17th Rotation of the Cyrandros Cycle, 3448 A.E. — Dusk
Taryn Family Estate, Luminaris Ward

Lira’s library smelled faintly of spiced ink and polished wood. Rain tapped softly against the tall arched windows, the storm-muted light pooling across the rune-etched desk where Vesa Caelune, Ashport Disposal & Recovery’s chief legal counsel, sat with a slate already brimming with open documents.

She was a thin woman in her late forties, her hair streaked with silver and bound tight at the nape, sharp-eyed behind half-moon lenses. Her reputation stretched far beyond Ashport’s borders — a legal pit viper known for stripping corrupt officials bare without ever raising her voice.

Across from her, Kael leaned forward in his chair, forearms resting on his knees. Lira sat beside him, posture straight, one hand resting casually on the armrest but her gaze sharp as cut glass.

“You’ve made quite a mess for me,” Vesa said finally, tapping her stylus against the slate. Her tone wasn’t scolding, more… appraising. “The citations are illegal, yes. But you’ve done more than put them in a corner — you’ve humiliated them in front of the entire city. They’ll try to make an example out of you.”

“Let them,” Kael said. “I’m done playing nice while they strangle kids with paperwork.”

Vesa’s lips twitched — not quite a smile. “Your moral outrage is admirable, Mr. Voren, but outrage doesn’t win in court. Paperwork does. Lucky for you, they’ve handed me enough rope to hang them twice over.”

She flicked her stylus and brought up a projection of a web of citations connected by glowing threads. Several were tagged in red.

“These,” she said, pointing, “are void from the start. Violations of federal child protection statutes. These,” she moved her finger, “break city procedural law. And these…” She tapped a cluster of blue tags. “…are tied directly to individual officials. Names you’ve already broadcast. Which means we can make it personal.”

Lira leaned forward. “We hit them with everything at once. No trickle of lawsuits — a barrage. Make them feel hunted.”

Vesa inclined her head. “Precisely. We’ll file simultaneous injunctions in multiple courts, name both departments and individuals, and pursue damages for every day your operations have been disrupted. If they stall? We take it to the federal bench in Caldenya, where the penalties for interfering with child welfare programs are… substantial.”

Kael’s jaw tightened. “Good. I want them squirming.”

Vesa’s gaze flicked to him, steady. “I’ll make them squirm, Mr. Voren. But I’ll need full access to your nonprofit’s financials, internal communications, and operational records. If you’ve cut even a single corner—”

“I haven’t,” Kael said.

Lira smirked. “He’s irritatingly clean.”

“That will make this easier,” Vesa replied. She flicked her wrist and several new windows opened on the projection. “We’ll also use the media. I’ve already prepared statements reinforcing your position as a provider of essential services under federal law. We’ll frame the citations as political harassment targeting vulnerable children. The press loves a martyr — and if you’re going to be one, you might as well be a useful one.”

Kael leaned back. “I’m not planning on dying for this.”

Vesa’s mouth quirked. “No, but politically speaking, you already have. Now the goal is to make sure your enemies regret it.”

Lira glanced at Kael. “We start the filings tomorrow?”

Vesa shook her head. “Tonight. Before they can coordinate a unified defense.”

Kael nodded. “Then let’s do it.”

Vesa closed the slate with a decisive snap. “Mr. Voren, Ms. Taryn… you’ve declared war. My job is to make sure you win it.”

Ironclad Security — Portland District, Night

Rain threaded the neon and made a ghost of the city. Outside Ironclad’s headquarters, Portland District was its usual bruise of light and industry—stacked tenements and slouching warehouses crowding the canal, barges sliding past like black knives. Inside, on the third floor, beyond a badge-locked door and a hallway that always smelled like old coffee and gun oil, Ironclad’s private lounge kept its lights low and its promises cheaper.

