Chapter 1 - The Dream and Flame

The heavy, rhythmic beat of iron on iron had finally stopped hours ago, but the heat of the forge always clung to the stones of the Eastern Province of Zol long after the sun dipped beneath the hills of Eskarta.
Leinhal lay motionless on his cot, the deep, exhausting sleep of a tradesman weighing down his limbs. The air in his small quarters above the smithy smelled of burnt coal, sweat, and well-oiled leather. It was a safe, predictable smell. A normal life.

Then, the room grew impossibly cold. In the sudden, suffocating dark of his sleep, the dreams of crackling orange furnaces and ringing anvils vanished, replaced by an absolute, terrifying silence. Leinhal felt awake yet paralyzed. The ceiling of his quarters was gone, replaced by a void of swirling, ash-choked clouds. Above his bed, a shape coalesced from the darkness.

It was a towering figure, draped in a heavy, tattered cowl that seemed to swallow what little ambient light remained. No face showed beneath the hood; only an empty abyss. Slowly, deliberately, a pale blue hand emerged from the folds of the dark fabric. The flesh looked like carved ice, translucent and laced with faint, glowing veins that thrummed like a dying pulse.

The hand reached down, descending toward Leinhal’s chest. He tried to scream, to roll off the cot, to grab the iron poker he kept by the hearth, but his body refused to obey.

The cold radiating from the pale skin was absolute. It bit through his linen shirt, freezing the breath inside his lungs. Just as the frost-rimed fingertips made contact with his sternum, a sound tore through the quiet of his mind.

It wasn't a voice spoken aloud, but a heavy, resonant vibration that rattled his very skull, echoing like a bronze bell struck deep underwater: Volumir Returns.

Leinhal gasped, his eyes flying open as he bolted upright on his cot. He threw off his wool blanket, his chest heaving as he clutched at his shirt. His skin was burning, hot and prickling with sweat, yet his teeth were chattering.

"Just a dream," he muttered into the dark, his voice raspy. He pressed the palms of his calloused hands against his eyes, trying to wipe away the image of the pale blue veins. "Just a madness."

He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, his bare feet meeting the cold wooden floorboards. He needed water. He needed to stoke the embers of the hearth to remind himself of the comforting, mundane warmth of Eskarta. But as he looked across the room toward the stairwell leading down to the shop floor, a strange light caught his eye.

Down below, through the gaps in the floorboards, a soft radiance was pulsing. It wasn't the deep, flickering orange of a dying coal bed. It was steady. Sharp.

Leinhal crept down the wooden steps, his hand sliding along the rough-hewn railing. The air on the ground floor of the smithy was unnaturally chilly, frost riming the edges of his water trough. He stopped at the bottom step, his breath catching in his throat.

In the center of the room sat his forge. He had raked the coals and doused the flames himself before turning in for the night. Yet now, the stone hearth was alive. Rising from the dead, blackened ashes was a single, towering flame. It made no sound, no crackle of wood, no hiss of coal. It danced in a silent, violent rhythm, casting long, twisting shadows across the tool-lined walls. And it was burning a brilliant, terrifying, pale blue.

The cold air in the smithy seemed to vanish, rushing toward the hearth like a drawn breath. The silent, pale blue flame pulsed in a slow, rhythmic cadence, perfectly matching the erratic pounding of Leinhal’s heart.

Drawn by a mix of terror and a blacksmith's instinct, he took a step forward. His bare feet clicked against the stone floor. He reached out a calloused hand toward the fire, his fingers trembling. He had spent his life reading the heat of a flame by its color, but this light defied everything he knew. It didn't radiate warmth; it radiated a heavy, crushing weight.

Two steps away from the hearth, a sudden, agonizing heat tore through his chest. Leinhal choked on a gasp, his knees buckling. He collapsed onto the stone floor, clutching his shirt as a searing pain, like an iron rivet driven white-hot into his flesh; blazed right over his sternum. It wasn't the heat of a normal burn; it felt like dry ice, a freezing torment that turned his blood to slush.

Panting, his vision blurring at the edges, he ripped open the collar of his linen shirt and forced himself to look down.

Woven directly into his flesh was a fresh, raw mark. The skin was dead-white and blistered, rimed with a faint, iridescent blue frost that refused to melt against his body's heat. It formed a perfect, jagged circle. And stamped perfectly in the dead center of the ring was the stark, unmistakable silhouette of a classic trade hammer. It was a brand.

