I. The Shadow of the Malum
Grand Auditor Rhett Levin rode through the Red Lantern District, his eyes stinging from the smoke of the gold foundries, but his stomach turning from something far worse. He had seen the clean, cold order of Obsidios Iubeo; now, looking at the capital of his own Union, he finally saw the filth he had ignored for decades.
The Red Lantern District—the sprawling maze of brothels, gambling dens, and flesh-markets—was not just dirty; it was diseased. The moral rot of the Union, fed by centuries of unchecked depravity, had weakened the veil to The Malum.
The physical manifestation was subtle but horrifying to anyone paying attention. Levin watched as a prostitute leaned against a gilded pillar. The stone beneath her hand wasn't just weathered; it was sweating. A thick, black, oily residue seeped from the masonry of the brothels, smelling of rancid meat and old copper. The cobblestones in the deepest alleys were slick with a grey slime that refused to wash away with the tide.
The people here were changing, too. The "Malum-Sickness" was spreading among the poor and the abused. Levin saw a beggar with skin that had turned grey and flaky, his eyes milky and wide, muttering about "the voices in the walls." The Ministry of Commerce called it a sanitation issue. They quarantined the sickest blocks behind wooden barricades and posted guards to beat back anyone trying to leave. It was a containment of bodies, not a cure for the soul.
The city was literally rotting from the inside out, the architecture buckling under the weight of the sins committed within its walls.
II. The Inventory of Souls (The Slave Pens)
Levin's route took him past the Residential Slave Quarters, known colloquially as "The Pens."
These were not homes. They were storage lockers for biological assets. Located beneath the street level of the merchant districts, The Pens were damp, windowless cellars carved into the bedrock.
Inside, the conditions were a masterclass in dehumanization. Levin stopped his horse, peering through a street-level grate that offered the only ventilation for the hundreds of souls trapped below. The smell that wafted up was a physical blow—ammonia, unwashed bodies, and the cloying, sweet scent of despair.
Down in the dark, men and women were packed so tightly they slept in shifts. There was no privacy, no dignity, no silence. They lay on mats of rotting straw that swarmed with vermin. They were fed a grey, flavorless nutrient paste pumped from a communal trough—fuel to keep the inventory working, nothing more.
Levin saw an old man, an elf with eyes that had seen centuries, staring up at the grate. The elf didn't beg. He didn't cry. He just stared with a hollow, terrifying vacancy. His spirit had been eroded by the grind of the Union until there was nothing left but a biological machine that balanced ledgers for a spice merchant.
This was the "civilization" the Union claimed to protect. It was a machine that turned life into coin and left the husks to rot in the dark.
III. The Terror of the Freemen
Above ground, the "free" poor lived in a state of terror that rivaled the slaves. In the Low Districts, the tenement buildings leaned precariously, their wood warped by the Malum's subtle touch.
Here, the Tax Collectors were the apex predators. Levin watched a squad of collectors, flanked by hired thugs, kicking down the door of a weaver's shop. The crime was a missed payment of three silver pieces.
The family was dragged out into the mud. The father, screaming, was beaten into silence. The mother clutched her children—a boy and a girl—trying to shield them with her own body.
"Asset seizure!" the Collector barked, marking a book. "Liquidation of family unit to cover debt and processing fees."
The horror was transactional. The parents were shackled for the mines. The children—prime stock—were separated, destined for the auction block to be sold to the highest bidder in the brothel district. The neighbors watched from behind shuttered windows, silent and terrified, knowing that one bad week of trade would put them in the same chains.
This was the culture Corvin Nyx had sworn to burn. And for the first time, Rhett Levin, the Grand Auditor, felt a chill that had nothing to do with the wind. He wondered if the fire was coming not to destroy, but to cleanse.
IV. The Ministry's Panic
Levin arrived at the Gold Tower, the seat of the Ministry. He walked through the marble halls, ignoring the pristine guards. He pushed open the doors to the High Council Chamber.
High Minister Kaelen looked up from his maps. "Levin. You are late. Where is the surplus? Where are the prisoners?"
Levin walked to the table. He threw his rod of office onto the obsidian inlay. It clattered loudly in the silence.
"There is no surplus," Levin rasped, his voice raw. "There are no prisoners."
He looked at the Ministers—men soft with wealth and blind with arrogance.
"I saw a city built in a month," Levin said. "I saw walls of black stone that defy our masons. I saw a man who snaps steel on his skin and commands the sky to darken."
He pointed a shaking finger at the map, directly at the location of Pravum.
"The city is gone. It is Obsidios Iubeo now. And the man who rules it... he is not asking for a ransom, Minister. He sent a message."
"What message?" General Harker demanded.
Levin looked at the High Minister. "He said this is the end of your era. He said if you want to audit him again... bring an army."
The silence in the room was absolute. It was the silence of men realizing their world was ending.
V. The Seeds of Envy (The Gold-Cloaks)
While Levin delivered the death warrant of their worldview, his escort—the fifty Gold-Cloaks—were dismissed. They returned to their barracks in the city, carrying their pay but also carrying a secret.
Captain Kaelus walked home to the Middle District. He opened the door to his small, cramped apartment. His wife looked up, tired, her hands raw from washing. His children were thin, sharing a bowl of watery gruel. The air in the room was stale.
Kaelus looked at his family. He remembered the Obsidian-fused houses in Lithos—warm, sturdy, and safe. He remembered the Dark Harvest bread—rich, heavy, and free. He remembered the look in the eyes of the "slaves" under the Raven Lord—a look of absolute, unshakeable security.
He looked at his wife, who lived in fear of the Tax Collector. He realized that his gold cloak protected nothing.
"We are on the wrong side," Kaelus whispered to the empty air.
The thought took root. In the taverns, in the barracks, and in the homes of the soldiers, the Gold-Cloaks began to talk. They spoke of the black stone city where the streets were clean, the food was magic, and the monsters were afraid.
The rot of the Union was deep, but the rot of envy was faster. The Ministry would soon call for an army, but they did not know that the soldiers they would hire were already dreaming of the enemy's bread.