"Don't waste energy trying to pry them off with your bare hands," Adrian said, kneeling in the dirt beside Zafriel. "You'll just shred your skin down to the bone. The metal's attuned to your personal aether signature. It feeds on whatever you try to push against it."Zafriel let out a ragged, trembling breath, his forehead resting against his drawn-up knees. Cold sweat beaded along his hairline, mixing with the gray ash that coated his skin like a second coat of armor. "It feels like ice running through my veins," the former champion murmured, his voice stripped of its usual commanding resonance. "Every time I reach for the Light, there’s just... nothing. An empty void. Like a piece of me has been carved out and left to rot.""You're freezing," Adrian observed, shifting closer until their shoulders pressed together. The heat radiating off Adrian’s demonic physiology was a stark contrast to Zafriel’s rapidly dropping body temperature. "And we need medical supplies. Your shoulder's gett

"Then stop shaking," Adrian muttered, his charcoal-grey eyes narrowing in intense focus as he adjusted his grip on the heavy blacksmith's hammer. "If you jerk your wrists at the wrong microsecond, I'll shatter your radial bones instead of the lock."Zafriel let out a sharp, breathless laugh that immediately dissolved into a wince. "Reassuring as ever, Adrian. Truly, your bedside manner is a gift.""Save your breath for enduring the feedback," Adrian replied, his voice dropping an octave as he swung the hammer with calculated, minimal force.The heavy, resonant clang echoed violently off the damp brick walls of the dry cistern, sounding less like a tool striking metal and more like a church bell tolling in a vault. Zafriel arched his back off the stone floor, his teeth gritting together so hard a thin line of crimson welled against his lower lip. A blinding flare of magenta light pulsed from the manacles, sending a visible shockwave of aetheric feedback rippling up his forearms. He slu

The damp chill of the subterranean cistern clung to Zafriel’s skin like a shroud of wet ice, but the paladin burned as though swallowed by a forge fire.Adrian knelt beside the low stone ledge, his large, calloused hands wringing out a strip of torn linen in a wooden bowl filled with murky runoff water. The silence of the dead hour before dawn weighed heavily upon them, broken only by Zafriel’s ragged, shallow breathing and the occasional distant clank of patrol armor echoing down the canyon."Drink," Adrian ordered quietly, sliding his arm beneath Zafriel’s shoulders to lift him upright.Zafriel’s eyes fluttered open, glassy and unfocused. The golden luminescence that usually defined his gaze was completely snuffed out, replaced by a fever-bright delirium. He stared straight through Adrian, his dry, cracked lips parting as he struggled to drag oxygen into his burning lungs."Commander," Zafriel rasped, his voice barely a breath of sound against the damp stone. "The rear gate... the s

"If we stay on this ledge another hour, those outriders will double back and sniff us out like hounds on a fresh carcass," Adrian said, his low voice cutting sharply through the sulfurous air. He shouldered his pack, his charcoal-grey eyes scanning the blinding expanse below. "We drop now, or we die in a ditch. Pick one."Zafriel staggered to his feet, swaying like a felled pine before catching his balance against the canyon wall. His limbs burned with the lingering poison of the manacles, and every breath tasted of dry, metallic ash. "I can walk. You don't need to carry me across that cursed wasteland.""Save your pride for someone who cares, paladin," Adrian retorted, catching Zafriel by the elbow as the former champion’s knees buckled. "The salt flats don't care how many holy medals you won in the capital. One wrong step in that alkaline crust and you sink straight down to your chest.""Then we avoid the crust," Zafriel snapped, wincing as a sharp spike of pain lanced through his w

A heavy-set man stepped out from behind a row of meat-hooks, the iron mace in his scarred hand shifting with practiced casualness. "Shelter's full, stranger. Unless you brought your own provisions, you're just another mouth draining a dry well.""We brought trouble, too, if that changes your math," Adrian replied instantly, his hand dropping within an inch of his concealed blade. "Kaelan Rith. I was told a southern deserter ran this rat-trap."Kaelan’s thick brows drew together, his gaze darting from Adrian’s hardened stance to the pale, silver-trimmed tunic visible beneath Zafriel’s tattered travel cloak. "You brought an inquisitorial lapdog right to my door? Are you completely insane, demon?""Watch your tongue, criminal," Zafriel rasped, forcing himself upright off the crates despite the violent tremor in his knees. His voice lacked its old resonant authority, yet the innate, commander-level bite cut sharply through the stale air. "The manacles are off in spirit if not in iron. Add