THE AETHERBORN

They ducked low behind the hulking statue, the armored guardian's shadow swallowing them like a cloak. Marble was cold under Thorne's palm. He breathed slow, feeling the faint pulse of aether still thumping under his skin, trying not to wince.

"Go back to your room," he hissed.

Elias folded his arms, smirking. "No way. Where's the fun in that?"

"Where's the sense," Thorne muttered. He closed his eyes and counted to three, patient thinning like cloth. "Tonight's mission is different. Too dangerous for you. You're not coming."

Elias puffed up his chest theatrically. "So not dragon riding, then. No archmage parley? No monster brawl? Pity." He hopped a little where he crouched, grin untroubled by the idea of risk.

Thorne kept his eyes shut. "No. Tonight I'm going to interrupt a smuggling run and destroy the goods."

Elias's mouth fell open, closed, then opened again like a fish. "Okaaay. I did not expect that. Cool, but… why?"

"Because Brennak's been bleeding the city dry," Thorne said bluntly, voice low. "His monopoly on the high-tier reagents feeds everything ugly. Humus told me what he wanted, I'm making sure Brennak can't sell next month's shipment."

Elias stared at him as if trying to find the right constellation of words. "Thorne… buddy, you really need a vacation. Or a hobby. Pottery? Knitting? Something with less death."

"I don't have time for a hobby," Thorne snapped, then softened because Elias looked genuinely wounded by the suggestion. "I need you to do something small. Not dangerous. Important."

Elias sat back on his heels, curiosity brightening his face. "You're not sending me away, so I don't get in trouble. You're sending me as, what? A decoy? A spy? I..."

"Not a spy." Thorne produced a small roll of parchment, then another, the corners dark with ash. He passed one to Elias and kept his voice very deliberately calm. "You don't have your staff. You can't cast. So, I don't need you to fight. I need you to be visible, inconspicuous. I need you to keep Fen company."

"Fen?" Elias repeated.

"Fen," Thorne confirmed. "Boy pickpocket. Smart kid. Knows things. Keep him fed, listen. Don't ask leading questions. Just hear him out. Make sure he's safe. He is in an inn called the Silver Lantern. There you will also find Mara, the serving woman. Give her this." He slipped a warm gold coin into Elias's palm; the metal felt heavy and real in the dim light.

Elias's eyebrows shot up so fast his hair ruffled. "A gold coin? You mean..."

Thorne's mouth twitched. "Yes. Gold. Give it to her and ask if she's heard anything new about Brennak's runners, or about anyone moving reagents. Be casual. Don't make that hand tremble." He tapped the coin's face with one finger. "Ask if anyone stuck around after the last shipments. If Mara mentions anyone loyal to a new buyer, note names and come back."

Elias's eyes widened in earnest astonishment. He clutched the coin as if it might vanish. "You want me to run errands. For you. I can't believe I'm being paid in gold to be a domestic agent."

"You're not being paid," Thorne said flatly. "You're being useful. No parades, Elias."

Elias's chest rose in mock offense. "I volunteer as tribute."

"Good." Thorne let out a tired breath. "I'll be dealing with the goods tonight. If I don't show up back by dawn, well. Go tell Marian I was reckless. Or don't. Preferably don't. Just be where I told you."

"How many of these errands am I supposed to run for you?" Elias asked, voice half teasing, half worried.

"Too many," Thorne admitted. A tiredness sat at the back of his throat like a stone. "You'll be safe. The place I'm hitting is guarded by men and haze wards, landside stuff. Not something you can or should tangle with."

Elias's smile faded into a seriousness that suited him strangely well. "I'll do it. I'll keep Fen and talk to Mara. I'll be back. You better be alive when I return."

"You better be alive even if I'm not," Thorne shot back, the corner of his mouth tugging. He pushed himself to his feet, joints protesting. "Now go. Move."

