The fragile relief Kael had felt after the Aptitude Test lasted less than a day. Invisibility, he quickly learned, was a cold comfort when the enemy was not a Guild Enforcer but the slow, insidious creep of sickness. Lila's condition had worsened. The dry, shallow cough that had been her constant companion had deepened into a wet, rattling sound that tore through the quiet of their small room and echoed the cracking of Kael's own heart. A fever had taken hold, leaving her skin slick with a clammy sweat and her cheeks flushed with an unhealthy, blotchy red.
The herbal tinctures he bought with his scavenged coppers were now useless, little more than bitter water against the encroaching tide. He had spent two days watching her, his own exhaustion a distant, irrelevant ache. He watched the fever-dreams flicker behind her closed eyelids, watched her small body tremble, and felt the old, familiar powerlessness settle over him like a shroud. This was not the quick, violent threat of a guard's baton, but a slow, grinding siege, and he had no walls left to defend.
"Kael?" she murmured, her voice a dry rasp. She had been asleep, but her rest was shallow, broken by fits of coughing that left her gasping.
He was by her side in an instant, a damp rag in his hand to cool her forehead. "I'm here, Lila. Just rest."
"The stone… it feels warm," she whispered, her fingers clutching the dark rune-stone at her neck.
Kael touched it. It was as cold as ever. He forced a smile. "That's your own warmth, little bird. You're fighting hard."
He knew he was out of time. The palliatives were failing. He needed real medicine, the kind brewed by skilled alchemists with ingredients that cost more than he could make in a month of back-breaking labor or a year of scavenging. There was only one place to find such things without a noble's purse: the black market, deep in the heart of the Quarter where even the Guild Enforcers trod lightly.
He rose, his decision made. He took the small, hidden pouch of coins he had saved—the product of a hundred dangerous errands and two particularly brutal underground brawls he'd fought in when he was seventeen. It wasn't much, but it was all they had.
"I'll be back soon," he said softly, pulling his hood low. "I'm going to get you something that works."
Lila's eyes were heavy with sleep, but she gave a weak nod. "Don't get into trouble."
"Trouble never sees me coming," he lied, and slipped out the door into the deepening dusk.
The path to the black market took him away from the main thoroughfares and into a tangled web of alleys known as the 'Veins'. Here, the smells of coal smoke and sewage were overpowered by the exotic scents of smuggled spices, outlawed alchemical reagents, and the cloying sweetness of dream-lily smoke wafting from hidden dens. Kael moved with a practiced, silent confidence, his hand resting on the hilt of a short, crude blade tucked into his belt.
He found the shop he was looking for, its entrance hidden behind a tattered curtain in a dead-end alley. A small, discreet sign, a raven clutching a leaf of silverwood, marked it as The Whispering Quill, an apothecary that dealt in remedies both legal and not.
The air inside was thick with the scent of a thousand dried herbs, minerals, and bottled liquids. An old man with eyes as sharp and dark as obsidian chips looked up from behind a cluttered counter.
"I need something for a lung fever," Kael said, his voice low. "Strong. The common tinctures aren't working."
The apothecary, Master Elric, studied him for a long moment, his gaze missing nothing. "Strong costs," he rasped, his voice like stones grinding together.
Kael emptied his pouch onto the counter. The coins made a pathetic clatter. "This is all I have."
Elric poked at the coins with a long, bony finger, his expression unreadable. He sighed. "This will not buy you a cure. A true Alchemist's Draught for this sickness requires moon-petal essence, something worth a thousand times this." He saw the despair flash in Kael's eyes and softened slightly. "But it may buy you time."
He disappeared into the back of the shop and returned with a small, dark blue vial filled with a shimmering, silver liquid. "Silver-fin extract. It will not cure her, boy, but it will cool the fever and clear the lungs. For a few days. A week, perhaps." He pushed the vial toward Kael. "And it will take every coin you have."
