Click. Tap. Pain.

  Stairs. Why did there always have to be stairs?

  The architect of this academy clearly had a deep, personal hatred for crippled men. Every step was a fresh negotiation with gravity, a new and exciting way for my hip to scream its displeasure to my spine.

  One step. Breath. Ignore the blood in your mouth. Two steps.

  I held her against my chest. Astrid. She was light. Terrifyingly light. Like a bundle of dry sticks held together by bruised skin and a ragged tunic. Her head lolled against my shoulder, her good arm the one that used to hold the spoon, the one that used to hold the sword dangling at a sickening, impossible angle.

  My tongue probed the gap where my teeth used to be. Sharp. A jagged edge of enamel cutting into my gum. I tasted copper. I swallowed it. It’s important to stay hydrated, after all. Even if the liquid is your own failure.

  We emerged from the Lion Gate into the night. The rain was falling. Of course it was raining. The gods have no imagination; when things are grim, they turn on the tap.

  A shadow detached itself from the gloom near the fountain.

  Gutrum Falken.

  He stood like a statue that had forgotten how to weather the storm. He was waiting for his daughter. He was waiting for the "Knight" to come home with a story of victory.

  Instead, he got me. The Bastard. Carrying a broken doll.

  Gutrum didn't speak. He didn't move. He just looked at the limp form in my arms. I saw the light go out of his eyes. It didn't flicker or fade; it was simply extinguished. One moment he was a man, the next he was a hollowed-out tree.

  "They didn't like her sign," I croaked. My voice was a wet ruin. "Or her nose. Or the fact that she existed."

  I walked forward. Click. Tap. Pain.

  I tried to hand her to him, but my arms... my arms wouldn't obey. They were locked. Spasming.

  "Take her," I whispered, the words bubbling through the gap in my teeth. "Before I drop her. I’m going to drop her, Gutrum. My hands are shaking."

  Gutrum moved then. He reached out. His hands hands that could crush stone, hands that had wielded the axe of the North were trembling so violently he could barely touch her cloak.

  He took her. He pulled her into his chest, burying his face in her muddy, bloody hair. He made a sound. Not a scream. A low, keening whimper. The sound a dog makes when you kick it for no reason.

  "The Gale-Force," a voice hissed from the dark.

  The Matriarch appeared. She looked at me. She looked at my ruined mouth, my limping leg. She didn't offer pity. Pity is useless. She offered a flask.

  "Nutrient broth," she said. "Drink. You are grey, Master Storm."

  I tried to take it. I tried to lift my hand.

  Pain.

  My fingers were claws. Stiff. Useless.

  "I can't," I mumbled, licking my empty gums. "Jaw's broken. Or dislocated. Hard to tell. Everything feels like fire."

  I looked at Gutrum. He had sunk to his knees in the mud, rocking Astrid back and forth.

  "Food," I told the Matriarch, gesturing with my chin towards the Duke. "Give it to the girl. If she dies... the world ends."

  Gerald and Mary arrived then. They ran out of the gate, panting. They stopped. They saw their father on the ground. They saw their sister.

  Mary didn't cry. She went cold. The frost started to spread from her boots again, cracking the wet stones. Gerald just stood there, his hand gripping his sword until the leather wrap tore.

  And then, the tapping.

  Tap. Step. Tap.

  Dr. Fenris Vulpine limped out of the shadows. He wasn't wearing a coat. He was shivering, his fur wet, leaning heavily on his cane. He looked annoyed.

  He walked up to Gutrum. He poked Astrid’s dangling, shattered arm with his cane.

  "Stop shaking her," Fenris snapped. His voice was sharp, cutting through the grief. "You're jostling the fracture. Do you want the bone to sever the artery? Because that's how you get a dead girl. Idiots. All of you."

  Gutrum looked up. His eyes were red, wild. "She... they broke her..."

  "Obviously," Fenris rolled his eyes. He popped a white pill into his mouth. "Compound fracture. Ulna and radius. Messy. Amateur work. A professional would have used a hammer, not a boot."

  Fenris grabbed Astrid’s wrist the broken one. He checked the pulse.

  "She's waking up," the fox muttered. "Shock is wearing off. Pain is arriving. Welcome back to the land of the living, little cripple. It sucks here."

