Chapter 2: The Price of Passage

Dawn in Junk Pit wasn't a sunrise; it was a slow dilution of the dark. The chemical gray of the sky softened to a bruised lavender, and the single, unblinking lights of the Prowlers on the high gantries went out, their shift over. For Liam, who hadn't slept, the change in light was the tolling of a bell, signaling the end of one life and the terrifying, uncertain start of another.

He stood at the edge of the Junk Pit Expanse, a desolate, wind-scoured plain that separated the scrap heaps from the caravan trail. The hovel he'd called home, a cramped nook in a mountain of rust, was already lost in the labyrinth behind him. He had nothing to go back for. His only possessions were the clothes on his back, the heavy traveler's cloak Hemlock had given him, and the pouch of Crownmarks that felt like a lead weight against his hip. It was both his ticket out and a constant, jangling reminder of the old man's sacrifice.

The caravan was a chaotic organism of wood, leather, and nervous energy. It was a motley collection of merchants, mercenaries, and families, all huddled together for protection on the two-week trek to Concord Spire. Hulking, six-legged shardboars, their stone-plated hides scarred from previous journeys, snorted impatiently in their harnesses, hitched to massive, high-wheeled wagons. The air was thick with the smell of dust, beast, and the sharp, metallic tang of fear.

Liam, used to slipping through crowds unseen, felt horribly exposed. His new cloak, meant to help him blend in, felt like a royal banner marking him as an outsider. The other travelers were a mix of hardened traders from the border towns and hopeful families from the slightly-less-impoverished settlements that clung to the edges of the great kingdoms. They all had one thing in common: they looked at him with a mixture of pity and disdain. He was Pit-scum, easily identified by the ingrained grime under his fingernails and the wary, hunted look in his eyes.

"Oi, you! Kid!"

The voice was a gravelly bark. A thick-necked man with a branded mark on his forearm—the sign of the caravan master—stomped toward him. His eyes scanned Liam from head to toe, lingering on the pouch at his belt.

"You aimin' to travel?" the man grunted.

"Yes, sir. To Concord Spire," Liam said, his voice steadier than he felt.

The caravan master, whose name was Borin, spat a stream of brown liquid onto the dusty ground. "Passage is twenty Crownmarks. Ten now, ten on arrival. Food and water's extra. We get attacked, you fight or you get left behind. We clear?"

Twenty marks. It was an exorbitant price, nearly half of what Hemlock had given him. Liam's heart sank, but he saw the predatory gleam in Borin's eyes. This was the price for being alone, for being from the Pit. Arguing would only make it worse.

He nodded, his hand protectively on the pouch. "We're clear."

"Pay up, then. And stay out of the way."

Liam carefully counted out ten coins, the unfamiliar weight of real currency feeling strange in his palm. Borin snatched them, tested one between his teeth with a grunt of satisfaction, and jerked a thumb toward the rear of the caravan. "Your spot's with the other hopefuls. Back of the last wagon. Try not to bring any Pit-plague with you."

The "hopefuls" were a small, miserable-looking group of teenagers, all around his age, clustered near the dusty tailgate of the final wagon. They were the other candidates for the Mana Rite, their faces a mixture of fierce ambition and stark terror. Unlike Liam, most of them wore clean, if patched, clothes and were accompanied by anxious-looking parents who fussed over them, pressing last-minute gifts of dried fruit and talismans into their hands.

Liam's arrival was met with a wall of silence. They saw his worn cloak, his dirt-smudged cheeks, and immediately shuffled away, creating a small, empty space around him as if he were contagious. He was an interloper, a creature from the dump they all feared ending up in. He found a spot by himself, pulling the hood of his cloak low and trying to make himself as small as possible.

The caravan lurched into motion with a groan of wood and a chorus of shardboar snorts. The journey had begun.

The first few days were a blur of monotony and casual cruelty. The other hopefuls ignored him, whispering behind their hands when they thought he wasn't looking. He bought his water and stale bread from a surly merchant who charged him double, and he spent the nights huddled by the low-burning campfire, just outside the circle of warmth and conversation. He was a ghost at the feast, present but unseen.

