CHAPTER 1: Raw Crystal
The Enforcer's boot cracked against the rusted ventilation grate just as Kaelin dropped into the darkness below.
Her heart hammered against her ribs, a raw, animal rhythm that drowned out the drip of stagnant water somewhere in the blackness. Above, filtered through the grate, angry voices echoed in the narrow alley.
"Scan the area! She can't have gone far!"
"The tracker says her energy signature is all over this sector. Find her!"
Kaelin pressed her back against the cold, wet wall of the maintenance tunnel, breathing through her mouth to silence the sound. The air smelled of ozone and decay. In the slivers of light from the street above, she could see the faint, ever-present glow of refined beast crystals embedded in the city's infrastructure a pale blue light that belonged to the Four Families.
Her own light was different. Unwanted.
She closed her eyes, and the world changed.
Lines of harsh, white text scrolled against the back of her eyelids.
[SYSTEM INTERFACE: ACTIVE]
[USER: KAELIN VERES | STATUS: HUNTED]
[PRIMARY ABILITY: ENERGY MANIPULATION: TIER 1]
[CURRENT OBJECTIVE: SURVIVE]
It didn't show her the Enforcers' names. It didn't give her their life stories. It showed her what it could parse from the energy they left in the world.
[SCANNING…]
- 3 HUMAN SIGNATURES DETECTED.
- WEAPONRY: KINETIC PULSE RIFLES (FAMILY-STANDARD).
- ARMOR: LIGHT POLYMER, CRYSTAL-ASSISTED. WEAK POINT: JOINTS.
- THREAT LEVEL: MEDIUM-HIGH.
A system. Her secret. The thing that made her more than just another "Unlicensed." It was the reason her mother was dead, and the reason she was breathing sewer air instead of sleeping in a bed.
A sharp whine cut through the tunnel. A drone, small and spider-like, clicked down the wall, its single red lens sweeping the darkness.
Her System flashed.
[ENTITY DETECTED: SURVEILLANCE DRONE: SILVER FAMILY MODEL]
[ENERGY SOURCE: LOW-GRADE BEAST CRYSTAL.]
[PROTOCOL: EVADE OR DISABLE.]
Kaelin didn't think. She moved.
Her hand shot out, palm open. In her mind's eye, she grabbed at the fuzzy, chaotic energy she always felt humming in her own veins the wild, untrained power the Families feared. She pushed it toward the drone.
A flicker of visible light, like a distorted heat haze, leapt from her fingertips. It wasn't a bolt. It was a push.
The drone sputtered. Its red lens flickered. For a second, the tiny beast crystal in its core flared a sickly green the color of raw, unstable power before going dark. It clattered to the tunnel floor.
[CRYSTAL ENERGY SIGNATURE ALTERED. TEMPORARY DISABLEMENT ACHIEVED.]
[SYSTEM NOTE: EFFICIENCY 34%. WASTED ENERGY: 66%.]
I'm getting sloppy, she thought, a bitter taste in her mouth. Fear made her wasteful.
Above, the voices sharpened. "Drone feed just cut out in sector seven-tunnel. She's down there! Flush her out!"
Panic, cold and sharp, lanced through her. They were coming to the grate. They'd drop grenades, or worse, a damping field that would make her System scream and her Ability vanish.
She had to run. But the tunnel ended in a solid wall fifty feet ahead. A dead end.
Her eyes darted, her System scanning desperately.
[ENVIRONMENTAL SCAN…]
- STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY: POOR.
- WEST WALL: CONSTRUCTION PLASMA BURN MARKS (RECENT).
- ESTIMATED WALL THICKNESS: 0.3 METERS.
- BEYOND: UNKNOWN. POSSIBLE STEAM VENT.
The wall was thin. Weakened by some old repair job.
It was a terrible risk. Using her Ability for more than a flicker was like lighting a beacon. Every scanner in the sector would ping her location.
Boots clanged on the grate above. A shadow blocked the light.
No choice.
Kaelin spun, placed both hands on the cold concrete of the west wall, and pushed with everything she had.
Not a flicker this time. A wave.
