The mage-engineer's shop was dim, lit only by the glow of a hovering mana lamp and the occasional flare from a bubbling alchemical rig in the corner. Tools hung from the rafters, most rusted from disuse or blackened by overexposure to volatile essence. The scent of ozone, grease, and burnt crystal clung to the air.
Kaiden sat stiffly on the reinforced chair, one leg stretched out while the other hung awkwardly over the edge. His broken mechanical limb emitted soft whirrs and occasional sparks as the engineer circled it.
The man — known only as Crel — wore thick gloves and had a permanent squint behind his rune-scribed monocle. His hands moved with a steady confidence that came from decades of delicate, often dangerous work. But his eyes kept flicking between Kaiden's face and the others.
"You've got a military-grade joint mechanism here," Crel muttered. "Northern tech. Modified for… something else. Looks stitched together with mana-sensitive alloys and raw steel."
"It's beyond most of your kind, I'd wager," Kaiden said, voice edged with disdain. "Try not to break it more than it already is."
Crel raised an eyebrow. "Arrogant for someone leaking sparks."
Kaiden's eyes narrowed. "I've survived worse than this. If I wanted to be crawling, I wouldn't be here asking a back-alley engineer to patch me up."
Crel gave a humorless chuckle. "You want it fixed or not?"
"Fixed and improved. I'm not limping out of here like some broken tool."
Sylen watched from the corner, arms crossed. Rav stood near the door, eyes scanning the street through a narrow slit in the shutters. Kess, still jittery from the teleportation, fidgeted with a leftover illusion glyph on his wrist.
Crel held up the ring Kaiden had given him earlier, turning it in his fingers. "Mana-binding. Fine work. Not local."
"It's yours if you keep quiet," Kaiden said flatly.
"You don't look like standard mercenaries," Crel muttered. "And you're hiding something. Failed job? Fugitive contract? You strike me more like... exiles."
Kaiden's lips curled faintly. "Guess it doesn't matter as long as you get paid."
Crel sighed. "You people and your secrets." He slipped the ring into a drawer and got to work.
With practiced hands, he pulled back a panel in Kaiden's thigh, exposing warped alloy plating, cracked gear tracks, and ether conduits pulsing erratically with pale blue light. Tiny puffs of steam hissed from ruptured seals. The scent of burnt mana thread filled the air.
"Damn thing's been through a meat grinder," Crel muttered. "Etheric backlash on your conduits. I'm going to have to reforge the link with a stabilizer shard. If I had a forge golem, this would be faster."
"I'm not paying for slow," Kaiden said. "Do it right."
The engineer glanced at him with a sideways smirk. "You're lucky I enjoy a challenge."
He pulled out a small crystal—opaque, faintly humming with a soft blue sheen—and wedged it into a new brace within the leg frame. He soldered in a micro-channel of reinforced mana thread and adjusted the support brace with a bronze chisel engraved with sigils Kaiden didn't recognize. The pain stabbed through Kaiden's nerves as flesh interfaced with realigned gears.
"You're not all machine," Crel said, his voice quieter this time. "That pain's real."
Kaiden grit his teeth. "Too real. Just means it still matters."
"Or it'll drive you insane. Half the people who take these kinds of mods don't last more than a year."
Kaiden leaned back, eyes dark. "Then I'll be the exception."
Crel paused for a moment, eyeing the exposed conduits. "Strange. This type of conduit shouldn't even respond this close to the border. Mana flow's too erratic around here. Either your source is warped... or you are."
Kaiden said nothing, but the tension in his jaw tightened.
Minutes passed with only the hum of tools and Kaiden's muted groans filling the air. Finally, Crel sat back, wiping his brow. The leg's panel clicked back into place with a satisfying hiss. The glow from the conduits stabilized, casting faint light through the seams.
"I rerouted your mana relay through a stabilizing shard. You won't have as much power output, but it won't overheat or fry your nerves anymore. I also gave the joint plating a stronger mana-reactive lattice. Should hold better under strain."
Kaiden flexed the leg experimentally. There was resistance, but it moved cleaner — tighter.
"It's an upgrade," he said grudgingly.
"Think of it as an apology for calling you a corpse," Crel said.
Rav gave a quiet signal from the window. "Guards sweeping the block. Might be standard. Might not. I also saw new posters on the board. Warnings about outsiders with unusual gear. They're tightening things."
Crel gestured toward the back. "Out the service door. Don't come back."
They slipped into the narrow alley. The cool night air bit at Kaiden's exposed skin, and the distant sound of patrol boots echoed off stone.
They moved quickly, avoiding torchlight and loud streets until they ducked into a storage shed behind a shuttered bakery. Once inside, they huddled down.
"Now what?" Kess asked, whispering.
Kaiden looked down at his leg, the fresh repair humming steady with mana. "We find out where we are. Then we survive it."
Sylen pulled out the tattered flyer-map again. "According to this, and the signposts we passed... we're somewhere inside the southern borderlands. Human territory, no doubt."
Kaiden nodded slowly. "Then we keep the masks up. Hired blades. Masked pilgrims. Whatever fits."
He looked up at the others. "One slip, and this whole thing crumbles. They'll burn us before asking questions."
There was a short silence before Rav smirked slightly. "I'll give us a full two days before Kess trips over someone important."
"Hey!" Kess shot him a glare. "I'm not the one who nearly got caught talking to a street vendor with my hood down."
"That was strategic," Rav said dryly. "I was testing the local suspicion levels."
Sylen rolled her eyes. "Focus. We're not out of this yet." She glanced at Kaiden. "Your leg gonna hold?"
Kaiden gave a stiff nod. "For now. Better than before."
Kess leaned forward, eyes squinting at the repaired limb. "Still looks like a rusted dog chewed it up."
Kaiden smirked faintly. "That dog would be dead."
For a moment, the tension eased.
Outside, bells chimed the hour — midnight.
And somewhere beyond the walls, another hunt was already in motion.