The mist of Valdrin clung to the city streets as if it were alive, slithering through the labyrinthine streets and broken rooftops. Lamps flickered, sputtering weak glimmers of amber light into the fog while the rumble of steam engines and the faint creaking of iron gears painted the soundscape.
Marek stood at the center of a dim, decrepit room, his silhouette cutting a large muscle figure against the candlelight, flickering shadows warping his features.
His team—an assortment of outcasts, thieves, and survivors—stood around him. Tension hung thick in the air, amplified by the recent events. The shipment, the new substance, and what happened last night weighed heavily on his mind. Tension visible on his face.
"Honestly, I have no idea what happened last night; what I know is we need answers. Whatever happened might happen again," Marek said at last, his voice low but firm. "Soon we should be hearing some clues. Valdrin's underbelly doesn't hide things without reason. If the Ironclad are involved, someone gotta know what's happening."
His sharp gaze swept across the room. "You shall scatter through the city. Speak to anyone from the alchemist factions you can find — the Whisperbinders, the Obsidian Hermits, hell even the Coilbloods if they even conversed with you. Don't mention any of our names. Just… ask about anything strange. Substances, weird happenings, about those vials we found. And be sure you ask about anything involving the Ironclads."
The team murmured their assent. Each of them nodded or grunted as they mentally mapped out their assignments.
Marek took one step closer. "Alchemist folk are stingy with their words to strangers," he muttered, "they do not trust strangers, but I'll also try to get something out of them."
"And the rest of you," Marek added, eyes narrowing, "find out where that substance comes from. Why it was in those crates. Why it feels... wrong, and most importantly what are they used for."
He glanced toward the crate in the corner, where remnants of the eerie substance still remained—a slick, silver material that shimmered faintly under torchlight based on what Cairon told him.
As his team filtered out, one by one vanishing into the maze of Valdrin, Marek exhaled deeply. The room grew still, the distant echoes of footsteps fading. Alone now, he let his posture drop, muscles loosening as the weight of leadership rolled off him, if only for a moment.
He lowered himself onto a crooked chair, clasping his hands together and resting his chin on them.
---
On top of the roofs on the Thieves' Alley, a street or better to say a marketplace for stolen goods, Cairon crouched, with Vynn right beside him.
Cairon, deep in thought, closed his eyes, thinking. The noise of the bustling street dulled into nothing, replaced by his own heartbeat—slow, steady. His mind drifted into the darkness behind his closed eyelids. He wasn't taking a break, not exactly; this was his routine to collect himself, a calmness, a deliberate easing into nothingness.
And then—
A murmur.
Cairon's brows furrowed. The sound was faint, like voices carried through water. Whispers tangled together, words dissolving into unintelligible fragments.
"…be careful… Vynn…"
The name jolted through him like a spark. He tried to focus, but the sounds shifted—cluttered, blurry, impossible to make out. It was as though he were submerged in a river, struggling to hear the voices echoing across its depths.
And then, the distinct rhythm of words began to surface.
"The A… The A…"
"Please watch over this child..." the voice hummed.
Cairon's breathing grew shallow. A shiver crawled up his spine, and the whispers pressed closer, louder. Silence fought to hold its grip but was shattered as screams erupted, followed by the furious clang of metal on metal—the unmistakable sound of Ironclads in motion.
"Catch them!" a distorted voice bellowed. "It's him—he came to save the boy! Both of them need to be destroyed!"
The vision fractured.
Cairon gasped, his eyes flying open as he shot upright, heart pounding violently against his ribs. His surroundings returned in an instant—the grimy street, the flickering lights, the faint scent of oil and metal in the air. He wiped the sweat from his brow, exhaling in ragged breaths.
That voice. That scream.
What did he hear just now, who was talking to him? How did they know he would encounter Vynn and save him, and the Ironclad. The whispers, the pursuit, how did he see it from their point of view.
Cairon rose unsteadily to his feet, as if the memory of that sound had physically struck him. He needed to figure out what was happening to him. He needed answers. His mind clawed through his memories of his past. Nothing felt related to what was happening to him. Everything was bizarre, like a lucid dream.
"Um, Cai, you okay?" Vynn asked.
"Yeah, I was just in deep thought," thinking what to do next. Cairon replied, clearing his throat. "We're visiting a friend. Don't remove your mask. They're only loyal to shillings and nothing more."
