Ren nursed his stale ale. Its bitter tang did little to cut through the day’s dust, but it bought him words from Elara, the barmaid. Her eyes, weary despite her youth, had a practiced way of assessing drifters like him.
"Cinderbeasts? For a bounty?" Elara leaned closer, wiping the counter with a cloth. "You'll want the Guildhall, then. Speak to a clerk in the Civic Registry."
He blinked. "Guildhall? Civic Registry?"
A faint snort escaped her. A genuine, tired laugh. "You're truly from the fringes, aren't you, stranger? The Guildhall. Big blocky building in the Iron Heart. Where the Lord's appointed clerks tally every bit of scrap and every life. Where they decide what's worth coin."
The lamp-light caught the grease on the pub’s walls. Outside, the Ironbound Dominion had begun to swallow the last sliver of rust-orange sky. He’d visit the Guildhall in the morning. Better to face officialdom when the sun offered some illusion of clarity.
Elara paused, her gaze speculative. "Why the interest in Cinderbeasts, anyway? Don't tell me you're one of them... a Cinder-Hunter?"
"A what?" His voice was a low rasp.
"You know," she lowered her voice conspiratorially, "the ones who think if they hunt enough of these mutated creatures, they can steal their power. Become an Arcanist."
A cold tendril of something—fear? fascination?—brushed against Ren's awareness. He already possessed a fragment of that power, unwieldy and dangerous. People sought it through blood?
She explained the whispered lore: common folk, desperate for a sliver of status, risked their lives against beasts corrupted by lingering Arcane Weave energy. Most mocked them as deluded, but the ranks of these hunters swelled with the hopeless.
A heavy hand landed on his shoulder. Ren tensed, muscles coiled, ready to strike. A rough, calloused palm.
"Elara, sweetling, that's not just some fable. It's the truth," a gruff voice rumbled. "I've seen it with my own eyes."
Ren slowly turned. The man was somewhere in his late thirties, early forties. A tangled mass of dark hair, a beard thick with grime. His tunic, patched and stained, hinted at a life lived hard. Yet, his eyes held a startling, predatory sharpness. Clear, like flint.
"Kael! You're alive?" Elara’s weariness vanished, replaced by genuine surprise.
A barking laugh from Kael. "Did you think a few overgrown rats could claim Kael? Not before I feel the Spark, girl!"
Three more figures emerged from the shadows behind Kael. Big men, their frames bulky under worn canvas and scavenged plating. A long, serrated spear glinted. A bow, scarred and sturdy. A hammer, its head a block of salvaged engine casing. Tools for breaking things, not for finesse.
Ren shifted, the heavy hand on his shoulder now an irritation. He shrugged it off. Kael flinched back a step, a flicker of surprise in those sharp eyes.
"My apologies," Kael grunted.
"No matter." Ren’s gaze lingered on him. "Tell me more. About what you said. Becoming... an Arcanist."
A wide grin split Kael's face, revealing stained teeth. He seemed pleased. "So, the young sprout's curious, eh? Pull up a stool, lad."
He pulled a crate over for himself. "They say Arcanists absorb the essence of the Weave through rituals, through study. But there's another way. A primal way. When a Cinderbeast dies, its corrupted essence disperses. A hunter, bloodied and brave, can absorb that raw power. A spark ignites within them."
Kael leaned in, his voice dropping. "We're not talking about those city-bound scholars with their dust-covered tomes. We're talking raw power. The kind that changes a man from the inside out."
"We've already taken down three, Renan," one of Kael’s crew, a bear of a man with a scarred cheek, boasted. "Almost there now!"
Another, Jax, nodded vigorously. "Yeah, feels like it’s just a matter of time."
Ren felt a chill. The only Cinderbeast he’d faced, a mutated construct of flame and shadow, could have ripped apart a dozen armed men. These rust-pickers claimed three?
"Three?" Ren's voice was barely a whisper. "Then... one of you has become an Arcanist already?"
A collective roar of laughter erupted from the common room. Elara even covered her mouth, her shoulders shaking.
"No, no!" Kael slapped his knee. "If one of us had found the Spark, the whole bloody Ironbound would know! Only four true Arcanists in this city, lad. The Lord, and his three Steel-Knights."
Renan grunted. "Helping the rest of us would be a sight easier then."
Jax shivered. "Honestly, we nearly bought the farm more times than I care to count."
