The water was a freezing, filthy embrace. It leached the warmth from Kiri's bones and carried the stench of a thousand city blocks. For a long moment, she let the current pull her, the shock of the betrayal and the near-death experience leaving her numb. The world was a blur of dripping brick and distant, echoing machinery.
Then, the Framesight kicked in, an involuntary reaction to the adrenaline still coursing through her.
Frame 1: A slime-covered pipe jutting from the wall, two feet ahead.
Frame 2:A half-submerged, rusted crate.
Frame 3:A narrow service ladder, leading up to a maintenance hatch.
Her body moved on autopilot. A single, painful Blink carried her from the water's pull to the slimy rungs of the ladder. She climbed, her muscles screaming, water streaming from her clothes. The hatch groaned open, and she spilled out into a narrow, dimly lit corridor deep in the Underspire's underbelly. This was not a place for people, but for the city's forgotten veins and arteries.
She was compromised. The Rusty Nail was a trap. Silas, the man who had given her contracts for three years, had sold her to the grey-coated mages. The Chronos Guild. The name surfaced in her mind, a piece of information she'd once stolen and thought irrelevant. It was terrifyingly relevant now.
Her safe-houses were known to Silas. Her contacts were his contacts. She was a rat in a maze, and the experimenters had just taken the top off.
She needed to move. But more than that, she needed to understand. Why hadn't they killed her? That compression sphere was an execution, yet it had been aimed at where she was, not where she would be. It was a message of terrifying precision: We understand your power enough to almost hit you.
A new kind of fear took root, colder than the sewer water. It was the fear of being known.
For hours, she moved through the non-places of Aethelburg: steam vents, abandoned freight lifts, the rooftops of lower-tier manufactories. She was a ghost again, but a hunted one, jumping at every shadow, her Framesight constantly scanning for that tell-tale shimmer of warped space.
It was on the roof of a textile mill, as dawn painted the smoggy sky a sickly purple, that they found her. Or rather, that she found their offer.
She was checking a pre-stashed cache of supplies a few protein bars, a canteen of water, a spare knife hidden behind a loose vent. Taped to the canteen was a single, crisp, white card. It was pristine, utterly alien in the grimy environment.
There was no name. No guild seal. Just five words, printed in a stark, elegant font:
WE HAVE THE BOY. THE APOTHECARY.
Kiri's blood ran cold.
Lysander. The boy wasn't a Crow. He was an apothecary's apprentice, a non-combatant who mixed poultices for underworld injuries and asked no questions. He was kind. He had fixed the deep gash on her arm two months ago, his hands gentle, his voice calm. He was the only person in the last year who had looked at her not as a weapon or a ghost, but as a person who was hurt. She had visited his clandestine shop three times since, under the cover of needing supplies, but truthfully, just to hear the quiet hum of his existence.
He was a secret. A vulnerability she hadn't known she was protecting.
And the Chronos Guild had found him.
The card was an address. A manufactory district on the city's middle tier. Not a trap. An invitation.
The message was clear: You can run. But he will suffer for it.
That evening, under the cover of a industrial smog that poured from a hundred chimneys, Kiri stood before the address. It was a disused clockwork assembly plant, its windows dark, its great doors sealed. She didn't Blink inside. She walked, every sense screaming, her Framesight dissecting the environment into a thousand potential threats.
The main floor was a cathedral of dead industry. Massive, silent assembly arms hung from the ceiling like the skeletons of prehistoric beasts. In the center of the vast, empty space, a single area was illuminated by a ghostly, blue Aether-lamp.
The silver-haired man stood there, alone. He had changed his grey coat for one of dark blue, but his dead-sky eyes were the same. Beside him, bound to a chair, was Lysander. The boy was pale, terrified, but unharmed. His eyes widened when he saw Kiri, a mix of hope and confusion.
"Kiri! Run!" he choked out.
The silver-haired man didn't even look at him. His gaze was fixed on Kiri. "The Ghost in the Machine," he said, his voice smooth and calm, echoing slightly in the cavernous space. "My name is Magus Alaric. We have been looking for you for a very long time."
Kiri said nothing. Her hand rested on the hilt of her stiletto. She calculated the frames. A Blink, a throw, a kill. Twenty frames. Four-tenths of a second.
As if reading her mind, Alaric raised a finger. A shimmering, razor-thin plane of distorted space materialized in the air between them, bisecting the room. It hummed with lethal energy.
"Please," Alaric said, not unkindly. "That would be a strategic error. For you, and for the boy."
"What do you want?" Kiri's voice was raw.
"We want to understand," Alaric said, his head tilting. "Your... ability. It should not exist. It defies the known laws of Aether-dynamics. You do not manipulate energy. You manipulate the substrate upon which energy acts. It is a thing of profound beauty."
"I'm not a lab rat."
"No. You are a key," Alaric corrected her gently. "A key to a lock we have been trying to pick for a generation. The lock on time itself." He gestured to the terrified boy. "This is not a threat, Kiri. It is an incentive. Join us. Submit to study, and the boy goes free, with a generous sum to forget this ever happened. You will be cared for. Honored."
"And if I refuse?"
Alaric's pleasant expression didn't change. "Then I will demonstrate to you, over the course of the next hour, exactly how a Spacial Mage can warp a human body without ever breaking the skin. We will still have our key. But you will be... less willing."
Lysander whimpered, tears cutting clean paths through the grime on his cheeks.
Kiri stood frozen, not in her Framesight, but in a real, paralyzing indecision. The frames played out in her mind, a dozen different sequences of violence and rescue. Every one ended with Lysander dead, or worse. The Guild's power was absolute, their understanding of her too advanced.
She was in a checkmate.
Her life as a ghost was over. The only choice left was what kind of prisoner she would become.
She looked at Lysander's terrified face, then back at Alaric's calm, assured one.
"I want your word," she said, her voice hollow. "Your mage's oath. He walks away. Unharmed. Unharrassed. Forever."
Alaric smiled. It was a genuine, triumphant smile. "You have it."
He made a subtle gesture, and the bonds around Lysander fell away. The boy stumbled from the chair, staring at Kiri.
"Go, Lysander," she said, not looking at him. "Forget me."
As the boy fled into the darkness, Alaric gestured to a side door, which slid open silently. "Your new life awaits, Kiri. Welcome to the Chronos Guild."
Kiri took a step forward, then another, leaving the ghost in the machine behind. She was walking into a gilded cage, and the only thing colder than the fear in her heart was the burning ember of fury she buried deep within it. This wasn't over. It was just a new sequence. And she would find the frame to break it.