The healers said the ribs would knit in a week. They lied. Every breath still burned. The ache wasn’t the real wound anyway—it was the silence that followed me everywhere.

  Arclight had swallowed the fight whole and spat out a neat sentence for the record: training exercise accident. Every corridor repeated it like a prayer. Professors said it with measured patience. Students whispered it with relief. Nobody laughed when I walked by, and somehow that was worse.

  Thirty seniors in the Wardhall, half of them still wrapped in bandages, and nobody dared to ask why. No one mentioned Cale Arcanus.

  My father’s messages had stopped after the first inquiry. Handle it, he’d written. We cannot afford another scandal before the Tournament. My mother hadn’t written at all. She didn’t have to; I knew what she’d think. You lost control. Fix it.

  So I did what Veylans always did when control slipped.

  I bought new control.

  The lower wards of Arclight were nothing like the marble spires above. Down here, light came from Technica lamps that hummed with static and smelled of copper. The air was thick with the sound of distant gears and the hiss of mana lines running beneath the cobbles.

  I pulled my hood lower as we entered the tavern. Two of my classmates followed—Riss and Marn—good at obedience, bad at thinking. They looked out of place among the ruin-divers and scrap merchants.

  The man I’d come to meet was waiting at the back, nursing a drink that glowed faintly green. A broker. No name, just a face like melted wax and eyes that had seen enough of the undercity to know what lived in it.

  “You’re early,” he said.

  “I’m paying,” I answered, dropping a purse onto the table. It hit with the sound of metal and certainty.

  He thumbed through the coins. “Dominion mint. Good weight.”

  “I need someone,” I said. “Strong. Not polite. Not tied to the Academy.”

  The broker’s mouth twitched. “You nobles always say that when you want someone to bleed for you.”

  “I want him broken,” I corrected.

  He gestured toward the back room. “Then you want her.”

  The door opened and heat came out with her.

  She moved like someone who’d forgotten how to be afraid. Leather jacket scorched at the cuffs, fire tattoos crawling up one arm in a slow, lazy pulse. Her hair was black with streaks of red near the ends, like it had caught flame and decided to keep the memory.

  “Lucien Veylan,” she said, as if reading it off a wanted poster. Her voice carried the smoke of a dozen back-alley fires. “The boy who lost a duel to a transfer student. I was starting to think you were a myth.”

  Riss bristled. I raised a hand to quiet him.

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  “You have me at a disadvantage,” I said.

  She smiled. “Most people do, at first.” She didn’t offer a hand. “Sarien Draeven. Maybe you’ve heard of the Ember Fangs?”

  I had. Even in the upper halls, the name came up in half-joking threats. A street gang that had started as ruin scavengers and turned into something larger, meaner. They ran the undercity’s trade in enchanted scrap and Technica weapons. She was the reason the patrols avoided whole districts after dark.

  “I need a job done,” I said. “A student at Arclight. I want him reminded of his place.”

  Her smile widened, teeth bright in the lamp glow. “You want him dead.”

  “Not yet.” I leaned forward. “I want him to remember.”

  She tapped the table with a scarred finger. “Pretty words. What do you pay?”

  “Gold. A lot of it.” I nodded to the purse. “And protection. The patrols won’t touch your business for the next two months. I can make that happen.”

  Her eyes flicked to the bag, then back to me. “Protection from the patrols? You sound like a boy borrowing his father’s name.”

  “I’m offering you a chance to make that name useful.”

  For a long moment she said nothing. Then she reached out and dragged the purse closer. The clink of coins sounded like a verdict.

  “Fine,” she said. “But if your pretty-boy target is half as dangerous as the stories say, I’ll be charging hazard pay.”

  Riss couldn’t stop himself. “He’s nothing! Just a freak with a trick—”

  Sarien’s eyes snapped to him. Heat shimmered around her knuckles. “Speak again and you’ll be the trick.”

  Riss swallowed hard and shut up.

  She stood, pocketed the purse, and stretched. The tattoos along her arm flared brighter, shaping themselves into the outline of a flaming serpent before fading. “I’ll need a night to gather my crew.”

  I nodded. “The Academy’s eastern gate. Tomorrow evening. He walks his sister home every day around dusk.”

  “Sweet,” she murmured. “Always the family ones.”

  She turned and left, boots ringing against the floorboards.

  The broker poured another drink. “You sure about this?” he asked once she was gone.

  “She’s a thug,” I said. “That’s all I need.”

  “She’s more than that,” he warned. “Sarien Draeven doesn’t take jobs she can’t enjoy.”

  I rose, pulling the hood back up. “Then she’ll enjoy this one.”

  Outside, the city wind smelled like burnt metal. The lamps overhead flickered as if listening.

  Riss and Marn trailed me in uneasy silence until we reached the tram stop. Marn finally spoke. “You think she can do it?”

  “She’ll try,” I said. “And if she fails, the story will still end the same. Everyone will know Arcanus bleeds.”

  I looked back once, toward the lower wards where the tavern lights still burned. For a heartbeat, I saw fire rise against the sky—one of Sarien’s tricks, probably, a flare to summon her gang. It painted the clouds red and gold.

  Perfect.

  If Cale wanted to play hero, I’d make sure the whole city watched him burn for it.

  *******

  Later that night, Sarien’s crew met in a warehouse by the mana lines. They called themselves the Ember Fangs—half ruin-divers, half arsonists. She stood on a crate while they prepped Technica gauntlets and rune-etched chains.

  “Target’s a student,” one said. “Pretty face. Supposed to be fast.”

  “Fast dies like slow if you know how to aim,” another grunted.

  Sarien held up a hand. A flame coiled around her fingers, snapping the air into silence. “You’ve all heard the rumors. Thirty nobles down. Red eyes. Aura that cracks stone.” She let the fire vanish. “I don’t care. He bleeds. Everything bleeds.”

  Someone laughed, nervous. “How much we getting paid to find out?”

  “Enough,” she said, grinning. “And if he really is what they say, I want to see how bright he burns before he goes out.”

  She pulled on her gloves, the runes along the leather lighting up one by one. Outside, rain started to fall—soft, steady, turning the street lamps into blurs.

  “Tomorrow,” she said. “We remind the nobles and their monsters who owns the night.”

  ****

  I couldn’t sleep.

  Every time I closed my eyes, I saw lightning-clad skin behind my eyelids. I felt the heat of humiliation crawling under my skin.

  After a couple of hours, I abandoned my attempts and poured myself a drink instead. I stood by the dorm window as Arclight’s spires glowed faint blue in the distance. Somewhere beyond them, in the city’s dark veins, a fallen noble with fire in her blood was gathering her pack.

  This weekend I would go home. I would make myself scarce, and those who thought they were strong would find out what it was like to be hunted.