Elias sprang up and did a little mock-salute, coin clinking in his palm. "Consider it done. I can't believe I'm a spy." He struck a dramatic pose, theatrical, ridiculously earnest.

Thorne rolled his eyes. He had a flash of tired amusement and then the mission asserted itself: maps, alley shadows, the pattern of Brennak's shipments, the way wards would hum on a moonless night. He crouched, whispering precise directions, routes Elias should take, who to avoid, the exact phrasing with Mara. Elias repeated them dutifully, adding an unnecessary dramatic aside about how heroic he felt.

"You're not exactly doing a good job at being discreet," Thorne said, unable to stop a grin.

Elias hushed him with exaggerated conspiracy. "Shh. Stealth is performance art."

"Fine," Thorne muttered, and when Elias finally padded to the stairwell, he paused and looked back. "Be careful."

"So are you," Elias replied, voice softening. "Come back."

Thorne watched him go, the coin glinting in sheer moonlight.

***

The delta was alive with whispers and wardlight.

From his perch high on the ridge above, Thorne watched the dark veins of the river split into narrow channels that cut through mud and rock. Every time a swell hit the hulls of the roped boats, their painted sigils flared bright, and a thin, flickering barrier snapped into being across a boat's prow for a moment, the ward drawing a pale seam of light where water met wood. Lanterns hung low over the water, their reflections trembling on the current. Brennak's men moved like ants, shifting crates, rolling barrels, shouting quietly over the roar of rushing water.

His Veil Sense stretched outward, feeding him a constant trickle of information: the faint hum of warding glyphs etched into the soil, the resonant pulse of stabilizing sigils lining the tunnels, the life signatures of the men below, twenty-three in total. Levels blinked faintly across his perception, none above thirty-five.

They were smugglers, not soldiers. And none of them knew death was already watching.

He crouched lower, boots silent on wet stone. The air smelled of silt and oil, thick with river damp. His eyes tracked the flow of movement below, crates coming from the tunnel mouths dug into the sides of the delta, each sealed with Brennak's dwarven runes. The shipments hadn't arrived yet, but the preparations were in full swing.

Where the men worked, the air tasted faintly of reagent dust, metallic, ozone, the sharp bite of preserved aether. The high-tier crates gleamed like promises. He could see the shipping marks in his head even before he saw the wooden slats: the sigil of Brennak's market etched into stenciled ink, the dwarf's rune for "sealed" burned into every lid.

He kept to the shadows. The courtyard lamps threw islands of yellow; Thorne slid between them, hands tucked, breath even. His cloak swallowed what little moonlight there was. He had no desire to unleash raw power here. Marian's voice, her lessons, ghosted through his memory: thread, not torrent; precision, not pride.

At a narrow fork, the river battered a small row of boats together. The impact flared the wards along the hulls, and for a ringing second a lattice of light shivered across the water. Thorne felt the aether in the barrier twitch, the current had fed it, and the wards had drunk. He stepped around the edge of the flare and watched the pale curtain sweep back into nothing. Close. Too close.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He picked his mark: three crates stacked under a tarp on a side pier. They weren't the biggest shipment, but they were the ones that mattered, vials in wooden crates lined with mastic and runic sealing wax. High-tier reagents for rituals and core work. If he ruined those, Brennak would lose leverage; merchants who'd saved would find dried glass where promise had been.

The men nearest were bored, casual, reckless, warmed by hearth-smells and coin. Levels told him enough: they'd notice if something went loud. So he made it quiet.

He raised his hand, palm open. He called the air with a narrow thought and drew a thin filament of ambient aether, folded into a hairline blade. Not a roar of light; not the plasma-white flame that had split the forest. This was Marian's phasing made his own: a blade that didn't exist until it needed to, a thread tuned to slide between states.

He placed the blade against the crate's seam. For anyone watching, the wood only trembled a fraction of an inch, a near-invisible sigh. Then the phase snapped closed inside the timbers. The splinters opened from the inside out as the blade phased back to solidity for a heartbeat, carving through wax and rope, severing glass and dissolving seals with precision heat. Vials hissed and clouded, reagents boiled into useless slurry inside their carriers. The crate collapsed inward, the noise swallowed by a groan of shifting boards.

