Rin moved across Magnara without disturbing it.
Rooftop to rooftop.
Awning to slate.
The night took him in like it knew him.
Shadow Muti ran along his arms and down the hem of his cloak until the fabric bled into every dark surface he touched. He crossed the roofs above The Talking Boar, passed over a row of sleeping guild offices, slid down the slope of a bathhouse roof, and crossed a canal street where late lanterns burned yellow below.
The city did not notice.
The city was busy.
Fireworks bloomed over the rings in gold, blue, and green. Drunk Seekers threw little Elemental tricks from balconies for crowds that cheered whether the tricks worked or not. Spirit shapes swam through the smoke above the plazas—dragons, birds, laughing masks—before coming apart into sparks over a thousand upturned faces.
Teens past curfew flew low across the crowds on Mason's Wind Riders, aura poured into the boards until the Wind Muti took over. They curved around lamp posts, skimmed over a bread wagon, and shot through the mist of a canal fountain while an old patrolman shouted after them as if shouting had ever stopped anyone from being seventeen.
Below that were the doors.
Taverns. Clubs. Red windows. Music spilling into the street.
Mr. Green lounges glowed from second floors, their stained glass fogged green-silver, full of people paying good coin to forget themselves for an hour.
Rin watched it all from above and kept moving.
Then he slowed.
A father lifted his daughter onto his shoulders so she could see a Water Muti serpent burst into bright mist over the canal. She had powdered sugar on her cheek and both hands buried in his hair, and she laughed like the world had never hurt anybody.
Rin held on the roofline for one step.
Then he took the next.
Born into any clan but a Black one, and maybe that was him down there.
Shoulders.
Small hands in his hair.
His fingers brushed Tetsuba's hilt.
Grief had spent years trying to rot him from the inside. Vengeance was the thing that got him up. Vengeance made him train when his hands shook.
He was hunting a man tonight.
The city could keep the fireworks.
Rin stepped off the roof.
The street rushed up.
His body folded into the shadow of a passing carriage before his boots ever touched stone.
The horses dragged him through the crowd without knowing. The driver hummed to himself, one loose hand on the reins. At the crossing, Seeker guards watched faces, bags, passes, and drunken hands drifting too close to weapon hilts.
Nobody watched beneath the wheels.
Rin came up three streets later from a shopfront shadow, already walking, and let strangers brush his shoulder without feeling him.
The smell reached him before the sign did.
Herbs. Burnt sugar. Something sharp underneath that made his eye twitch.
Rainbow smoke curled from a chimney in soft ribbons above a narrow storefront wedged between a late bakery and a shuttered wand repair shop.
The Wonder Family Potion Apothecary.
He looked at it for a moment.
Then he pushed the door open.
A dry bell rang.
Inside, the shop was warmer than the street and packed to the ceiling with hanging herbs, sealed drawers, brass scales, and charm-locked cases. Something bubbled in the back and sent up a column of steam that changed color as it climbed.
The whole place smelled like medicine dressed as candy.
A voice came from behind the counter.
"Give me a minute. Or don't. I'll be right there."
She came down the ladder without once looking at the rungs, one hand sliding along the rail.
Pale. Dressed in the black of a dead rose. A chained black-silver bead choker at her throat, kohl around her eyes, and a smile that looked friendly in the way sharpened glass looked pretty.
She reached the counter and spread one hand as if presenting a stage.
"Welcome to the Wonder Family. Read the label before you drink anything. Absolutely no refunds. All Wonder potions are one hundred percent effective."
Her elbow dropped onto the wood.
"And there are a few things I'll deny selling if a guild inspector asks."
Then her eyes met his.
She stopped.
"Oh," she said. "I know you."
"You do?"
"Yeah." Her smile grew. "You're on Captain William's team. We go way back. And I know your squadmate Kai Xander, which is why I'm offended he hasn't come to see me yet."
One painted nail tapped the counter.
"I'm choosing to believe he's busy. Keeps me from taking it personally."
"You're connected."
"The Wonder Family supplies the world."
She set her cheek against her hand and studied him like she had already read half his life from his boots.
"We know everybody before they walk through the door, Mr. Black Phantom."
The shop went quiet.
She had said it at ordinary volume.
In a room with a door, a window, and a street on the other side of both.
Rin let the name sit there until she felt the shape of it.
"Fair enough."
His eyes moved past her to the shelves.
