Illuminated only with the soft green glow of the strange stick, he could not see a thing beyond a few steps. The sound grew closer. Now Helion was sure of it. It sounded like steps. Fast steps. Someone was running towards him.

Had the heretics found him? Or was it his dad? The boy barely had any time to make a split second decision. He had promised his father to be cautious and to meet at the “cistern chamber”, some sort of big open room with an elevated platform over a gigantic pool of water according to how he had described it.

Helion made a choice. Choosing one of the descending tunnels closer to him, he readied his arm and threw the glowing stick as far as he could into the darkness down below. He had made sure to choose a tunnel that didn’t have the moon eye marking and to remember where the one that had it was before losing his only source of light. Then he walked as fast and quiet as he could towards the direction where he remembered the correctly marked tunnel to be, growing very aware of how close the steps were to him. He was used to moving in the dark, so knowing where he had to go already it was not much of a problem. All those years of playing in the basement had helped him to grow comfortable in the lack of light.

The boy hid behind one of the arch columns of the entrance, calmed himself with a breathing technique his father taught him, and waited. His eyes were getting used to the deep dark, even though there was a slight green glow coming from the tunnel where he had thrown the stick. Minutes later, he noticed movement in the direction he had come from. A cloaked figure came out of the dark. Illuminated by the soft green light, the robes looked stained by some liquid that Helion suspected was probably blood. By the shape of his body, Helion ventured that it was a man, but definitely not his father. This stranger was wielding a scary looking curved dagger with what he could swear, even in the dark, were actual animal teeth growing out of the back of the blade, perfect to cut open flesh and tear apart bones. The light slightly reflected on them, suggesting that they were probably made of metal. It was much bigger and menacing that his humble little hunting knife though.

He tried to focus his senses, just like his father had taught him. The mantra he had practiced again and again to call upon his Clarity coming to his silent lips and echoing in his mind.

“Remember Helion, the key to decide if you are truly in danger is to determine the power of an enemy. Most Wielders above Iron Core can hide their auras, so you may not know their Core level, but one can never hide if they are a Wielder at all, no matter how strong they may be. So listen well...”

My vision exists beyond my body. My eyes are not my eyes, just a path to connect to what the world can show me.

“...no matter the circumstances...”

My eye is the conduit of my soul. My soul is the source of my forming Core.

“...if you were to find yourself against a Wielder that doesn’t try to hide his aura...”

A Core shines bright like a pearl in a dark pond, reflecting the light that is my will.

He focused the light of his own soul into the waters of his enemy, keeping his juvenile inherent Rohmat concentrated enough to form a fine film over his eyes to act as lenses to see the Rohmat outside himself.

“...just run.”

An intense aura of kaleidoscopic light, shapes forming and changing in the dark, wild and unpredictable surrounded the heretic. The Rohmat was trembling and dancing in impossible ways, tiny specks of possibility and creation given color and movement, manifested through the man’s core outwards, reverberating with raw power. That strong Rohmat coalesced into tears of tarnished black silver floating in the air around the man, like a crown of mercurial stars.

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Helion could recognize this as he had seen the same around his father when he had shown him his aura, except for the dark spots covering the fluid, ethereal metal. There was no doubt about it. The stranger wasn’t just any Wielder; he was a Silver Core. The heretics leader. The man that had been taking over the valley in a wave of violence. People have been saying he called himself Prophet Rainfall or something like that.

What was he doing there? Had the heretics been using the old Metal World tunnels too? Was that how they overcame the superior defenses of Kaladori? If that was the case, then he was more in danger down there that in the surface! For all he knew, the tunnels could be overflowing with heretics or worse, they could have hidden in there a Broken, a corrupted Wielder turned into a twisted monstrosity, ready to unleash it into the town from inside its defenses.

Helion had only heard horror stories from the guards, tales about Wielders that lost themselves to corruption and fused irreversibly with their Almats, turning into abominations part person and part, well, things. Almats could come in a lot of shapes beyond just weapons, after all. The mayor had an Almat he had cultivated from a pocket watch. For example, Helion had seen him speaking to it a couple of times while he was walking down the street. And he had heard about Almats that could be used to move from one place to another faster than on foot, which sounded quite fantastical to him. Apparently they called those “vehicles”.

His father had fought the Broken for real in the past, but he never wanted to talk about those times. His face always got pretty dark when Helion tried to get information about the Slaughterlands beyond the protection of the Emperor, so he learned not to inquire about it anymore a while back.

Helion kept his breath in check, steady and soft, like a dead whisper. The heretic leader seemed curious about the light, but he was not moving. Come on, you blasphemous piece of scrap, get on with it and leave me be! Hesitating, the man stepped towards the tunnel and his aura trembled. Helion knew what that was. His father’s aura had done the same thing when he had practiced his aura sight with him. He was using a Skill!

Although there was no way for him to know what kind of skill it was just from seeing his aura, its activation was something he was capable of detecting. This heretic was being extremely careless. He either was truly incompetent as a Wielder or the worse possibility, too powerful to really care about hiding anything.

The state of the valley’s greatest settlement didn’t indicate the former was a strong contender, so Helion was not willing to risk it at all.

He started walking backwards slowly, very slowly...

The heretic’s head suddenly snapped in his direction. To the rust with stealth then.

Helion turned around and started running down the passage. Without glancing behind, he knew that the man was doing the same. He didn’t have many options at hand. It was very dark and there was a decent distance between them. He hadn’t seen much of the tunnel before losing his light, but his eyes were already accustomed enough to the dark to know it was a steep descent, almost ramp like. His dagger could be used as a weapon, but he was neither a trained fighter nor he had any confidence in being able to overcome a Wielder with a Silver Core. Their fast steps echoed down the old stone floor, but he could hear the rushing of water not far down there. If only he could reach the water, maybe he could...

He suddenly felt much lighter than moments before. It was like a weight had been removed from his left side, giving him an extra boost to run, just in time as the tunnel ended as it did the stone to step in. Ahead and below of him there was only darkness. He saw something fall down from his side and he felt a rush of cold coming from his hand. He took a quick glance, his head spinning and a strange sensation crawling over his spine.

His arm was gone.

On the stones a few steps behind, cleanly cut up to the elbow, his left arm was lying in a pool of blood. Whose blood is that? He thought in his confusion. The shock was too much still to realize what had just happened and losing his balance after the sudden shift in weight at the border of the tunnel’s end; he did the only logical thing. He tripped. Just in time to avoid another attack that swoop just where his head had just been a second ago.

The last thing he saw was the face of his assailant. Or he thought he did, but the blood was rushing to his vision and there was no light, only his Rohmat vision that he had forgotten to turn off. But he saw him, and the heretic knew it, only to lose consciousness just as he fell.

Down, down into the darkness below.