Two men turned their heads at that sound. Heartbeats later, one muttered, "What the..." and the other reached for his knife.

Thorne was already behind them, the shadow curling into a neck like water finds a low. The nullite dagger slid clean and quick, silent as breath. The first man crumpled, a muffled thud. The second went down seconds later, a soft surprise, no more. Thorne's hands were steady; his breaths were candle-wick small. If anyone elsewhere heard the muffled drops in the delta's clamor, they thought rats or falling crates.

He moved from pile to pile. Another crate, another whisper-shard of aether and another internal cut. Reagent fumes steamed free and blew out into river air, harmlessly diluted by the current. One by one, the sealed boxes of high-tier goods became useless to men with coin but not patience, powdered, liquefied, charred into chemical mess that would fetch no honest buyer.

Perfect.

Thorne drew both nullite daggers, black metal that drank the moonlight. His plan wasn't to fight; it was to send a message. The dwarf needed to know exactly who had done this.

He slipped from shadow to shadow, his movements a smooth rhythm of breath and intent. Each step muffled by the faint hum of his active stealth. At the nearest tunnel mouth, a lone guard leaned against a post, half-bored, half-dozing, a pipe smoldering between his fingers.

Thorne exhaled once. He moved.

One heartbeat later, the guard stiffened as a blade kissed his throat. A soft crack of vertebrae followed, clean, final, almost polite. Thorne caught the body before it hit the ground, lowering it behind a stack of crates. The dagger left no blood.

He stepped into the tunnel.

The air inside was close and heavy, vibrating faintly with the hum of the stabilization wards Brennak's engineers had carved into the walls. Pale glyphs pulsed along the stone like a heartbeat, keeping the tunnels from collapsing under the pressure of the shifting riverbed.

Thorne crouched, dragging his fingers across the nearest sigil. The hum tingled against his skin. He could feel the aether's structure, neat, rigid, dwarven precision. Sturdy, but predictable.

He whispered under his breath. "Let's make this personal."

Then he turned his focus inward, to his Aether Binding.

He channeled ambient aether into the daggers, intent sharp and deliberate: break. At once, the air thickened. The daggers drank the energy greedily, their edges glowing faint white-blue, threads of light spiraling around the runes engraved in their hilts.

The feedback hit him like a pulse through his veins, sharp, biting, alive. His core flared in answer, bright and furious, and for a terrifying instant he felt it strain. A line of heat shot through his chest, his heart stuttering in rhythm with the energy.

He gritted his teeth. The aether clawed at him, eager, wild. His eyes burned, light bleeding through the cracks of his restraint.

"Not now," he hissed, forcing control. His fingers trembled, but the infusion held. The daggers pulsed once, alive and hungry.

He drove one blade into the sigil.

The glyph flared, protesting, then shuddered and went dark, the light along the tunnel flickering out in a chain reaction. The air trembled as the stabilizing field collapsed, dust falling from the ceiling in lazy spirals.

One down.

He moved to the next, the process faster now, more confident. Cut, overload, collapse. Each broken ward destabilized the earth a little more, the tunnels creaking faintly under their own weight. It was the same trick he'd used on Brennak's underground market. The same signature.

A signature the dwarf would recognize.

Thorne allowed himself a grim smile.

By the time he reached the last sigil, sweat lined his forehead. His pulse thudded hard in his ears, his core still buzzing from the repeated feedback. But when he pressed the dagger into the glyph, it flickered and died with a satisfying snap.

The tunnels below groaned, faint vibrations spreading outward through the stone. He could feel it under his boots. A slow, creeping instability.

Good.

He sheathed his daggers, exhaled through his teeth, and climbed out of the tunnel mouth, keeping to the shadows. He scaled the ridge to higher ground, muscles aching, and crouched low among the roots of a withered tree overlooking the water. From there, he had a clear view of the delta below.

