The air in the subterranean depths of Sector 9 was a physical weight, thick with the smell of wet stone, copper, and the static of suppression fields. This was not a prison for men; it was a cage for monsters and legends. Lucien Valerius, the shadow-mage who had once moved through the world like a ghost, was now anchored to the physical plane by the most brutal means imaginable.
He was suspended by his wrists from the ceiling, his toes barely grazing the freezing floor. The Anti-Magic Manacleswere no longer his primary agony. Positioned in the four corners of his cell were obsidian pylons—Aurelius's latest invention: Sonic Resonance Emitters.
