Page 110

Kyer looked up to the overcast sky. “The final reason is more of a personal request. Something Maude has been dead against because she feels this is already risky enough.”

“What is it?”

“In addition to keeping guns, Caiven also keeps people. Women, specifically, and there’s one who will not survive once the Swarm raid his property after we’re gone.”

“Why do you think that?”

“She’s Ashin. A Wraith shaded, Ashin woman.”

Lily stilled. Kyer was right. If the Swarm discovered her inside, she’d be killed and her soul destroyed.

The same fate that had befallen her family.

Chapter Twenty-One

Snow flitted from the sky in thick, relentless flurries. Jarek could scarcely see twenty paces ahead of him in Failen’s farthest district, if that was where he was.

Mixed with the heavy snowfall, the smog in the air was almost suffocating. Most of the buildings were ramshackle structures made of brittle brick and wood, leaning precariously toward one another.

It was depressing, and there was little he could do, but he couldn’t help but visit between lulls in Markoth’s liberation. Curiosity led him here to learn—to understand—what had become of his home beyond the palace, despite Kyer’s warnings to avoid visiting.

Keeping his head low, he tightened the scarf over his mouth and ears with numb fingers, trudging through the blinding white of the fresh snowfall and the soot-stained slush under his boots. Everyone he passed was covered from head to toe in layers of warm clothing, but their posture was forlorn. There were no children playing outside and no elderly sitting out front on porches.

It was unrecognizable.

Jarek manifested outside of what used to be a gambling house. The structure was dilapidated, but a few bodies hovered around the entrance. As he wandered deeper into the district, he came across a gaping, steaming hole in the earth—the entrance to a mine shaft, struck like a bomb went off in the middle of the street. He carefully peeked through the bars of the tall gate surrounding the crater, finding the shell of a void clinging to the side of the wall like a monstrous, metallic arachnid. The machine’s black visor flashed a bright orange.

He moved on.

The city’s main export had always been metal. Now it was their only valuable resource. Alongside the precious stones and ore, the city once manufactured textiles along the rivers connecting to the great lakes. Over time, the mills were transformed into refineries, forges, and foundries to prioritize mining for ghostsoil in what was now known as the Faded District—home to Failen’s resident souls born of Dabria.

From what he learned, most worked in the mines under their very feet, preserving the machinery and the voids while the rest worked in the factories. They were paid enough to be used for labor, but the workers sought the immortality of the royal houses that resided near the palace through hard, unrelenting work, hoping to build their worth like the families that were loyal to Valen and Chiman’s rise.

The original families were the only part that remained the same in Failen. Most had been given titles as chancellors, administrators, or advisers to the now empress. Elevations in hierarchy for the faded were determined through generations of loyalty after chosen reincarnations, and some would be lucky to climb out of the pits, but never high enough to claim centuries worth of life like those who resided close to Ironfall.

The corner of the next crossroad brought him to such an exception.

A Sanctum of the Sun stood out in the Faded District like an ink-dipped diamond. The only building in the area that was prim and polished, it towered far above the squalid residences surrounding it. The church was constructed of cracked black marble, identical to every other sanctum like it, down to the tall, twisting spires that reached toward Erebria.

Jarek climbed the shining steps and opened the heavy wooden doors as quietly as a shadow. Inside, the wide chamber was as cold as the street outside—dim, cavernous, and plunging downward. It stunk of ginger and escence. Natural slivers of ghostsoil ore descended along the walls toward the widening base of the church, shimmering in the light from the sconces lining the edges of the room. A deep, grainy voice echoed throughout the space.

Keeping his hood up, he descended the steep staircase toward the pulpit where one man preached to a packed congregation. Jarek took his place in line, near the aisle.

“…let us reflect upon the blessings of our existence, as we are to partake in a grand design, for the wellbeing of the whole, as well as the individual.”

Jarek made it a point to visit most of Minister Nickolai Sharpe’s sermons. He was unremarkable, as most Failish residents go. Jarek choosing his church over the many others scattered across the city stemmed first from its distance from Ironfall, and familiarity of the area second.

It was a safe, uneventful location to spy on what motivated Failen to continue through such squalor.

Surrounded by a half circle of spiked offshoots of black rock, Nickolai leaned over his pulpit. Nearly one hundred years old, his skin was smooth while his voice only presented a hint of age. Wearing a long gray cloak over his black clerical garbs, he spoke with a certainty and assuredness that only a Failen zealot could hone. If the life story he told through his sermons was true, his soul was chosen to work in the mines like his father, and his father before him, but through dedication to the Sanctum’s teachings and loyalty, he had been given a new opportunity to serve the empire’s people.

“Our souls are the currency of salvation and rebirth, a most gracious offering from the benevolent who ensure our prosperity.”

Two black orbs roamed in place of Nickolai’s scleras, the detail unnerving Jarek every time he caught sight of it. Sitting through enough services, he had noticed in place of blinking that a dark green light flashed across the surface like that of the voids, and with each twist of his neck, Jarek could hear a snap of metal—a click for every swallow and bend of a joint.

The problem with Valen’s vision for immortality wasn’t the soul—it was the flesh.

Manufactured in Reave, Markoth’s and the empire’s precious Lithance could be synthesized into almost any remedy, one of which, Licane, was as sought after as escence was for Escardians—a different kind of addiction contained in a little glass vial that froze the aging process until the next dose after six of Rion’s cycles. Loyalists like Nickolai were paid in the proper dosing so long as they peddled their paranoia to the faded who oiled their machines. If—when—his time came, his soul would be used for reincarnation and not as a battery for the metals he once dug up.