Elder Sterling reached into his leather sleeve and produced a carved birchwood puppet.
The toy soldier was no larger than a man’s forearm, polished to a dull sheen and fitted with a thumbnail-sized spirit stone in its hollow chest. It carried a tiny wooden broadsword painted silver.
“Let us see what this smog does to mundane constructs,” Sterling grunted.
He flicked his wrist. The puppet sailed across the meteor-iron threshold, tumbling through the air before landing with a light clatter on the red flagstones of the Second Furnace Ring.
The moment its wooden soles touched the stone, the air shrieked.
Thick, ash-colored chains erupted from the flagstones like coiled vipers. They did not crush the toy. Instead, the ghostly iron links wrapped around the puppet’s wrists, elbows, and knees, locking into its joints with greasy clicks.
The miniature figure jerked upright as if yanked by an invisible puppeteer.
Its wooden head snapped forward. Its tiny spirit stone flared with sickly violet light. Without a second of delay, the puppet lunged into the opening stance of the Nine-River Sword Style.
