A whisper. Not of wind, nor of the shifting dust outside, but of something far subtler, a fractured thread in the world’s deep matrix. Silas’s eyes snapped open.
Deep night claimed the small room. Everyone else slept, their labored breaths faint through the thin, rockcrete walls. Stillness pressed in, broken only by the rasp of his own breathing.
He rose, a shadow detaching from shadow. Footfalls made no sound on the packed earth floor. His gaze fixed on the crude iron door, the only egress from this cramped space – barely a man and a half could lie stretched within.
A scrape, almost lost in the room’s silence, grated against his ears. Someone turned the handle.
Click. Click.
That metallic rasp, amplified by the tension in Silas’s skull, echoed. His heart hammered a slow, heavy rhythm against his ribs.
Clunk.
The lock mechanism surrendered. A sliver of deeper gloom, colder than the room’s own darkness, appeared as the door creaked inward. A figure, silhouetted against the meager light of the hallway, peered inside.
A glint of steel. A dagger, wickedly long, gripped tight in the intruder’s hand. Not yet accustomed to the interior black, the man edged forward, sensing his way into the room’s confines.
Silas held his breath, every nerve taut. He remained still, a statue of watchful stone, observing the man’s hesitant advance.
Oblivious to the predator in his path, the man took another step. His weight settled.
Crack!
A sharp report. The snap of stressed shale beneath the man’s boot. It was the trap Silas had laid, a finely balanced arrangement of loose stone and taut cord.
Thud!
A choked cry ripped from the intruder. A dull impact followed, the man’s sudden fall shaking the very ground. A small, sharpened piece of flint, launched by the trap’s release, had found purchase in his side.
Silas had designed it with meticulous care. The shard, imbued with a touch of his own subtle earth-force, would fly true upon activation. Unwittingly, the man had paid the price.
“Argh! What in the…?” The man thrashed on the floor, groaning, cursing.
Suddenly, Silas moved. He was a streak of dark motion from his crouched position. He propelled himself forward, a stone-hard fist connecting with the man’s jaw. The intruder’s head snapped back.
Silas straddled the man’s chest. He ripped the dagger from the man’s lax grip, its weight familiar in his hand. The point hovered just above the man’s exposed throat.
Eyes wide with shock and pain, the man stared up at the boy.
“Ugh! You little whelp…”
“Wondered which stray skulk had come sniffing,” Silas’s voice was low, rough with disuse. “Just the neighbor from the next wall, aren’t you?”
Literally. The man’s hovel abutted Silas’s own within The Cracks. Silas had seen him before, glimpsed his furtive stares. There was an unpleasant hunger in his eyes. A man not easily forgotten.
Silas tapped the man’s cheek with the dagger’s flat. “Old man, even here, aren’t you overstepping, robbing a boy?”
“What’s a rat like you got? Let go, whelp! You know who my brother is?” The man snarled, desperation coloring his voice.
“How would I know that? Tell me, old man.” Silas’s tone was cold, unwavering.
The man grimaced, a vein throbbing in his temple. “He’s a Binder. A Master Binder. The Theron name means something.”
“Lie better. A Master Binder’s kin living in a stone-nest like this?” Silas scoffed. The notion was absurd. The Theron name was indeed powerful, whispered even in The Cracks.
“It’s true. Here on some… business. Temporarily.”
“Then do your business quietly. Don’t go creeping into a child’s room to steal.” Silas pressed the dagger’s tip lightly against the man’s skin. A bead of blood welled.
“Hah! Damn it, how could I just leave it? Aether-shard, right there! Big as my thumb!”
Silas’s brow furrowed. “You actually saw it?”
A bitter taste filled his mouth. He’d found a small, raw Aether-shard a few cycles ago. The first he’d ever held. He’d spent hours marveling at its faint internal glow, the way its Veins pulsed under his touch. Someone, this man, must have glimpsed it through a crack, or when Silas had foolishly admired it by the thin light of the hallway.
Stupidity. A deadly sin in The Cracks.
