The Inquisition's ivory armor feels heavier these days, its polished surface reflecting the Spire's sterile light like a mockery of purity. Jarek flexes his gauntleted fist, the storm-gray Shard embedded in the metal pulsing faintly, a rhythm out of sync with his own heartbeat. From his tower, Ironhaven sprawls below—a jagged tapestry of decay and hubris. The Dregs cling to the horizon, a smudge of shadow he pretends not to search for when the suppressants wear thin.
He remembers the first time they killed a man.
Twelve years old, cornered in a Dregs alley reeking of piss and synth-gin. The slumlord's enforcer loomed, knife at Jarek's throat, breath hot with contempt. Kael didn't hesitate. Didn't plead. He lunged, pipe in hand, and jammed it into the man's ribs with a wet, visceral crunch. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder afterward, bloodied and breathless. Kael's hands shook. Jarek's didn't. That's the difference, he thinks now. You felt. I acted.
But back then, Kael's loyalty was the only currency that mattered.
The Shard found him in the sewers.
Rain lashed the Dregs the night the floods washed the tunnels clean, exposing rot better left buried. Kael wanted to turn back—"Smells like a grave"—but Jarek pressed on, boots sloshing through muck. The corpse was half-submerged, ribs splayed like a cracked vault, but it wasn't the stench that gripped him. It was the glow. A jagged crystal jutted from the corpse's chest, throbbing faintly, gold veins spiderwebbing its surface.
Take it, hummed a vibration in his skull. Not words. Hunger.
Kael grabbed his arm. "Don't. That thing's poison."
Jarek pried it free anyway.
The Shard seared his palm, tendrils of gold snaking up his wrist. Power flooded him—not warmth, but a tectonic ache, bones grinding to dust and reforging. The tunnel trembled. Kael stumbled back, eyes wide, as cracks split the walls.
"Jarek—!"
He didn't answer. Stonebreaker did.
At first, it was small.
He split firewood with a slap. Crushed a smuggler's skull for skimming their cut. Kael stared at the body, then at Jarek's hands. "You're changing," he said, voice thin.
"I'm strong," Jarek snapped.
But nights were worse. The Shard gnawed at his marrow, whispering. Weakness festers. Cut it out. He'd lie awake, listening to Kael's steady breaths, and wonder if his friend heard the screams too.
The bank job was Kael's idea.
"One score. Enough to get out," he'd said, sketching the vault's weak points on a grease-stained napkin. "Somewhere the Inquisition won't find us."
Jarek nodded, but Stonebreaker seethed. Fresh? The Shard showed him futures—cities crumbling under his fists, Inquisitors groveling, Kael's face twisted in fear. Or worse. Pity.
When the sirens blared, Kael froze. "Run!" he shouted, but Jarek's feet carried him toward the vault, not away. Stonebreaker surged, his fist slamming into the door. Metal screamed. Gold bricks skittered. Kael's voice cracked—"What are you doing?!"—but Jarek couldn't stop.
He didn't look back.
Coward, Stonebreaker hissed. He'd have dragged you down.
Now, the Spire's medics pump him full of suppressants to "manage the corruption." They don't know the Shard drinks the poison like wine. His armor gleams, but his veins writhe black beneath the surface. Lieutenant Stonebreaker. Loyal. Efficient. Hollow.
The reports land on his desk daily: Dregs insurgent. Shardbearer. Crystalline hound. He sees Kael in every word—stubborn, scrappy, still too soft to finish what they started.
Terminate on sight, he orders.
But when the refinery's coordinates flash on his screen, his gauntlet hesitates.
The truth is this:
He didn't run from Kael. He ran from the boy who shared his last crust of bread. The boy who flinched at gunfire but stood firm when it mattered. The boy who might've made him human.
Better to be hated, he tells himself, than mourned.
But some nights, when the suppressants wear thin, he hears the pipe clattering to the alley floor. Sees Kael's trembling hands. Feels the weight of the Shard's lie.
Did I choose this?
The silence answers.
Next Dawn
The refinery gates splinter under Stonebreaker's fist. Gutter's howl pierces the comms—a sound he'd know anywhere. Kael's voice follows, ragged but familiar: "You're not taking her."
Jarek steps through the rubble, gauntlets humming. Kael stands in the shadows, thinner, harder, one eye clouded with Shard-rot. The dog snarls, crystalline fur bristling.
For a heartbeat, the Spire fades. They're twelve again, bloodied and breathless, the world reduced to an alley and a choice.
Stonebreaker roars.
Jarek's feet falter.