The march through the Weeping Iron-Groves was a grinding exercise in frustration. Captain Kaelen led the formation with a poise that felt entirely out of place among the rusted, twisted trunks of the petrified forest. Behind him, the six Knights of the Third Division moved in a tight, silver-plated wedge. Their heavy boots crunched through the metallic brush with a sound like shattering glass. Gareth walked in the center, flanked by the massive presence of Captain Varkas.

The air was thick with the scent of mercury. It was a sweet, heavy smell that seemed to coat the inside of the throat with every breath. Kaelen stopped at the edge of a jagged ridge, his eyes narrowed as he adjusted the mana-sensor on his gauntlet. The needle was spinning. The interference from the mercury-rich soil was a constant irritant.

"The resonance is peaking," Kaelen said. He did not look back at the squad. "Our target is close. Whatever defect she is harboring is bleeding into the groves like a cracked pipe."

Captain Varkas let out a short, guttural grunt. He was a man of immense physical density. His Rank 5 Justiciar mana was so heavy that the air around him seemed to warp. "It is an insult that they sent two Captains for a runaway girl. I should be in the capital, not trekking through a Grade 4 dump. We should have just burned the surrounding sectors and been done with it."

"The High Command wants the variable secured, Varkas," Kaelen replied. His voice was a calm, rhythmic drone. "And if we have to kill a few squatters along the way, that is just a bonus for the Empire's census."

Gareth gripped the hilt of his sword. He felt a sharp, familiar knot of anxiety in his chest. "Captain, the report from the outpost mentioned two protectors. We need to be careful."

Varkas laughed. It was a harsh, mocking sound. "Careful of what? Some slum-born scavengers who found a pair of rusted knives? You worry too much, Gareth. That is why you are still a Knight-Lieutenant and I am a Captain."

The squad pushed through a final wall of serrated iron leaves and stopped. They had reached a massive basin. In the center of the depression sat a pool of mercury as smooth as a mirror. The silence of the clearing was absolute. The only thing moving was a single figure standing by the edge of the silver water.

The boy was dressed in dark, oil-stained leathers. He held a star-metal spear in a loose, practiced grip. He did not look up when the Third Division fanned out around the ridge. He did not look up when the six Knights leveled their lances at his heart. He was staring down into the mercury with a look of profound, localized disgust.

Kaelen raised his hand. His fingers glowed with the white light of his analytical mana. He paused, his expression shifting from boredom to a sharp, cold curiosity.

"Wait," Kaelen said.

"What is it?" Varkas asked, his hand going to his own heavy blade.

"Look at the density," Kaelen whispered. He sounded more offended than surprised. "The boy. He is at the fourth rank. He is a Sentinel."

The six Knights shifted their weight, their silver armor clinking. To find a Rank 4 mana signature in the middle of a commoner's wasteland was a statistical impossibility. It was a fluke that defied the Imperial Academy's entire philosophy of bloodline and pedigree.

Varkas let out a dry, rasping laugh. "A Rank 4 rat. Well, that is a new one. I wonder how many lives he had to steal to push his channels that far. It is a tragedy, really. Imagine what that mana could have done in the hands of someone who actually matters."

"He looks like he's barely holding together," Kaelen observed. He looked at Vane with the same clinical interest he might give to a laboratory specimen. "A Sentinel in rank, perhaps, but look at the poise. No Imperial training. No refinement. He is just a container under too much pressure. His foundation must be a mess of scar tissue and gutter-mana. He is a fraud."

Gareth stepped forward, his eyes locked on the boy. He felt a surge of pure, irrational hatred. The boy looked familiar, but the context was all wrong. He was just a scavenger standing in a pit of mercury. "Captain, let me handle him. I'll show this fraud what a real Knight-Lieutenant looks like."

Varkas shrugged. "Go ahead. I'm curious to see if his channels explode when he tries to parry."

Vane finally spoke. His voice was quiet, but in the silence of the basin, it carried with an eerie clarity. He was still looking into the mercury. "Is this really it? Just a cheap, smaller imitation. How pathetic."

Kaelen frowned. "What is he muttering about?"

Vane's lip curled in a sneer of pure disdain. He looked at the mercury pool as if it were a piece of rotting meat. "Just a mindless beast with three heads. It lacks the scale. It lacks the void. To think I actually have to use something this crude."

"He has lost his mind," Varkas said, stepping into the clearing. His heavy boots crushed a patch of brittle, seared iron leaves. "Enough of this. I will pin him, and Gareth can finish the job."

Varkas planted his feet and began to flare his mana. As a Rank 5 Justiciar, his power was a physical weight. A massive wall of white-gold pressure erupted from his body, intended to crush anything within fifty yards into the dirt. The sheer density of it made the iron trees groan. It was a beautiful, arrogant display of the Empire's right to rule. It was the law of the strong made manifest in light and heat.

But the environment reacted in a way Varkas did not expect.

The seared leaves beneath his feet did not just crumble. They began to vibrate. They chattered at a frequency that was so sharp it felt like a needle in the brain. The sound was picked up by the twisted trunks of the trees that surrounded the basin. It echoed and climbed, jumping from trunk to trunk until the entire basin was a resonant chamber of high-pitched, metallic shrieks.

"What is that noise?" Kaelen shouted, his hands flying to his ears.

The crystallized hexagonal sheets that had been laid across the smaller mercury pools began to shake. They were not just glass; they were amplifiers. They caught the sonic vibration from the trees and slammed it back down into the liquid metal. The once-still surface of the central basin began to churn. It did not just ripple. It began to geyser.

Vane finally looked at them. His eyes were cold, reflecting the silver of the pool. He did not look like he was part of the fight. He looked like he was watching a scripted play from the balcony.

"You are too loud," Vane said. His voice was a flat, clinical observation. "And she really hates loud guests."

The center of the mercury pool exploded.

A column of liquid silver fifty feet wide detonated into the air. It drenched the clearing in a toxic, metallic rain that hissed against the silver armor of the Knights. Through the shimmering spray, three colossal, serpentine necks uncoiled with the speed of a snapping whip. They were plated in wet, overlapping iron scales that dripped with liquid mercury.

The heads rose high above the treeline. Their eyes were glowing pits of toxic, sulfurous yellow. They did not look at the boy standing by the edge. They did not even see the girl hiding in the brush. Their yellow eyes locked onto the most offensive thing in their territory. They locked onto the brilliant, white-gold flare of Varkas's Rank 5 aura.

The Mercury Hydra let out a roar that shattered every piece of crystal in the clearing, and then it lunged.

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