Second Part: The Gauntlet and the Curse

The desert sand still burns under her feet when Saeris makes the unthinkable choice: to melt the gauntlet. Not to sell it, but to transform it. Use it. Master it. But the metal resists. It vibrates. It moans. It sings in tongues no smith in Zilvaren could understand. Elroy’s workshop becomes a shrine of tensions. —This isn’t common gold —he whispers, eyes fixed on the runes emerging from the gauntlet—. This… is alive.

Meanwhile, Hayden, her younger brother, reappears covered in blood, thrown into the sand in front of the House of Kala, a tavern where dreams go to die. He’s gambled again. Lost again. And Saeris, as always, picks up the pieces. The gauntlet hidden in a cloth bag becomes an invisible burden, too valuable, too cursed.

That night, in a dusty room above a brothel, Saeris sleeps with the gauntlet under her pillow. But the dreams are not hers. Voices that don’t belong to this world call to her. The sand turns to ice. The city to white ruins. She sees herself, dressed in frost, surrounded by eyes bright like dead stars.

She wakes soaked in sweat. Reality has torn.

The next day, while scouring the underworld for information about the gauntlet, she runs into Carrion Swift—smuggler, former lover, and traitor. Carrion knows. He smells it. —What you’re carrying… is not just gold. It’s damnation.