Her journey on the flea market ended in front of an old run down shop.
The shop was tucked between a potion seller and a stall hawking monster bait — easy to miss if you weren't looking. She almost missed it herself, caught up in the rhythm of walking.
She stopped.
The signboard sagged between hanging and collapse, suspended in a way that felt wrong to look at.
There were no windows. No one could tell what was happening inside without stepping in themselves.
Her hand found the door before she'd decided to open it.
Inside was dim. Shelves lined the walls, half-empty, the kind of stock that suggested the owner didn't actually care if anything sold. A counter sat at the back, and behind it —
A man.
Middle-aged. Still. His eyes tracked her the moment she stepped in, but he didn't speak.
She let the door close behind her.
The quiet pressed different than the market. Heavier. Like the air had weight here.
She looked at him.
"Tell me why I'm here."
He didn't answer with words.
Instead his hand moved — slow, deliberate — and slid an envelope across the counter. No name. No seal. Just the paper, off-white, folded once.
She picked it up. Opened it.
The message was short. She read it twice.
Her jaw tightened.
"Great. Just great." She folded it back, shoved it in her pocket next to the magic stone. "New mission already. And what is it? Babysitting?"
The man's voice came low. Almost human, but not quite — like something wearing a human voice.
"It isn't."
"Then what? Join a party. Watch a guy. Report." She gestured with one hand, sharp. "That's literally babysitting."
Silence.
The man looked at her fully for the first time.
Something behind his eyes flattened — not anger, something quieter and harder than that.
"You dare mock White's orders?"
The temperature in the room didn't drop. But something did. A pressure that had nothing to do with cold.
She held her hands up.
"Sorry. Sorry. I'll go." A beat. "So. Who is he?"
The man closed his mouth.
Instead of speaking, he reached beneath the counter and brought out an orb — pale, thumb-sized, set in a dull metal frame.
Her eyes went wide.
"Whoa. A memory stone." She leaned forward, hands flat on the counter, all irritation replaced by something brighter. "I want one too. Where'd you get —"
He looked at her.
She covered her mouth with both hands.
The orb lit.
A boy.
And a monster.
Both fought like survival was the only thing left in the world, yet the monster was the one steadily losing ground.
The orb went dark.
She didn't speak immediately.
The man didn't either.
She looked at the counter, then at the wall, then back at the orb like it might show her something else if she stared hard enough.
The boy she'd run into at the market. Same face. Same build. Same stupid way of looking at things like he was still deciding what they meant.
"This guy…?"
Her voice came out different. Not scared. Just… not sure.
The man didn't speak. Only stared at her.
The image stuck behind her eyes — the last frame refusing to move.
The boy moved wrong for someone fighting to survive — too calm, too direct, every step stealing ground the monster thought it still had.
There was no panic in his face. No rage either. Just a cold kind of focus that made the exchange feel less like combat and more like something being decided.
What unsettled her more was the wound.
It was closing.
And whatever caused it, she couldn't make sense of it — like the monster's own magic was being drained away and turned into life inside him.
The memory kept playing.
And the longer it did, the harder it became to tell which one of them looked human anymore.
She shoved the envelope deeper into her pocket.
"When do I start?"
The man's hand slid another paper across the counter. A name. A location. A time.
She picked it up and stared a moment too long at the space where a name should've been.
Unknown.
"You've got to be kidding."
She folded the paper and stood.
The door closed behind her. The market noise rushed back, loud and stupid and normal.
She stood outside the shop for a moment, letting it wash over her, waiting for the weight behind her ribs to settle.
It didn't.
He's hiding his identity? For what? And what do they want from him?
She started walking.
Every few steps her mind replayed the same image.
The closing wounds that made no sense on anything human. The shaking monster that lost to a nobody. And the look in his eyes.
Annoying.
She barely knew the guy and already he was taking up space in her head.
Her pace slowed. Then she pushed it faster. Then her feet dragged on their own in a way that irritated her more than the thoughts themselves — as if her body had rejected the idea of simply walking away before deciding what exactly he was supposed to be.
No conclusion came.
But her eyes found him anyway.
He was sitting on a bench near the center fountain of an old park close to the Daedalus Street entrance. The magic-stone lamps overhead hadn't decided to wake up yet, still dim, still flickering as the sun slipped behind the west mountains.
She was less than ten feet from his side and he hadn't turned his head once. Nobody else was around. This part of the district was empty at this hour and yet, he still hadn't noticed.
He was somewhere else entirely.
His face was difficult to read but it was definitely concern. Or uncertainty. Something he was working through without any help from the outside world.
Then, like he had finally reached a decision, he took a slow breath and stood.
Without another pause, he started walking toward one of the side streets leading deeper into Daedalus.
She had never believed in destiny or fate or any of that kind of bullshit.
But seeing him like this—looking straight through her without even realizing she was there—still forced one stupid thought into her head.
Am I really that short? Or just… unnoticeable the way I always wanted to be?
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