Chapter 23
The outer districts stank of rust and ash. Cracked walls wept grease. Towering furnaces never ceased churning. Smoke coated the sky like a second skin.
This was where the Empire forgot its dead.
And Kiro walked among them.
He moved without a cloak, without armor—his body marked by glowing sigils, the Voidbrand pulsing faintly on his shoulder. Survivors—those too broken to resist, too afraid to speak—watched him pass with sunken eyes.
He stopped before a group of workers as they loaded grav-carts with scraps pulled from a collapsed fuel tunnel. One boy barely older than fifteen dropped his bundle when he saw the weapon on Kiro's back. Blood Venom, quiet now, hissed faintly in the boy's mind.
Kiro crouched before him.
"What's your name?" he asked.
The boy didn't answer.
Kiro didn't press. Instead, he looked to the others. "Do you feel it?" he asked. "The way the air tastes different. The tremble in the stone. That's not war. That's change."