This labyrinthine warren, a sprawl of lean-tos and crumbling rockcrete, was known as The Cracks. It was where those barred from Bastion’s protective walls scrabbled for existence. Law was a luxury here, decency a weakness. The strong devoured the weak, stripping them of everything.
Weakness was an indictment. Strength, the only indulgence.
Silas knew these tenets intimately. Born and raised in The Cracks, his earliest memories were of dodging blows, scavenging for scraps. He remembered the chill of the Beggar’s Hole, the beatings for too little coin, for too much food.
When he came of age, he broke free. Slipped out of the Hole, a ghost in the pre-dawn gloom, leaving no trace. The Hole’s grim master still hunted him, Silas knew.
Even his name, Silas, he had chosen himself. A quiet name, solid like stone. It felt right. He was Silas.
Survival had been his constant companion. Pickpocketing, scavenging, raiding deserted hovels – every means short of murder he had employed. Complacency meant death in this place. His meticulous traps, hidden even in his own room, had saved him more than once.
What to do with this man? The question hung heavy. If his brother truly was a Master Binder, there would be repercussions. Dangerous repercussions.
A glint of cunning flickered in the man’s eyes.
Swish!
Another dagger, thinner, sharper, slid from the man’s sleeve. An emergency blade, kept close.
“Die, you little wretch!” the man screamed, twisting, lashing out with the hidden weapon.
Silas recoiled, barely avoiding the thrust. He scrambled back, the man’s eyes now feral, bloodlust overriding all else. He lunged again, desperate to kill, to seize the Aether-shard he coveted.
Silas grappled. A whirlwind of flailing limbs, grunts, and the rasp of cloth on skin. The small room felt suffocating, too tight for such a struggle. He tried to disarm, to evade. The man, fueled by greed and pain, was surprisingly strong.
Ploosh!
A sickening sound. A blade tearing through flesh. The fight stopped, abrupt and terrible.
“Argh!” The man shrieked, a raw, primal sound, then crumpled. His own dagger, wrestled from his grip, was buried deep in his chest.
He stared at Silas, eyes wide with disbelief, a silent question in their depths. Tremors wracked his body. A final shudder. His breath left him in a ragged gasp.
“Damn it.” Silas fell back, hitting the wall with a dull thud. His chest heaved, his vision blurred at the edges. Never before. Never like this. The cold shock of the blade sinking home, the feel of warm blood on his hands – it was an indelible brand.
“Why… why did you have to come in?” he whispered, his voice hoarse, staring at the motionless body.
—
He had always known this day would come. To survive in The Cracks, to avoid being crushed, violence was inevitable. Killing? A brutal necessity. But not today. He hadn't expected today.
Silas shook himself. Focus. The dead man’s brother. A Master Binder. Peril. Imminent. Making the body vanish was impossible. The Cracks teemed with eyes. Moving a corpse unseen through this maze? Foolish.
Best to leave it. Run. Hide himself, and fast.
Decision made, Silas moved with cold precision. He wrestled the door shut, locking it with a heavy chain he kept wrapped around the frame. Then, he slipped out, melting into the shadows.
The street, if it could be called that, twisted like the guts of a beast. Shabby structures, stacked one upon another like broken crockery, formed a chaotic labyrinth. No order, no logic. Just cramped rooms and blind alleys.
Silas plunged into the maze. His lean frame made him a ghost, slipping through gaps, scaling crumbling walls, lost to the hungry night.
—
“Blast it! A true Master Binder. Even with my luck, how could it be this cursed?”
Silas muttered, huddled within the rattling interior of a rust-eaten dust-skiff. The hulking transport, its hull patched with scavenged metal plates, groaned as it navigated the treacherous Ash Wastes.
Lee Kaelen Theron, the dead man’s brother, was indeed a Master Binder. Not just any. A Seismic Binder, whispered to be one of the most potent. Even a fledgling Binder was a force; a Master like Theron was a living legend.
Among Bastion’s powerful, there were barely a hundred Master Binders. They were the architects of the floating islands, the wardens of the Veins. Theron was nobility, a king in stone.
