Ash clung to Embermark like breath on glass.
Not dust. Not decay. Something alive.
It wound through the cracks in the cobblestones, stirred by every breeze—never settling, always listening. It knew the streets better than those who walked them.
Hatim ran.
Boots slapped stone. Heat clawed down his throat, raw and scalding.
The merchant's curses cracked through the air, lost beneath the ever-present roar of a city built atop molten veins of Akar.
Crowds surged like tides.
A woman spun past balancing syrup-glazed pastries; Hatim veered, ducking beneath a butcher's hook, nearly colliding with a man draped in cloth shimmering like caged starlight.
Spices stung his lungs—sweet, sharp, metallic.
His breath tore ragged. Still, he didn't stop.
Not for pain.
Not for fear.
Not when survival had sharper teeth.
He slipped into an alley. Shadows swallowed him whole.
The merchant's shouts faded, replaced by the low hum of Embermark—the city breathed, pulsed, remembered.
Embermark was a city of layers. Built upon ancient stone, its foundations were carved from the mountain's base—choked with ash, where the unwanted were born and buried. These low-lying warrens were called the Sinks, a place where the Akar veins pulsed hottest, closest to the surface, poisoning the air with glowing embers and birthing Bab like flies from rot. The lowest caste lived here—the Impure—those too tainted by mixed blood or old crime to rise.
Above them, winding stairways and worn lifts climbed into the Middens, where the merchants, craftsmen, and hustlers made their living. Here, chaos ruled in color and noise, and the ash drifted like restless ghosts between tightly packed homes of stone and iron.
Further still rose the Crowns—great spires atop jagged cliffs, where the nobles resided in tiered mansions carved from the peaks themselves. Here the Akar glowed beneath polished crystal floors, and the Bab were rare, culled by ancient runes and mechanical wards. It was cooler here. Cleaner. As though the mountain itself bowed in deference.
And then, higher than all, where even the wind dared not trespass, were the Sanctums—floating plateaus anchored by chains of obsidian, where the Ancients dwelled. Few ever glimpsed them, but their whispers governed the city like the tides.
Hatim leaned against a soot-stained wall, breath still ragged. Heat shimmered in the cracks beneath his feet.
"Still running like a streetrat," said a voice.
Lugal leaned from shadow, half-smirking.
"Took you long enough."
"You followed me?"
"Watched you lose him. Sloppy. You're lucky he was slower than you."
Hatim wiped sweat from his brow.
"What do you want?"
Lugal held up a vial no longer than a thumb. Inside: golden light, swirling and alive.
Hatim froze.
"Where'd you get that?"
"Not mine. Yet. It's payment—for whoever finishes the errand."
Hatim's gut twisted. Pure Akar.
"What kind of errand?"
"For an Ancient."
Hatim swore.
"You in?"
Hatim hesitated. A breeze swept the alley, carrying with it a faint chittering. The sound of wings.
A Bab.
Then two. Then five.
They circled the vial, drawn to the purity. Their ember-lit wings whispered through the ash.
Lugal pocketed it.
"That job might cost you," Hatim muttered.
"So might hunger."Lugal tossed him a crust.
Hatim ate slowly, eyes drifted to the ash curling at their feet. He didn't speak right away.
Lugal studied him, then sighed. "Didn't think you'd bite. Not yet. You're not ready to deal with their kind anyway."
Hatim looked up. "Then why show me that?"
"So you know what's coming." Lugal stepped back into shadow. "But for now... try Bolun. He works near the old glass furnaces, in the lower Middens. Deals with runoffs, scrap hauls, small lifts. It's grunt work, but safer. He might have something more your speed."
Hatim hesitated, then nodded. A quiet pact in the air, neither warm nor bitter.
They parted ways without ceremony.
Hatim followed the winding veins of ash toward the furnace quarter.
The city shifted with him, familiar and alien all at once. Embermark thrummed, a slow heartbeat beneath his boots.
He passed beneath rusted arches, their iron filigree warped by heat. The smell of molten sand and old fire filled the alleys. Here, the ash clung heavier—coating faces, clothes, memory.
Children darted between barrels of scrap and vats of cooling slag. Traders barked from under lean-tos made of stitched hide and bent pipe. The glass furnaces loomed ahead, chimneys weeping red smoke like wounded gods.
Hatim kept his head down. Too many faces. Too many eyes that didn't blink.
Then—
"Oi, Whispered Void!"
Hatim froze.
Ahead, at the mouth of a cracked square, Tiri leaned against a scorched pillar, arms folded. Masad stood beside him, silent and sharp.
The way they stood, the way their gazes pinned him—too familiar.
The first time, he'd run.
The second, he'd fought.
Neither had ended well.
Tiri flexed his fingers, rolling his shoulders with practiced ease. But beneath it—tension, ready to strike.
"Still pretending?" Masad sneered.
People slowed. A vendor paused mid-haggle. A woman drew her child close. Heads turned ever so slightly.
Watching. Waiting.
Hatim's mouth went dry.
Tiri tilted his head. Voice soft. Dangerous.
"Maybe we toss you off the cliff. Let Asha sort through your lies."
Hatim turned to leave.
A mistake.
The first blow caught his ribs.
He staggered.
A fist cracked across his back.
A boot slammed into his side.
The heat of Akar flared with each hit, pulsing brighter—as if the city fed on his pain.
Hatim curled in, teeth clenched.
Then—the ground shifted.
Not just the veins. Something deeper.
Something watching.
The pulse beneath him matched his heartbeat.
Then—a gasp.
Fingers gripped his arm.
A voice, steady.
"Enough."
The pressure changed.
The heat. The crowd. Time itself hesitated.
Hatim cracked one eye open, chest heaving, lip bloodied.
The grip tightened—not violent. Warning.
Whoever stood above him wasn't just another face.
Tiri's sneer faltered. Masad stepped back.
The veins of Akar flickered in the dust.
The city watched.
Waited.
Hatim swallowed.
Then—
"We need to go. Now."
Not a request. A command.
Before he could protest, before his mind caught up, he was being pulled away—dragged into the shadows.
Behind him, the market roared back to life, voices rising to smother his absence.
But Hatim knew.
Something had changed.