  Astrid’s eyes fluttered open.

  She didn't scream. She didn't cry.

  She stared up at the rainy sky. Then she looked at her arm. The twisted, purple meat that used to be her hand.

  She looked at Gutrum.

  "Papa?" she whispered. Her voice was a ghost.

  "I'm here," Gutrum choked out, stroking her face. "I'm here, Little Wolf. I've got you."

  "Why?" Astrid asked.

  It wasn't a question about Volpert. Or the pain.

  She looked at her other shoulder. The empty sleeve. The old wound.

  "Why did you cut it off?" she whispered, tears finally leaking from her eyes, mixing with the blood. "When I was six. You held me down. You let them cut it off. Why?"

  Gutrum froze. He looked like he had been stabbed.

  "Astrid... I..."

  "You let them make me broken," she sobbed, her body shaking. "If I had two arms... I could have blocked him. I could have fought."

  Gutrum couldn't speak. The guilt was choking him. He was drowning in it.

  "He didn't want to," Fenris interrupted.

  The fox limped closer, his blue eyes cold and clinical. He looked down at the girl.

  "Your father fought the surgeons, you ungrateful brat. He broke the nose of the first doctor who suggested amputation. He threatened to burn the hospital down."

  Fenris leaned on his cane, staring at her with that utter lack of bedside manner.

  "It was necrotic fasciitis," Fenris said flatly. "Flesh-eating bacteria. A rare strain from the Undercroft. It had already eaten your hand. It was climbing your arm. You were six. You were burning up. Your fever was forty-two degrees."

  He pointed a claw at Gutrum.

  "He held you while you screamed, yes. But he was crying harder than you were. He had a choice: A one-armed daughter, or a small coffin. He chose the daughter. It was a medical necessity. It’s not lupus, and it wasn't cruelty. It was math."

  Fenris sneered, looking around at the weeping family.

  "Everyone thinks love is soft. Love is cutting off the gangrene so the body survives. Your father has the stomach for it. Do you?"

  Astrid stared at the fox. Then at her father. She saw the tears in Gutrum’s beard. The agony in his face.

  She stopped crying.

  She breathed. A shuddering, wet breath.

  The pain was there. I could see it. It was a white-hot spike in her brain. But she shoved it down. She swallowed it, just like I swallowed my tooth.

  She tried to sit up.

  "Easy," Gerald whispered, reaching for her.

  "Don't touch me," Astrid hissed.

  She sat up. Her broken arm dangled uselessly. She looked like a wreck. A victim.

  But her eyes...

  Her eyes were burning.

  "Volpert," she said. The name wasn't a sound. It was a curse.

  "He broke me," Astrid whispered. She looked at her shattered hand. "He laughed. He ate his cake and he laughed."

  She looked at me. I was leaning against the fountain, clutching my ribs, looking like a corpse that had been fished out of the river.

  "Wilhelm tried," she said. "But he's weak."

  I flinched. True.

  "We are all weak," Astrid said. She looked at the Shadowgrove Tower in the distance. The lights were on. They were celebrating.

  "But not for long."

  She turned to Fenris.

  "Fix me," she commanded.

  Fenris raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

  "Fix the arm," she snarled. "Set the bone. Stitch the meat. Do whatever you do."

  She grabbed the front of Gutrum’s tunic with her broken hand, screaming in agony but refusing to let go.

  "And then..." she looked at the darkness. "I'm going to kill them."

  "We will help," Gerald said, drawing his sword. "We will "

  "NO!" Astrid screamed. Blood sprayed from her mouth. "No! Not we! ME!"

  She glared at them. A one-armed, broken-boned demon.

  "I don't want an army. I don't want a plan."

  She started to recite. A list.

  "The Guard with the Hammer. The Guard who stepped on my hand. The Guard who held Wilhelm."

  She looked at the castle.

  "Prince Volpert."

  She looked at the Fake sky.

  "Alexander Shadowgrove."

  She turned back to me. Her eyes locked onto mine.

  "I am going to kill them all, Wilhelm. Every. Single. One. I am going to cut them open and see if they have glass souls or if they just rot like the rest of us."

  She slumped back against Gutrum’s chest, exhausted by the hate.

  "Fix me, Fox," she whispered, her eyes closing. "So I can start the work."

