The guards didn't speak. They flanked Torik like statues, metal greaves clanking against stone, each step bringing the young thief closer to whatever fate the city had in store for him. The hallway was narrow, its walls damp and green-veined with moss. A torch sputtered in a bracket overhead. The flame didn't so much light the way as it shivered in protest.
They stopped before a plain iron door. Captain Kell opened it without ceremony and gestured. "In."
The room was small. A single metal bar had been fixed into the far wall. A table. Two chairs. Bare stone floor, cracked in places. The ceiling arched low and was webbed with dust. Interrogation chamber, clearly. No need to dress it up.
"Left arm," Kell said to the guard. "Chain it to the bar. That'll be enough."
Torik didn't fight. The manacles clicked shut cold around his wrist, pinning it high enough that it would ache within minutes. Just one arm… a gesture. Mercy, or arrogance.
Kell turned to go but paused at the doorway. "Water? Food?"
Torik blinked, caught off guard. He narrowed his eyes. Some kind of trick. Poison, or a setup for weakness. "No," he spat.
Kell shrugged and stepped out with the guards, shutting the door behind him. Their footsteps faded.
Silence.
Torik waited three heartbeats before moving.
He scanned the room like he always did as survival demanded. The table was old and splintered, one leg crooked from uneven stone. The chairs weren't bolted down. The walls were thick; he tapped one with his knuckles and felt nothing but weight. The only door was steel-banded and locked from the outside. A narrow vent near the ceiling might have let in a breeze once, but he wouldn't fit through it, not even if he dislocated both shoulders and cracked a few ribs.
He looked down. There.
A shard of rusted metal, chipped off from something old. Maybe a weapon once, maybe just debris. It was jagged and dry, but sharp enough to draw blood. He picked it up with his free hand.
Not strong enough to fight. Especially not while chained up, he'd have to run.
But he could lose the hand.
He stared at his wrist, chain taut, and held the shard to the flesh just below the cuff. Shit, he thought. This was his only option?
No. He couldn't hesitate here.
The door opened.
He froze. Kell stepped in, alone. His eyes dropped to the shard in Torik's hand, the angle of his wrist.
"You were going to cut off your hand," Kell said. He didn't raise his voice. He sounded… impressed.
Torik dropped the shard onto the table. It clinked.
Kell walked forward and picked it up, turning it over between gloved fingers. "Would've poisoned you," he said. "Rust that deep carries death in it. Your veins would blacken in hours."
Torik tensed. "I would've… burned the wound. Seared it shut."
Kell gave a short bark of a laugh and tossed the metal back on the table. "Maybe. If you had fire. You don't." He sat down across from Torik and pulled his chair forward with a scrape. His posture changed, no longer polite, no longer amused.
"So," he said, eyes narrowing. "Do you want to talk willingly, or do I have to beat it out of you?"
Torik didn't answer at first. His arm ached, and his pride itched more. They already had Varlon. The artifact, the crown, was out of his hands. He wasn't going to get out clean, but maybe… maybe he could cut a deal.
Still, he didn't trust the captain. Couldn't trust any highborn knight playing at kindness one minute and cruelty the next.
"What do I get?" he asked.
Kell didn't even blink. "What do you want?"
Torik sneered. "Does it matter? You'll promise me anything and give me nothing."
Kell leaned back. "You have nothing to lose. Trust is dangerous but powerful, when given correctly."
Torik gritted his teeth. "Varlon offered me a job. Said he'd clear my debts, give me a hundred chains. All I had to do was steal something."
"And you succeeded," Kell said. "But Varlon swears you never brought him the crown."
He was watching Torik carefully now. Measuring. Judging.
Torik thought. He could lie. Say he still had the crown, use that as leverage. But Kell didn't seem the type to be tricked.
"Don't play me for a fool, boy," Kell said, as if reading his thoughts. "If you hold out, I'll beat it out of you. If I kill you, so be it."
Torik swallowed. The words weren't shouted, but they rang true. Coldly true. Maybe death was better than torture. He would end up in a grave either way.
"I don't have it," he said. "I passed it to my partner. Inside the Keep. They got out with it."
Kell's brow rose. "So that's how you managed it. I watched you climb the wall. That bag you carried looked too light to hold anything of value." He chuckled. "You've got good instincts."
"You've got good eyes," Torik replied.
Kell leaned forward. "Where is your partner now?"
Torik hesitated, then admitted, "They betrayed me. We were supposed to meet afterward. They never showed."