During the day, he watched the world change. The gray, metallic plains of the Expanse slowly gave way to the cracked, ochre earth of the lands bordering the Stone Kingdom, Terrastone. Great, mesas of rock clawed at the sky, and the air grew drier, dustier. It was a harsh, unforgiving landscape, but to Liam, who had only ever known the claustrophobic canyons of Junk Pit, it was breathtakingly vast.

He learned the rhythms of the caravan. The pre-dawn packing, the long, swaying hours of travel, the wary tension that fell each night as the mercenaries set up a perimeter against bandits and beasts. He also learned the names and faces of the other Rite candidates.

There was Tess, a girl with a stony expression that matched her homeland. She had thick, calloused hands and a quiet, unshakeable confidence. Liam saw her once, during a water break, touch a cracked wagon wheel. For a moment, a faint brown light glowed under her palm, and the wood seemed to groan and knit itself a fraction tighter. She was a Stone-attuned, no doubt about it.

There was also a loud, boisterous boy named Roric who claimed to be from a village near the Fire Kingdom, Pyraxis. He boasted constantly about the Fire-Sparks in his family line and spent his time trying to impress the other kids by creating tiny, sputtering flames that were barely more impressive than Kaelen's.

Liam kept his own secret locked tight in his chest. The memory of the fireball vanishing was a strange, warm coal inside him. He didn't dare test it. He didn't know how. What if it was a one-time fluke? What if it was the sky-steel shard after all, and he was just a normal, magicless boy on a fool's errand? The uncertainty was a constant, gnawing companion.

On the fifth night, trouble found them.

They had made camp in a narrow canyon, the rock walls providing a natural defense. The twin moons were high and bright, casting long, eerie shadows. The mercenaries were on edge; the scouts had found tracks earlier in the day. Not bandits. Werewolves.

Liam was trying to sleep when the first howl ripped through the night. It was a sound that bypassed the ears and went straight to the spine, a primal cry of hunger and violence.

Panic erupted in the camp. Merchants shouted, shardboars bellowed in terror, and the Rite candidates huddled together, their bravado gone. Borin's voice cut through the chaos, bellowing orders. "Circle the wagons! Archers, on the walls! Anyone who can fight, grab a weapon!"

Liam's heart hammered against his ribs. He wasn't a fighter. He was a scavenger, a survivor. His instincts screamed at him to find a hole and hide. But Hemlock's words echoed in his mind: *What if you are something?*

Another howl, closer this time. Figures moved in the moon-shadows at the canyon's entrance. They were fast, moving on two legs but with a low, predatory crouch. They were bigger than men, their forms blurring at the edges as if the moonlight itself couldn't quite hold their shape.

A mercenary near Liam raised his crossbow, his hands shaking. "Hold the line!"

The werewolves charged.

They were a whirlwind of claws and fangs. They moved with terrifying speed, their bodies blurring as they channeled Pure Mana into raw physical power. A mercenary screamed as he was thrown through the air, landing in a crumpled heap. The line of defenders buckled.

Liam was frozen, clutching the hilt of a rusty short-sword he'd been given. It felt alien and useless in his hand. Beside him, Roric, the boastful Fire-Spark, was pale with terror, his hands trembling too much to even attempt a cantrip.

One of the werewolves, larger than the rest, its fur the color of midnight, broke through the line. Its eyes, glowing with a faint, clear light, locked onto the cluster of terrified teenagers. It saw easy prey.

It lunged, not at Liam, but at Tess.

The Stone-attuned girl didn't scream. She stood her ground, her jaw set. She thrust her hands forward, and a wall of rock, jagged and solid, erupted from the ground. It was a powerful spell, a manifestation of a true Core-level talent.

The werewolf, caught off guard, slammed into the barrier with a sickening crunch. The rock wall cracked, but it held. The beast snarled, shaking its head, and prepared to strike again, its claws scraping against the stone, searching for a weakness.

Tess grunted, sweat beading on her forehead. "I… can't hold it for long!"

The mercenaries were occupied with the other attackers. No one was coming to help.

