The Grinders district was waking up.
It wasn't a gentle awakening. It was the sound of a beast being kicked.
Klaxons wailed from the burning Processing Plant and steam whistles screamed from the surrounding factories.
The heavy, rhythmic thumping of the presses faltered as the power grid fluctuated from the explosion Zane and Wren had caused.
Zane ran, his boots pounding the slick cobblestones.
He carried Kael over his shoulder effortlessly, the dense muscle fibre granted by the Soul Essence making the boy feel as light as a bag of feathers.
Wren was a shadow ahead of him, leading the way through the maze of alleyways and steam tunnels.
She moved with a desperate urgency, checking every corner and every roofline.
They were loud.
They were messy.
And they were exposed.
"Faster, Stain!" Wren hissed, vaulting over a pile of rusted scrap. "The Watch will be swarming the main roads in five minutes. We need to hit the slag pits before they lock down the district."
Zane grunted but picked up the pace.
The cold stone in his gut—his battery—was still nearly full, humming with a low, potent energy.
He pushed a fraction of it into his legs, and his stride lengthened. He ate up the ground, matching Wren's speed despite his burden.
Kael groaned, bouncing against Zane's shoulder. "I'm going to be sick..."
"Do it and I'll drop you," Zane said, not slowing down.
They reached the edge of the slag pits ten minutes later.
The air here was hotter and smelled of sulphur and molten rock. The glow from the open pits painted the smog in shades of hellish orange and red.
Wren slid down a slope of cooled, glassy impurities, and kicked open the hidden hatch to their boiler safe house.
"Inside. Now."
Zane jumped down, landing heavily on the metal floor. He dumped Kael onto the ground like a sack of garbage.
The boy sprawled on the rusted metal, gasping for air. His pristine white suit was ruined, smeared with soot, grease, and sewer filth. He looked pathetic.
Wren slammed the hatch shut and spun the locking wheel and leaned against it for a moment, listening.
Silence. Just the distant roar of the fires and the hum of the city.
"We're clear," she said, letting out a breath. "For now."
She turned and looked at Kael. Her face was hard, lit by the flickering lantern light.
"Right," she said, pulling her knife. "Talk."
Kael scrambled backward until his back hit the curved iron wall.
He looked from Wren's knife to Zane, who was standing by the hatch, arms crossed, shadows coiling lazily around his boots.
"I... I told you!" Kael stammered. "The sewers! The drainage pipe under the canal! That's the way in!"
"That's a way in," Zane said, his voice deep and calm. "But you're holding out. I can hear it."
He tapped his temple.
[...they don't know about the filter... they'll die... good... let them die...]
Kael's thought was a sharp, malicious spike hidden under his fear, so it was still accessible to Zane.
Zane took a step forward. He didn't need to threaten.
He just let his Grief Sight flare. His eyes glowed with a cold, blue light.
"The filter," Zane said. "Tell us about the filter."
Kael froze. His eyes went wide. "How... how do you do that?"
"I'm the Union Rep," Zane repeated his line from the factory. "I know when management is lying. Talk."
Kael swallowed hard. He looked at Wren, then back at Zane. He seemed to realize that lying was physically impossible.
"It's... it's a bio-scanner," Kael whispered. "Rivet bought it from the Spire. It scans for corruption. For Sump-rot. If you're from the slums, the turrets activate. Only 'Clean' DNA can pass."
Wren cursed. "We're all from the slums. We're all carrying the rot."
"Exactly," Kael said, a flicker of his old arrogance returning. "You can't get in. You'll be shredded before you take three steps."
"But you can get in," Zane said.
Kael blinked. "I... yes. I'm family. My DNA is keyed in."
"Then you're our key," Wren said, sheathing her knife. "We don't need to sneak past it. We just need to carry you in front of us like a shield."
Kael paled. "Rivet will shoot through me! He doesn't care! Family means nothing to him if it threatens the business!"
"Then you better hope we're fast," Zane said.
He walked over to a crate and sat down, staring at the boy. There was the other thing. What he had felt while running.
The fear that wasn't about Rivet.
[...please don't ask about Her... please don't ask about Her...]
Kael's mind was chanting it like a mantra.
"Who is she?" Zane asked softly.
The question hit Kael like a physical blow. He flinched, curling into a ball.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"The woman," Zane pressed. "The one you're actually afraid of. The one you thought I might be able to kill."
Wren looked at Zane, confused. "What woman? Rivet doesn't have a wife. He killed her years ago."
"Not a wife," Zane said, his eyes never leaving Kael. "Someone else. Someone scary enough to make a sadist like Kael wet himself."
Kael started to shake. It wasn't the "surface" fear of pain or death.
It was a deep, primal dread.
The kind of fear a child feels for the monster under the bed.
