The slums breathed with their own rhythm.
A wet, metallic exhale curled through the labyrinth of alleyways and collapsed roofs, thick with the scent of rust, oil, and something older—something sour that clung to your bones long after you left. If you ever left.
The sky overhead was the color of beaten tin, a low-hanging ceiling pressing down on the crooked silhouettes of buildings like a slow, grinding threat. Somewhere in the haze, morning had arrived, but no one in the Stannum Slums had noticed. Here, time didn't rise and fall with the sun—it hung like a chain around your neck.
In a tight corner between two leaning brick walls, where cracked pipework hissed like angry serpents, a boy sat with his knees pulled tight to his chest.
They called him Kael.
Not because it meant anything. Not because it belonged to someone he'd lost. Simply because it was short enough to shout and hard enough to spit.
He looked fifteen, maybe. Or maybe the slums had chewed years off his face. His skin was the pallid color of old parchment, freckled with the grime of a hundred unwashed days. His eyes—black, wide, and too still for his age—were the only clean thing about him.
He sat motionless, back pressed against a warm exhaust vent, watching steam billow across the alley like smoke from a dying god's lungs.
His hands were wrapped in ratty cloth, fingertips stained a dull reddish brown—Stannum residue. Not from his blood, though it ran thick with it. From work. The kind of work that scraped under fingernails and stayed with you when you slept. If you slept.
Footsteps scraped across the upper scaffolds. Kael didn't flinch. Too rhythmic. Too familiar.
"Scav trains beat us to the western spill again," came a voice from above—low, female, sharp as glass. A pair of boots dropped beside him. Worn soles, broken heel. Nira.
She crouched, pushing back the hood of her weather-beaten coat. Her face bore the signature marks of the slums: shallow lines, sun-hardened skin, eyes that had stopped expecting anything better years ago. She flicked him a half-eaten strip of synthmeat. He caught it without looking.
"Thanks," Kael muttered, biting into the bitter protein like it owed him money.
She watched him chew for a beat, then frowned. "You hear about the Outer Ring flare?"
He nodded.
"Another Aereus purge. Twelve dead, just for stepping past the line."
He said nothing. There wasn't much to say. The Aereus didn't kill because they needed to. They did it to remind the rest that breathing was a privilege—one bought with golden veins and guarded by platinum teeth.
Kael's own veins pulsed dully beneath his skin. The color of ashwater. Stannum. The lowest of the low. Bloodmetal that did nothing. No enhancements, no power, no glow. A joke played by fate.
"Don't worry," Nira muttered, eyes fixed on some point far beyond the alley wall. "We'll find something soon. You're due for testing in less than a year, right? Maybe—"
"Don't." Kael's voice was quiet. Not harsh. Just tired.
Nira shut up.
Testing. As if it was anything more than a slow public execution for the slumborn. The Ceremony of Alloying—the day when a citizen's worth was measured in the purity and strength of their bloodmetal. The day society decided who you were allowed to be.
Cuprum Water, if you were lucky. Maybe Aereus if you had enough money to bribe a new identity. Platinum Regius? That wasn't for humans. That was for gods.
Kael had stopped dreaming of miracles long ago.
A shout rang out down the block. A crash. Glass? Metal?
Both teens stiffened. Nira was already on her feet, hand going to the worn shock-blade she carried on her belt.
A figure rounded the alley corner.
Old. Limping. Cloaked in something that looked more like tattered robes than a coat. Too heavy for the weather, and too clean for someone from here. His face was obscured, but his steps—while slow—were deliberate.
He stopped a few paces from them and lifted his head.
Kael felt something tighten in his chest. The man's eyes weren't white. They were silver. Not reflective. Luminous. Not alive.
A blink later, the stranger had lowered his gaze, staring at Kael like he'd already read his name from a list.
"You're not supposed to be here," Nira snapped. "Keep moving."
The old man didn't answer. Instead, he raised one hand. Not threatening. Just… showing.
His palm bore a mark. Burned in. Twisting, spindled lines that formed the outline of a broken circle. Inside, a single droplet, etched in crimson ink. A sigil.
Kael stared. Not because it was impressive. Because he'd seen it before.
Just once. Years ago. On the wall of a ruined chamber buried beneath the canal lines. A hidden door with no handle. A whisper of something forbidden.
A symbol that had no place in the bloodmetal hierarchy. Not in any class. Not on any register.
The man turned without another word and limped away, vanishing into the morning haze.
Kael didn't speak. Didn't move. His heart was beating too loud.
"Kael?" Nira asked.
But he was already standing.
Kael walked like he'd forgotten how to stop.
The alleyways stretched ahead, endless and crooked, rusted veins feeding into the rotting carcass of the district. But the path he followed wasn't physical. It was memory, instinct, a thread pulled tight from years ago—when he was smaller, hungrier, and still believed in impossible things.