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  Fenris looked at her. For the first time, he didn't look annoyed. He looked... interested.

  "Interesting pathology," Fenris muttered. "Trauma-induced hyper-fixation. Obsessive homicidal ideation. Very healthy. Very... proactive."

  He tapped his cane.

  "Bring her to the lab. I'll need screws. And whiskey. Lots of whiskey."

  Gutrum picked her up. He looked at me.

  "Wilhelm?"

  I pushed myself off the fountain. Click. Tap. Pain.

  "I'm coming," I lisped through my broken jaw. "Someone has to pay the bill."

  I limped after them, trailing blood in the rain.

  Why do I do this? I asked myself, licking the empty socket of my tooth. Why do I keep getting up?

  I looked at Astrid’s small, broken hand hanging over Gutrum’s shoulder.

  Ah. That’s why.

  Because I need to be there when she peels him.

  "Make way," I gurgled to the empty street.

  -----------------------------------------Break ------------------------------------------------------------Break------------------------------------

  The Royal Castle didn't just loom; it threatened.

  It was a monstrosity of black basalt and gothic spite, piercing the smog like a jagged spear aimed at the throat of God. The archways were too high, the shadows too deep, and the gargoyles looked less like statues and more like petrified demons waiting for the dinner bell.

  Click. Tap. Pain.

  My leg dragged over the threshold of the Sanctum of Flesh. The marble floor was cold enough to bite through my boot, sending a fresh jolt of agony up my hip to shake hands with the throbbing misery in my jaw.

  "Home sweet dungeon," I mumbled, licking the gap in my teeth. The taste of copper was becoming a familiar, unwanted friend.

  Gutrum carried Astrid. The Duke looked like he had aged fifty years in an hour. His face was grey, his eyes hollowed out by the kind of guilt that eats a man from the inside. Behind him, Gerald and Mary walked like wraiths, weapons drawn, expecting the shadows to bite.

  We entered the lab. The smell hit us instantly antiseptic, rot, and the sharp tang of ozone.

  Dr. Fenris Vulpine was scrubbing a saw. He didn't look up.

  "You're dripping on my floor," the fox said. His voice was dry, clipped, devoid of sympathy. "Blood stains the grout. Do you know how hard it is to get blood out of grout? It requires scrubbing. I hate scrubbing."

  "She needs help," Gutrum rasped, laying Astrid gently on the metal table. "Fix her."

  Fenris limped over, leaning on his cane. He peered at Astrid’s shattered arm through a magnifying glass.

  "Compound fracture. Ulna is pulverized. Radius is snapped. Soft tissue damage is... extensive." Fenris popped a pill. "I can fix the bone. I can reattach the muscle. But the nerve damage? That’s going to itch when it rains. Forever."

  He turned to me. His blue eyes glittered with avarice.

  "Ten thousand."

  I blinked, swaying against a table of bubbling beakers. "Excuse me?"

  "Gold," Fenris clarified, holding out a paw. "Ten thousand Annunaki Gold. Anesthetics aren't free. Neither is my time. And titanium screws? Imported. Very pricey."

  "You're a Council Member!" I spat, blood spraying from my lip. "You work for the Crown!"

  "I work for science," Fenris corrected. "The Crown is just the landlord. Pay up, Bastard, or I let the girl fuse wrong. She’ll have a flipper instead of a hand."

  I looked at Astrid. She was pale, sweating, biting her lip to keep from screaming.

  I opened the ledger in my mind.

  "Fine," I hissed. I authorized the transfer. A heavy sack materialized in my hand from the Inventory a perk of the Master of Coin class. I threw it at the fox.

  "Do it," I snarled. "And if she flinches... I will turn you into a scarf."

  Fenris caught the sack. He didn't weigh it. He knew.

  "Get out of my light," he ordered, pulling a syringe from his coat.

  While the fox worked and the sounds of snapping bone and wet drilling filled the room, making my stomach turn I limped over to the corner where my personal guard, the Gale-Force Matriarch, was waiting.

  She looked fresh. Unbothered. It must be nice to have 20 Agility.

  "Status," I grunted.

  "Perimeter secure," she whispered. "The Shadowgrove Purifiers have retreated to the Prince’s wing. They are... celebrating."

  My hand tightened on my rapier hilt. Celebrating.