"She... she comes once a month," Kael whispered, his voice barely audible over the hum of the slag pits. "She wears white. Perfect white. Like the Spire clouds."
"A noble?" Wren asked.
"More than a noble," Kael said. "She walks through the Sump and the mud doesn't touch her. The Nails... they can't even look at her. Rivet bows to her. He bows."
"What does she want?" Zane asked.
"She takes things," Kael said. "Special shipments. From the Processing Plant. The 'pure' gold. The heirlooms with... with history."
He looked up at Zane, his eyes haunted.
"And she takes people. The ones with... potential. The ones who survive the longest in the pits. She calls them 'Candidates'."
Zane felt a chill. Candidates.
"Candidates for what?"
"I don't know!" Kael cried. "Nobody knows! They never come back! Rivet says it's the 'Tithe'. The price of doing business. But I've seen her eyes. They're... they're empty. Like glass."
[...she looks at me like I'm meat... just meat...]
Zane stood up and walked to the porthole.
He looked out at the city. The Spire, the noble district, rose above the smog in the distance, a gleaming needle of white light.
"Lady Silica," Zane whispered. Or whatever her name was in the dossiers. The leader of the Purification Cult.
"What?" Wren asked.
"Nothing," Zane said. "Just a hunch."
He turned back to Kael. "This woman. Does she have a name?"
"They call her 'The Pale Lady'," Kael said. "But I heard Rivet say it once. Elara. Lady Elara."
Zane nodded. It fit. The plot was thickening faster than the smog outside.
"Okay," Zane said. "We have a way in. We have a hostage. And we know Rivet answers to someone bigger."
"Does that change the plan?" Wren asked.
"No," Zane said. "We still kill Rivet. We still take his stash. But now we know we have to be quick. If this 'Elara' finds out we've disrupted her tithe, she might come looking."
"And if she does?" Wren asked, testing the weight of her spear.
Zane looked at his hands.
He felt the cold, heavy power of the Grave-Warren monster still sitting in his gut. He remembered the feeling of shattering its despair.
"If she comes," Zane said, "we'll see if she bleeds… or I'll… eat her."
Kael gulped.
The next few hours were a blur of preparation.
Wren sketched out the layout of the sewers leading to the Iron-Heart. It was a nightmare of pressure valves, steam vents, and patrolled walkways.
"We have to move during the shift change," Wren explained, pointing to a junction on the map. "At 0400, the night crew rotates out and the morning crew comes in. The steam venting cycles to clear the pipes. For ten minutes, the sensors are blind from the heat interference."
"Ten minutes to get from the drainage pipe to the inner sanctum," Zane said. "With him."
He pointed at Kael, who was currently tied to a pipe, eating the rest of the stale bread.
"I can run," Kael mumbled. "I don't want to die."
"You'll run," Zane said. "Or I'll carry you. And if I have to carry you, I might get hungry."
Kael swallowed and nodded rapidly.
Zane checked his UI.
ESSENCE: 95% STATUS: OPTIMAL
He hadn't burned much. He was ready.
"One thing," Zane said to Wren. "The freelancers. You said I shouldn't have spared them."
Wren looked up from the map. "Yeah. Loose ends trip you up."
"I spared the innkeeper too," Zane said. "And he got away. He's alive."
"For now," Wren said. "Or maybe Rivet caught him and skinned him. You don't know. That's the point, Stain. Hope is messy. Despair is clean. Dead is cleaner."
"I'm not doing this to be clean," Zane said. "I'm doing this because I have to. But I'm not going to become a butcher just because it's efficient."
Wren stared at him for a long moment. Then, she shrugged.
"Suit yourself. But when one of your 'saved' souls comes back to stick a knife in your ribs, don't say I didn't warn you."
She rolled up the map and shoved it into her boot.
"It's time. 0300 hours. By the time we get to the pipe, the shift change will be starting."
Zane went to Kael and cut his bonds. The boy rubbed his wrists, looking small and terrified.
"You stick to me," Zane told him. "You do exactly what I say. You get us through that filter. And if you try to run, if you try to signal anyone..."
Zane let a tiny wisp of shadow curl around his finger.
"I won't kill you," Zane whispered. "I'll leave you in the dark. With Her."
Kael shuddered. "I'll be good. I swear."
Zane nodded. He looked at Wren.
"Let's go take over the underworld."
They climbed out of the boiler and into the night. The Grinders were loud, a cacophony of metal and fire. But beneath the noise, Zane could hear the Whispers.
[...pain... heat... exhaustion...]
It was a sea of misery.
And somewhere in the centre of it, inside the Iron-Heart, was Rivet. A man who thought he owned the despair.
Zane was going to show him who the real owner was.
Who the real Reaper of despaired souls really was.