The Edge of the Coin

The Edge of the Coin

Zalim - The Streets of Seda

The city was loud. Not the good, rhythmic noise of a forge or a training yard, but the sloppy, discordant noise of panic.

Zalim moved through the wreckage of the lower district with the bored efficiency of a man weeding a garden. A looter, crazed by the yellow fog, lunged at him from a shattered storefront with a broken table leg.

Zalim didn't draw the black scimitar. He simply shifted his weight, a subtle, fluid motion of his hips. The looter stumbled past him, overextended. Zalim tapped the man behind the ear with the heavy brass pommel of his blade. The man dropped like a sack of grain.

"Sloppy," Zalim murmured.

At his hip, the black blade hummed—a low, vibrating thrum of hunger. It wanted blood. It remembered blood.

"Not yet," he whispered to the steel, his hand soothing the hilt. "These are just symptoms. We save the edge for the disease."

He stepped over the unconscious man and continued up the hill. His unweathered, porcelain-smooth face remained impassive, untouched by the grime and smoke that coated the rest of the city. He didn't sweat. He didn't pant. He simply existed, a vessel of ancient, preserved lethality walking through a modern disaster.

He looked up at the high district. The blue-white dome of the Etheric Institute glowed against the smoky sky, a beacon of stubborn order.

"Crowstooth," Zalim said, the name tasting like old wine. " still hiding."

He adjusted his crimson silks and began the climb.

The Institute - The Great Hall

The Moot was dying before it had even begun.

Rina stood at the head of the long oak table in the Institute's library, looking out at the faces of the surviving bureaucracy. Junior senators, tax collectors, guild masters—men and women who were excellent at filing paperwork but utterly incapable of survival.

"We cannot declare martial law without a quorum!" spluttered a rotund man from the Trade Guild. "The charter is clear! Article 15 states that—"

"The charter is ash!" Rina slammed her hand on the table. "Look out the window, Master Gilder. The city is half-gone. The Sanguine are real. Root is real. If we do not consolidate power now, we will be overrun by the riots before nightfall."

"And who do you propose leads this... Empire?" a sharp-faced woman from the Treasury asked, her eyes narrowing. "You? A girl who abandoned the floor during session?"

"I propose we survive," Rina snapped. "I propose we find someone who knows how to fight a war, not just fund one."

"We have the City Guard," Gilder insisted. "Captain Vane will—"

"Captain Vane is dead," Aga’s voice rumbled from the corner of the room.

The room fell silent. The woodsman was leaning against a bookshelf, sharpening Gaidan’s longsword with a whetstone. He hadn't spoken for an hour, just watched them with wolfish disdain.

"I saw him," Aga continued, not looking up from the steel. "He was beating a dead man in the plaza. The sickness took him."

"Then we are defenseless," the Treasury woman whispered, her face pale.

"Not defenseless," Crowstooth said, stepping into the room. The Arch-Mage looked tired, leaning heavily on his staff. "We have the Institute's wardens. And we have our... guests."

"A barbarian and a traitor?" Gilder scoffed. "Hardly an army."

Before Rina could retort, the heavy double doors of the library boomed. Not a knock. A sound like a battering ram made of air.

A breathless junior warden burst in. "Headmaster! The gates! Someone is... someone is coming through! Bypassing every ward in place!"

"The Sanguine?" Crowstooth asked, his grip tightening on his staff.

"No, sir. Just one man. But... the guards... they can't touch him."

The Courtyard

Aga was the first out the door, sword already hand. Rina and Crowstooth followed close behind.

In the main courtyard, a dozen Institute wardens were on the ground. They weren't dead. They were groaning, nursing bruised ribs and dislocated shoulders. Their staves lay scattered on the white stone.

Standing in the center of the circle was a man in desert silks. He hadn't drawn his weapon. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, looking up at the main tower with a mild, critical expression.

"Form!" Aga roared, leaping down the steps.

The woodsman charged. He didn't know who this intruder was, but he smelled of ozone and old magic—a scent that was dangerously close to the construct, but sharper. Dangerous.

Aga swung the longsword in a horizontal cleave, a blow meant to cut a man in half.

The desert warrior didn't block. He didn't dodge.

He flowed.

Like water pouring over a stone, the stranger shifted inside Aga’s guard. He caught Aga’s wrist mid-swing—not with strength, but with perfect, terrifying leverage. He twisted.

Aga’s momentum was turned against him. The big woodsman was flipped over the stranger's hip, slamming into the pavement with a bone-rattling thud.

Aga roared, rolling to his feet instantly, ready to kill.

"Halt!" Crowstooth’s voice was a thunderclap, amplified by magic.

Aga froze, his sword raised. The stranger didn't flinch. He just brushed a speck of dust from his pristine crimson sleeve.

"Zalim," Crowstooth breathed, descending the stairs. "You look... unchanged."

The stranger turned. His glass-like eyes fixed on the old mage. "Crowstooth. You look old. The years have been... heavy?"

"Heavy enough," Crowstooth said. He gestured to the fallen guards. "Was this necessary?"

"They were rude," Zalim said simply. He patted the black hilt at his hip. "And he is impatient. I had to keep the noise down."

Aga lowered his sword, eyeing the stranger warily. "Who is this?"

"An old friend," Crowstooth said. "And perhaps... the answer to your question, Senator Cassius."

Rina stepped forward, studying the stranger. He radiated a calm, lethal competence that the Senators inside could only dream of. "You are a soldier?"

"I am a weapon," Zalim corrected gently. "There is a distinction."

"Why are you here?" Aga asked, sniffing the air. The man smelled of sand and... nothing. Like an empty room.

"I was hunting," Zalim said. "Border skirmishes. Sanguine raids. They've been testing the perimeter for months. I tracked a cell moving West."

"West?" Elara asked, appearing at the doorway with Faren. "Toward the coast?"

"No," Zalim said. "Toward the mountains. They aren't just attacking Seda. I found their tracks leading into the foothills of the Iron Peaks."

"Glimmerdeep," Faren whispered. "The Domain of Earth."

Zalim nodded. "Root—if that is what he calls himself now—didn't just want to destroy Seda. He wanted a distraction. While you were watching the fire, his main force was moving."

"Moving to do what?" Rina asked.

Zalim’s hand tightened on his sword hilt. The black blade seemed to darken the air around it.

"To wake something up," Zalim said. "The Sanguine were carrying heavy equipment. Excavation gear. And they were singing old songs. Songs about the Stone King."

Crowstooth paled. "Greed. The Dead King of Earth."

Aga sheathed his sword. The path was clear. The scent of the Abyss he had tracked here was gone, washed away by the sea. But a new trail had just opened.

"Then we go to the mountains," Aga said.

"We?" Zalim looked at the woodsman, a faint, amused smile touching his perfect lips. "You swing that sword like a falling tree, woodsman. You have heart, but no edge."

"I can learn," Aga growled.

"Perhaps," Zalim said. He looked at Rina, then at the terrified scholars, and finally at Crowstooth. "It seems the pieces are finally on the board."

He bowed low to Rina, a gesture of exaggerated courtly grace.

"Zalim, of the Empty Court, at your service, my Lady. If you need an Emperor... I suppose I can clear the way for one."