  "I need food," I said, ignoring the rage for a moment. My body was failing. [VITALITY: 2,200 ml]. I was running on fumes. "And... I need a package."

  I handed her a slip of paper.

  "Go to the Emporium. Get the 'Noble's Coffer'. And get me calories. Meat. Bread. Sugar. Anything that doesn't taste like despair. Here."

  I tossed her a small pouch. 100 Gold for the food. 1,000 for the box.

  "Go," I commanded. "Fast. Before I pass out and die of irony."

  She vanished. A blur of wind.

  I slid down the wall, clutching my ribs. Across the room, Astrid let out a muffled whimper as Fenris tightened a screw.

  "Interesting," Fenris muttered, his voice echoing the clinical detachment of a man solving a crossword puzzle. "The bone density is high for a child. Malnutrition, yes, but the marrow is strong."

  "Can you..." Astrid gasped, her voice slurring from the pain potions. "Can you give me... a new one?"

  Fenris paused. He looked at her empty left sleeve.

  "A prosthetic?" he asked.

  "A weapon," she whispered. "Like... metal. Magic. So I can kill him."

  Fenris sighed. He wiped blood off his fur.

  "It exists," he said. "The Arm of the Titan. Or the Void-Claw. Technomancy from the Golden Age."

  He leaned in, his fox face inches from hers.

  "But you can't afford it, Little Wolf. And I don't mean gold."

  "Tell me," she demanded.

  "Ten Million Gold," Fenris listed, ticking off claws. "For the chassis. Then... you need a power source. A battery."

  He tapped her chest.

  "You have zero Spirit Power. You can't power a magical limb. It would just be a paperweight. To make it move... to make it crush... you need a God."

  "A God?" Wilhelm asked from the floor.

  "Anunnaki Blood," Fenris said casually. "Five thousand milliliters. A full transfusion. From a living God. Someone with... oh, let's say... 100,000,000 Spirit Power."

  The room went silent.

  100 Million.

  Alexander had 1.1 Million, and he was a demigod. Anunnaki were myths. They were the sky. You don't kill the sky.

  "So it's impossible," Gerald said heavily.

  "It's improbable," Fenris corrected. "Statistically approaching zero. But... if you find a God... and you bleed him... bring me the bucket. I've always wanted to dissect a deity."

  He finished the bandage.

  "Done. It will heal. Keep it immobile. No stabbing for three weeks."

  Just then, the wind stirred. The Gale-Force Matriarch appeared.

  She dropped a heavy sack next to me.

  "Sustenance," she said.

  I tore the bag open. Roast chicken. Still hot. A loaf of bread soaked in butter. A jar of honey.

  I didn't chew. I inhaled.

  The grey washed out of my vision. The pain in my back dulled to a manageable throb. I stood up. I didn't sway.

  "Better," I breathed.

  I looked at the small, gilded box the Matriarch had placed on top of the chicken bones.

  "Come on," I whispered, tapping the lid. "Daddy needs a new pair of shoes. Or a miracle."

  I flipped the latch.

  Golden light spilled out. Not an item. Not a potion.

  A scroll. Ancient, crumbling parchment that dissolved into light as soon as I touched it.

  "One point," I muttered. "A thousand gold for one point. That’s... inflation."

  But I took it. I needed it.

  I opened my status.

  I looked at Endurance. 8. Fragile. My ribs broke when I sneezed. My jaw broke when I got slapped.

  "No more breaking," I whispered.

  I dumped the point into Endurance.

  A wave of heat washed over my bones. My ribs felt... thicker. My jaw felt tighter. I wasn't a tank, but I wasn't glass anymore. I was... ceramic. Harder to break.

  I clenched my fist.

  "Dr. Fenris," I said, turning to Fenris. "Is she mobile?"

  Fenris waved a hand. "She can walk. Just don't let her headbutt anyone."

  I walked over to Astrid. She was sitting up, cradling her newly casted arm. She looked small, but her eyes were nuclear reactors.

  "Can you walk, Wolf?"

  "I can run," she hissed. "I can kill."

  "Good," I said.

  I looked at Gerald. At Mary. At Gutrum.

  "We aren't hiding," I said. My voice was calm.

  pained, and absolutely certain. "We aren't going to cry in the dark."

