The morning started like every other gray sky, sour air, the streets still half asleep. I was cleaning the gutters behind the fish market, scraping out rot with a rusted pan. The smell made my stomach twist, but at least it paid. One copper for the whole day. Enough to not die. That was the rule.
The shouting started somewhere near the fountain. Drunken laughter, heavy boots, the clinking of armor. Soldiers new recruits, by the sound of their steps. The kind who thought wearing iron made them gods. I kept my head down. The last thing I needed was to be noticed.
They were talking loud, too loud.
"the fever took another one last night," one of them said. " I heard she from the outer camp. Street rat, blue-grade. Shame, really. Pretty thing."
I froze.
Blue-grade. Outer camp. Street rat. The words clattered in my skull like stones. I waited for the rest, praying they'd change the ending somehow.
"Lira, I think that was her name ," another voice said. "she from the slums near South Gate. Barely made it two weeks. Guess talent doesn't cure sickness."
The laughter that followed wasn't cruel it was worse,Casual, Forgetful. Like they were talking about the weather.
I don't remember standing up. The world went distant, the sounds muffled, like my ears had sunk underwater. My hands were shaking, but I didn't feel cold. I felt nothing. Not even the hunger.
They kept talking, their words spilling through the air like ash. I turned and walked away before I heard more. My feet didn't know where to go, so they took me to the only place they remembered the fountain.
The water there was muddy, its surface trembling with each passing cart. The same place where she used to sit, kicking her heels against the stone, talking about things too big for our kind of people, the academy, about changing her fate, about someday seeing the upper lights up close.
I stared at the water and tried to remember her voice, but all I could heard was the city.
People moved around me, merchants shouting, beggars begging, guards watching but the world had gone flat. I waited for tears. None came, Maybe I'd already run out.
The fountain's edge was cold beneath my fingers. I traced a crack in the stone and wondered if that's what it felt like inside her chest when the fever took her. Did she think of the streets? Did she think of me?
I wanted to ask her why she left so soon, but I knew better. Questions don't get answers here.
For me the sun never rose that day . It just climbed higher and made everything uglier. The noise of the market grew until it drowned out my thoughts, So I left.
I walked without reason. Through alleys, past drunks, through the back of the tanner's yard. The world smelled like blood and boiled leather. I kept walking until I reached the fence by the edge of the district the one that separated the slums from the farmlands. I pressed my forehead against the wood and closed my eyes.
It wasn't supposed to hurt this much. People died here all the time. They vanished like smoke, and the city never blinked. But she'd been different. She'd laughed even when there was nothing to laugh about. She'd shared food she didn't have. She'd made me believe there might be more than just surviving.
And now she was gone.
I tried to imagine the camp rows of tents, the smell of sweat and medicine. I pictured her lying still, eyes open to a ceiling of canvas she'd never dreamed of. Maybe they burned her body already. Maybe they didn't bother.
A part of me wanted to go there, to see the spot where she fell, but another part the part that had learned what this world does to those who care told me it didn't matter. The dead don't wait for you.
So I stayed by the fence till the sky went dark again. The hunger came back, soft and familiar. I welcomed it. at least hunger was honest,hunger didn't lie.
When I finally moved, the city lights looked smaller than before, like even they had lost interest.
That night, as I curled under my shed and listened to the rain, I whispered her name once. Just once. It didn't echo.
The world didn't answer.