Krimshold had once been a fortress city, a mighty bastion of stone and steel built to hold back the crawling dangers of the world. But time had other plans. As wars dwindled and borders shifted, the fortress transformed—not by design, but necessity. Its walls became trading grounds. Its towers, merchant stalls. Now it stood as a chaotic amalgam of crime, trade, and restless opportunity.
Fornos Dag walked calmly through its crowded streets, the city's layered scents of iron, spices, smoke, and wet stone clinging to the air. Beside him moved Brassheart, cloaked and masked like a mute servant. The golem towered behind him in silence, its bulky form slightly stooped to blend in, or at least to draw less attention.
It didn't help much. Krimshold noticed everything.
A group of street performers juggled small magic flares to impress a crowd of drunk traders. Children darted between carts and guards, half-stealing and half-playing. Above them, steel cables and suspended platforms webbed the air, where wealthier merchants conducted business above the noise.
Fornos stopped in front of a worn stone table stacked with old trinkets and cracked gemstones. The vendor was a gaunt woman wrapped in layers of gray and purple shawls. Her eyes, clouded by cataracts, didn't stop scanning Fornos with pinpoint accuracy.
Without a word, Fornos reached into his coat and placed a small glinting jewel on her table—a mana-calibrated opal etched with micro-inscriptions.
She didn't touch it. Her hand simply twitched slightly under the table, sending a coded signal through whatever invisible network she was tied to.
"Item?" she asked in a voice rough as gravel.
"Harmful," Fornos replied, his eyes scanning the trinkets casually.
"Take a right to the flask items," she murmured.
Fornos gave a small nod and turned sharply, Brassheart following.
The directions weren't literal. "Flask items" referred to a coded marker in the bazaar—a black lantern painted with alchemical runes hanging from an archway. Fornos stepped under it and into a quieter section of the market, where fewer questions were asked and everything had a price.
He passed a stall selling confiscated codexes—some stripped from golems, others newly etched by rogue engineers. There was even a mounted display titled "Suicide Codexes—Use at Your Own Risk." Fornos smirked and moved on.
Eventually, he reached a shaded alley lined with red cloth and hanging brass ornaments. An old man stood beside a cart loaded with arcane weaponry. Strange limbs, shoulder mounts, claws, and cannons—all stripped from fallen golems or illegally crafted.
"I need an arm cannon," Fornos said softly, "for a golem with a reinforced right arm. Energy dispersion must be efficient, and the ammo loading internal."
The old man squinted at him, then at Brassheart.
"Four options," he said, gesturing. "One is flashy but overheats. One is durable but slow. One is fast, but breaks after a hundred uses. The last one isn't for sale."
"Why?" Fornos asked.
"It's mine," the old man said with a smile, revealing gold teeth.
Fornos pointed to the third. "I'll take the fast one."
"A hundred shots, then it's dead," the old man warned.
"Won't need that many," Fornos replied, flicking a coin that shimmered unnaturally in the dim light. It landed in the man's palm and hissed softly—a soul-marked trader's coin with built-in authentication.
The deal was done in seconds. The cannon, heavy and dull gray, was handed over in a reinforced case. Brassheart took it without a word.
"Lorgnette?" Fornos asked.
The old man blinked, surprised. "You want to look smart now?"
"I plan to read across the room," Fornos replied.
He was led to a different stall—a quiet corner filled with magical optics. Tiny monocles with adjustable zoom, crystalline goggles for seeing mana threads, and delicate spectacles that could reveal enchantment scripts at a glance.
He picked up a brass lorgnette with retractable lenses etched in thin arcane script. It was a blend of elegance and function, the kind nobles wore in court and crafters used in precision work.
"This one?" the stall keeper asked.
"I want a variant," Fornos said, "Same body. Lenses must toggle between two views—standard and inscription-focused. No glow. No trace."
The stall keeper grinned. "Discreet scholar, huh? You're not the first."
"I'll pay in two contracts and a minor favor token," Fornos replied smoothly.
The man's grin widened. "Done."
It took only a few minutes before Fornos had the lorgnette fitted, customized, and safely in its case. It folded neatly, no different than a noble's accessory—but he knew better. This wasn't fashion. It was leverage.
As he turned to leave, Brassheart took a step forward, adjusting the new cannon arm slightly beneath his robes. The disguise held—for now.
Fornos led them back through the winding alleys, retracing the coded route to where the ordinary market buzzed. A street fight had broken out nearby, and a group of guards in rust-colored uniforms stood watching, laughing instead of intervening.
Krimshold, Fornos thought, the city that thrives on chaos and gets rich off silence.
He paused on a bridge overlooking the lower levels of the city, watching crates of smuggled goods being carried under false flags. Air barges drifted overhead, some leaking steam, others carrying golems in stasis boxes marked for "agricultural use."
Lies everywhere.
He looked to Brassheart, then down at the reinforced case holding the new cannon. This piece wasn't the best. But it was cheap, fast, and had no signature. Disposable. Just like the golem it would be mounted on.
Fornos had no interest in winning honorably. He was building something more dangerous—a network of deniable power.
He took out the lorgnette and held it up to one eye. The lenses shimmered briefly, then revealed dozens of small enchantments hidden beneath the surface of Krimshold—wards, contracts, trip-scripts, and long-dead sigils left behind by fools who thought their power eternal.
"Interesting," Fornos muttered.
With a faint smirk, he turned and walked on, disappearing into the crowd once more.
Phase Two had begun.