"Move your ass or we're both dead!" Lena's voice was a sharp hiss in my ear, her hand gripping my shoulder so hard I felt my collarbone groan.
Behind us, the door to the workshop didn't just open—it exploded. Splinters of blackened oak flew like shrapnel. Then came the sound: a low, guttural vibration that made the fillings in my teeth ache. Sigil-hounds. Guild bred. They didn't hunt by scent; they hunted the hum of illegal engines.
"I can't—my leg's cramping!" I stumbled, my boots slipping on a patch of spilled lubricant.
Lena didn't look back. She hauled me upward with a jerk, slamming me against the damp brick of the alleyway. Her chest was inches from mine, her breath smelling of bitter coffee and cold ozone. She looked at the glowing red ring on her wrist—my mark—and then glared into my eyes.
"You did this," she spat, her voice trembling. "You put a leash on a Guild Inspector. Do you have any idea how many ways they can skin a rat for that?"
"You were going to shoot me!" I yelled back, the panic finally breaking through. "I saw your face, Lena. You weren't taking me in for questioning. You were cleaning house."
"Shut up and run!"
She shoved me toward the vents. I scrambled, the heat from the engine-core in my pocket burning through my trousers. It wasn't just heat—it was a pulse. A heartbeat. *Thump-thump. Thump-thump.*
Suddenly, a heavy boot slammed into the gravel behind us. A man stepped out of the smoke, wearing the charcoal grey of the High Guild. He wasn't a grunt. He had a silver monocle etched with a tracking sigil and a smile that didn't reach his eyes.
"Inspector Voss," the man called out, his voice smooth as polished marble. "I see you've found our little thief. Or did you decide to keep him for yourself?"
Lena froze. I could feel her heart hammering against my arm. She didn't lower her gun, but her aim wavered.
"He's resisting arrest, Commander Thorne," she lied. The lie was thin. Transparent.
Thorne chuckled, stepping closer. The sigil-hounds circled us, their metallic ribs clicking. "Resisting? He's practically clinging to you. Tell me, Lena, does the Guild know you're playing bodyguard to a scrap-heap brat? Or should I tell your father?"
I felt Lena flinch. The power dynamic shifted in a second. She wasn't the hunter anymore; she was the prey. And I was the bait.
"He's a lead," Lena snapped, her voice regaining some steel. "He knows where the core came from. If you kill him now, you lose the trail."
"The trail is written in his blood, Voss. Step aside."
Thorne raised a hand. A spark of blue electricity danced between his fingers—a high-grade combat sigil. He wasn't going to arrest me. He was going to erase me.
I didn't think. I just reacted. I reached into my pocket, gripped the dead engine-core, and screamed in my head: *Do something!*
*CRACK.*
A wave of gold-black energy erupted from my palm. It wasn't a spark; it was a physical blow. The shockwave slammed into Thorne, throwing him backward into a stack of rusted crates. The sigil-hounds yelped, their internal gears grinding as the pulse scrambled their sensors.
Silence fell over the alley, save for the hiss of escaping steam from a nearby pipe.
Lena stared at me, her mouth open. "What the hell was that?"
"I don't know!" I gasped, clutching my hand. The skin was charred, the mark on my palm glowing like a dying star. "It just... it listened to me."
"You're not just a gearwright," she whispered, her eyes narrowing. "You're a Weaver. A living one. That's impossible. The Guild purged the last of them fifty years ago."
"Well, I'm not very good at being impossible!" I snapped. "Now are we running, or are you waiting for him to get up and fry my brain?"
Lena looked at Thorne, who was already groggily pushing himself up, his face twisted in rage. She looked back at me. The fear was still there, but something else had crept in. Curiosity. Or maybe just the realization that I was the only thing keeping her from being disgraced by her father.
She grabbed my wrist—not the marked one, but the other—and dragged me toward a hidden cellar door. "Down. Now."
We tumbled into the dark, the smell of old grease and wet earth filling my nose. Lena slammed the iron bolt shut just as Thorne's fist hit the door from above. *Boom. Boom.*
"Listen to me, Milo," she said, pinning me against the wall. The space was so tight I could feel the heat radiating off her skin. Her eyes were frantic. "You can't go back to your shop. You can't go home. The moment you step into the light, every Hunter in Cinder City will be on you."
"I have a sister," I whispered, my voice cracking. "I can't just leave her."
"She's safer if you're gone," Lena countered. She leaned in closer, her voice dropping to a dangerous murmur. "But if you help me—if you use that thing in your pocket to find what the Guild is hiding—I can protect her. I can get you both out of the soot-slums."
"And what's the catch?"
"The catch is you belong to me," she said. "No more running. No more secrets. You do exactly what I say, when I say it. You're my asset now."
I laughed, a dry, hacking sound. "An asset? I'm the one who put the ring on your wrist, remember? Who's really the asset here?"
She glared at the red mark on her skin. The tension between us snapped like a taut wire. For a second, I thought she was going to punch me. Instead, she stepped even closer, her chest brushing mine, her gaze locking onto my lips before snapping back to my eyes.
"Don't get cocky, kid," she breathed. "The ring is a leash. But I'm still the one holding the gun."
She pushed me away and pulled a crumpled piece of parchment from her coat. It was a Guild bounty list. I looked down, and my heart stopped.
My name wasn't just on the list. It was at the top. And next to it was a number: 50,000 Sovereigns. Dead or Alive.
"Fifty thousand?" I whispered. "I'm worth fifty thousand?"
"You're worth more than that to the people who want that engine back," Lena said. She tapped the core in my pocket. "And they aren't going to stop until they have it."
Suddenly, the engine-core vibrated. Not a pulse this time, but a steady, rhythmic hum. I pulled it out, and the surface of the metal began to shift. The sigils didn't just glow—they rearranged themselves, sliding across the metal like liquid ink.
"What is it doing?" Lena asked, leaning in.
As she got closer, I could smell the faint scent of rain and metal on her. The core flared bright gold, and a holographic projection shimmered into the air between us. It wasn't a message. It was a map.
It showed the entire city, but one spot was pulsing with a violent, bloody red light.
"That's the High District," Lena whispered, her face turning pale. "That's the Guild Headquarters."
"Why is it pointing there?" I asked.
"Because," a voice rasped from the shadows of the cellar.
We both spun around. A man was leaning against the damp wall, his face half-hidden by a tattered cloak. He held a jagged blade in one hand and a detonator in the other.
"Because that's where they keep the rest of your family," the man said, and he smiled, revealing teeth filed to points.
Lena raised her gun, but the man was faster. He didn't move toward us; he pressed the button on the detonator.
*KABOOM.*
The ceiling groaned. Dust and rubble rained down on us, and as the floor began to buckle, the man leaned forward and whispered,
"The countdown has started, Weaver. You have six hours before the city burns."