It was then that Liam saw it. The werewolf's claws weren't just claws. They were coated in a shimmering aura of clear, uncolored mana—the Pure Mana the world bible had described. It was a visible, structured force, used to enhance its physical strikes.

A structured force. A spell, of a sort.

The memory of Kaelen's fireball hitting the sky-steel shard flashed in his mind. The feeling of the magic being *eaten*. The hungry void inside him.

Without thinking, without a plan, Liam moved. He dropped the useless sword and scrambled forward, placing his hands flat against Tess's rock wall, right where the werewolf was clawing.

"What are you doing, you idiot?" Tess yelled, her concentration wavering.

"Trust me!" Liam yelled back, though he wasn't sure if he trusted himself.

He closed his eyes and focused. He didn't know any spells or techniques. All he had was a memory and a desperate, primal desire. He imagined the hungry void inside him, the one that had tasted Kaelen's fire. He pushed that feeling out, through his arms, into his palms. *Eat*, he thought. *Just like before. Eat it.*

The moment the werewolf's mana-infused claws struck the wall again, Liam felt it.

It was like plunging his hands into a current of raw energy. A jolt shot up his arms, electric and overwhelming. But it wasn't painful. It was nourishing. The shimmering aura around the werewolf's claws flickered, and then, just as the fireball had, it vanished, siphoned away into nothing. The hungry place inside him pulsed with satisfaction, a feeling of being full and empty at the same time.

The werewolf stumbled back, looking at its claws in confusion. The raw, physical strike, stripped of its magical enhancement, had barely scratched the stone. It snarled, bewildered, and struck again.

Again, Liam felt the rush of energy. Again, the mana disappeared. He felt a strange power coursing through him, a resource he didn't know how to use but could feel pooling within him.

"It's working!" Tess gasped, her eyes wide with disbelief. "Whatever you're doing, it's working!"

The alpha werewolf, enraged and confused by this strange defense, let out a furious roar. It abandoned its attack on the wall and turned its glowing eyes on the new, unexpected threat. On Liam.

It lunged, its jaws snapping, aiming to tear his head from his shoulders.

Liam had no wall to hide behind. He was out of time, out of options. The stored energy inside him, the stolen mana from the werewolf, churned without a release. On pure instinct, driven by sheer terror, he threw his hands up to shield his face and screamed.

He didn't release a spell. He didn't know how. Instead, the raw, stolen mana he had just absorbed, having nowhere else to go, erupted from him. Not as a structured attack, but as a chaotic, concussive burst of pure, colorless force.

*Shove.*

The air distorted. The werewolf, caught mid-lunge, was blasted backward as if hit by an invisible battering ram. It flew a dozen feet, crashing into two of its pack-mates and sending them sprawling in a heap of tangled limbs and surprised yelps.

The canyon fell silent.

Every eye—mercenary, traveler, and werewolf—turned to Liam. He stood alone, his hands still outstretched, his chest heaving. The other werewolves, seeing their alpha thrown back by an unarmed, scrawny boy, hesitated. Their primal confidence was broken, replaced by uncertainty and fear of the unknown.

The alpha staggered to its feet, shaking its head. It stared at Liam, not with hunger, but with a strange, calculating respect. Then, with a low growl to its pack, it turned and melted back into the shadows, the remaining attackers following close behind.

The fight was over.

Liam's legs gave out, and he collapsed to the dusty ground, his body trembling uncontrollably. The strange energy inside him was gone, leaving him feeling hollowed out and exhausted.

The caravan members stared at him, their expressions a mixture of awe, fear, and confusion. Borin, the caravan master, approached slowly, his face unreadable. Tess was looking at him with wide, shocked eyes, her earlier disdain completely gone.

"What in the name of the Five Kingdoms," Borin said, his voice a low rumble, "was that?"

Liam looked up, his gaze sweeping over the stunned faces around the campfire. He had no answer. He had just wanted to survive. But in doing so, he had revealed something that could no longer be hidden.

He was no longer Liam, the Scrap-rat from the Pit. He was Liam, the boy who could eat magic. And he had a terrifying feeling that his journey to Concord Spire had just become infinitely more complicated.