As he stared at it, the pale blue veins in the frost burned mark thrummed. Simultaneously, the silent flame in his forge flared higher, casting a long, sharp shadow of the anvil across the wall. A shadow that looked less like a block of iron and more like a kneeling figure waiting for a command.

 

The rolling hills of the Tellarane province gave way to the dense, low-slung stone walls of Arvel, just inside the Zol provincial line, as the morning fog began to lift.

Sheanna pulled the hood of her travel-stained cloak lower over her eyes, adjusting the strap of her leather pack. To any passing merchant or guard at the eastern gate, she looked like a simple herbalist or a wandering scribe. They didn't need to know about the forbidden texts hidden beneath the dried lavender in her satchel, or the copper tokens of the Remnant Gods sewn into the lining of her vest.

As she slipped past the gate guards, paying the entry toll with a quiet nod, she kept her eyes moving. Arvel was a working city, loud with the sounds of cartwheels on cobblestones and the shouting of morning vendors. But beneath the mundane chatter, there was a palpable undercurrent of unease. People were whispering on street corners. Women hanging laundry glanced nervously toward the sky.

They had all seen it. Six hours ago, in the dead of night, the southern sky had been pierced by a brilliant, silent flash. To the uninitiated, it might have looked like lightning. But lightning didn't turn the clouds a deep, unnatural hue of pale blue. Lightning didn't leave a lingering taste of ozone and ancient ice on the tongue.

Sheanna rubbed the tips of her fingers together, still feeling the faint, sympathetic vibration in her own veins. The Great Towers of Magi would have felt it too. Their atmospheric tethers in the capital would be screaming, and it wouldn't be long before Magi Dorhan’s inquisitors descended on this province like locusts. She had to find the source first.

Following the layout of the city, she steered away from the grander merchant districts and headed toward the smoky, soot-stained air of the artisan quarters. A magical spike that sharp, carrying the unmistakable signature of the ancient northern curse, had to leave a physical footprint. She just needed to find the one place in Arvel where the metal, the earth, or the fires had stopped behaving by the rules of men.

The border city of Arvel was a sprawling, chaotic melting pot. Sitting right on the jagged seam where the high-altitude Province of Zol met the fertile lowlands of Tellarane, it was a place where merchants, soldiers, and refugees constantly rubbed shoulders. For an agent operating within the hidden temple networks, it was the perfect place to get lost, and the most dangerous place to get caught.

Sheanna checked the heavy iron clasp of her cloak as she ducked into a narrow, mud-slicked alleyway. She was weeks of hard travel away from the hidden enclaves of her order, sent into Eskarta following nothing but fragments of translated prophecies and whispers of a shifting tide in the north.

But hours ago, while camping on the desolate plains of Zol, she hadn't needed a prophecy. She had seen the blue flash with her own eyes. It had split the horizon like a glowing fracture in the sky, originating from the borderlands. Since then, the rumors had spread like wildfire ahead of her. Rumors of milk turning sour in the bucket, of compasses reversing their needles, and of a blinding azure light that had briefly turned night into day over Arvel.

Sheanna closed her eyes, taking a deep, slow breath to shut out the noise of the nearby market. She reached into her pocket, wrapping her fingers around a smooth, obsidian stone token; a relic of a Remnant God whose name had been erased from the Towers' histories. As she focused, she didn't just look for signs; she felt for them.

The air in Arvel's artisan district was thick with the heavy scent of burning coal and sulfur from the neighborhood smithies. But as she drew closer to the edge of the Zol provincial line, the smell of smoke began to change. It grew crisp. Cold. A faint, metallic ring echoed down the alleyway, the sound of a hammer striking an anvil. But the rhythm was wrong. It was heavy, hesitant, and carried a low, resonant vibration that made the ancient obsidian token in her palm push a sudden shock of ice up her arm.

She opened her eyes, her gaze locking onto a soot-stained timber building at the end of the lane. A sign shaped like a crude iron horseshoe dangled over the door. She had found it.

 

The iron gates of Arvel did not swing open for Magi Dorhan; they were thrown wide by men who knew better than to keep a hound of the Great Towers waiting. Dorhan did not look at the bowing guards as his white stallion trotted past the stone archway. He adjusted his pristine white leather riding gloves, his gaze fixed entirely on the sky. To the common rabble of the borderlands, the morning air was merely foggy. To Dorhan, whose eyes had been permanently altered by the liquid silver rites of the High Magi, the air was a chaotic lattice of bleeding color.