Nira's footsteps echoed behind him. She didn't ask questions. Yet.
"You saw that mark before," she said at last, voice low.
Kael didn't answer. The slums didn't reward honesty, and they punished hope.
But the image was burned behind his eyes: a door deep under the canalworks, sealed by centuries, half-swallowed by the roots of the city itself. He'd stumbled on it once while chasing a runaway scav bot. At the time, it had felt like nothing. An echo. A dream.
Now it felt like gravity.
They passed into the inner slum sectors, where the walls grew tighter, like the city was trying to crush them out of existence. Garbage fires burned in oil drums. Silent faces peered from behind torn curtains. Here, even the buildings seemed tired of standing.
The trail stopped near the old transport artery—Tunnel 9C, long collapsed, now just a ribcage of twisted rail and steel. The man was nowhere in sight.
Kael paused. Scanned the shadows.
There. A flicker of motion, just beyond a warped access hatch. Not running. Waiting.
He crossed the debris field, one hand brushing the edge of a corroded girder. The metal hummed faintly. Not electricity. Not tech. Something older. Deeper.
The hatch groaned as he pulled it open.
Darkness waited below.
Nira swore. "Kael, this is suicide."
He met her gaze. "Then stay."
She didn't.
The tunnel beyond the hatch was dry. That alone made it rare. The city's underlayers were built like a nest—wires, ducts, canals, all tangled and forgotten. But this corridor was clean. Empty. Untouched.
The descent was slow. Steep. Their footsteps echoed in odd ways, like the walls were bending the sound, folding it inward.
Eventually, they reached a junction. The passage ahead was blocked by what looked like a vault door—thick and circular, its surface marked with the same broken-circle sigil. The crimson droplet in the center shimmered, like blood caught under glass.
The old man waited beside it.
"You followed," he said.
Kael nodded. "What is this place?"
The stranger studied him, then Nira. "She is not meant to be here."
"Tough," Nira said flatly.
The old man didn't argue. Instead, he turned to the door and pressed his palm to the sigil.
It moved.
Not like a machine. Like something alive. The door peeled open in a slow spiral, revealing a chamber beyond.
Light spilled out.
Not electric. Not fire. It came from the walls themselves—veins of amber stone running like circuits through the room, pulsing softly, as if breathing.
Kael stepped inside.
The air was warmer here. Drier. And there was a scent—like burnt ozone, salt, and copper. Familiar, yet impossible.
The chamber was circular, the floor tiled in broken mosaics. In the center stood a platform, etched with ancient runes. Symbols older than the bloodmetal system. Older than the Alloying Order itself.
Figures stood along the walls. Hooded. Still.
"You walk on forbidden ground," one of them said. Their voice echoed oddly, as though spoken through water.
Kael's mouth was dry. "I didn't ask to be born Stannum. I didn't ask to be nothing."
"Yet here you are," another voice said. "Why?"
Kael hesitated.
Then: "Because I don't believe the lie anymore."
A long silence followed.
Then the old man spoke again, gentler now. "The bloodmetal hierarchy is not truth. It is design. A scaffold of control built on generations of fear."
He approached Kael, raising one hand.
"You bleed Stannum. Weak. Brittle. Worthless. That is what they told you. What if it wasn't weakness at all? What if it was suppression?"
Kael's breath caught.
"They said it doesn't conduct power," he murmured. "That it's inert."
"They lied."
The old man turned and gestured to the glowing veins in the wall.
"Stannum resists change. It endures. It corrodes others, but not itself. When alloyed, it doesn't amplify—it stabilizes. It anchors. It is the base. The silent spine."
Kael felt dizzy.
"You want to break your fate?" the old man asked. "Then unlearn their laws. The body can be rewritten. Blood can be remade."
A chill ran down Kael's spine.
"You're talking about a transfusion," Nira said quietly. "Illegals. You'll kill him."
The old man turned. His gaze burned.
"Not a transfusion. A convergence."
The platform behind them stirred.
Rods rose from its center, tipped with intricate needles, each etched with vein-script. A machine, but not one Kael had ever seen. It looked… organic. Like it had grown from the stone itself.
"You are not the first to come here," the old man said. "But few are chosen. Fewer still survive. You carry a fragment of resonance in your blood. An echo we've been waiting for."
Kael stared.
A hundred voices in his head screamed at him to run. To climb back through the hatch and disappear. To forget this chamber. To cling to the familiar decay of his world.
But another voice—smaller, quieter, older—whispered something else.
You are not broken. You are unfinished.
His hands curled into fists.
"What happens if I agree?"
The old man smiled.
"Then you begin to become."