I wake to a vacuum of silence. No soot-rattle, no coughing through walls—just the pressurized hiss of the Vaporgates. The mattress is a velvet lung, swallowing my weight in silk sheets that slide against my skin like oil on glass. There is no grit here, no familiar itch of wool. It feels like sinking into a lie.
Ashlynn is a knot of heat against my side, curled small, as if in the narrowest corner of a city gutter. Her breath carries the hotel's salt-sweet air and the faint antiseptic tang of cleaned wood already scrubbed from her skin. My body aches for the friction of floorboards and the uneven weight of stone beneath our feet. Here, in this clinical, high-precision perfection, we are the only things that feel stubbornly, insistently real.
I flex my right arm. The broken bone is gone. A wound that no longer exists. A pain that has stopped lingering. But an agony that stays.
I tap Ashlynn gently on the shoulder. "Wake up, the day has started."
We rise and get ready for whatever the day will show.
We wear the only clothing we have—shirts and pants, coats over them; mine black, hers crimson.
Leaving Valazam Hotel, I bend on the street to pick up a few rocks—just in case. Ashlynn follows silently.
At the Hearthlight building, Tanya steps out the front door. I wave; she waves back, her skin-and-bone smile, waxy and a little eerie. Not my taste.
"You should spend time with Tanya today," I nudge Ashlynn.
"But I've never met her," she says.
"There's always a first time," I reply. "Here."
I hand her a few rocks.
Ashlynn falls in step with Tanya, and I watch them walking together, talking quietly.
I step inside the Hearthlight lobby and approach the clerk's counter.
"Good Monday, Len," Margaret greets me.
"Good Monday, Margaret," I answer.
"So my registration?" I ask.
"Oh yes, you have been accepted as an initiate." She smiles. "Captain Gary is waiting."
She steps out from behind the counter. "Come with me."
I follow her.
She leads me to an office.
The office is a space of warmth. The walls are paneled in light wood that appears eternally new, masking the damp stone of the building. A desk lamp filled with glowing liquid casts a soft, white glow, meticulously designed to feel inviting. Vaporgates filter the air, carrying an artificial scent of lavender that covers the city's stench.
Gary sits behind the desk in a crisp Hearthlight uniform of deep black with blue accents. On his chest, the Hearthlight emblem—a white bird in a gilded lantern.
Margaret closes the door and leaves.
"Here's your badge, Len," Gary taps a badge on his desk.
I walk over and pick up the badge, slipping it into my coat pocket.
"I didn't know you were a captain," I say.
"I became captain yesterday," he says. "New role, new responsibility." He scoffs.
Gary steps from behind his desk and reaches for a paper on the top of a nearby shelf.
On the paper is a colored portrait—a man probably in his fifties. Dark hair. Brown eyes. Tanned skin.
"His name is Aram," he says. "He is in possession of illegal alchemy material, IAM."
"IAM?"
"Invisible Alchemical Metal," he says.
Gary pulls a gun from a drawer. Yes. A gun.
The gun is a slab of symmetrical steel, widened for twin barrels with a double-indexed cylinder. The metal is poreless, oily black, devoid of scuffs or tool marks. It cycles with a clockwork whir, locking into place with a pressurized thud that makes the heavy walnut grip feel like a lead anchor. A revolver.
It isn't the same gun from my dream.
He also pulls out a shoulder holster.
"It's yours," he says, already holding it out.
I remove my coat and wear the holster over my shirt, resting the revolver in place before putting the coat back on.
Gary hands me a cartridge pouch, which I attach to my belt.
"Twelve rounds, all loaded with kuor," he says.
"Kuor?" I ask.
"Fuel for alchemy," he shrugs. "You already know how to make them."
We finish our preparation.
We leave the building.
Gary raises a hand. A carriage rolls up—large, enclosed, heavy enough to mute sound.
Inside, the space smells of old leather and filtered air. The benches face inward, forcing proximity. The door shuts with a seal, not a latch.
Gary gives the jarvy an address.
The carriage moves.
The carriage rattles through the North, wheels grinding over cobbles that feel jagged and half-formed beneath the weight. Outside, the slums blur into charcoal greys and flickering soot. Buildings pass like hollow shells, their edges bleeding into the permanent fog.
No one speaks.
The Vaporgates loom ahead.
Massive brass-rimmed arches hum with a low alchemical vibration, exhaling a thick curtain of mist.
As we pass through, the world snaps.
The suffocating stench of sulfur and wet horse vanishes, replaced instantly by the sterile bite of pine and ozone.
The neighborhood emerges with frightening clarity. Lanterns no longer flicker; they cast steady, brilliant white, revealing every pore in the brickwork, every trimmed leaf on manicured trees. The carriage's rattle softens into a muffled thud as the wheels meet purified pavement.
The houses here rise mostly as tall, white-stone townhouses—gleaming, precise, untouched. Yet some show tiny imperfections: a slightly rusted gate, a window streaked from a forgotten rain, a door repainted one shade too many. Others are larger, grander, crowned with sculpted balustrades or wrought-iron balconies, gardens trimmed into impossible symmetry.
Nothing is allowed to be truly broken. Even the silence feels enforced. Here, in Eldenmere, wealth and order marry obsession, and every house whispers its owner's pride.
Gary tells the jarvy to stop in front of a house.
It's a tall white-stone townhouse—but the perfection is failing. While neighboring windows gleam, its glass is filmed with an oily haze. Rust gnaws at the iron fence, jagged and out of place. The brass Hearthlight emblem on the oak door is tarnished, its shine bleeding away.
We approach the door.
Gary tests the handle. He doesn't knock.
Unlocked.
He draws his gun. I do the same.
He enters first. I follow, keeping distance.
We raise our guns, close to our faces.
"Help me."
Not Gary's voice. Not mine.
Gary glances at me, then tilts his head upward—a signal.
I nod.
We follow the voice upstairs to a closed door.
"Help me," it pleads, just on the other side.
Gary's finger tightens on the trigger before the last syllable lands.
BANG.
BANG.
BANG.
Gary fires through the door before opening it.
Then he reaches the handle and pushes it open slowly.
"HELP ME!"
A feral explodes outward, tearing the door from its hinges. It slams Gary to the floor, pinning him down.
I kick it in the face. Its teeth scatter on the floor.
It hisses at me so I kick it again by the stomach as hard as I can.
It skids back, long limbs scrambling.
Gary rolls clear and comes up beside me.
The feral steadies itself then charges again.
Just as quick, I aim for its face.
BANG.
Bullet lands between its eyes. Headshot.
It drops forward.
As I step closer, black liquid leaks from the wound, thick and glossy. It smells of rot and blood mixed together.
I nudge the body over with my boot.
My heart spikes a bit. Just a little bit.
Aram is smiling.