The screaming in the Warren eventually faded for now.
Zane sat on the edge of the stone walkway with his boots dangling just above the foul water.
He wasn't just full, he was overflowing. The battery in his gut felt like a dense, cold star that radiated a numbing strength through his entire body.
He looked at his hands and flexed them.
The skin was no longer grey and waxy but held a flush of unnatural, vibrant health. The deep fatigue that had plagued him since he woke up in the alley was gone, replaced by a buzzing, restless energy that demanded action.
He wasn't a victim anymore.
Wren waded back from the monster's nest with the silver box tucked securely under her arm. She looked like a drowned rat, covered in sewage and monster-slime, but her grin was sharp and victorious.
"You look pleased with yourself, Stain," she said as she climbed onto the walkway and shook the filth off her boots.
"Zane… and I'm alive," he replied, standing up with a fluid ease he hadn't possessed an hour ago. "And I'm not starving. That's a win in my book."
Wren sat down and placed the silver box on her lap. It was small, etched with complex, spiralling patterns that hurt Zane's eyes if he looked at them too long.
It didn't smell of despair or rot; it smelled of ozone and cold metal.
"What's in it?" Zane asked.
"A ticket out," Wren muttered. She fiddled with the lock, her fingers moving with surprising delicacy for someone who fought with a piece of rebar.
Click.
The lid popped open.
Zane leaned in to look.
Inside the box, nestled on a bed of black velvet, was a single, glowing crystal. It was jagged and pulsed with a soft, white light that seemed to push back the gloom of the sewer.
"A Purity Shard," Wren whispered, the feral edge in her voice replaced by awe. "The Church uses these to power their high-grade wards. It's worth enough to buy passage on a Guild airship or hire a healer from the Spire."
Zane looked at the shard and felt a strange revulsion.
The light it cast was too clean, too orderly. It clashed with the cold, dark energy sitting in his gut.
"That's your brother's cure?" Zane asked.
"It's the money for the cure. I guess you read my despair or whatever your sickness is," Wren corrected, snapping the box shut and hiding the light. She shoved the box into a deep pocket inside her leather armor. "Now we just have to survive long enough to spend it."
She stood up and grabbed her spear. "We're done here. The Cleaners will be sweeping the upper tunnels by now, so we have to take the long way around. We'll come up in the Grinders district."
"The Grinders?" Zane asked. "That's Rusted-Nail territory."
"The whole Sump is Nail territory, idiot," Wren said, starting to walk back down the tunnel. "But the Grinders are loud. The machinery confuses the Exterminators' sensors, and the smog covers the smell of your death-magic. It's the best place to hide."
Zane fell into step beside her. He noticed that she wasn't walking ahead of him anymore but next to him.
The dynamic had shifted. He wasn't just a junkie she was dragging along; he was the heavy artillery. Of course, it was transactional.
"So, what's the plan?" Zane asked. "We get to the surface, and then what? We just walk out the front gate?"
"Hardly," Wren snorted. "The gates are guarded by the Watch and the Church. They scan for corruption. You'd light up their sensors like a flare. We need a smuggler, and smugglers need coin."
"I have five copper coins," Zane offered dryly.
"That buys you a rat-kabob and a kick in the teeth," Wren said. "We need gold. Or favours. And right now, the only currency you have is violence and death."
She glanced at him, her eyes calculating. "Rivet is going to be hunting you. He's not the type to let a squad wipe go unanswered. He'll put a bounty on your head that will have every cutter in the Sump looking for you."
"So, we kill him," Zane said.
The words came out easily. Too easily.
A day ago, the thought of killing a fly would have made him sick. Now, the idea of removing a threat felt like simple logic.
It was just paperwork.
Wren stopped and looked at him. "You're getting comfortable with that demon inside you, aren't you?"
"It's not a demon," Zane said, touching his stomach. "It's a job. Mortis hired me to be a reaper, so I'm going to reap."
"Careful, Stain," Wren warned. "You start enjoying the killing, and you end up like Silas. A Spark burning so hot she consumes herself."
"Silas said I was messy," Zane said, remembering the Blade's cold disdain. "She said I needed to learn."
"She's right," Wren said. "But you have something she doesn't."
"What's that?"
