The aged bamboo flexed slightly under Kaelen’s thumb.
Deputy Warden Vorg was already in mid-descent. The five-foot blade of his Molten-Iron Cleaver hissed through the dusty air, a roaring wall of crimson fire that cast violent, distorted shadows against the soot-caked brick chimneys.
Vorg had spent fifteen years perfecting that cleave. He had used it to execute runaway miners, butcher rival guild enforcers, and enforce the Grand Regent’s will across the Duchy’s darkest corners.
To Vorg, the strike was already finished.
An errand boy sitting on an upturned wooden crate in a faded cotton bathrobe had no defensive angles. A Golden Core Early aura had zero hope of withstanding a full-weight execution cleave forged from molten dragon-iron.
Vorg could already feel the satisfying crunch of shattered bone.
He was wrong.
Inside Kaelen’s dantian, the Nine-Ringed Golden Core spun with absolute, sovereign calm.