A mana-screen glowed on the far wall. Kael Voren stood in the frame with the wind clawing his coat, the blacksteel monument rising behind him like a fresh wound stitched with names. The sound was turned down; the captions did enough—“To the Children of Ashport’s Forgotten”—but Varek didn’t need the words. He’d watched the speech twice already at full volume. He’d watched Kael hold up the citations and say their names—Zellen Marrick, Fyra Dren, Department of Sanitary Affairs, Department of Charitable Oversight—as if he were laying curses by candlelight. He’d watched the crowd—hungry, hollow, angry—lean forward like a single animal, starved and listening for a gunshot.

He watched a third time. Not because the content changed, but because each replay braided tighter with the storm tapping the window and the hum of the building’s security wards, and in that braid Varek could feel a clock starting somewhere he couldn’t see.

He raised the glass to his lips and let the spirit burn down his throat and bloom in his chest. The camera cut to Kael’s face as the kid jabbed a finger at the lens—Then be afraid—and Varek let himself grin, slow and wolfish.

“Bold,” he muttered to nobody. “Stupid. But bold.”

He killed the feed, and the room sank back to its ordinary gloom. The rain was a soft hiss. In the reflection of the dead screen, he looked like a rumor—lean, long-boned, hair pulled tight, the scar along his jaw catching a slice of light. People said he was Draven’s shadow. People were only half right. A shadow follows. Varek preferred to get where he was going first and turn off the lights.

He flicked a comm bead awake and spoke low, the way he did when he didn’t want to give his breath the satisfaction of fogging. “Kerris. Nyla. Silven. Back room. Five minutes. Tell Garro and Went if they’re sober enough to sit without drooling.”

Static clicked. Kerris’s voice rolled back, gravel and sleep. “On my way.”

Nyla didn’t waste extra oxygen. “Copy.”

Silven: “Y-Yeah. Copy.”

Varek slid the empty glass aside and stood. The chair’s leather sighed like an old regret. For a heartbeat he lingered—gloved fingertips resting on the arm as if the chair were a dog he didn’t want to startle. Then he left the lounge, pushed into the corridor, and tapped the back room door with the back of his knuckles three times. It stuck, like everything in this building, then gave.

The back room was an Ironclad joke—“conference room,” they called it, as if anything decided in here could reasonably be a conference. Scarred oak table. One mana-lamp that flickered when the wind blew wrong. A floor that remembered spills and didn’t tell. The air had that iron tang of rain-soaked coats and the sourness of spirits that had been cheap before they were watered down.

Kerris got there first, big shoulders filling a chair, his thick fingers flipping a coin end over end with the lazy precision of a man who liked to pretend he wasn’t dangerous unless someone paid him to prove it. Nyla came next, a slip of shadow with a black hood slicked with rain, eyes like polished onyx, a slight smile that neither apologized nor explained. Silven arrived last, damp and breathless, hair plastered to his forehead, a stain on his cuff that might have been broth or blood; with Silven, it was always the second you hoped for and the first you got.

Garro showed up with the easy lope of a man who thought his talent made him bulletproof (it didn’t) and Went with his hands jammed in his pockets, face pinched from not sleeping. Varek let them all sit, then stayed standing. He always liked the angle it gave him on the table, like he could tip it whenever he chose and let the contents fall where they wanted. He let the silence stretch, and when everything in the room was quiet enough, he set the hook.

“You all saw it,” he said. “Kael Voren’s wall. The speech. The list.”

Kerris’s coin arced, caught light, vanished into his palm. “Whole city saw. Kid’s got a death wish.”

Went snorted without humor. “Or a crown fantasy.”

Nyla’s smile widened a millimeter. “He has a gift for making people listen. That’s rarer than a talent.”

Silven, eager to be relevant, chimed in: “He named names. The departments’ll have to hit back. Can’t let that stand.”

Varek nodded as if they were students and he the teacher asking if water was wet. “You’re all correct and that’s boring. Here’s the only sentence that matters tonight: the clock is ticking. Bureaucrats don’t punch with fists. They drag you into rooms with no windows and stack paper until you suffocate. That machine’s already started. By the time it’s done, there’ll be nothing left worth stealing.”

He let the words hang. In the hall, someone dropped something metal and swore. The rain wrote its glass script again and again.

