Kai looked at Miri. She was clutching the wagon's wood so hard her knuckles were white. He looked back at the dark woods behind him. If he went back now, the void beasts would hunt him continuously. After thinking for a second, he held out his right wrist.
The shackle was a heavy band of cold, white steel etched with yellow runes. As Vane snapped it shut, Kai felt a sharp, stinging sensation as the pure energy of the device linked with his nervous system.
It felt like a leash to him.
"Welcome to the fortress of Order," Vane said, a small, cruel smile touching his lips.
"Try not to burn anything. It would be a shame to have to execute you in front of the child."
The massive bronze doors groaned open. The caravan rolled inside. Kai sat on the edge of the wagon, looking at Vane as they moved in.
The inner walls were a lie. From the outside, the Golden Gate looked like a beacon of hope, but inside, the lower district was a suffocating maze.
The streets were narrow, the stone walls caked in so much salt dust that the buildings looked like they were made of bone.
Above, massive iron chains spanned the gaps between rooftops, supporting thousands of Spark lamps that hummed with a low frequency.
Kai walked behind the wagon, his shackled wrist covered by his cloak. The order hackle was cold, a numbing, artificial chill that made his forearm feel like dead wood.
Every time his heart beat, he felt a tiny, rhythmic tether pull at his mark, like a hook caught in a fish's gill. The church didn't just want to stop him from fighting; they wanted to monitor his life force.
"Look at their eyes," Miri whispered, peeking through the wagon's canvas.
The people of the lower district didn't look like the survivors in the outer villages. Their skin was a sickly, pale yellow; the bleach effect of living under constant spark light.
They moved like zombies without a purpose, their eyes wide and glassy, reflecting the artificial suns above. To them, Kai and the caravan were just another set of shadows in a world that had forgotten what a real sunset looked like.
The caravan stopped at an intersection guarded by a light tower; a tall stone pillar topped with a massive halo stone lens.
A beam of yellow light swept the street, moving with the precision of a clock.
As the beam passed over Kai, the shackle on his wrist vibrated. The rune-etched steel glowed blue for a heartbeat, signaling to the tower that a marked individual was passing.
"Don't react," Elara hissed from the driver's seat, her eyes fixed forward.
"The towers are linked to the Cathedral. If you flinch, the guards will be on us before the next street. We are heading for the Sump. It is a district where the salt runoff from the upper levels makes the air full of fog for the towers to see clearly."
They descended a long, sloping ramp into the Sump. Here, the order of the city began to fail. The Spark lamps were cracked, flickering with dying, orange light that reminded Kai of guttering candles.
The smell of the Void beasts returned here, a faint, oily stench of rot, mixing with the heavy, metallic taste of the salt waste that flowed in open gutters.
Kai felt the red in his shoulder stir. It wasn't the rage of battle; it was a desperate, starving hunger. The salt-saturated air was acting like a cage for his heat, but the rot in the Sump was like a scent of food to a caged wolf.
He gripped his sword hilt with his good hand, his knuckles white. The Void chill [blue] of his fingernails had reached his first knuckle.
"We are here," Elara said, pulling the horses to a stop in front of a building that looked more like a fortress than a tavern.
The sign was a simple piece of iron with three notches cut into it; the symbol of the Scourged veterans. This was The Ash Pit, the only place in the city where a man with a Mark could sleep without a priest trying to harvest his blood.
The heavy iron doors of the Ash Pit groaned as Kai pushed open. The air inside smelled of cheap ale, burnt salt spork, and the sharp, medical tang of bitter bark.
It was the smell of men who were dying slowly, and for the first time since entering the city, Kai felt he could finally breathe.
The tavern was carved directly into the foundation of the inner wall. Massive stone pillars, slick with moisture and salt waste runoff, held up a ceiling that vibrated every time a carriage passed on the streets above.
In the dim, orange flicker of a few low-grade Spark lamps, Kai saw them: the Hollowed men and women with mottled skin, missing limbs, and the telltale blue tint in their eyes. They were the veterans the church had used up and thrown into the Sump.
"Table in the back," Kai muttered to Elara and Miri. He kept his head down, but his height and the massive silhouette of The Scourge drew eyes like a magnet.
These weren't glassy-eyed citizens from the upper levels; these were predators. They recognized the notch pattern on his blade. They recognized his left arm, which still had red burning in his veins.
A man with a prosthetic arm made of rusted iron and Halo stone stood behind the bar. He was cleaning a glass with a rag that looked older than Kai.
He didn't look up until Kai dropped a single coin on the counter.
"I need a dampener," Kai said, his voice a low whisper. "And the girl needs a proper meal, not something that came out of a traveler's bag."
The barman, a veteran named Kaelen, finally looked up. He stared at the white steel order shackle on Kai's wrist. A short, raspy laugh escaped his throat.
"Vane's jewelry? You must have pissed off the Third Order pretty badly to get a tracking tether on your first day in the cage, Hearth Guard."