Four Arcanists in a city teeming with tens of thousands. The scale of his own untapped power felt heavier then. A mentor, long gone, had once spoken of the Arcane Weave thinning, of the world growing barren of true power. Perhaps this was what he'd meant.
Kael’s gaze drifted to Ren's satchel, then to his empty belt. "By the way, you’re talking Cinderbeasts, but you're not exactly armed to the teeth, are you? Where's your blade, your striker?"
"Weapons?" Ren reached into a pocket, pulling out the worn leather slingshot. It was crude, patched from lambskin, a relic from his scavenging days. He braced for mockery. Their heavy iron weapons were true tools of the Dominion.
But Kael's crew squinted at it, then leaned in.
"A sling, eh?" Renan rubbed his chin. "Used for stones, I reckon?"
"That wear marks a lot of practice," Jax observed, nodding.
"What size rock do you usually feed that thing?" Stellan, the third man, asked.
"Egg-sized," Ren replied.
Kael's eyes gleamed. "Egg-sized? That’d be enough to crack the skull of a Rabbit-Scuttler or a Fox-Snatcher. The mutated kind, mind."
Ren understood. They weren't hunting the monstrous predators he’d encountered. Their targets were the lower-grade mutations: herbivores, smaller carnivores. Creatures still dangerous, yes, capable of killing an unarmored man, but a world away from the Cinderbeasts that haunted his own nightmares.
"Say, sprout," Kael clapped Ren’s shoulder again, this time lighter. "We could use another set of eyes. A marksman. Ever considered joining a crew? Share the bounty, share the risk."
"No." Ren's refusal was immediate, flat.
His goals were his own. He sought answers, not coin, and certainly not the petty thrill of hunting creatures whose power barely registered on his senses. Revealing his own nascent, volatile connection to the Arcane Weave would be catastrophic.
Kael shrugged, a flicker of disappointment in his eyes. "Pity. But the offer stands, lad. If you ever change your mind."
They chatted a while longer, Kael recounting exaggerated tales of past hunts, his men adding boisterous details. When the hour grew late, Ren took a small, tarnished key from Elara and ascended the creaking stairs to his room.
---
The thin wooden floorboards offered little privacy. As Ren lay on the rough cot, staring at the darkened ceiling, the muffled voices of Kael and his crew drifted up from below.
“Kael, hyungnim, why were you so keen on that fresh-faced kid? He looked like a gust of wind would knock him over.” That was Jax.
“Seriously. Scrawny thing. One swipe from a Snatcher, and he’d be blubbering for his mother.” Renan’s voice.
They had seemed so hearty, so welcoming moments ago. Ren felt no sting of betrayal. Such two-facedness was just another grimy cog in the Dominion’s mechanism. He’d seen it in every desperate alley, every forgotten corner. It simply was. He sighed, rolling onto his side.
A pause, then Kael’s deeper rumble. "Tsk. Reminded me of my younger days, is all. Out there, with nothing but a leather strap and a pocket full of rocks? You don't last ten days like that. Not in this age."
"You're too soft, big hyungnim," Stellan chimed in.
"Who's arguing?" Kael chuckled.
Ren closed his eyes. The world had good men, and bad. Most were just trying to survive. Some just hadn’t learned the trick yet.
---
Morning light, fractured by industrial smog, painted the Ironbound Dominion in shades of bruised grey and rust. Ren choked down the inn’s breakfast – a lump of dark bread, gritty and dense, with a thin, watery soup that tasted vaguely of metal.
He walked toward the Iron Heart, the city’s administrative core. The Guildhall of Ironbound rose like a monolithic gear from the surrounding sprawl. Four stories of scarred ferrocrete and salvaged plating, its entrance a constant churn of citizens, clerks, and grim-faced Enforcers.
A woman haggled loudly with a stooped man over some property deed. A line of supplicants snaked towards a series of open booths. Ren threaded through the crowd, following the signs for "Civic Registry – Arcane Bounties."
A balding man, neck thick with jowls, sat behind a chipped desk. Guild Clerk Jory, his nameplate read. His eyes, the color of stagnant water, glanced up, then dismissed Ren with a sneer. He saw another street rat, another hopeful fool.
"What do you want?" Jory’s voice was a dismissive grunt.
"Bounties. For Cinderbeasts." Ren kept his voice level, neutral.