Kerris leaned back until his chair complained. “So we call it. Draven’s already said. We back off. Let the city grind him down and we go collect from some other fat fish that can’t count.”

The name pushed between them like a knife tip. Draven was the weight in the building, the old lion whose growl carried down stairwells and through concrete. Varek respected him. Varek never mistook respect for obedience.

“Draven,” Varek said, tasting the consonants like he needed to remember which ones were supposed to be there. “Draven is a soldier. Soldiers are trained to survive battles by following rules. That’s why he’s still breathing. And that’s why he’ll die with his jaw clenched and his pockets light.” He put both hands on the table and leaned in until Kerris had to tilt his head to keep eye contact. “We’re not soldiers. We’re thieves with uniforms. We dance under the rules and take what the rules forget.”

Silven looked at the table like he wished his courage had chosen a different room. “We, uh, we’re still talking about Kael. And, um. The—” He glanced at Nyla. “Backer.”

Nyla’s eyes didn’t blink. “The smith.”

The smith. Garrick without a name. The heat in the room lowered a degree all at once, as if someone had opened a door to a cellar where winter slept.

Kerris flipped the coin again. “Renn damn near pissed himself the other night with that story. Said there was Orichalcum in the forge. Said the air tried to climb in his chest and eat his lungs.”

Went huffed. “Renn once cried because a sewer rat looked at him with bad intentions.”

“It wasn’t just Renn,” Varek said. “I went and took a stroll past those windows before Draven sent around his pretty little ‘stand down’.” He let himself smile the way you smile when you open a curtain and find a tiger and remember you’ve always wanted to see one up close. “Glass was black with soot. Flame was butter-smooth. There was a blade on the hook I’ve only ever seen in paintings and prayers. Whatever lives in that room, it’s bigger than our payroll.”

“Then we listen to Draven,” Kerris said. It wasn’t a question. It was the kind of statement men make before they pick sides.

Varek didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t have to. He let the storm outside punctuate the cadence.

“No,” he said. “We move. Now. Before the city tears Voren into little righteous pieces and his assets get wrapped in red tape and pious nonsense. Before his backer—divine or demigod or ghost in a furnace—decides the kid is an art project and not a purse. We move while the boy still thinks morality is a shield and not a painted circle on the floor.”

Nyla’s chin dipped; her version of a nod. Garro scratched his jaw and made that face he made when numbers ran away from him and made shapes he couldn’t catch. Went stared at a point over Varek’s shoulder and calculated wages against risk and risk against reputation. Kerris rolled the coin over his knuckles, thinking how it would feel if the coin were a small bone.

Silven shifted, voice small. “Draven said we were done.”

Varek finally smiled in a way that counted. He pushed off the table, took three unhurried steps, and draped an arm around Silven’s shoulders, guide-light gentle. “Draven raised us up from gutter work and gave us a name people spit with respect. I’ll kiss his rings in public and call him sir with a full throat when he’s in the room. But you and me, Silven? We’re not in the room. We’re in the back room.” He squeezed, just enough to wake up the boy’s bones. “You want a life where you ask permission, join the guard. They’ll give you a little hat and a whistle. This is Ironclad. We take the jobs we can’t write down.”

Silven swallowed around the hand on his shoulder and managed a crooked nod.

Varek released him and let the silence draw once more, then cut it clean.

“Here’s the plan,” he said. “And listen careful, because I’m only saying it once.”

They leaned in. Even Kerris, if only to make sure he didn’t miss something he could later claim he disapproved of.

“We don’t tail,” Varek went on. “We don’t case. We don’t make noise that bounces back into our mouths. We already know the pattern. Half an orbit as his security detail and we’ve walked his life to the bathroom and back. Kael’s schedule is a circle: forge in the mornings when the flame’s sweeter, hunting drills in the afternoons when the wind’s mean, girlfriend’s estate nights when he wants to pretend the air doesn’t taste like rust. When he’s out, the apartment is quiet as a monk. Sera is twelve. She’s with Elira almost always. If she’s not with Elira, it’s because Kael has her hand and a destination. There’s no ‘maybe’ there. That’s routine chiseled into stone.”

