Chapter 0 — First Taste
Hunger, for Soren, was a compass.
Lanterns hung like borrowed moons. The square smelled of char and salt and promises you could spend. Stalls breathed—each a small altar to wanting. He came with a wooden box and a private patience: not to be a savior, but to become an instrument of living, exact and unforgiving.
The shard fit his palm like a secret. He pressed it to his tongue and lessons spilled—how heat kneels, how onions concede, which silence lets a stew tell a truth. His hands moved as if they remembered a life he had not yet lived.
Three judges tasted. One smiled as if a door had opened. One trembled. The third said, soft as a verdict, "It's unanchored. It will take."
He reached for a lullaby that had been a map under his ribs. The sound was gone—an empty chair in a house he could no longer enter. The vessel hummed, curious, not cruel.
A Conservator slid a ring onto his finger. The shard quieted; a brace of law around a hunger. He had traded a small warmth for steadiness and learned the ledger of perfection: every skill has a price measured in names and songs.
He closed the box. The city kept its laughing, the Taste Emperor's card burned in his fist. He walked into the night with the fragment in his pocket and a question folded to the bone: what will you lose to become flawless?