Kael didn't hesitate. He pushed the coins forward, grabbed the vial, and secured it in an inner pocket. Time. It wasn't a cure, but it was something. As he turned to leave, Elric's voice stopped him.
"The word on the street is that a boy from the Quarter lit up the Aptitude Orb with an old-light glyph," the old man said, his voice barely a whisper. "A Veynar glyph, some are saying. Dangerous times to be drawing that kind of attention."
Kael froze, his back to the man. He said nothing, and then left, the old man's words a cold stone in the pit of his stomach.
He walked back through the Veins, the vial a heavy weight against his chest. Veynar glyph. The name, his name, spoken in the shadows, was a death sentence. He clutched the vial tighter. He had bought Lila a week. But what then? The question echoed in the hollow space where hope used to be, and it brought with it a memory, sharp and searing as a fresh burn.
The world was fire and screaming. He was nine years old, his father's hand clamped tight on his shoulder. Smoke, thick and acrid, clawed at his throat. Outside the study's window, the grand courtyard of Veynar Keep was filled with armored men, their breastplates bearing the golden hawk of House Draemhold.
"They are not here to talk, Joren," his mother, Seraya, said, her voice strained as she clutched a five-year-old Lila to her chest. Lila was crying, her small face buried in their mother's shoulder.
His father, Archivar Joren Varenholt, looked not at the soldiers, but at the two men standing behind them, their faces illuminated by the spreading flames. Lord Draemhold. And Lord Valcarin. Men who had shared wine at their table only a week ago.
"They came for the archives," his father said, his voice a low, bitter rumble. "For the truth." He turned to Kael, his eyes burning with a desperate intensity. "You must listen to me, Kael. The runes… they are not what the Guild says. They are your blood. Your birthright. Never forget that."
He pressed the cold, smooth rune-stone into his wife's hand. "Seraya, take the children. The passages. Go now."
"I will not leave you," she pleaded.
"You must!" he roared, a sound of pure agony. The doors to the study splintered. "For them." He kissed her, then pressed his forehead against Kael's. "Be strong. Protect your sister. Avenge us."
That was the last time he saw him. His mother had pulled him away, down a hidden passage behind a tapestry, the sounds of battle and his father's final, defiant shout swallowed by the stone. He remembered running, the weight of Lila in his mother's arms, the suffocating darkness of the tunnels. And then… nothing. His next memory was waking up in a cold, unfamiliar room in the Shadow Quarter, with Lila sleeping beside him and his mother gone forever.
Kael stumbled back into his room, the memory receding, leaving him shaking and cold. He looked at Lila, her face still flushed with fever, her life hanging by the thread he had just purchased with every coin he owned.
His father's words echoed in his mind. Avenge us. He had thought it was a command to fight. But for ten years, he had done nothing but survive. He had run. He had hidden. He had bowed his head and endured the sneers of men like Aric Draemhold, the son of the man who had watched his home burn.
He administered the silver-fin extract to Lila, watching as the shimmering liquid passed her lips. Within minutes, the flush on her cheeks began to fade, and her breathing grew deeper, more even. The medicine was working. For now.
Kael sat by her side, watching her sleep. The brief flicker of hope he'd felt after discovering his own magic now seemed like a cruel joke. What good was a spark of power when the world was a flood, threatening to drown everything he loved?
He looked down at his hands. He had always seen them as tools for survival—for scavenging, for fighting, for earning enough to see the next sunrise. But his father had told him they were more. They were a legacy.
A cold, terrifying resolve began to crystallize in his heart, forged in the crucible of his grief and rage. Survival was not enough. Hiding was not enough. He would not spend another ten years scrambling for scraps while the men who destroyed his family ruled from golden towers. The system that let a girl like Lila waste away from a curable illness for lack of coin was not a system to be endured. It was a system to be broken.
He would find the truth. He would master the power in his blood. And he would tear their world of broken promises apart, stone by gilded stone. It was no longer a matter of revenge. It was a matter of justice.
Chapter 3 is now complete.
Continuing with Chapter 4: The Market Raid.