The air shuddered. A sound like tearing metal screamed in the confined space. Light not the clean blue of city crystals, but a violent, emerald green erupted from her palms and spider-webbed across the wall. Dust and chunks of debris blasted inward.
The wall didn't just crack. A section of it vaporized into a cloud of pulverized concrete.
[WARNING: ENERGY SURGE DETECTABLE!]
[ABILITY USAGE: FORCE WAVE. EFFICIENCY: 21%.]
She didn't care about efficiency. She scrambled through the new, jagged hole, coughing on dust. She emerged not into another tunnel, but into a wide, dark underground channel. A main runoff pipe. A faint, warm, humid breeze blew from the left. The direction of the outer districts. Toward the Wall.
Hope, desperate and thin, flickered.
She took two running steps before the world turned heavy.
A deep, resonant THUMM filled the space. The air itself seemed to thicken, pressing down on her skin, pushing against her mind. Her System blared red in her vision.
[ALERT: DAMPENER FIELD DETECTED!]
[ABILITY SUPPRESSION: 70%]
[SYSTEM FUNCTION LIMITED TO PASSIVE SCAN.]
"There!"
An Enforcer dropped from a service ladder ahead, his polymer armor sleek under the pipe's emergency lights. Two more landed behind her, cutting off her retreat. Their rifles were raised, the crystal cores at the barrels beginning to glow with a charged, yellow light. Kinetic pulses. They wouldn't kill her. They'd shatter every bone in her body and take her alive for "processing."
The lead Enforcer's visor was up. He was young, with the cold, bored look of someone who followed orders without question. "Unlicensed. Surrender your energy. Come quietly."
Kaelin's breath came in short gasps. The dampener field felt like a weight on her chest. She couldn't push another wave. She could barely summon a spark.
She was trapped.
Then, the pipe groaned.
Not from her. From above.
A section of the ceiling a heavy, corroded maintenance hatch ripped free with a shriek of tortured metal.
It didn't fall. It was thrown.
The massive metal disk spun like a discus, slamming into the Enforcer in front of her with a sickening crunch of armor. He flew back into the wall and didn't move.
"What the?" The other two Enforcers spun, rifles swinging upward.
A figure dropped into the space between Kaelin and the remaining guards. He landed in a crouch, the impact echoing. He was tall, wearing a patched, dark jacket and worn cargo pants, not armor. In his hand wasn't a crystal rifle, but a heavy, crude-looking hammer with a large, uncut beast crystal crudely wired to its head. The crystal glowed with a volatile, pulsating red.
"Wrong neighborhood, tin men," he said, his voice a low, confident growl.
Her System, strained through the dampener, managed a flicker.
[HUMAN MALE. ESTIMATED AGE: 18.]
[WEAPON: MECH-ENHANCED BLUNT INSTRUMENT. CRYSTAL: UNREFINED FIRE-Aspect. HIGHLY VOLATILE.]
[THREAT ASSESSMENT: INCONCLUSIVE.]
The Enforcers fired.
Twin pulses of concussive force ripped through the air.
The boy didn't dodge. He swung.
His hammer met the first pulse head-on. The raw red crystal on its head flared blindingly bright. There was a sound like a thunderclap, and the kinetic energy wasn't absorbed—it was deflected, shattered into a dozen harmless ripples that scorched the pipe walls.
The second pulse was coming. He wouldn't be able to swing again in time.
"Left joint!" Kaelin screamed, the words tearing from her throat before she could think.
He listened.
Instead of trying to block, he dropped low and lunged, not at the Enforcer, but at the space beside him. His free hand shot out, fingers clamping not on armor, but on the subtle, flexible seam at the soldier's left hip joint.
He pulled.
There was a hiss of releasing pressure, a shout of pain, and the Enforcer's leg gave way. The shot went wide, blasting a hole in the ceiling.
The last Enforcer turned to run, yelling into his comms. "We need backup! We have a Wildling and the target!"
The boy with the hammer moved fast. He scooped up a chunk of broken concrete and hurled it. It wasn't the throw that mattered. As the rock flew, the red crystal on his hammer pulsed once. A wave of heat followed the projectile, making the air waver. The rock struck the Enforcer in the back of the helmet, not hard enough to crack it, but the transferred heat made him yell and stumble.
