The hall was so silent that Reinhart could hear his own heartbeat—fast and irregular. The stone floor chilled his knees through the fabric of his trousers. There was barely any light, just a dim patch where he froze, not daring to raise his head.
A sound drifted from the darkness. A dry, rhythmic click.
"Baron von Stein is dead," the voice said matter-of-factly. "His men proved useless. The College of Mages is now working in my mines to the east. In chains."
Reinhart swallowed hard. His throat was bone-dry, his tongue clinging to the roof of his mouth.
"My..." he faltered. "I arranged the shipments. The ore will start moving in two weeks. Half of all Dornheim's yield..."
"Two weeks," the voice interrupted. Someone stepped slowly into the circle of light.
It was a man. He was dressed simply, almost poorly, save for a strange device on his wrist—a complex intertwining of copper tubes and tiny pistons that moved on their own, completely devoid of magic. He rolled an ideally smooth steel sphere between his fingers. It spun silently.
"I didn't need 'shipments,' dear Reinhart. I needed total control of the vein. Dornheim ore isn't just iron. It is pure raw material for my machines. Yet you chose to bargain, and you left the Count alive."
He stopped directly in front of Reinhart. His boots were pristine, without a single speck of dirt.
"I gave you a task: take the land. Instead, you brought me a piece of paper with a seal. Did you honestly think your aristocratic fumbling with contracts would impress me?"
"But the technology..." Reinhart looked up. "The boy, the engineer. He creates mechanisms..."
"Mechanisms?" The man gave a barely perceptible smirk, tossing the steel sphere into the air. It hovered, slowly unfolding into a complex, multi-faceted construct. "What he builds are primitive crutches. I could assemble something like that from scrap in a single evening. I don't need his ideas. I needed no one left in those ruins who could get in the way."
He reached out and carefully adjusted the collar of Reinhart's doublet.
"You proved to be far too preoccupied with your own profit. Fifty percent of the ore in your own pocket, right? You decided you could play games behind my back?"
Reinhart felt an icy chill crawl down his spine. He wanted to speak, but the words caught in his chest. He began to shake, the saliva in his mouth turning bitter and viscous.
"Perhaps..." he stammered, his voice breaking into a harsh rasp. "Perhaps you should take on this task yourself, my lord? Since it is so simple."
The man stopped. With a dry click, the hovering sphere folded back into a smooth ball and pulled itself toward his wrist, snapping perfectly into the slots of the copper device.
"I have far more important matters to attend to," his voice remained perfectly calm. "Surely you understand that a puppet who disobeys its master must be replaced."
Reinhart instantly felt a cold sensation in his chest.
He slowly lowered his gaze. A slender steel spike protruded from his chest, just beneath his heart. The fabric of his doublet hadn't torn, and there was no blood—the wound had been instantly cauterized by some internal discharge from the device.
"Wh... why?" the Count exhaled. His legs gave out, and he collapsed to his knees. "You... promised..."
"Shut up." The man gave his wrist a slight twist, and the spike retracted into his sleeve with a brief buzz. "You didn't do what I asked."
Reinhart fell forward, his forehead striking his master's boots. He twitched a couple more times, trying to catch his breath, but he was already dead.
The man disdainedly nudged his foot away and stepped over the corpse.
"Aristocrats," he whispered to himself. "Always thinking their titles actually mean something."
He peered into the darkness of the hall.
"My final hope rests on you..." His voice dropped to a bare whisper. "If even you fail, then I will have to handle this myself."
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