The boot caught Ryker in the ribs and flipped him onto his back.Mud packed into his mouth. He tasted blood and copper and rot. Somewhere above him, Brant laughed—that wet, easy laugh of a man who had never once been afraid."Still breathing?" Brant crouched and grabbed a fistful of Ryker's hair, hauling his head up. "Look at that. The elders really did break you."Ryker spat. Blood and mud hit Brant's cheek.The backhand came fast. White light burst across Ryker's vision and he was face-down again, cheek scraping stone. He didn't try to get up. Getting up cost too much now.Two days ago, he had been an outer disciple. Nothing special. Slow progress, thin spirit root, but alive. Then Elder Voss's men had pulled him from the dormitory at midnight and strapped him to a stone table in the eastern hall."Subject fourteen," Voss had said, bored, not even looking at him. "Sever the root. Record the collapse."They had driven a needle of cold fire through his spine and shattered every meridi

Four men came through the east gate with clubs and rope.Ryker counted them from behind the feed shed. No Cassian—just his hired hands, the kind who did the ugly work and never asked questions. The leader was a thick-necked disciple named Gorren who had broken three fingers on Ryker's left hand during the meridian experiment and laughed about it after.Tobin pressed low beside him. "They'll check the pens first. Cassian logs every kill.""Then we move before they get here.""Move where? The whole compound's a walled box and they're standing in the only door."Ryker looked at the sack of cores at his feet. Six point eight percent. Not enough to fight four men. Not even close.But the System had given him something else, something he hadn't tested yet. He pulled up the interface and scanned the men through the fence.[Target: Gorren — outer disciple, stage two. Meridian integrity: 61%. Weak point: left knee, old injury, poorly healed.][Target: Pell — outer disciple, stage one. Meridian

The summons came before Ryker's nose stopped bleeding.A written slip, sealed with Cassian's mark, delivered by a disciple who wouldn't meet his eyes. Report to the overseer's hall. Immediately. Bring nothing.Tobin read it over his shoulder and swore. "Don't go. He'll have guards.""He'll have guards whether I go or not." Ryker wiped his face on his sleeve. "Better inside his hall than in a dark corridor."Haldor didn't argue. He just pressed the clay jar into Ryker's hand. "Half a swallow. No more—your body's at seventy percent strain. If he pushes you, don't absorb. Not once. You hear me?""I hear you.""Then say it back.""I won't absorb," Ryker said.Haldor let him go.---The overseer's hall sat at the top of the Outer Court, a long stone room with high windows and a floor scrubbed clean of every trace of mud. Cassian was already seated behind a table of dark wood, a ledger open in front of him, a cup of tea steaming at his elbow. He was thirty-three and looked ten years older—t

It came out of the dark dragging one leg, and it had a face Ryker knew."Vell?" Tobin whispered. "That's Vell. He was in my dormitory."Vell had been an outer disciple—quiet, thin, always the first to volunteer for errands that got him out of the compound. Ten weeks ago he'd been called to the east hall by Elder Voss's men and never came back. Now he shuffled toward them in a torn robe, mouth working, eyes wrong. His left arm hung dead at his side, and something under his skin moved where no vein should move."Vell," Ryker said. "Stop walking."Vell kept coming.[Target: Subject Nine — classification: UNSTABLE. Meridian integrity: 12%. Corrupted channels.][WARNING: Host body strain 88%. Absorption unreliable.]"Stop walking," Ryker said again.Vell's head tilted. Then his jaw opened too wide and he lunged.Ryker took the hit on his forearms and the strength in it was wrong—hollow, twitching, three times what a stage-one body should have. He went back into the arch and the stone crack

The hounds found the trail in minutes.Ryker heard them before he saw them—deep, chesty bays echoing off the ravine walls, getting louder. Talia grabbed his arm and pulled him off the hunter's path entirely, into a thicket of grey thorns that tore at their robes."Down," she hissed.They flattened against the ravine wall. Two hounds loped past below, noses down, following the blood trail. A dozen armed disciples followed at a jog, torches bobbing.Tobin didn't breathe.The hounds reached the spot where Ryker had stood three minutes ago and stopped. They circled, confused, then one of them whined and turned in a slow circle. The spirit spring water. It had masked their scent exactly as Talia promised.The handler cursed and hauled the hounds back toward the main trail.Talia waited until the torchlight faded. Then she stood. "We've got maybe an hour before they realize the trail's gone cold and start sweeping the walls. We need to be out of this ravine.""Where?" Ryker asked."There's