Red Mercy Draughts sat racked behind charm-glass, their crimson liquid catching the lamplight like bottled blood. A jar of Vargrolf fangs floated in cloudy solution, yellowed and sharp, each one longer than a finger.
And low in the counter, behind Muti-glass, waited the row nobody browsed for fun.
Antitoxins. Lungmint. Shock stabilizers bedded in black trays, with yellow warning wax sealing every stopper.
The shelf you came to after something had already gone wrong.
Alice followed his gaze.
"So." Tap. "What's your poison, Viatra boy?"
"Five Red Mercy Draughts. One antitoxin vial. Two shock stabilizer ampoules. A case of lungmint."
Her brows lifted.
"That all?"
Rin's face did not change.
"And a copy of the Black Book."
The tapping stopped.
Then Alice smiled and turned toward the shelves.
"Looks like the Phantom plans on getting into trouble tonight."
"Never." He reached into his coat for tola. "Trial stuff."
"Sure. Trial stuff always makes people buy enough medicine to survive a small war."
Her hands moved fast.
Bottles went into padded slots. Ampoules clicked down into a black carry sleeve. The book came from a drawer beneath the counter, bound in dark leather with silver pressed into the cover.
She tied charm tags to the bag and slid it across the counter.
"Eight hundred and fifty."
Rin paid.
She counted once and swept the coins away.
Then she ducked under the counter and came back up with a second bag.
Small. Tied in dark string, and tied badly—the knot of something tied, undone, and tied again more than once.
"Hey. Can you give this to Kai?"
Rin took it.
"Threw a couple goodies in yours too," Alice added, too quickly. She leaned back on one elbow. "And tell him to come see me."
"That's it?"
"Tell him to come see me or I'll kill him."
Rin looked at the knot.
Alice waved a hand.
"Lovingly."
He tucked the small bag away.
"He's alive," Rin said. "Last I checked."
Something in her face moved, then got put back.
"Thanks," she said.
He turned toward the door.
"And Rin?"
He stopped.
Her voice stayed playful. Her eyes had gone somewhere else.
"Whatever you're doing tonight, don't get Captain William in trouble unless it's worth it."
Rin looked back over his shoulder.
For a moment, neither of them smiled.
Then he pushed the door open.
"It is."
The bell rang again behind him.
Outside, the festival swallowed him whole.
He crossed with the crowd, stepped into the shadow of a passing carriage, sank out of sight, and rode beneath it toward Ring IV while lanterns and boots passed above him in broken flashes.
The Merchant Quarters were still awake.
Ring IV breathed money at every corner. Smaller banks stayed open late while merchants tried to move tola before the morning prices changed. A clerk held a coin beneath an inspection lamp and rolled it slowly, watching for the oil-slick shimmer that meant phantom residue. Two Seekers haggled over a Vinlan-marked breastplate that had never been closer to Vinlan than the stall it sat on.
Rin passed beneath all of it, four inches deep in the dark.
At the Ring V checkpoint, he rose from the ground into another man's shadow.
A Seeker guard.
Broad. Bored. Walking his round toward the gate.
They went through together.
Halfway beneath the arch, the guard slowed.
He looked down.
At the lamplight.
At the shape stretched ahead of his own boots.
At the way it had one edge too many.
Rin did not breathe.
The guard's hand drifted an inch toward his hilt.
Then a Wind Rider went shrieking past overhead with three kids howling on it. The patrolman two posts down started yelling, and the guard's head snapped up.
The shadow stretched.
The extra edge stretched with it.
Became a trick of the lamp.
Became nothing.
The guard swore at the sky and kept walking.
Ring V opened ahead with heat and metal.
Hammer strikes rang from open workshop doors, and red forge-light pulsed behind the shutters. Founder Road ran through the district like a spine, lined with armorers, sigil etchers, weapon brokers, and late stalls selling everything a fighter could talk himself into needing before sunrise.
Rin rode the guard's shadow until the crowd thickened.
Then he stepped out into open traffic, and nobody looked twice.
He turned right onto Nightweave Row.
The light dropped.
The crowd thinned.
The hammering here came slower and heavier, each strike ringing between the buildings like a warning. The signs were iron, bone, lacquered wood, and black glass.
Artisans on Nightweave Row did not call out to anyone.
People came because they already knew what they wanted, or because someone dangerous had told them where to go.
Rin walked with the Wonder bag beneath his cloak and Tetsuba quiet at his side.
Two days ago, this had been the first place he stopped in Magnara.
Onikaze Forge.