The urge to unleash a flicker of the Weave, just enough to make the air hum, to make this man’s smug expression falter, was strong. But Ren swallowed it. A true Arcanist, especially one with his kind of power, was a liability in this city. He'd witnessed how the Enforcers reacted to even rumors of "unregistered Arcane manifestation."
If he claimed to be a Knight, he’d be pressed into service. If he revealed himself a noble-level Arcanist, he'd be drowned in false courtesies, unable to leave without causing an incident. No, anonymity was his shield. He just needed information, then he’d vanish.
Jory sighed, a performance of profound inconvenience. He slapped a thick ledger onto the desk, then pushed a printed sheet across to Ren.
"Don't touch it. Read it, give it back," Jory snapped.
The sheet was stark. Descriptions of Cinderbeasts: size, known habits, last reported sightings, and the bounty offered. Smaller, less dangerous mutations, like the Rabbit-Scuttlers Kael mentioned, required live capture. Proof of their continued existence, perhaps. The truly dangerous ones, the human-killers, earned their bounty for a corpse.
"Careful out there," Jory droned, not looking up. "Even if you accidentally kill one, don't you dare leave its husk in the wilds. If the Steel-Knights don't disperse its arcane residue, it could birth something... ghastly. An Arcane Construct, a Revenant. Leaving a Cinderbeast corpse is grounds for summary execution in this Dominion. Remember that."
A cold tremor ran through Ren. He had witnessed the aftermath of such a corruption. The official's warning resonated with a deeply buried horror. "I understand."
"Some of these creatures," Ren gestured to the sheet, a detail catching his eye, "they seem too much for... drifters. Don't the Knights hunt them?"
Jory finally looked up, a scoff twisting his lips. "Do you think they have time for such trifles? The Steel-Knights uphold the Lord's decree, maintain civic order, repel incursions from the Outlands. Cinderbeast hunts? That's for fools like you."
Ren's gaze dropped back to the bounty sheet. His eyes fixed on one entry:
---
**Razorwing**
*Corrupted Avian: A large corvid species, feathers hardened and sharpened into razor-like blades. Capable of deflecting projectile attacks. Hunts by diving from high altitudes, releasing volleys of these feathers.*
*Common Prey: Scavenges on domestic dogs, targets young children near city outskirts. Known for gruesome, scattered remains.*
---
If Arcanists were supposed to be humanity's protectors, guardians of the Weave, why were these horrors left to "fools"? His bitterness flared. The true power of the Arcane Weave, the spark within him, was a responsibility, not a trophy. A burden. Yet, so few bore it.
He folded the sheet carefully, handed it back to Jory, then turned and left the Guildhall. The city's cacophony seemed louder, more desperate.
He headed for the industrial edges, the districts where the metal skeletal frames of new constructions clawed at the sky, then beyond, to where the smog thinned and the ruins of the older world peeked through the grit. The concrete towers gave way to overgrown rubble, twisted metal skeletons, and then, the raw, unkempt wilderness that pressed against the Dominion’s borders.
Nobody watched him. He was just another shadow, melting into the encroaching wild.
'Time to start.'
The Razorwing. A hunter of children. A sickening weight settled in his gut.
"Crow Detection."
A whisper of power. Not a raw surge, but a subtle ripple, seeking out the Arcane trace within the target species. A wave of sound crashed over him.
The rustle of a thousand wings. The frantic caw of scavengers. The distant, mocking squawk. The sharp *clack* of beaks against bone, against hard earth. Every single crow, from every direction within a mile, was suddenly present, overwhelming.
"Ugh." He clenched his jaw, the nascent headache already throbbing behind his eyes. He cut the connection. The roar of sensation vanished, leaving a ringing silence.
'Useless.'
How could he filter through so much ambient noise? He needed precision.
'A crow that possesses arcane corruption?' He tried to define the search, to push the Weave to differentiate. Nothing. The spell refused to activate. The sheer, subtle presence of magic, corrupted or otherwise, wasn't a distinct enough marker for this rudimentary detection. It simply saw "crow" and "magic." All crows, perhaps, carried a faint, residual echo of the Arcane Weave, a background hum he couldn’t filter.
Next, he focused. 'Crows that have ingested human flesh.' He pushed his will again.
Too many targets. A surge of disgust rippled through him. Scavengers. The city’s waste, its forgotten dead, its desperate hunger. He closed his eyes, the grim reality of the Dominion pressing in.
He needed a better way. A clearer link. A deeper understanding of this nascent power that surged and receded within him like a dangerous tide.