"Choke it?" Mother Jera let out a dry, rattling cough that sounded like dry leaves scraping across flagstones. Her milky eyes fixed on Galang with a cold, unforgiving intensity. "You think you can just squeeze an engine that’s been drinking this valley dry for twenty winters and walk away? The tethers aren't just pipes, boy. They're roots. You pull too hard, and the whole mountain caves in on your head.""We aren't planning to pull," Bayu said, taking half a step forward despite Draven’s sharp, warning intake of breath behind him. "We're planning to cut. And we need your people to show us where the main lines cross the ridge. You know every foot of this dead earth better than any palace cartographer."Baran lowered the rusted spear a fraction of an inch, though the muscle in his jaw throbbed. "And why should we help a bunch of city-rats tear up our hills? Last time men from the capital came down here with tools, they dragged away half our youth to feed the lower barracks.""That was t

"Your blood is glowing, boy," Mother Jera rasped, ignoring Galang’s fiery outburst entirely as she leaned forward on her staff. Her milky, cataracts-clouded eyes seemed to drill right through his skin, pinning him to the dusty wind. "That’s not the mark of a liberator. That’s the mark of a tether-leech. You’re already half-machine, and you come out here bleeding purple light, demanding we hand you our pickaxes?"Galang flinched, his hand flying up to clamp over his jaw, covering the pulsing violet veins that throbbed beneath his skin. "It's a weapon," he spat, his voice dropping an octave as panic flared in his chest. "It’s the only reason we made it through the capital's shadow-drain alive. Don't act like you wouldn't use it if the Sultan’s hollow-guards were breathing down your neck.""We don't touch the poison," Baran growled, his grip tightening back onto his rusted spear, the ash-wood shaft creaking under his rough palms. He stepped forward, closing the distance between them, his

"Or what?" Baran snarled, lowering the tip of his rusted spear until it hovered barely a hand's breadth from Draven’s chest. "You'll cut us down? Go ahead. There are twelve of us and four of you, and the last patrol from the capital that tried to take our grain is currently bleaching bones under three feet of sand.""Baran, enough," Mother Jera commanded, her voice like grinding stones, cutting through the rising heat of the standoff. She didn't look at the spear, nor did she blink her milky, ruined eyes. She kept her gaze pinned squarely on Bayu, whose face remained a mask of cold calculation. "The boy with the glowing jaw speaks of cutting throats, but he doesn't realize the knife is already buried in his own neck. Take your hand off your sword, soldier. We don't negotiate with steel in this camp."Draven didn't move immediately. His eyes flicked to Baran, then to the old woman, before he slowly, deliberately, let his fingers slide away from the hilt of his shortsword. The metal whi

"You speak of the guards as if they are a pestilence to be swatted, outsider," Mother Jera said, leaning forward on her crooked staff of blackened thorn-wood. The dry wood clicked against the hard-packed earth of the tent floor, a rhythmic, maddening sound that matched the invisible, erratic pulse vibrating inside Galang’s jaw. "They are not an infestation. They are the consequence. Every time your friend there lets that violet light flare to life in his veins, a little more of our groundwater turns to salt. Every time you use the tethers to leap a ditch or shatter a gate, the subterranean roots wither five leagues in every direction. You are fighting the Sultan with his own stolen poison.""We aren't using them anymore," Bayu snapped, cutting her off before she could sink her claws any deeper into their fraying morale. He took another step forward, ignoring the way Baran’s rusted spearhead twitched in response. "Look at him. Look at Galang. We know what the tethers cost. We're done w

"Let them look at what the tethers do!" Galang snarled, his eyes wide, the irises nearly swallowed by an unnatural, radioactive lavender glow. "Let them see the weapon you want us to throw away!""Put your hand back over your face, you idiot," Draven barked, stepping into the space between them with a heavy, metallic clank of his breastplate. He didn't draw a blade, but his scarred hand hovered dangerously close to the pommel of his shortsword. "You want to scream about your rights to burn from the inside out? Do it somewhere the Sultan’s scouts can't smell the ozone coming off your teeth.""Let him scream," Mother Jera rasped from the shadows of her furs, her sightless white eyes turning toward the sound of Galang’s heavy, wheezing breaths. "The sound won't draw the guards any faster than the light already does. The earth here remembers every pulse of that violet filth. It sings through the bedrock. Every hollow-guard between here and the capital can taste the marrow in your bones, b