Nyla’s voice was a shadow over velvet. “Building security?”

“We are building security,” Varek said. “Or we were, until Draven decided we’re church boys now. We know the routes, the blind cameras, the guard who takes his bladder breaks like they’re union-mandated prayer. We don’t need a map. We are the map.”

Went’s mouth twitched. “You want to grab the girl.”

“I want leverage,” Varek said, flat. He didn’t blink when he said it. “I want the kind of leverage that answers the call at midnight and doesn’t ask for time to think. Kael loves a hundred things. He worships exactly two—his mother and his sister. We touch one, the other moves him where we want like a string through the nose.”

Kerris set the coin down and covered it with his palm. “Kidnapping a minor brings a different kind of heat.”

“So does starving the slums because some city peacock needs a new fountain,” Varek said. “We all pick our temperatures.”

Garro scratched his jaw again. “The smith.”

Varek looked at him, and for a heartbeat the mask slipped enough to show a steel under the grin. “The smith doesn’t leave his cave,” he said. “If he does, he won’t leave it for us. He’ll leave it for the thing inside him that makes the air weird and the knives sing. And that thing, friends, is not invited to our negotiation.”

“Assuming Kael doesn’t bring it to us,” Nyla murmured. Not a challenge. A vector in the air she wanted everyone to see.

Varek dipped his chin. “Assuming the boy doesn’t do something noble and loud and suicidal,” he agreed. “We help him avoid that by giving him an option that buys silence. He’s busy—with lawsuits, press, saints’ work. He’ll pay to make a problem go away quick.”

Went looked at Kerris, then Nyla, then back to Varek. “What are you thinking for the approach?”

“Soft first,” Varek said. “Always soft first. A message where there should be none. A face outside the glass he didn’t expect. A request wrapped in sugar.” He let the implication fill in its own uglier corners. “If he’s smart and clean, he’ll move money like it’s a prayer and call it a tithe. If he’s stubborn and thinks he can out-stare the storm, then we stop asking nice and we move to concrete.”

Silven’s voice broke a little against the word. “Da— concrete how soon?”

Varek’s impatience slid under the table and tapped his boot. He never showed it on his face; faces were mirrors for men who wanted to be understood. “Soon,” he said. “Soon as we see him leave for a block of hours that gives us the hole we need. A night at Luminaris is best. He gets hypnotized by silk over there. But if it’s the forge or the marsh, we take the marsh. Metal keeps him sharper than mud.”

Kerris’s coin clicked once against the wood—an unconscious consent. “We doing this without Draven?”

“We’re doing this without telling Draven,” Varek said. “He’s busy being the conscience of a company that rents force by the hour. He can file the paperwork on our alibi after we count.” He scanned the faces—Greed has a shape and a smell, and it was in the room now, warm as blood. “You all know the payout ladder. You know the silence clause. You know the exit routes if everything goes to bone dust. You know the names you don’t say in rooms you don't know.”

Nyla’s eyes flicked to the lamp, then back. “We know.”

“Good,” Varek said, and meant it. He straightened, rolled his shoulders once like a fighter in a small ring, and let the plan put muscle on its bones.

“Assignments,” he said. “Kerris, you’re point on logistics. I want our routes clean and our faces cleaner. We’re in and out and gone before anyone decides they heard a story. No lingers, no souvenirs.”

Kerris grunted. That was his yes.

“Nyla,” Varek went on, “you’re eyes on the building. Not inside. Outside. The kind of outside that neighbors don’t notice because they’re arguing with their kettle. You see Kael, you don’t blink. You see anyone who smells like they were born holding a sword, you don’t blink twice.”

Nyla’s smile said: she would blink when the universe forced her.

“Silven,” Varek said, and the boy tensed like a fish feeling the hook tug. “You’re comm relay and soft voice. You deliver the first message when it’s time. You only say what I feed you word-for-word. If he says anything not on your script, you pretend the line is bad and bring it to me.”