A jagged, pale blue fracture still stained the local ether, pulsing like an open wound over the artisan quarters.

"The resonance is stabilizing," Dorhan said, his voice quiet, smooth, and utterly devoid of warmth.
Behind him, six inquisitors rode in flawless, silent formation. Their faces were hidden behind blank, featureless masks of polished iron, and their heavy crimson capes hung perfectly straight against the flanks of their armored mounts.

At Dorhan’s right hand rode Prefect Vael, holding a long, silver-capped staff. The multi-faceted siphon-crystal at its tip was spinning lazily, humming with a faint, agitated violet light as it drank in the ambient static of the area.

"The local magistrates claim it was an anomalous dry lightning strike, My Lord," Vael reported, his voice muffled by his mask.

"The local magistrates are fools who cannot tell the difference between a thunderstorm and a cosmic breach," Dorhan replied smoothly. He pulled a heavy silver pocket watch from his vest, snapping it open. The hands did not track time; three separate needles spun erratically, all pointing toward the smoky, soot-stained skyline of the southern district. "The Primal Weave has been disturbed. A seal has thinned, and whatever leaked through has anchored itself to a physical catalyst. Find it, siphon it, and prepare the containment pyre."

A passing merchant cart rumbled too close to the vanguard, its driver frantically pulling the reins to clear the path. Dorhan didn't look down, but the siphon-crystal on Vael’s staff flared violently, drawing a sudden, agonizing gasp from the merchant's draft horse as the ambient energy was ripped from its veins. The animal collapsed to its knees, shivering.

Dorhan paid the beast no mind. His eyes remained locked on the pale blue miasma drifting over the artisan district. For centuries, the Great Towers had maintained the illusion of absolute control, burying the truth of the northern continent and the entities that slept beneath the ice. A rogue spike this massive, carrying the unmistakable signature of the ancient northern curse, could dismantle a millennium of carefully guarded secrets if the rabble began to understand what it meant.

"Deploy the vanguard to the perimeter of the lowlands canal," Dorhan ordered, his hand resting on the silver hilt of his short-sword. "Seal the drainage channels and the docks. If the anomaly attempts to flee the provincial line, burn the quarter to ash. Volumir will not return on my watch."

The heavy timber door creaked as Sheanna slipped into the smithy, the ambient noise of Arvel’s artisan district instantly swallowed by the deafening rhythm inside. The air was thick with the scent of hot iron, but it lacked the suffocating heat of a standard forge. Instead, a bizarre, localized draft of mountain chill swept past her ankles, smelling sharply of ancient ice and ozone.
Leinhal stood over the massive iron anvil, his broad shoulders tensed as he brought a heavy hand-hammer down in a furious, desperate arc.

Clang.

The sound was deep, but it didn't ring true. It carried a hollow, glassy resonance that vibrated through the stone floorboards right into the soles of Sheanna's boots.
With a roar of pure frustration, Leinhal halted mid-swing. He grabbed the piece of metal he had been working with a pair of long iron tongs and hurled it violently across the room. The metal bar struck the dirt floor, skidding to a halt near Sheanna’s feet. It didn't glow with the dull, fading red of cooling iron. Instead, the metal was fractured down the center, its jagged edges frosted with a brittle, crystalline glaze that pulsed with a faint, dying azure light.

Panting, his face slick with a mixture of cold sweat and soot, Leinhal leaned heavily against his anvil. He froze when he saw the shadow near the entryway, instantly yanking the heavy lapels of his leather tool vest together. His calloused fingers scrambled at the collar of his linen shirt, frantically tucking the fabric inward to bury the pale blue glow bleeding from his chest.
He didn't know who this traveler was, but the brand was a madness. A curse. If the local magistrates or the town guard saw it, they would lock him in a plague cell.

"The shop is closed," Leinhal rasped, his voice cracking as he kept his left hand pressed flat over his sternum, trying to smother the light. His eyes, rimmed with dark circles and bloodshot from lack of sleep, locked onto her. "I'm not taking commissions. Get out."

Sheanna didn't move. She kept her hands visible, but her eyes drifted from his defensive posture down to the frosty, shattered iron bar near her boots. "I'm not here to buy a sword, smith."

"Then leave," Leinhal demanded, his grip tightening on the handle of his smithing hammer. The instincts of a cornered animal were starting to override his exhaustion. "I don't have anything for you."