Men shouted to one another, unaware of what had just happened beneath their feet. The crates kept coming. The air shimmered faintly where the river met the wardline, the barrier between Evermist's outer reach and the wild chaos of the Primordial Forest beyond.

Thorne rested his forearms on his knees, eyes scanning the horizon. The ship would come soon. He could already feel the faint tremor of approaching engines through the water, the rhythmic thrum of magic-propelled runes.

He stayed still, breathing slow, waiting.

The first sound was the low hum of runic engines. Then came the light, soft, shifting, shimmering over the black water like ghosts.

Thorne straightened where he crouched among the roots, cloak brushing against the wet stone. Out on the river, a shadow grew. The ship emerged from the mist, broad, low, built for speed and stealth, its hull reinforced with dwarven plates carved in protective runes. Aether-sails flickered faintly between visible and invisible states, slipping in and out of sight like mirages.

The smugglers below grew animated. Torches flared, shouts echoed, and the dockhands started dragging crates toward the approaching vessel.

Thorne's Veil Sense expanded, threading through the air in thin, invisible currents. The information came to him in pulses, thirty-two signatures aboard, the usual assortment of smugglers, loaders, and minor spellrunners. But then...

He froze.

A dense knot of aether flared near the ship's stern, strong, deliberate, pulsing with a cadence that made the air tighten around it. When his mind brushed it, a faint notification shimmered in the edge of his vision:

Level 76 – Mage-Class Signature Detected

"Damn it," Thorne muttered under his breath.

This wasn't supposed to be complicated.

He'd expected a shipment of dust and a handful of Brennak's hired muscle, nothing he couldn't quietly ruin and slip away from before sunrise. But this… this changed everything.

He focused again, peeling back the aether threads to study the signature. The mage wasn't just powerful; their energy was disciplined. Structured. Whoever they were, they had formal training, the kind taught in academies, not black markets.

Brennak had brought in a mage strong enough to defend an entire shipment. That wasn't caution, that was desperation.

Thorne's first instinct was the old one: move fast, strike hard, overwhelm the threat before it could react. He could flood the delta in raw aether, collapse the tunnels, drown the docks, burn the ship where it stood. He could end this entire operation in a minute.

But the thought of channeling that much power made his chest ache. His core still throbbed from last night, a quiet, relentless pulse beneath his ribs. He could feel the fracture there, small but real, like a splintered bone. Each breath of aether pressed against it. Each flicker of his Veil Sense made it strain.

If he overdid it again…

He flexed his fingers slowly, feeling the faint static rise under his skin. Even now the aether around him leaned close, eager, ready to obey. It would be so easy to let it all go.

No.

He forced the temptation down. This had to be done smart.

He studied the terrain again. The ship's approach would take it close to the western dock, the only one deep enough to handle a cargo that size. The stabilizing wards in the tunnels beneath that dock were gone; he'd cut them himself. The ground there was already unstable, held together by little more than habit and wishful runecraft.

A plan began to form.

He wouldn't have to fight the mage head-on. He'd just have to make sure the mage and everything they protected went under.

Thorne crouched lower, pulling one dagger free. The nullite edge gleamed faintly with residual aether, ready to do its work.

"Sorry, Brennak," he murmured. "But if you're sending mages to guard your secrets, you should've built better tunnels."

He waited, eyes locked on the incoming ship as it cut through the mist. The air thickened with the hum of aether engines. The men on the docks began to cheer, their lanterns swaying wildly.

Thorne breathed once, slow and deliberate.

Patience. Timing. Precision.

He would wait until the ship was halfway moored, until every crate, every worker, and every ounce of Brennak's ambition sat squarely over the cracks he had carved into the delta.

Then, with one breath and a flick of his hand, the whole thing would come down.

And if the mage wanted a fight…

They'd have to crawl out of the river first.