Silven nodded too fast. “Yeah. Yes. I can do that.”

“Garro, Went,” Varek said. “You’re the door and the back door. You know which is which. You know where the eyes are. If you have to improvise, you do it quiet. If you can’t do it quiet, do it quick. If you can’t do it quick, you don’t do it.”

Garro rubbed his knuckles together; they made a sound like a small avalanche that had decided to stay.

Went said, “Copy,” because there were men who thought language was a tool you wore down if you used it too much.

“And me?” Kerris said, lifting the coin and making it vanish.

“You,” Varek said, “are the arms that catch the bag.”

Kerris smirked. “Always am.”

Varek let the room breathe, then drew the air back into his lungs like the first sweet drag of a vice. He pictured Kael again, finger toward the camera, thunder coiled in that skinny frame like a promise. He pictured the wall of names and how it must have felt to carve them in blacksteel with a hand that had never been asked to write mercy in official script. He pictured the smith’s door and the way the light moved behind it like a living thing.

“Timing,” he said. “We don’t wait for the lawsuits to land. We don’t wait for the city to get organized. We move on the first long gap, and it’s coming. The boy will go back to the forge because that’s where his head is when he thinks about the future. He’ll go back to Luminaris because that’s where his heart is when he thinks about letting it rest. Either path buys us hours.”

“Tonight?” Silven asked, voice thin as a page.

Varek’s grin sharpened. “Tonight we sleep, because men who don’t sleep forget where they put their nerve. Tomorrow we watch his ArkSeal pings and count the blocks. If the hole opens, we take it. If it doesn’t, we make one the next night.”

Nyla’s brow dipped. “If Draven gets wind—”

“Draven doesn’t read wind,” Varek said. “He waits for reports. We’re not reporting yet.”

Kerris leaned forward. “And when the boy pays?”

Varek had the number already. He always had the number. “We start with a throat-clearing sum—something that hurts him but doesn’t make him proud to refuse. Then we add teeth, if he decides he’s a martyr today. Either way, we finish before the city’s machine does. We get ours while there’s still meat on the bones.”

Went’s mouth made that almost-smile again. “And if the smith comes out of his cave after all?”

Varek tilted his head, as if listening to the storm draw a diagram for him on the window. “Then,” he said gently, “we learn something about gods. But I have a faith of my own.” He tapped the side of his skull. “The kind where men with hammers don’t notice ants if the ants don’t climb their feet.”

The lamp flickered, as if agreeing. Or warning. They all chose the story they could work with.

Varek straightened, the meeting’s gravity shifting toward the door. “You’ve got your parts,” he said. “No bravado. No extra. I want us to slide through this city like water through a cracked wall. We go when I say, and not before, and if anyone’s conscience wakes up and starts yelling, you put a pillow over its face and ask it to be useful later.”

Nyla stood first, ghost-quiet. Kerris followed, chair legs rasping. Garro and Went went out together, practiced as doorframes, and Silven waited, eyes on Varek as if the older man might change his mind and pull him off the line. Varek didn’t. He watched the boy go until the door clicked.

Alone, he drifted a hand over the table’s scars and thought about the things that left marks you could see and the things that left them inside you where touch couldn’t reach. He thought about Draven’s warning, about divines in gutters and lions sleeping under anvils. He thought about Kael Voren, who had chosen, loudly and in daylight, to be a symbol.

Symbols were wonderful. They drew crowds and cameras and bullets. They bled with ceremony.

Varek liked money.

He lifted his comm bead back to his mouth and spoke into the quiet. “Tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “Eyes on Voren’s path from Grays to Brinewatch. If he cuts to Luminaris after, we move to standby. I’ll call the count.”

The bead chimed acknowledgement. The rain drummed. Somewhere in the building, Draven’s laugh rolled down the stairwell, big and tired and human.

Varek killed the lamp. The room fell into the kind of dark that felt like a favor.

He let himself smile one more time, alone, where it didn’t have to mean anything to anyone else.

“Strike while the wolves circle,” he murmured, and went to sharpen his teeth.