I pressed the barrel of my gun harder against Lord Collin's chair, the cold metal a brutal reminder that there would be no room for negotiation. Lord Henry Collin looked up at me through the rearview mirror, his eyes wide with fear and barely concealed desperation. He sat rigid in the car—a prisoner in his own vessel.
The guards' eyes widened as they met mine before flickering to Marlik. His unwavering focus on the road acted as a silent anchor, prompting the guards to scrutinize him more intently. In that fleeting, almost timeless moment, I detected a subtle flicker of uncertainty in their eyes—a crack in the hard veneer of duty that betrayed their inner hesitation.
Lord Collin took a deep, steadying breath. "What is the meaning of this?" he demanded, his voice quavering as he addressed the soldier.
Almost immediately, the soldier's expression shifted—recognition dawning on his face. In that instant, the standoff deflated. "My lord… Lord Collin, forgive us sir," he stammered, lowering his weapon in a reluctant gesture of deference. "We are stopping every car sir—protocol, sir." His apology was halting, his words heavy with both duty and regret. For a brief heartbeat, it seemed his adherence to protocol might spare us further delay, as Lord Collin slowly regained his composure.
The tension inside the car was palpable, the silence punctuated only by the deep breaths of Lord Collin's wife and his son. I knew we couldn't afford even a moment's hesitation. Then, the soldier held the radio dangling on his uniform, "Secure passage, Lord Collin coming through."
The soldier signaled us that our way was cleared. Marlik shifted the car into gear, and we inched forward as the checkpoint barriers began to roll back. The heavy metal gates parted like the jaws of a beast, allowing us to cross the threshold into the city.
The transformation was instant. The sterile, regimented air of the checkpoint gave way to a chaotic, pulsating world. Neon lights flickered erratically, reflecting off rain-slicked streets littered with the remnants of a city that had long abandoned order. Graffiti stretched across every available surface—coded messages, gang insignias, warnings. The distant thump of bass-heavy music vibrated through the ground, merging with the hum of power generators and the restless murmur of voices.
Amid the swarming crowd, it wasn't just people that moved. Cyber-enhanced figures walked among them, their glowing optic implants scanning every passerby, their mechanical limbs whirring with unnatural precision. Some were subtle—just a flicker of chrome under a sleeve, a too-smooth motion of an augmented hand. Others were grotesquely obvious, their flesh long abandoned for synthetic plating, their expressions unreadable beneath metallic exoskeletons. A man with an exposed mechanical jaw bared his teeth in laughter at a joke I couldn't hear, while a woman with sleek cybernetic arms exchanged currency with a dealer, her fingers flickering as data transferred between them.
The streets pulsed with life, a raw and unpredictable rhythm that made my pulse quicken. Far from the controlled monotony of the checkpoint, here the air vibrated with the energy of countless
voices—angry shouts, hurried footsteps, and the soft murmur of secrets exchanged in shadowed alleys. It was a realm where chaos reigned, yet that disorder was imbued with a fierce vitality, a testament to survival in a city that had learned to thrive in decay.
The car hummed as we passed through the city, but the noise outside—the clamor of a thousand voices, the faint pulse of distant music—was a constant reminder of the chaos we had entered. The streets were alive, but it wasn't the life of hope or opportunity. It was the life of survival, of people who had long since given up on order and embraced whatever form of control they could carve out of the madness.
Marlik slowed the car and pulled over to the side, the tires skidding slightly on the wet asphalt. We'd reached a nondescript alleyway, the kind where even the streetlights seemed to flicker with apathy. I glanced back at Lord Henry Collin, his face pale and stiff as a statue. His wife sat beside him, her eyes glassy with a mix of resignation and something else—something I couldn't name yet, but it had the weight of years of quiet suffering behind it.
I shifted in my seat, pressing the gun just a little closer to Lord Collin's side, the cold steel an unspoken reminder of what was at stake.
"Get out," I said flatly, nodding toward the street. "You too," I added, turning my eyes to his wife, her face still frozen in that resigned expression.
I stepped out, locking eyes with her, feeling the weight of everything she had been carrying for so long. The car door slammed shut, and the thrum of the city swallowed the silence between us.
"You need to leave him," I said, my voice low, just loud enough for her to hear. "He's not worth your time."
She remained silent at first, her gaze distant, as though I had asked her to rip apart a piece of her very soul. Her eyes flicked back to Lord Henry, who stood rigid by the car, his jaw clenched tight. There was fear in his expression—not fear of losing her out of love, but of watching the fragile foundation of his carefully crafted life crumble. I saw it clearly now: she came from wealth, and that was the reason he stayed. He had the name; she had the money.
