Aurelian had been enjoying the view.

  From the wall, the Gutter March laid itself bare in layers — stone and smoke and ordered decay. The upper tiers caught the early light, pale and clean, while the lower districts still slept beneath a skin of shadow. From here, the city looked almost honest. Functional. Necessary.

  Veylan leaned beside him, hands resting on the parapet, cloak stirring in the breeze.

  “A productive visit,” Veylan said pleasantly. “Your reputation remains intact.”

  Aurelian allowed himself a thin smile. “We cultivate consistency.”

  Below them, carts moved along the inner roads. Gates cycled open and shut with measured rhythm. Everything was where it should be.

  Then—

  BOOM.

  The sound didn’t belong.

  It wasn’t the dull crack of stone or the familiar report of industrial charges. This was sharper. Violent. Wrong.

  Aurelian’s head snapped toward the outer gate.

  So did Veylan’s.

  Beyond the walls — past the controlled geometry of the city — movement erupted. Shapes scattered across the open ground where the transfer was meant to occur. Small figures running. Falling. Guards shouting, their formations breaking.

  A body collapsed.

  Another followed.

  Aurelian’s breath went cold.

  That site was supposed to be quiet. Isolated. Watched.

  His eyes sharpened, cursed energy stirring instinctively as he focused.

  He saw it then.

  A guard braced himself, feet planted wide. In his hands was a long, unfamiliar device — metal and etched stone fused together, lines of dormant sigils faintly visible along its length.

  The guard pulled a lever.

  There was a violent crack — not an explosion, but a release.

  Something invisible tore through the air and punched a hole straight through a running child’s chest.

  The body dropped mid-step.

  Aurelian’s fingers dug into the stone.

  Guns.

  Special issue. Rare. Expensive.

  They weren’t meant for this.

  The weapons were powered by cursed energy reservoirs — not enough to rival an Awakened, but sufficient to accelerate small metal slugs to obscene speeds. Fast enough to punch through the hide of a Realm One beast. Fast enough to kill anything unprotected.

  They were contingency tools.

  Monster response.

  Last resort.

  Not crowd control.

  Aurelian felt his jaw tighten.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Beside him, Veylan laughed.

  A short, amused sound.

  “Oh dear,” Veylan said lightly. “Is that my merchandise being perforated?”

  Aurelian turned.

  Veylan was watching the chaos with open interest, head tilted slightly, eyes bright.

  “I do hope you realize,” Veylan continued, voice smooth as silk, “that I’ll be expecting compensation. Dead inventory is… inconvenient.”

  Something in Aurelian snapped.

  The stone beneath his hand cracked.

  He didn’t answer.

  He moved.

  Aurelian stepped onto the parapet and jumped.

  Ten stories.

  No hesitation.

  The air detonated around him as cursed energy surged through his body, reinforcing muscle and bone beyond mortal limits. The wall fractured where he launched, stone exploding outward as he vanished in a thunderclap.

  To anyone watching, it would have looked like teleportation.

  To Aurelian, it was controlled violence.

  He hit the ground near the transfer site like a meteor.

  The impact carved a shallow crater into packed earth and sand, shockwaves rippling outward, knocking guards off their feet and sending loose debris skittering.

  Dust billowed.

  Aurelian straightened slowly.

  “Stop.”

  The word carried.

  Not shouted.

  Imposed.

  Cursed energy rode his voice, compressing the air itself. Every guard heard it — not just in their ears, but in their bones. Muscles locked. Movements stalled mid-action.

  Silence slammed down.

  Aurelian breathed once.

  Then he took it in.

  Children frozen mid-run. Some tangled in hardened sand already, limbs pinned, eyes wide with terror. Others lay still — too still — blood darkening the ground beneath them.

  Guards stood uncertain, weapons half-raised.

  And farther out—

  There.

  Two figures.

  One on the ground, clutching his leg, blood soaking through torn cloth.

  The other standing over him.

  Kael.

  Recognition hit instantly. Sharp. Personal.

  Aurelian had dragged that one from the dungeon himself.

  His gaze dropped.

  Around the boy, the sand lay disturbed — not randomly scattered, but displaced, as if something had passed through it unnaturally.

  And near his feet—

  Metal slugs.

  Inert.

  Aurelian’s eyes narrowed.

  Awakened.

  Realization settled with grim certainty.

  Not the one on the ground.

  The standing one.

  Kael.

  Aurelian inhaled.

  His cursed energy answered.

  It surged outward in a controlled wave, invisible but absolute — the presence of a Realm Three Awakened fully asserting himself. To the unawakened, it felt like standing beneath a collapsing sky. Knees buckled. Breath stuttered. Thought narrowed to survival.

  Sand answered his call.

  Grains lifted from the ground, swirling into motion within a vast radius — one hundred, fifty meters — responding to his will as naturally as fingers closing into a fist.

  He clenched.

  Sand wrapped around fleeing children, hardening instantly into rigid restraints, pinning arms and legs in place without crushing them. Efficient. Reusable.

  He shaped more.

  A spear formed in midair — long, brutal, dense — grains compressed and hardened beyond steel, its surface gleaming faintly with cursed reinforcement.

  He didn’t hesitate.

  He hurled it.

  The spear vanished.

  It crossed the distance in less than a heartbeat, tearing through the air with a scream of displaced pressure.

  Seven meters from the wounded boy, it slowed — just a fraction.

  Resistance.

  Not enough.

  The spear punched through the child’s chest like paper, blood exploding outward in a violent bloom as the force carried on, ripping past and slamming into a massive tree far beyond, embedding itself deep enough to split the trunk.

  The body collapsed.

  Dead.

  Unmistakably.

  Time seemed to lurch forward again.

  Aurelian watched the other boy — Kael — freeze.

  Watched the color drain from his face.

  Then, inexplicably, Kael staggered.

  And fell.

  Aurelian frowned.

  That was unexpected.

  He turned back to the field, already shaping another spear, voice rising as he barked orders.

  “Collect them. Now. Anyone restrained comes with us. Anyone running—”

  Movement flickered beside the fallen boy.

  A child appeared where there had been none.

  Fourteen, perhaps. Dark hair. Green eyes. Thin, but standing too calmly for the chaos around him.

  Another Awak—

  Aurelian’s energy spiked.

  He started to aim.

  The boy grabbed Kael.

  And vanished.

  Not in a flash.

  Not in motion.

  They were simply… gone.

  Aurelian blinked.

  His cursed senses screamed absence — a blank spot where perception should have been.

  “What—” he snarled.

  He reached out, flooding the area with power, sand surging, senses expanding—

  Nothing.

  No trace.

  No resistance.

  No target.

  The space where they should have been refused to resolve in his mind.

  Aurelian felt something twist in his chest.

  Rage.

  Pure, incandescent rage.

  “FUCK!”

  The shout tore out of him, raw and uncontrolled, echoing across the field — utterly unbecoming, stripped of all cultivated calm.

  Guards flinched.

  Veylan, watching from the wall in the distance, laughed again.

  Aurelian stood in the crater he’d made, fists clenched, cursed energy boiling just beneath his skin as the truth settled in.

  Two assets lost.

  One Awakened escaped.

  And the Gutter March had just bled in public.

  Far beyond the city walls, unseen, the wilds swallowed their prey.

  And for the first time in years—

  Aurelian was not in control.