"You have a fire that burns blue," Sheanna said quietly, her voice cutting through the ringing silence of the shop. She took a slow, deliberate step forward, reaching into her vest. She didn't pull a weapon. Instead, she revealed a smooth, obsidian token. It was pulsing with a faint, icy radiance. "And you have a mark beneath your shirt that matches this."

Leinhal’s breath caught. He took a instinctive step back, his heel hitting the stone base of his dead forge. "How do you know that? Who are you?"

Sheanna let the hood of her cloak fall back slightly, her gaze sharp and assessing. "I belong to an order that listens for the things the Great Towers try to bury. Three nights ago, the northern sky split open, and every relic we hold began to bleed cold. I've spent days tracking the resonance to this city, to this very quarter. I knew exactly what to look for because..."

She stopped dead.

The heavy, unnatural silence that had settled over the artisan district was suddenly shattered. From the cobblestones of the public square just a block away, the rhythmic, iron-shod clatter of armored hooves echoed through the stone walls of the smithy. It wasn't the slow trot of a routine municipal patrol. It was a synchronized, aggressive vanguard. Shouted orders and the sharp ring of drawn steel followed, cutting through the morning fog.

Leinhal looked from the door to Sheanna, the frantic pounding of his heart perfectly matching the sudden, icy sting of the hidden brand against his ribs.
Sheanna’s demeanor shifted instantly from mysterious observer to a hunter on the run. She snapped her hood back up and threw open a rotted timber door at the rear of the forge that led out into the narrow, fog-slicked alleys.

"We don't have time for explanations," she whispered fiercely, gesturing toward the dark lane outside. "The men in the square don't ask questions, smith. If they find you hiding that mark, they will cut it right out of your chest. Move."

The heavy timber front door of the smithy didn't just creak open; it exploded inward, splintering against the stone floor under the weight of an iron-shod boot.

Two inquisitors crossed the threshold instantly, their blank steel masks reflecting the dim morning light filtering through the dust. They moved with terrifying, mechanical precision, their short-swords drawn and held low. Behind them stepped Prefect Vael, his white robes sweeping through the dirt. He raised his silver-capped staff, the multi-faceted siphon-crystal at its apex spinning with a frantic, high-pitched whine. It wasn't humming anymore; it was screaming, bleeding a violent purple corona that illuminated the soot-stained walls.

"The resonance is fresh," Vael reported, his voice hollow behind his mask. "Within minutes."
Magi Dorhan stepped into the room, his liquid-silver eyes sweeping the space. He didn't look at the shattered tools or the overturned stools. His gaze locked onto the stone hearth. Even though Leinhal had fled, the residual energy of the rogue Weave lingered. A thin layer of white frost rimed the edge of the iron anvil, and a faint, pale blue vapor still drifted upward from the blackened ashes of the forge.
Dorhan walked over to the anvil, extending a pristine white leather glove. He touched the frosted iron. A sharp, crackling hiss echoed through the room as the ambient warmth of his hand fought the ancient ice.

"A smith," Dorhan murmured, his silver eyes narrowing as he tracked a set of hurried, soot-stained footprints leading toward the back of the shop. "The Primal Weave anchored itself to a shaper of iron. Tragic."
He turned toward the open rear door, where the thick river fog was already rolling into the room.
"They went toward the drainage channels," Dorhan ordered, his voice dropping to a cold, absolute whisper. "Signal the canal vanguard. Do not let them reach the water."

The mud of the alleyway was slick and freezing against Leinhal’s bare feet, but the sheer adrenaline coursing through his veins drowned out the discomfort. He ran with his heavy leather tool vest slung awkwardly over his shoulder, his left hand still reflexively clutching the front of his shirt as if he could physically squeeze the pale blue light out of existence.
Ahead of him, Sheanna moved like a shadow through the mist, her travel-stained cloak snapping behind her.

"Keep down!" she hissed over her shoulder, ducking behind a stack of rotted cargo crates as the heavy thud of armored boots echoed from the intersecting lane ahead. "The main avenue is blocked. We have to take the narrow cuts."

"They're right behind us!" Leinhal panted, his chest heaving. The brand on his sternum felt like a frozen spike driven deep into his ribs, pulsing in agonizing rhythm with his racing heart. "I heard the door smash. Who are those men?"

"The end of your life if you don't shut your mouth," Sheanna snapped, though her eyes were frantically scanning the dead-end alley they had just turned into.

