The fragment pulsed beneath Gold's cloak.
He kept it close—wrapped in cloth, sealed in the lockbox, hidden beneath layers of rags—but still, he felt it humming. Not with life, but with memory. Not his. Not yet.
He had no place to sleep that night.
The Market offered no charity. Neither did the Empire.
So he wandered the lower sprawl—through smoke-choked alleys and neon-lit gutters where cursed ink ran through cracks in the stone. Streetlights buzzed with dying magic. Above, the towers of the High Nobility stabbed into clouds, unreachable.
Gold's steps slowed near a fountain.
Once a holy site, now dry. Covered in graffiti, old blood, and ash. A man lay slumped against it, eyes glassy, muttering to invisible gods.
Gold stared for a moment. Then moved on.
---
He found a small den behind a shuttered alchemy shop—walls scorched from a past explosion, roof caved in. It was enough.
He didn't sleep. He waited.
The fragment inside the lockbox had begun to pulse in rhythm with his heartbeat. The Pact stirred. He unwrapped it.
The shard hovered above his palm—dull now, but aching with unspoken things.
> "Do you seek to remember?" the Pact whispered.
Gold didn't answer.
He pressed the fragment to his chest.
And the world went dark.
---
He was back in the ruins of his village.
But it was before the fire.
Children ran. Lanterns swayed. His mother's voice sang something soft. His father sharpened tools in the dusk.
Gold—smaller, softer, whole—watched it all.
Then, the sky broke.
A shadow fell. Screams began. And a figure emerged—not from sky, but from memory itself. A priest in gold-veined robes. Eyes like mirrors. Voice like thunder.
> "The Pact must be paid."
Flames rose. The scene cracked.
Gold fell into darkness again.
---
He woke coughing blood.
The shard was dim now. But something had changed.
He remembered the priest.
And he remembered fear.
---
That morning, a name spread across the lower city—a Writ of Seizure from the Imperial Church.
An unlicensed divine artifact had been detected.
The enforcers were hunting.
And Gold had just lit a beacon inside himself.
The Imperial Enforcers came at dawn.
They rode glass-hooved mounts that never bled, wrapped in bone-white armor veined with glyphlight. Their faces were hidden behind visors etched with divine script. And wherever they passed, silence followed.
Gold felt them before he saw them.
The Pact pulsed. A warning.
He fled into the alleys, cloak tight, the fragment pressed to his chest like a second heart. The city was awake now—merchants lifting shutters, children begging for bread, drones sweeping trash from gutters—but none of them mattered.
The Empire had scented him.
He turned a corner.
And stopped.
A girl stood there, waiting.
She couldn't have been older than him—maybe seventeen. Hair shaved on one side, the rest braided with wire. Her jacket was patchwork, her boots burnt at the edges. But her eyes were calm, too calm for this city.
One glowed faintly blue.
"Aether-burn," Gold whispered.
She raised an eyebrow. "You're carrying something hot."
Gold stepped back. "Who are you?"
"No one important," she said. "But if you want to live, come with me."
From behind, hooves clattered on stone.
He hesitated.
She turned, walking into the fog. "They'll flay your soul for what you've got, Pact-boy. You want to fight back or just die pretty?"
Gold followed.
---
Her name, he learned later, was Sil.
Not her real name. That was long gone. Sil meant "thread" in Old Veyran. She said it suited her—she stitched broken things together.
She led him through cracks in the city most forgot existed—between shrine ruins, down old sewer veins, through the tunnels left behind by the Aether Wars. Places where magic no longer worked quite right.
They passed a dead statue with bleeding eyes.
They passed a gate that breathed.
Finally, they reached an old water reservoir, long drained. A community lived here—in the dry basin beneath the Empire's feet. Mages with broken wands. Runaways with gods in their dreams. Children who carved their names into bones instead of books.
Sil turned to him.
"You're not the first to run. But you might be the first to change something."
Gold looked at them all.
"Why help me?"
Sil's smile didn't reach her eyes. "Because I saw what touched you. That fragment you carry? It's not just divine. It's angry. And we could use a little anger right now."
The people in the reservoir weren't soldiers. They were survivors.
A blind boy who hummed divine songs in his sleep. A woman with ink-for-blood who drew sigils with her fingertips. A man with a hole in his chest where his heart should be—still breathing, still fighting.
They called themselves the Gravedawn.
Sil led Gold to the center of their sanctum, where an altar of shattered relics stood surrounded by candles made of bone wax. Here, nothing divine flowed. No light, no warmth, only the silence of forsaken gods.
"We live where the Aether fails," Sil said. "Where the Empire's reach cracks. We steal from their storehouses, intercept their envoys, sabotage their pacts."
Gold looked at her. "You're rebels."
"We're what's left," she said.
A tall figure stepped forward. His armor was old, marked with the seal of a forgotten House. His face was carved like stone—scarred, tired, dangerous.
"This is Marshal Orien," Sil said. "He led a Legion once, before he refused to burn a village that bore a forbidden pact."
Gold tensed.
Orien studied him. "The fragment you carry—it speaks to you?"
Gold hesitated, then nodded. "It... whispers."
"Then you are marked. The gods see you now. And the Empire will never stop hunting you."
Gold met his gaze. "Let them come."
Sil smirked. Orien's frown twitched—almost approval.
"Then you may be useful," the old soldier said. "If you're willing to bleed."
Gold stepped forward, the fragment pulsing in his chest. "I didn't come here to hide. I came to burn."
Sil's eyes gleamed.
"Then welcome to the Gravedawn," she said.