If caught, death would be merciful. Kaelen’s rage, like a fracturing mountain, would know no bounds. The fact that his brother was a thief, a murderer in waiting, meant nothing. Only the death of kin.
“Today, I flee. Pathetic. But mark my words, Kaelen Theron, I will return. I will have my vengeance.”
Kaelen Theron knew The Cracks. He too had risen from its dust. He had mapped Silas’s potential boltholes, his escape routes. Silas had been cornered, run out of options. The dust-skiff was his only chance.
It was a cargo vessel, ferrying raw Aether-shards from the Sunken Quarry to Bastion. Once outside the colony, Theron’s reach would lessen, his hunt less precise.
‘Never thought I’d willingly board one of these.’ Silas bit his lip. The Sunken Quarry. A place of legend and dread.
Beyond Bastion lay the Ash Wastes. Red, perpetually shifting dunes stretched to the horizon, unbroken by life save for the hardiest scrub. Every dune, every shadow, held danger.
Beneath the scarlet grit, monstrous dust-wyrms burrowed. Above, skymanta-scavengers circled, their leathery wings casting vast, fleeting shadows. And worse, the raider gangs, desperate men and women, haunted the desert routes, preying on any who dared cross.
No place was safe. That was why, despite their wretched lives, the poor clung to The Cracks, to Bastion’s outskirts. The beasts, for reasons unknown, skirted the colony’s immediate perimeter. Near Bastion, the odds of a brutal death at the claws of a desert creature were slightly diminished. But Theron’s wrath changed everything.
“Damn it! If only I had Theron’s power…”
A century ago, the world had fractured. Continents ripped apart, floating in a perpetual twilight. Ninety percent of humanity perished. The survivors clung to life on the broken shards of land.
The Binders, the Awakened, were their saviors. From the ashes, a fraction of humanity had manifested abilities beyond comprehension. Some, like Silas, could touch the world’s Veins. Others could mend flesh, conjure light, or channel the very currents of the sky. They were the Binders. They became the architects of the new world, its rulers.
Even low-rank Binders held sway in Bastion. Compared to them, Silas was less than dust. If he died, few would notice. None would mourn.
His only choice: the dust-skiff to the Sunken Quarry.
Seventy kilometers from Bastion, nestled deep in the Scarred Peaks, lay the Quarry. All its extracted Aether-shards fueled Bastion, powering its sky-lifts, its protective barriers, its very existence.
Mining Aether-shards demanded immense labor. The tunnels, narrow and treacherous, required men to wield pickaxes by hand. The conditions were brutal. Miners died constantly, accidents a daily occurrence.
Labor was always scarce. Desperate for workers, Bastion turned a blind eye. They loaded anyone willing onto the dust-skiffs, no questions asked, no identities checked. This was Silas’s lifeline.
‘No matter what, I’ll survive the Quarry. And then, Kaelen Theron. I will break you.’
While Silas stared out at the red expanse, a grim fire in his eyes, the skiff filled. All miners. Desperate men, hardened by the wastes.
“Hey, lad! Heading to the Quarry too?”
A burly man, scarred face, thick neck, leaned over from the bench opposite. He looked strong, built for the punishing work. He reeked of stale sweat and desperation.
Silas’s voice was clipped, a reflex of the slums. “What of it?”
“Feisty, aren’t you? But mind yourself, boy, once we’re there.” The man’s grin was wide, unsettling.
“Why?”
“Place is crawling with men who’d fancy a frail pretty thing like you. Heheheh!” The man’s eyes raked Silas from head to toe, a predatory glint within their depths.
‘Filthy worm.’ Silas knew that look. The Cracks were full of such men. He had a lean frame, a face that some called handsome, if not for the perpetual grimness. If not for his sharp instincts, his ready fierceness, he would have been taken countless times.
Silas’s hand, a phantom, brushed the hilt of the dagger tucked beneath his worn jacket. It was the same one, taken from the dead man.
---