Valthara Prime never really slept.
Lucien Blackmoore moved through it like he'd drawn the map and then thrown it into a fire. His boots clapped wet stone, his crimson coat heavy with rain and spite. The Silent Ledger pressed against his ribs like a second spine, pulsing slow, deliberate. Judging. Always judging.
Current Objective: Retrieve Tess's routing keys.Target: Kellis Varn – active. Location unknown.Outstanding Debts: 2 due for collection by dawn. Risk rating: moderate.Proxy Movement: Detected – Cassian signature.
Lucien exhaled through his teeth. The air down here stank of rusted copper, ozone, and something worse—like scorched sugar rotting under steel. His eyes scanned alley corners, glass gutters, sewer lips—tracking heat signatures, mapping rhythms. The Ledger fed him soft data in pulses, silent to all but him. It did more than tally souls. It whispered patterns. Predicted slants.
He'd laid three decoy trails tonight, just to buy time. One baited a Watcher probe into the Rustbend stacks, where the Aether coils chewed signal. Another flagged a false aura signature near the freight lift by Coilrow. And the last… that one was personal. A red herring soaked in Kellis Varn's scent, sold to a desperate info-runner in exchange for nothing more than the chance to see who came sniffing.
Decoys active. One misfire recorded near Coilrow. Syndicate ping confirmed. Traced back to Cassian's old routing pattern.
Lucien grunted. No rest for the bastards.
The real play? Tess.
Lucien slowed as the alley pinched narrow. A flickering rune—painted in haste, half-erased by rain—marked the wall near a broken vending shrine. The shrine's offerings had long since rotted or been stripped for wire. He crouched low and tapped a glyph on the stone. It pulsed once, dull gold.
"You're late."
Tess stepped from shadow like she'd never been gone, braid coiled around one shoulder, goggles pushed up to her forehead. Her jacket, all hexsteel buckles and slick street armor, clung like a second skin. She had a knife in her palm already. Of course she did.
Lucien grinned. "Had to take the long way. Your friends are nosy."
She didn't blink. "They're not my friends. Syndicate don't keep those."
He stepped close, eyes flicking to the Ledger glyph that hovered faintly above her boot. Tracked. Tagged. The book pulsed once. She wasn't lying.
Subject Tess Veradine: Loyalty unresolved. Oathbound to Cassian Proxy – lapsed. Status: volatile.
"I need access to Varn's routing keys," Lucien said. "You get them?"
Tess hesitated. Just long enough to read as doubt.
Lucien tilted his head. His voice softened. "I know he owes you. But you help me catch him, and I make the debt vanish. Valthamur-grade erasure. Clean."
She exhaled hard, then pulled a small chip from her glove. "I had to burn three favors for this."
Lucien took it gently. "Then I owe you three."
She looked up, brow tight. "You ever pay your debts, Blackmoore?"
He looked away. "When I remember them."
That earned him a scoff. She stepped past him. "Let's move. This place crawls when you stand still."
They weaved through rusted scaffolding and flickering lamps, past drainage flows and old gods scrawled in graffiti. The air felt like wire pulled taut—ready to snap. Lucien kept half an eye on Tess, the other on the patterns forming around them. The Ledger vibrated faintly. Not danger yet. But... possibility. Shifting angles.
Warning: Pattern deviation in forward quadrant. Recommend reroute.Tracking signal: Cassian proxy proximity – increasing.
Then it pulsed again. Sharp. Warning.
Lucien stopped. Tess turned, confused.
"What?"
"Quiet," he hissed. He angled the Ledger to the wall and saw it: a smear tag, nearly invisible, hiding behind false reflection glyphs. It was Cassian's work. Burnt at the edges, carved with arrogance. A signal.
"We're not alone."
Two figures stepped from the mouth of the alley, all trench coats and synth-blades. Syndicate goons, marked with neon scarring along their necks—a gang-brand Lucien recognized from the Vellum Bastion days. They moved like they weren't used to missing.
Tess tensed beside him. "I didn't tip them. I swear."
Lucien believed her. He just didn't care.
He raised his voice, full of theatrical bite. "You two stumble in here by accident, or were you hoping for autographs?"
One of the goons raised a pulse-shot. "Varn's location. Now."
Lucien pulled Tess in close, whispered in her ear. "They want you to crack. Don't. I'll handle the ugly part."
She stiffened, then nodded. Loyalty or fear, he didn't check.
He threw a smoke glyph. The alley screamed with white static as it detonated. In the chaos, Lucien vaulted the scaffolding, drawing a stunblade with his left hand. One goon followed, coughing and blind. Lucien took him down with a clean arc to the side of the knee. His scream was short and sharp, lost in the static haze.
The second fired twice into the fog.
Lucien grabbed the edge of a broken pipe and dropped down behind her. The second goon never saw him coming. Lucien slammed the Ledger into the base of his skull. Not lethal, but final enough.
Status: Neutralized.Combat rating: 64%. Precision slip recorded. Fatigue present.
He turned. Tess was standing over the first goon, breathing hard. Blood on her sleeve. Not hers.
"You used me," she said, low.
Lucien met her stare. "I used the fact they thought you were weak. You proved them wrong."
She almost hit him. Almost. But instead she said, "You don't get to call that a win."
Lucien pocketed the chip. "I call it survival."
They moved again. Fast. Silent. Until the alley opened into a service conduit choked with old data vines. Safe enough, for now.
Tess stopped walking. "I owe debt. Cassian's crew. Before I met you. If they call it in... I don't get to choose."
Lucien lit a cigarette. Inhaled. Eyes sharp.
"Then we make sure they can't call."
The Ledger pulsed again. Its voice, mechanical and ancient, cut through his chest.
Trust coefficient: 27%.Threat vector: Mutual betrayal projected.New target pending – inbound signal from Outer Spire.
Lucien closed his eyes.
"So does yours," he whispered.
He handed Tess a glyph chip. "Safehouse, district four. Lay low. Anyone knocks, you vanish. I'll be there before dawn."
She took it, slowly. "This better not be another trap."
Lucien smiled thin. "It's the counter. Cassian left breadcrumbs. I plan to poison the trail."
She gave him one last look. It wasn't trust. It wasn't hate. It was worse—hope, peeled back and already bleeding. Then she vanished into the conduit.
The Ledger pulsed again.
Her trust breaks. So does yours.
Lucien stared at the fading alley and muttered, "Her trust was my shield. Her eyes burned me."
He lit another cigarette from the dying ember of the first. Neon bled through the smoke in waves of sickly blue and gutter orange.
"Clumsy traps, Cassian. Sloppy. You're losing your edge."
He walked into the dark.
The Ledger vibrated once more, slower now.
Soul-Contract Interference Detected. Tracer Thread active.Cassian Proxy routing trace—cross-world breach possible.Incoming instability in worldshift boundary.
Lucien paused, felt it deep—like pressure changing in his molars. The air rippled. Valthara Prime thinned around the edges.
Then came the shift. No portal. No ceremony.
Just sensation: ribs contracting, breath warping, time turning inside out as the walls of the Undergleam broke like glass—and suddenly he was standing between worlds.
He braced against it. The new place bled different colors—too soft, too wide. A breach realm, liminal and decaying, half-built like Cassian's memory left something unfinished.
The Ledger whirred.
World integrity low. Exit recommended. Cassian's influence: increasing. Anchors corrupted.
Lucien said nothing. But his fist clenched around the plan already forming.
Time to set the sting.