail that cut through the rumbling din of the border checkpoint.
He stumbled backward into the mud, clutching his useless, withered arm, his eyes wide with absolute horror as he stared at the seven-year-old child.
Thomas fell to his knees, his ink-black blindfold tearing loose as he hit the wet cobblestones.
For the first time in seven years, his eyes were fully exposed to the world.
They burned like twin, molten silver suns, casting a cold, ethereal light that made the surrounding torches of the House of Embers flicker and die.
“The anomaly!” a merchant yelled, pointing a trembling finger.
“The silver child from the prophecy!” Panic erupted instantly.
Dozens of laborers and merchants stampeded away from the collapsing transport carts, blocking the view of the incoming guards.
The alarm horns of the border wall began to wail, answered almost immediately by the distant, booming signals from the Citadel.
The High Houses had felt the massive, localized collapse of the elemental grid.
“Thomas!” A strong pair of arms scooped Thomas out of the mud before the panicked crowd could trample him.
It was John.
His father’s face was pale with terror, but his jaw was set with fierce, protective resolve.
He swiftly wrapped a scrap of torn canvas around Thomas’s head, covering those telltale silver eyes once more.
Martha appeared right behind them, her face fierce as she shoved a heavy iron wrench into the gears of the nearest gate mechanism.
“The portcullis is dropping, John!
The inner guard is mobilizing!” “We aren’t going through the main gate,” John said, his voice dropping into a hard and desperate growl as he cradled his seven-year-old son against his chest.
“Look at the wall’s foundation.
The runes are dead.
Because Thomas’s magic had drained the earth-runes reinforcing the sector, the massive stone blocks of the outer perimeter wall were beginning to crack under their own immense weight.
A spiderweb of fractures raced up the masonry right beside the guard tower.
With a deafening crunch, a massive section of the perimeter wall collapsed inward, kicking up a blinding cloud of stone dust and motar.
“Run!” John roared.
Through the choking gray fog and screaming chaos of the checkpoint, the family sprinted over the fallen rubble of the empire’s greatest barrier.
They took their first steps beyond the jurisdiction of Oakhaven, plunging directly into the wild, untamed twilight of the lawless Wildlands.