Kell exhaled through his nose. "Wonderful." He rubbed a hand down his face.
Torik looked at him. "Can I ask you something?"
Kell nodded.
"What's so special about this crown? The whole city feels like it's choking over it."
Kell's expression turned grim. "That crown," he said, "is the Titan's Crown."
"The what?"
"Tharoghul's crown," Kell said. "The Last Titan. It is what binds him, what keeps him at bay. That crown must remain affixed with the Jewels of Binding. And the main jewel is cracked."
Torik's mouth dried. "So they brought it here… to fix it?"
Kell nodded once. "And the ones who hired you? The Cult of the Unbound. They don't want it fixed. They want Tharoghul to rise."
Silence settled between them. Dust floated in the light from the ceiling vent, dancing like dying embers.
"I may have helped end the world," Torik said at last.
"Perhaps," Kell said.
Torik leaned back. "Whatever. What's the world ever done for me?"
Kell's eyes snapped up. "That's a dangerous way to think."
"I'm a thief," Torik said. "Dangerous thinking's the only kind I've got."
Kell stood, paced once, then turned. "I want you to help me recover the crown."
Torik blinked. "What?"
"You heard me."
"I thought you'd execute me."
Kell shrugged. "I should. But you're not going to be."
"Why?"
"Because," Kell said, leaning on the table, "you're a Veilbinder."
Torik blinked. "A what?"
Kell tilted his head, watching him, truly watching him, like a man inspecting the sharpness of a blade that shouldn't exist.
"Don't insult us both by pretending. In the Keep when the guards cornered you, you made them see something that wasn't there. Made them see you as Tharoghul. Tell me I'm wrong."
Torik didn't speak. He didn't need to. The silence was admission enough.
But the confusion on his face… that part was genuine. Kell narrowed his eyes.
"You really don't know."
"No," Torik said. "I thought it was just… something I could do. A trick I picked up. I don't even know how it works. I just focus, and things happen. People don't see me. Or they see something else. I get headaches from it though, especially after doing a whole room my head was on fire."
Kell exhaled, the kind of breath that came after watching someone juggling lit oilflasks and realizing they didn't know they were flammable.
"That's because normal Veilbinders don't bind a whole room of people," Kell said. "They are lucky to manage two people at once, yet you made all of those soldiers see what you wanted."
Torik stilled. There was a gravity to the words, like a nail being driven into the planks of the world.
"Veilbinding," Kell continued. "The art of bending perception. Not of the world, but of how the world is seen. A Veilbinder changes reality not by touching it, but by convincing others it's already changed."
Torik sat in stunned silence.
Veilbinding.
A name. A shape to what had always been smoke and instinct. Suddenly his whole life, the narrow escapes, the invisible moments, the times a guard had blinked and forgotten he was there… it wasn't just luck. It was a design. A pattern hidden in plain sight.
"There are others like me?" he asked, voice low.
Kell nodded. "Few. But yes. Some find their way to courts, lords and ladies pay handsomely to twist how others are seen. Others…" He gestured at Torik, at his grimy cuffs and the rust-stained floor. "Find themselves in the gutters. Scoundrels. Spies. Thieves."
Torik's mind raced. "So it's… magic?"
"It's older than magic," Kell said. "Magic borrows power. The Bound Arts are power. Gifts drawn from the same forces that bind the world. Veilbinding. Musclebinding. Stonebinding. Soulbinding. There are dozens. All rare. All dangerous. And all forbidden, if practiced without sanction."
"Wait…" Torik leaned forward. "Those creepy Bound guards. The one who shattered the stone wall with their bare hands…"
"Musclebinders." Kell finished. "Their strength isn't natural. They bind their muscle to the essence of force itself. You saw the result."
A beat passed. Torik stared at his own hands, dirty, calloused, trembling slightly. And yet, they had made soldiers doubt their eyes. Made men run screaming from the image of a Titan.
He looked up. "And you want me to help you. Why?"
"Yes," Kell said. "That crown was supposed to be impossible to steal. But you did it. Which means you can steal it back."
Torik looked down at his manacled arm. Then up at Kell. "And what do I get?"
"Freedom," Kell said. "Those debts Varlon was supposed to clear? I'll do it. You walk away a free man. Help us, and this goes away."
Torik thought about it.
Then he sighed.
"Fine, but get me a plate of food, the type the highlords eat."
"Changed your mind I guess, I'll have it sent to you. I can't free you yet I need to get High Lady Ysara on board first."
Before Torik could ask the man walked out and shut the door behind him.