Sullivan looked at the gloves on his desk, just within reach, and gave a grateful sigh. He wanted to put them on, he truly did, but alas, he could not.

  He set down his schematics and adjusted the sleeping Princess, making sure she wouldn’t fall. He sank back further in his chair, dragging a gloved hand through his ink-black hair, making a mess of it.

  He’d take off his stifling jacket as well, but alas. He could not.

  To make matters worse was The Daily Ring now at the corner of his desk. He could just barely read the title from where it sat.

  UNLUCKY #7

  The Epidemic of the Needy

  Another hiss of a whistle between his teeth summoned a shadebound.

  “Bring me the newspaper,” he muttered.

  The shadowy servant passed over the desk like a manifested cloth, and placed the paper in his gloved hand before sinking back into the floor.

  With careful dexterity, Sullivan managed to open the newspaper and began reading the tragedies of his life. It wasn’t enough that the dam project had been delayed by a century and a half—now even the infrastructure that had already been laid and integrated was in constant disrepair.

  Nothing could go right. Not with Sullivan at the helm.

  Dina Daily’s name stretched across the byline in neat, assertive print. A meticulous werewolf if ever there was one—lunar-touched, sharp-witted, and entirely incapable of keeping her nose out of things that didn’t concern her.

  Not that he could fault her this time. Not really.

  Her concerns over the mana port certainly weren’t misplaced. The infrastructure was failing, the system was overloaded, and the city’s labor force was already stretched to the bone. There were no spare hands left to fix a problem like that.

  A problem that wouldn’t have been a problem if it weren’t for the tide of refugees who now surrounded the leaking port like moths to a giant, gleaming bug zapper of old.

  Drawn in by the glow, fried by the aftermath.

  He supposed, in their position, it was a lifeline. Even in disrepair, the port held a lingering electrical charge—mana-fused crystals inlaid into its runic web, faintly pulsing. That kind of residual energy could mean survival. Heat. Light. Power. Even if just enough to last one more night. Especially outside the protection of Elysium’s Outer Wall.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  But the port was unstable. It would take at least two weeks to fix. Each component, each fractured line of the runic interface, required specialized knowledge. Magic and Old World technology. Few knew how to handle either. Fewer still knew both.

  Vincent would have been the obvious choice. He was more adept at integration work than the most skilled Tower Mages. But he hadn’t left his room for almost a century, and how could he blame him?

  Sullivan would do it himself.

  But the city, ever a creature with its own agenda, had a way of keeping him trapped within the Inner Sanctum. Going out in daylight was out of the question—sun sores bubbled and blistered like fevered curses across his skin. And when his mana-burn flared in tandem?

  The pain was exquisite.

  Going at night was no better—if the Glass Chapel found him outside his “mercifully sanctioned domain” at such a late hour, they would send their zealots with billy clubs and the third degree.

  He had no patience left for that. Not again.

  His teeth creaked—jaw tight with the kind of slow-burning fury that cracked porcelain from the inside.

  To keep himself from drowning in that rising tide of contempt, Sullivan returned to the article. Dina's words, crisp and unapologetic, her usual accusatory tone, marched on.

  Apparently, there was a rising number of patients reporting symptoms of aurasickness.

  It was a term coined by the medics of the Institution of Convalescence—an affliction suffered by those with heightened sensitivity to the ambient mana currents in the air. To the untrained or the magically frail, it was akin to radiation poisoning. A gnawing, invisible sickness that slowly stripped the soul of its equilibrium.

  And it was spreading.

  After Moon Fall, the humans were abruptly and violently saturated with the magical energy once imprisoned behind the Umbral Veil. They had evolved without it. Lived entire lifetimes beneath skies that bore no magic. Their bodies were unprepared for the slow, relentless poison now laced into the air they breathed, the water they drank, even the ground beneath their feet.

  It was worse, of course, in districts where the mana density had begun to fluctuate—beyond what any of the stabilizers could control.

  He rubbed at his temple, wishing the headaches away.

  Aurasickness was manageable. There were ways to mitigate symptoms. With enough time, some people could grow a tolerance.

  Void crystals were once used to line windows, tucked under children’s pillows, worn like talismans on leather strings. They were subtle, unremarkable things, often mistaken for decorative obsidian, but they drew in excess mana like a sponge, purifying the air in delicate increments. Essentially an air filter, but for mana.

  But that was before the last Absolute Eclipse.

  Which was twenty years ago.

  Since then, the crystals had grown rare. The last known veins near the city were mined dry, or worse—quietly bought up by private collectors with old money and clean lungs. Now, even the sick had to bid against the rich for the right to breathe.

  Nothing new there.

  And now, Mana Port 7 was leaking from the Outer Wall into the surrounding district. A slow, constant bleed of raw, untamed energy that pulsed like a wound left to fester. The distortion had already begun—stones warping, air shimmering, mana humming like nerves exposed to open air.

  And the refugees… were right in the thick of it.

  Too much ambient mana. Too few warding sigils. Too many desperate bodies curled around a system designed to siphon, not sustain.

  It was no wonder they were getting sick.

  And per usual, the Assembly would do nothing until the situation bloomed into catastrophe. Not when they could pin it all on him.

  There was no better hunting dog to sic on him than Dina Daily. She’d been tearing into him and Chief Vrig like a wolf with raw meat in her teeth for months now. Constantly wanting an interview, always being turned away by the Permits Committee.

  Sanctum guests without proper papers were a liability to the state. Couldn’t control blood supply if benevolent donors were showing up en masse.

  And Magnus would hate that.