He leapt down from the roof, grabbing the railings and window frames, like a monkey, swift and fast.
Vynn, astonished, looked with his mouth open. "How the hell should I follow you like that?"
He hooked a rope he had with him to the roof and went down, slowly at that. After a couple of minutes climbing down, he saw Cairon waiting for him.
"As you see, you gotta work on your movement. You never know when you'll get followed, pursued, or when you might need to do the pursuing. Got it, kid?"
"Yes, sir." Vynn, taking everything to heart.
Cairon circled around and went into a shop. The outer part had yellow glass windows. The shop looked old but clean — the inside full of oil and perfumery.
As Cairon opened the door, there was a jingling sound. As he went inside, he called, "Misty, you there?"
"Oh, Cai, you're back?" A girl with short black hair, blue eyes, and tanned skin came to the front desk. "What do you need?"
"Any hot news on the street?" Cairon said.
"Nothing you don't know, I suppose. Were you involved last night?" Misty said, questioning and probing.
"Nah, what happened?" Cai said, feigning ignorance.
"You're a terrible liar, but I'll bite. Last night someone hit the Ironclad hard — in a span of a couple minutes they sent the Ironclad running with their tails between their legs. Imagine, the mighty Ironclad, scurrying away. Everyone is looking for the culprit, some are even already looking to join whoever was behind it."
"Anything else?" Cai said.
"Those alchemists are on a frenzy," Misty said. "Nobody knows what's up with them. They're running around, looking for a certain product nobody's heard of, but they're stubborn and still looking."
Cairon glanced toward Vynn, locking eyes. Looking back at Misty, he said, "What for?"
"Nobody really knows," Misty said. "Whatever it is, it's gotta be good for those nerds to be looking for it. It has some sort of value."
"Which group was looking for it?" Cai asked.
"Not gonna believe this — those antisocial Coilbloods. Interesting, ey?"
Cairon, not expecting such an answer, was taken aback.
"Any way to contact them?"
"They said whoever has any info on what they need can go to the clock tower on the Rusty Square. Don't know anything else," Misty replied.
Jing. Cairon threw a coin to Misty with his thumbs. "Here you go, five shillings. Keep the change," Cairon said.
"I see you're as generous as always. Pleasure doing business with you. Come again."
Walking out, Vynn approached Cairon. "Are we going to those lunatics?"
"Yeah, we are. This is important — they absolutely know what those vials are."
---
The Rusty Square district didn't so much have Coilbloods in it as it belonged to them. Cairon counted nine masked coats for every ordinary face on the street — long crimson coats worn open over tight leather beneath, rows of sideways buttons running up to the collar, tactical trousers tucked into boots laced past the ankle. Half-face gas masks covered the rest, brass fittings catching the gaslight, and above the masks sat round, lensed goggles that glowed a dull, constant red, like something behind the glass was always watching.
They patrolled in slow loops, unhurried, the way people move when they've never once had to worry about who might be watching them instead.
Cairon kept close to the crowd, Vynn a half-step behind him, both of them just two more masked faces in a street full of them. He was still working out how they'd get anywhere near the clock tower without drawing attention when the noise of the street dropped away again — the same sudden hush, the same sense of going under.
Voices reached him from somewhere he couldn't place, thick and slow, like they were speaking through the wrong side of a wall.
"...how the hell are we supposed to find something we've never seen...."
"This is absurd."
"What even is it? They could at least tell us something."
"Stop asking questions. We follow his orders. That's it."
The words cut off as fast as they'd come, and the street noise rushed back in all at once, loud enough that Cairon flinched.
He didn't have time to make sense of any of it.
BOOOOM !
The clock tower came apart in a single white explosion like shockwave blast , and the sound arrived a half-second behind it , a concussion he felt in his teeth before he heard it, a wall of heat rolling down the street hard enough to stagger the crowd around him. Stone and glass rained down through smoke. Coilbloods who'd been mid-stride were simply gone, or worse than gone — scattered across the cobbles in pieces too small to call bodies anymore, dark wet bloody marks thrown up the walls where the blast had painted them.
Cairon stood frozen in the wreckage of it, ears ringing, Vynn's fist gripping the back of his coat.
"What the hell is happening?" His own voice sounded far away to him, swallowed under the ringing. Nobody left standing looked like they had an answer.