At the end of the lane, a massive iron-reinforced security grate barred the way to the lowlands canal. It was locked tight with a heavy, rusted padlock the size of a man’s fist. Behind them, the sound of splashing mud and the metallic clinking of inquisitor armor grew deafeningly loud. They were turning the corner.

"We're trapped," Leinhal rasped, his back hitting the damp brick wall. He gripped his smithing hammer, his knuckles turning white. "I can try to break the chain, but it'll take too many strikes."

"Stand back," Sheanna interrupted. She didn't draw a blade, and she didn't chant the elaborate, flowing incantations of the High Magi. Instead, she tore away her riding glove, revealing a series of intricate, geometric scars etched directly into the skin of her palm. She reached into her vest and pulled out a small, flat sliver of polished river stone. With a fluid, practiced motion of her thumb, she dragged her scarred palm across the stone's surface.

As her skin met the rock, the etched lines on her hand flared with a dull, earthy amber light. She slammed the stone directly against the heavy iron padlock. A Sylvan Rune.

The effect was instantaneous. There was no flash of fire, no dramatic explosion. Instead, a deep, resonant hum vibrated through the metal. The iron of the padlock didn't just break; it violently degraded, the structural integrity of the metal instantly turning to brittle, orange rust that crumbled into dust in a matter of seconds. The heavy chain clattered uselessly to the mud.

Leinhal’s eyes widened, his blacksmith's understanding of metal completely shattered by what he had just witnessed. "What did you just do to that iron?"

"Borrowed time," Sheanna said, throwing the weight of her shoulder against the grate. It groaned open, revealing the fog-shrouded stone banks of the canal just beyond. "Now move, before they borrow ours."

The heavy iron grate swung shut behind them with a muffled clang, disappearing into the thick river fog that blanketed the lowlands canal. Sheanna didn't look back to see if the inquisitors had reached the alley. She moved with purpose along the damp stone towpath, her eyes scanning the dark, murky water where the silhouettes of moored cargo barges sat like sleeping beasts.

Leinhal followed her, his boots splashing through the shallow puddles. His mind was reeling. His left hand remained pressed against his chest, where the hidden brand still thrummed like frozen iron, but his eyes were fixed entirely on Sheanna's bare right hand.

The amber glow in her scarred palm had completely faded, leaving behind nothing but the stark, geometric lines etched into her skin. The small sliver of river stone she had used was now dull and brittle, a faint crack running straight down its center as she tucked it back into her vest.

"That wasn't Magi casting," Leinhal whispered, his voice hushed but intense as he struggled to keep pace with her long strides. "I've seen the circuit-mages from the capital when they come to inspect the provincial vaults. They draw circles. They chant for minutes. You just... you broke that lock's marrow. You turned solid iron to dross in a heartbeat."

"The Magi draw circles because they are tying strings to a wild animal," Sheanna said without slowing down. She stepped onto the wooden gangplank of a flat-bottomed coal barge, its deck piled high with coarse black canvas sacks. "Runes don't demand a tether. They are a direct imprint. I focus the intent, the stone holds the shape, and the Weave answers."

"But the stone cracked," Leinhal noted, his blacksmith’s eye instantly calculating the material cost.

"Because the Weave doesn't like to be held," she replied quietly, her gaze sweeping the empty deck of the barge. She reached for the thick hemp mooring lines tied to the stone cleats on the dock. "A rune is a single breath. Once it's spent, the stone is empty until I take the hours to engrave and speak the focus back into it. If Dorhan's men corner us before the next sunrise, I'm down to what's left in my satchel."

Leinhal looked down at his own calloused hands. He spent his life heating metal, forcing it to bend through sweat and physical labor. The idea that a single sliver of rock and a focused thought could completely dismantle the structural integrity of iron defied everything he knew about the world. It was terrifying, but as he heard a distant, metallic shout echo from the streets above the canal, he realized it was the only reason he was still breathing.

"We need to cut the lines," he said, stepping past her to grab the heavy mooring rope. His muscles tensed as he worked the knot free, his trade-honed strength making quick work of the stiff, damp fibers. "Where does this channel lead?"

"Deep into Tellarane," Sheanna said, throwing her weight against a long wooden steering oar at the stern as the barge began to drift away from the stone bank. "Away from the high towers of Zol. If we can reach the main arterial channels before the inquisitors seal the regional locks, we have a chance."
As the dark water widened between the barge and the city, the fog closed in, swallowing the soot-stained skyline of Arvel. Leinhal collapsed onto a sack of coal, his chest heaving as the adrenaline finally began to drain from his limbs, leaving behind the heavy, freezing ache of the brand beneath his shirt.