It was enough.
"Come on!" The boy was suddenly at Kaelin's side, grabbing her arm. His grip was strong, calloused. "Unless you want to meet their airship!"
He pulled her toward a side pipe she hadn't noticed a ragged hole that looked recently made. She stumbled after him, the dampener field fading as they left its radius. Her System came back online with a flood of data she shoved aside. She just ran.
They ran through a maze of darkness, his hand a firm anchor. She heard the distant, building whine of hover-engines above. The Enforcers were calling in the big guns.
Finally, he shoved her through a final hatch, and they emerged into a vast, cavernous space. It was a derelict recycling plant, long forgotten. Moonlight streamed through broken skylights, illuminating piles of scrap and the silhouettes of two other people waiting nervously.
A girl with goggles pushed up on her forehead, working on a sparking console, and a lanky boy nervously adjusting a device on his wrist.
"Saba! You cut it close," the girl said, her eyes widening at the sight of Kaelin.
Saba.
"Had to make an impression, Ren," the boy Saba said, releasing Kaelin's arm. He was breathing hard, a grin on his face that didn't quite reach his watchful eyes. He looked her up and down, taking in her torn clothes, the dust, the fear she knew was plain on her face. "You alright?"
Kaelin hugged her arms around herself, suddenly aware of how she must look. How vulnerable she was. She'd just been saved by strangers. Strangers with a hammer that broke dampener-field tactics.
"Why?" she asked, her voice hoarse. "Why help me?"
Saba's grin faded into something more serious. He tapped the crude crystal on his hammer. "You saw my little light show. You think they gave me a license for this?" He nodded toward the distant sound of engines. "They hunt people like us. Only thing to do is stick together. Or get picked off alone."
The girl, Ren, walked over, holding a small scanner. "Signature's all over the net. They've tagged you as a high-value Unlicensed, energy-manipulation type." She looked at Saba. "She can't stay in the Warrens. They'll sweep every bolt-hole."
"I know," Saba said, his eyes still on Kaelin. "You need to disappear. Really disappear."
"How?" Kaelin whispered. There was no disappearing from the Four Families.
Saba exchanged a look with his friends. "You get inside. You play their game." He reached into his jacket and pulled out a small, clean data-chip. "Tomorrow is Testing Day at the Aurum Wall Academy. For the lucky kids who might get 'chosen' for an Ability License."
Kaelin stared at the chip. The Academy was the heart of the system that killed her mother. A place of lies and polished crystal.
"This chip," Saba said, placing it in her trembling hand, "has a new identity. Kaelin Vance. Orphan. No records. Clean. It'll get you through the gates for the preliminary testing. If you score high enough and you will, if you can control that power of yours even a little they'll let you in. You'll be off the streets. Behind their walls."
"You want me to join them?" The idea was a poison.
"I want you to survive," Saba said bluntly. "Inside, you can learn. About their tech, their patrols, their weaknesses. You can get strong. And maybe, someday, you can be more than just a girl running in the dark."
He turned to leave with his friends.
"Wait," Kaelin said. She looked at the data-chip, then at his retreating back. "What if… what if I see you there?"
Saba glanced back, and that real, sharp grin returned. "At the Academy? Don't worry." He hefted his hammer onto his shoulder. The raw crystal glinted in the moonlight. "I'll find you."
Then he was gone, melting into the shadows of the scrap piles with Ren and the other boy, leaving Kaelin alone in the vast, silent dereliction.
She looked down at the chip in her hand. It felt like a death sentence and a lifeline, all in one.
[SYSTEM INTERFACE: STANDBY]
[NEW OBJECTIVE RECEIVED: INFILTRATE AURUM WALL ACADEMY.]
[COMMENCING IDENTITY PROTOCOL: KAELIN VANCE.]
Above, through the broken glass of the skylight, the first hint of dawn began to bleed into the sky. The day of Testing. The day everything would change.
She closed her fist around the chip. The running was over.