  I adjusted my coat. I checked my rapier.

  "We are going to the King," I stated. "And we are going to tell him that his son just declared war on his own family."

  I limped toward the door.

  "Volpert wants to play games? Fine. I'm the Master of Coin."

  I grinned. A bloody, jagged grin.

  "I'm about to make this very, very expensive for him."

  "Let's go," I commanded. "To the Throne Room. We have a Prince to dethrone."

  ------------------------------------------------Bonus History Worldbuilding--------------------------------------------------------------------

  The Chronicle of the High Winds Date: Year 3456, Post-Annunaki Departure Author: Grand Duke Borros "The Thunder-Lung" Stormsong Location: The Crown-Bough of the Elder Tree Ygg’s Spear, Kaledon

  Pour me another horn of mead, boy. No, not that watered-down swill from Milkhaven give me the dark stuff, the sap-brew that burns the throat like a lightning strike!So, you want to know why the House of Stormsong sits high while the rest of the world crawls in the mud? You want to know whose blood pumps through your veins? Listen well, and don’t let the wind steal my words. The history books in the South those ink-stained lies written by Ironvine counters and Whitefield poets they call us savages. They call Kaledon "The Unlivable Land."

  Hah! They are right. It is unlivable for them.

  For us? It is a forge. You look outside, what do you see? You see the Great Funnels, the tornadoes that stretch fifty kilometers into the black sky. You see trees with bark harder than steel, rising twenty kilometers up until they pierce the clouds. We live on the branches, boy. We build our fortresses where the air is thin and the wind screams like a dying god.

  Here are the ones who came before. The ones who taught the other Duchies that you do not spit into a hurricane.

  The Conflict: The War of the Wine-Cask (Vs. House Ironvine)

  Those greedy bastards in Vineburg have always envied our timber. Our trees are the only things tall enough to mast the sky-ships of the old world. Duke Oren Ironvine a man so fat he needed a crane to get on his horse marched his armies to our southern root-borders. He demanded a "tribute of ten thousand trunks" to build a fleet, claiming the Annunaki laws gave him the right.

  Thorgar didn't argue. He didn't send a diplomat. Thorgar climbed to the dizzying height of the Titan’s Limb, fifteen kilometers up, right above the Ironvine encampment. He had his engineers rig the structural vines of a dying, massive branch a piece of wood the size of a mountain.

  When the Ironvine herald blew his trumpet, Thorgar cut the vine.

  Gravity did the rest. It took three minutes for the branch to hit the ground. The sound shattered windows in Glassara three hundred miles away. It flattened the Ironvine army into a paste. Thorgar sent a message to the survivors: "Here is your timber. Come and collect it."

  They haven't asked for a tribute since.

  The Conflict: The Silk-Dagger Plot (Vs. House Whitefield)

  Never trust a Whitefield. Their cats look innocent, but their claws are dipped in shit and poison. Duchess Lysa Whitefield couldn't beat us in open war our winds tear their formations apart. So she tried to marry into us. She sent her son, a "pretty boy" with soft hands, to court Vala.

  But Vala… gods, she was magnificent. She wore armor made of beetle-chitin and swung a hammer taller than you. During the wedding feast on the High-Platform (during a Category 5 storm, as is tradition), she found a poisoned needle in her goblet.

  She didn’t call the guards. She grabbed the Whitefield prince by his silk collar and walked him to the edge of the branch. The wind was howling at 300 kilometers an hour. She held him over the void and shouted, "If you can fly like a Stormsong, you can live!"

  She let go. He didn’t fly.

  When House Whitefield demanded justice, Vala sent them his boots. It’s the only thing we found.

  Gods, my throat’s as dry as a desert in the Firelands! That’s enough scratching on parchment for one day. I’m a Duke of Kaledon, boy, not a bloody scribe from some dusty library in Glassara! My hand aches and the mead is calling my name louder than those winds outside.

  The rest of them the madmen, the conquerors, and the ones who truly made the other Duchies tremble they’ll have their turn. Ragnar and the others have waited centuries to have their stories told; they can wait until I’ve had a proper drink and a long sleep.

  Now, bugger off before I throw you off the branch! I’ll finish the chronicle when the mood strikes me, and not a moment sooner. A Stormsong doesn't work on anyone's time but his own!