The barge drifted blindly through the suffocating gloom of the lowlands drainage channel. The heavy scent of wet coal gave way to the pungent, choking stench of the tannery pits—a sign that they were deep within the city’s underbelly. Leinhal stood at the bow, his hands gripped white-hot around the wooden steering pole, letting the sluggish current carry them.

Suddenly, Sheanna dropped low against the canvas sacks, her fingers sinking into the rough fabric. She reached back, snagging the hem of Leinhal’s tool vest and yanking him down beside her.

"Listen," she breathed. Through the dense, clinging mist, voices echoed off the damp stone walls of the canal. They were muffled, distorted by the water and the stone arches, but undeniably close.

"Check the lower slips!" a voice shouted from somewhere along the towpath above. "They couldn't have made the main road. Search the cargo crates!"

"We don't even know who we're looking for!" another voice yelled back, the sound of splashing boots accompanying the frustration.

"The white-robes just said a rogue anomaly. Is it a man? A beast? Give us something to track!"

Leinhal held his breath, his left hand pressing flat against his chest. Beneath his palm, the branded circle throbbed with a cold, rhythmic venom, but he squeezed harder, terrified that the pale blue light would bleed through his shirt and paint a target on the fog. Beside him, Sheanna sat perfectly still, her hand resting near her vest where her remaining stones were tucked.

The searchers' footsteps grew louder, pausing directly above the stone archway the barge was passing beneath. A faint, flickering torchlight swept over the water, cutting weak amber lines through the gray vapor. For three agonizing heartbeats, the world shrunk to the sound of lapping water against the hull.

"Nothing here but coal barges," the first voice grumbled, the sound finally beginning to recede. "Come on. If we miss the sweep in the artisan district, the Prefect will have our hides."

As the shouts faded into the distance, the sluggish water beneath the hull began to shift. The barge tilted slightly, its speed picking up as it slipped out from under the stone arches and into the flooded bypass culvert Leinhal had promised. The air grew intensely cold, and the stagnant stench of the city was abruptly replaced by the sharp, clean rush of a faster waterway. The dark current caught the heavy timber boat, pulling them forward into the black, unpatrolled exit that led toward the fertile lowlands of Tellarane.

 

Back in the artisan district, the morning sun had finally begun to crack through the high-altitude fog, though it brought no warmth to the soot-stained square outside the smithy.

Magi Dorhan stood near the shattered entrance of the forge, his liquid-silver eyes fixed on the empty streets. Behind him, the silent, blank-masked inquisitors kept a wide perimeter, their crimson capes snapping in the morning breeze.

Prefect Vael stepped forward, accompanied by the captain of the Arvel city watch, a man whose leather armor was slick with sweat despite the morning chill. The captain bowed low, his hands trembling as he held a sheepskin ledger.

"My Lord Magi," the captain stammered, keeping his eyes firmly on the cobblestones. "We have identified the owner of the forge. The registry lists him as Leinhal, a registered trade smith of the Eastern Province. No prior infractions. No record of magical affinity or bloodlines connected to the capital."

"A common laborer," Vael murmured, the multi-faceted siphon-crystal on his staff spinning lazily, its violet light dimming in the growing daylight. He turned his blank metal mask toward Dorhan. "The anomaly has no anchoring in the Weave's established circles. If he was chosen by a Remnant signature, he is an volatile vessel.

My Lord, the resonance in the alleyway vanished near the canal locks. They may have already fled the city."

"No one flees Arvel without my leave," Dorhan said smoothly, his voice a quiet, chilling contrast to the captain's panic. He turned his gaze to the watch captain. "If this smith turns up at any gate, any outpost, or any tavern within ten leagues, what is your protocol?"

"The guards have his description, My Lord," the captain insisted quickly, swallowing hard. "If he or anyone traveling with him attempts to surface, the guards will report directly to your inquisitors immediately. If they are still in the local area, we will find them. I swear it on the crown."

Dorhan didn't answer immediately. He adjusted the iron filigree trim of his white robes, his silver eyes looking toward the southern horizon where the lowlands began.
"See that you do, Captain," Dorhan whispered. "Because if the northern ice takes root in your province, a cage will be the kindest thing awaiting you."