I felt sorry for her. As I looked at her, it was clear she would never leave him. She was too comfortable living in her little glass house of lies, unable to imagine anything different. In truth, she was a beautiful woman in her early forties, likely someone who had never truly known love. Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
I turned to Lord Henry, my gaze sharp and unyielding. "If I hear even a whimper," I warned coldly, "the last time you spoke to little Henry will be exactly that — the last." Without waiting for a response, I got into the car, and Marlik drove away. Leaving Lord Henry and his family by the roadside, I couldn't help but notice how out of place they seemed—like a picture awkwardly pasted into the wrong background.
Driving through the smoke-choked streets of Vekaera, we left behind the relics of Old Vekaera and steered toward the glow of New Vekaera. The steam car rattled over cobblestones, its clanging gears echoing like the pulse of a war-torn heart.
New Vekaera rose before me like a fortress of industry. Towering brass and glass structures sliced into the soot-dark sky, their facades etched with exposed gears and mechanical sinews. Steam hissed from hidden vents while clockwork displays ticked silently on polished panels. Elevated rail lines and narrow walkways stitched the buildings together, forming a lattice of purpose amid the city's pulse.
The streets thrummed with kinetic energy—cyber-enhanced citizens in dark, crisp attire navigated the sidewalks with measured precision, and small, hovering drones skimmed the air, their sensors sweeping over the crowds. Neon panels and holographic signs blinked in quick succession, throwing harsh light on the metallic surfaces and slick cobblestones. Every clang of metal and rush of compressed air underscored a relentless drive for innovation. Here, in the wealthiest slice of Vekaera, technology and industry ruled, and the old grit of the city was reshaped by a future built on steam, clockwork, and digital precision.
Beside me, Marlik's eyes burned with unspoken questions. When he couldn't wait any longer, he broke the silence.
"How did you know about Lord Henry and Emilie?" he asked, my tone steady but edged with defiance.
I merely smirked in reply, my voice cutting through the tense air. "Everyone has a secret they'd die for. I just made an educated guess." Marlik was not convinced.
"Is this the magic chaos you're talking about?" he leaned.
"Elementary stuff really, the first power you find at the doors of order and chaos, is deduction, keen powers of observation. You have to divine the pattern of the nature of things before you decide whether it's order or chaos, otherwise the two will always manipulate you."
I caught a twitch in Marlik's eyes as he scanned the empty street. Shifting in his worn leather chair, he glanced over his shoulder and at the rearview mirror. His gaze narrowed, and after a moment—once he was sure we weren't being followed—he leaned forward. "So," he started, "what are we doing in Vekaera?" he asked, his tone blunt yet edged with quiet unease.
I resigned to the back of my chair, the car hissed soothingly, "We're here to look for a man called Orin Aelthorn," I stated.
Marlik's eyes narrowed. "Why this Orin?" he demanded.
"The path's not clear yet," I admitted, "but he's the key to our mission."
"Marlik leaned forward, his tone laced with doubt. "You mean, in all your calculations and your chaos you're betting everything on a guy you don't know—someone you've never seen, and whose whereabouts are a complete mystery? We're doomed before we even start." His expression hardened.
"I told you from the beginning if we are going to this together you're going to have to learn to trust me. There is a plan, sometimes not all the pieces have to be known. The path isn't clear yet, but he's the key to our mission's success," I admitted.
His words hung heavy in the dim light, each syllable cutting through the murmur of our surroundings.
"I might not know where he is but I know who might?" I pressed, then added, "Who is that?"
"An old friend," I said dryly.
"It's been a thousand years. Are you sure you'll find this mysterious friend still in Vekaera?"
"My friend is Vekaera herself,"
"You speak as if the city is a person," Marlik said.
I didn't answer.
"Pray, do tell, how on Ormos does one talk to the city?"
I knew he wouldn't stop asking questions, so I let my mind drift elsewhere. Then, without warning, a wave of anxiety slammed into me, sharp and suffocating. My vision blurred, and I shut my eyes.
She was there, My Elara. Smiling. Still and untouched by time, her face burned against the darkness like an apparition.
I could turn back now. This was my last chance to walk away. Because beyond this moment—only blood and pain awaited.
Still, deep in my gut, I knew two things with a certainty as cold and unyielding as steel—
One, I was never going to turn back. Never.
And two, the worst was definitely coming.