The cistern was warm, heated by the collective fever of a hundred broken bodies. Lorcan sat by the fire, polishing his crystal arm. He watched the leader—the Ashen Phantom—sitting apart from the group, staring into the dark.

  "Who is he?" Lorcan whispered to Tessa, the woman with the frost-rimmed hands.

  "He saved me from the Black Spire. But he never speaks." Tessa didn't look at the leader; she looked at the fire. "Everyone has a theory, New Blood."

  She pointed toward the bark-skinned man across the fire.

  "Old Bark was one of the first 'vessels' in the Spire," Tessa whispered. "Maeve wanted his skin to be armor, but the graft was a failure. Before the Drudges could move him to the 'harvest' cells, he and the others escaped. Those who escaped first crawled through the cisterns, dragging their mutated bodies through the filth."

  Lorcan looked at Old Bark. He wasn't a soldier; he was a survivor of a botched batch.

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  "She harvested the soul once the bloom was finished," Tessa continued. "The undead can't harness the potions, so she needs us alive to change. But she needs us dead to obey."

  Lorcan looked back at the lonely figure of the Phantom. "Then the Phantom... he's a failure too?"

  "No, Old Bark thinks the Phantom is a Golem. A suit of scrap-armor filled with alchemical gas, animated by a rune. He thinks there's no man inside that cloak at all. Just heat and orders."

  "He fights like a man," Lorcan argued.

  "Does he? He doesn't eat. He doesn't sleep. And that shaking? That's the rumble of a furnace, not a heartbeat."

  Tessa leaned in. "My theory? I think he's a Heretic Weapon that broke his chains. The Soulfather was trying to forge a living siege-breaker, and this one escaped."

  Lorcan watched the figure. The Phantom reached into his ragged tunic and pulled out a small, blackened object. It was fused shut by heat—a coin? A stone? A locket melted beyond recognition?

  The Phantom stared at it, his body trembling with a fresh wave of dry heat, before tucking it away near his heart.

  "He's not an animate," Lorcan decided quietly. "Animate don't hold onto trinkets."

  "Then what is he?" Tessa asked.

  "I think he's in pain," Lorcan said. "And I think he's afraid that if he stops moving, he'll explode."