The Key and the Cage

The priest's voice slithered through the dark like smoke. "Your parents died screaming for mercy, boy. But their *sin* lives on in that trinket."

My bracelet burned cold against my wrist, its golden gears flickering as if sensing danger. The priest stepped closer, his robes swallowing the moonlight. Symbols of the Church's Mechanicarum order glinted on his collar—a gear entwined with flames.

"What do you want?" I hissed, backing into the alley wall.

"The Thaladir girl thinks she can steal God's power." He smiled, rotten teeth gleaming. "But you're the one who'll open the vault. *Your blood* is the key."

Before I could react, he lunged. A syringe flashed in his hand, filled with a viscous black liquid. I ducked, slamming my elbow into his ribs. The syringe clattered to the cobblestones as he wheezed, but his grip was iron.

"The Church raised you in shadows," he spat. "Now you'll die in them."

A pistol cocked.

"Let him go."

Lira stood at the alley's mouth, her stolen Church pistol aimed at the priest's skull. Her hair was loose, her dress torn from sprinting through the streets.

The priest chuckled. "You think this ends with me? The Mechanicarum already knows. They'll raze Thaladir to ash before—"

***Bang.***

The Aetherium round tore through his head, leaving only a smoldering husk.

The priest's body crumpled, but Lira's hands kept shaking long after she lowered the pistol. I'd never seen her falter—not when we'd argued over schematics, not when the embassy guards nearly caught us testing the Aetherium engine. Now, she stared at the smoking corpse like it might rise and condemn her.

"We need to burn the body," she said, voice hollow. "The Mechanicarum tracks their own with… with *devices*."

"You've killed before," I said, sharper than I meant to.

Her mechanical eye whirred as she turned to me. "Not a priest. Not in *cold blood*."

We dragged the corpse into the forge's furnace, the flames hissing as they consumed his robes. I watched her carefully. The noble girl who'd barged into my workshop with a relic pistol now knelt in ash, scrubbing blood from her gloves with a ferocity that scared me.

"Why did you really come to me, Lira?" I asked. "You're Thaladir royalty. You could've hired any engineer."

She hesitated. "My father thinks the Church is weak. A relic. But I've seen their archives—records of machines that could make steam engines look like child's toys. I needed someone *hungry* enough to take risks. Someone they wouldn't notice."

*Someone expendable*, I thought bitterly.

"This changes nothing," she said, rising. "We still need the Aetherium."

"And if the vault requires more of my blood? My *life*?"

"Then we find another way." She gripped my wrist, her thumb brushing the bracelet. "I'm not them, Jace. I won't sacrifice you."

But as the furnace dimmed, I wondered if that was a promise—or a lie.