"Tal 39!" The Orm slaver emerged, shock-whip crackling. "You're off-route. The Guild—"
He drew his blade. Not the Guild's standard-issue straight sword, but the curved, single-edged Kael he'd hidden in his false leg. Old Dorei steel, folded a thousand times, its edge singing with pre-war magic.
Kaelen’s fingers twitched. His old name—the one before the number—whispered at the edge of his mind. Lirien. It meant "ember" in the old Dorei tongue. tal 39-dorei campaign setting reborn
The collar shattered.
"Focus," Vex said, not unkindly. "You want to save them? Do the job. The Guild pays. You buy freedom-slips. That's the system." "Tal 39
"Tal 39," a voice rasped from his shadow. Vex, his handler—a woman made of old scars and older bitterness—stepped beside him. "The client wants a distraction. You burn the front gate. The real package goes out the back."
The shockwave rippled outward. Every Dorei slave within a hundred yards felt their own collars flicker, destabilized by the feedback. Chains fell. Iron hissed. The girl's collar cracked down the middle and dropped into the mud with a soft plink . Not the Guild's standard-issue straight sword, but the
Then the Orm screamed, "Kill them all!"