"Me," Wren grinned. "I'm the brains. You're the muscle. We stick together, we kill Rivet, we take his stash, and we buy our way out of this hellhole. That's the deal."
"Long-term partnership?" Zane asked, a hint of light in his eyes which creeped out Wren.
"Until I get my brother out," Wren said firmly. "After that, you're on your own."
Zane nodded.
It was a transactional relationship, honest and brutal. He could work with that. It was better than the fake empathy of the hotline.
'Humans of Earth are cooked if I'm the best hotline operator they got,' he thought.
They walked in silence for an hour, winding through the labyrinthine tunnels of the Underside.
The crushing despair of the Warren faded behind them, replaced by the standard, background misery of the city above.
Zane felt his Whispers skill picking up the noise from the surface. It was a dull roar of exhaustion, pain, and anger.
[...machine ate my hand... foreman won't pay...] [...too much smoke... can't breathe...] [...kill him... just kill him and take it...]
They reached a vertical shaft with a rusted iron ladder bolted to the wall.
Above, a circle of grey, smoky light marked the surface.
"The Grinders," Wren whispered. "Keep your hood up. Keep your 'stink' locked down. If you flare that aura of yours, every Nail in a three-block radius will know we're here."
Zane focused on the cold stone in his gut.
He willed it to stay tight, to stay hidden. He imagined wrapping the power in layers of lead. The faint, oily shadows that drifted off his skin retracted, leaving him looking like just another beggar in a dirty tunic.
"Ready?" Wren asked.
"Let's go," Zane said.
They climbed the ladder.
The air grew hotter and tasted of soot and iron. The sound of massive, rhythmic thumping—the industrial presses of the factories—vibrated through the rungs.
Zane pushed open the grate at the top and climbed out.
They emerged in an alleyway between two towering brick factories. The sky was a bruised purple grey, choked with smoke from a hundred chimneys.
The noise was deafening.
Zane took a deep breath of the polluted air. It tasted like home. Worse.
"We need a safe house," Wren said, keeping her voice low. "I know a place near the slag pits. It's abandoned, but dry."
They started to move toward the mouth of the alley.
Zane stopped.
His Whispers skill spiked.
It wasn't a general wash of misery—it was a specific, sharp cluster of thoughts moving rapidly toward them.
[...saw them come up... two of them...] [...fresh meat... look at that girl...] [...easy pickings...]
It wasn't the Nails. It was something lower on the food chain.
Scavengers.
Three men stepped into the alley entrance, blocking their path.
They were filthy, holding jagged lengths of pipe and shivs made from scrap metal. They weren't wearing the Red Nail insignia. Just freelancers looking for a victim.
"Lost, little rats?" the leader sneered, revealing a mouth full of rotted teeth. He looked at Wren with a hunger that had nothing to do with food.
Wren sighed and lowered her spear. "I really don't have time for this."
She looked at Zane. "You want to handle the small fry, or should I?"
Zane looked at the three men. He could feel their souls.
They were small, petty things, burning with greed and malice. They weren't a feast; they were barely even a snack.
But he needed practice. He needed to test his control without burning his battery dry.
"I've got it," Zane said casually.
He stepped forward. He didn't draw his knife. He didn't unleash a wave of shadows.
He just looked at the leader and let a tiny, controlled sliver of the Grave-Warren's despair leak out of his eyes.
[...hopeless...]
He projected the thought like a dart.
The leader froze. His sneer vanished, replaced by a sudden, slack-jawed horror.
He dropped his pipe. It clattered on the stones.
"What's... what's the point?" the leader whispered, tears suddenly streaming down his grimy face. "We're just... we're just dirt."
The other two thugs stared at their boss, confused.
Zane took another step. "Move," he said.
The leader fell to his knees, sobbing into his hands.
The other two, terrified by their leader's sudden breakdown, scrambled backward, tripping over themselves to get away from the man who radiated such cold, absolute finality.
Zane walked past them without breaking stride.
Wren followed him, shaking her head. "You didn't kill them."
"Waste of energy," Zane said, feeling the cold stone in his gut. He hadn't lost even 0.1%. "And besides, living with that memory is worse."
Wren laughed and nodded in approval, "You're learning, Stain. You're definitely learning."
They walked out into the smog of the Grinders, two predators entering the herd.
The hunt for Rivet had begun.