Coal smoke rasped in Kazimir’s throat as he ran, boots sliding on the wet cobbles. The stolen blueprints were stiff parchment wedged inside his coat. He didn't slow until the silhouette of Katarzyna’s clock tower rose through the grease-thick haze above the drainage canal. He ducked through the ground-floor intake, throwing the iron hatch shut and dropping the crossbar.
Katarzyna sat at her workbench, a complex clockwork mechanism disassembled before her. The oil lamp cast long, dancing shadows, making her sharp features appear even more severe. She didn’t look up, her delicate tools moving with precision.
“Took you long enough, Markovic,” she said, her voice flat, devoid of surprise. “The Hound’s men were swarming the Dross Pit an hour ago. You’re lucky you didn’t stumble into them.”
Kazimir leaned against a stack of crates, fighting for breath. He slid the rolled schematics across the bench. “Here. Soul-Forge blueprints. Now, Mila.”
Katarzyna finally lifted her gaze, her eyes like chips of flint. She unrolled the parchment, her fingers tracing the intricate diagrams of Soul Echo conduits and resonance chambers. The corners of her mouth twitched into an appraising line.
“Remarkable,” she said softly. “This… this changes everything.” She re-rolled the schematics, tucking them into a hidden compartment beneath her bench. “Mila is safe, as promised. My runners tucked her into a cellar vault under the old Veles shrine. Untraceable, even for Volkov.”
[CONTRACT: 'SOUL-FORGE SCHEMATICS' FULFILLED. ALLY RELATIONSHIP: KATARZYNA VETROVA - STABILITY INCREASED.]
The knot in Kazimir’s stomach loosened, then tightened again. “What’s the price on top? You look like you just inherited an iron foundry.”
“Because it has,” she replied, her smile not fading. “With this, my network will truly flourish. No more scavenging for scraps. I’ll control the flow of Soul-forged components across half of Olovgrad. But that power comes with… information.” She leaned forward, her expression turning serious. “Volkov is no longer just hunting a thug who defied him. He’s hunting *you* specifically. He’s asking questions about your name, your sister, your past. He’s obsessed. He views your escape, your humiliation of Lyudvik, and now this heist, as personal affronts.”
“I gathered that much,” Kazimir muttered, rubbing his temples. The sonic flare from the trigger had left high-pitched static behind his temples.
“And that’s not all,” Katarzyna continued, lowering her pitch. “The ‘glitch phantoms’… Vorotnik’s shadows. They’ve been sighted, more frequently, closer to the Dross Pit. Street runners claim they hunt people who deviate, who act outside normal habit. They’re searching for… anomalies. Like you.”
Vorotnik was moving, and Rostov was running parallel. “How do you know the Hound is so focused?”
“My network, Markovic. It has eyes everywhere. Including the garrison’s armory master, who watched Volkov spend two hours examining a silver pendant dropped in the records room.” She paused, a glint in her eye. “It bears a raven, doesn’t it? The same as Mila’s.”
Kazimir cursed under his breath. The chime pendant. It had torn free during the sprint. His own creation, a tiny piece of his old world, had betrayed him.
Three districts away, under the gas lamps of his garrison office, Rostov Volkov turned the silver disk over his knuckles. He held it with a surprising gentleness for a man of his brutal reputation, turning it over and over. The raven emblem was simple, yet subtly distinct from any artisan’s mark he knew. He’d shown it to three master jewelers in Olovgrad, each shaking their heads, unable to identify the craft or the metallic composition. The metal hummed with an uneven pulse, an oscillation that broke the clean frequency rules of local Soul-forging.
“Not from Kolyada,” he mused aloud, his voice a low growl. He dropped the silver onto an ink-stained city chart, dragging a scarred fingernail from the garrison gate through the slag mounds. “Too unique. Too… clean. Too alien.”
He remembered the blast, the way it had ripped through his senses, disorienting him completely. It wasn’t a typical sonic weapon, no Kolyadan tech produced such a focused, high-frequency disruption. The trinket, the tripwire countermeasure in the foundries, the clean entry into the vault—it pointed to a technician who saw the joints holding the city together. It spoke of a mind that understood the fundamental building blocks of this world, not just their application.
“Markovic,” he repeated, the name now a burning question in his mind, not just a target. “Who are you?”
Five days passed. Huddled in a low-ceilinged vault beneath the river wharves, Kazimir traced survey grids across greaseproof paper, hunting patterns in the corrupted sightings. Mila, meanwhile, spent her days sketching in a worn notebook, her nascent Soul Echoes sometimes flaring, a faint, iridescent glow around her hands when she was particularly focused. He still saw the fear in her eyes, the lingering trauma of the chase, and it fueled his every decision.
His own system notifications were eerily quiet regarding Vorotnik, a silence that unnerved him more than any blaring alert. It was as if the final boss was actively suppressing its presence from his Authorial sight, adapting to his interference. The thought was chilling.
He was sketching a defensive perimeter around the Veles shrine, mentally calculating escape routes, when the sound hit him. Not a crash, not a shout, but a profound, unnatural silence. The boots scraping overhead, the gutting knives thumping on pine tables, the water sloshing in gutters—everything cut out. As if a curtain had fallen over the world.
Kazimir’s head snapped up. His hand instinctively went to the concealed vibro-knife at his belt. He moved silently, pressing himself against the cold, damp stone wall, creeping toward the timber hatch leading up to the gutting floor. He heard it then, a low, deliberate thudding, growing closer. Footsteps, heavy and unhurried.
The door, secured by multiple reinforced bolts, suddenly vibrated. Not from an impact, but from a steady, immense pressure. The ancient wood groaned, splinters dusting the floor. A crack appeared, then another, spreading like spiderwebs across the door’s surface. Through the widening gaps, Kazimir saw the dull glint of a metal gauntlet.
Then, the door splintered inward, torn from its frame with a sound like thunder. Dust and debris filled the small chamber. Standing in the gaping doorway, his silhouette framed by the sudden, stark light from the stunned market above, was Rostov Volkov. His chin was dark with stubble, his stare locked onto Kazimir. The air in the room grew heavy, crackling with suppressed power.
“Markovic,” Rostov said, his voice a low, resonant rumble. He took a single, slow step into the chamber, then stopped, his gaze unwavering, piercing. “Who coded you?”