The next morning, the sky over Blackmoor bled gray. Rain tapped the stone windows in rhythmic spits as Thorne pulled a rusted tin bowl of gruel toward him and didn't eat a bite.
He was watching.
Across the hall sat *Warden Harrix*—a beast of a man who ran the boys' wing with fists and threats. His knuckles were permanently bruised. His voice was sharp enough to flay skin.
But what made Harrix dangerous wasn't the violence.
It was *his ledger*.
Hidden behind a false panel in his quarters, the ledger documented every bribe, every illegal adoption, every sale of magically-gifted children to black-market alchemists and war mages. Thorne had found it in his last life. Too late to stop what came next.
Not this time.
> "We take him down," Thorne said to Ruby that night. "But clean. Quiet. And we keep the ledger."
> "You want to rob him?" Ruby asked. "He'll kill us if we fail."
> "Then we don't fail."
---
🕷️ *The Spider's Thread*
The plan was simple. Elegant.
*Rikkan* would forge a panic letter from a nobleman, claiming Harrix was caught stealing gold from the adoption pool. Thorne had memorized the sigils of noble houses from before. The illusion had to be flawless.
*Ruby* would spike the wardens' ale with a sedative she'd traded for rat jerky in the tunnels.
*Thorne* would get inside.
The corridors of Blackmoor were colder at night. Harrix's door was iron, but the lock? Cheap. Thorne picked it with a sliver of bone and a whisper of concentration.
Inside: clutter. Mugs. Papers. Knives. And there it was.
A cracked cabinet. Inside it, behind a stack of decrees and forged letters:
*The ledger.*
Names. Ages. Prices. Even *Ruby's* name was there—marked for "evaluation."
Thorne's breath hitched. He grabbed the book, slipping it into his coat. But as he turned—
> "Thought you were clever, didn't you?"
Harrix stood in the doorway.
Half-drugged. Fully furious.
---
🔪 *Blood for Blood*
The fight was savage.
Harrix charged. Thorne ducked low, slashing the man's thigh with a hidden blade taken from Rikkan's cache. Blood sprayed. Harrix howled, grabbing Thorne by the throat and slamming him into the wall.
> "I'll break your godsdamned neck!"
Before he could—
*Ruby* appeared in the doorway like a vengeful ghost. She didn't hesitate.
Her dagger slid into Harrix's kidney with the precision of a surgeon.
> "Let go," she whispered.
Harrix did. He dropped like meat.
Thorne gasped for breath, clutching his throat.
> "We weren't supposed to kill him."
> "He was going to kill *you*," Ruby said flatly. "Besides… dead men tell no lies."
They stood in silence over the bleeding corpse of a warden. Thunder cracked outside.
> "We clean this up," Thorne said. "Tonight, we don't just survive. We *take over.*"
---
🔥 *Rise of the Ember Syndicate*
By morning, Warden Harrix had "vanished." Run off with stolen gold, the rumor went. Convenient. No one questioned it—least of all the other wardens, who were all quietly bribed with silver that Rikkan "found."
Thorne's name began to move through whispers.
A boy who made wardens disappear.
A boy who *knew things*.
A boy who was building something darker than escape.
And the Ember Syndicate? It now had three leaders:
- *Thorne*, the mind.
- *Ruby*, the blade.
- *Rikkan*, the whisper.
Together, they controlled the tunnels, the food supply, and by winter's end, over a third of Blackmoor's orphans.
> "This is just the beginning," Thorne told them one night by firelight. "First Blackmoor. Then the city. Then the world."
Ruby raised a brow. "You always think that far ahead?"
Thorne stared into the flame.
> "When you've watched the world burn once, you don't forget the smell."
---
*End of Chapter 3*
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