The sun bled out of the sky, leaving a bruised purple stain on the horizon. I knelt in the dirt, my fingers tracing the familiar curve of a small, wooden bird. The world narrowed to this one, desolate patch of ground. The roar of the city faded to a dull hum, then to nothing. All that was left was the sickly beat of my own heart.
"It's up to you now, Nadim. She looks so much like your mother. Take good care of your sister."
My father's last words, whispered through cracked lips eight years ago, returned with force. For six hundred and ten days, a sliver of hope had been lodged deep in my gut. It was irrational, defiant. I had told myself Dalia was dead—it was the only logical outcome. But the hope had persisted, a stubborn ember refusing to be extinguished. Now, as I stared at the bird, a cold wave of certainty washed over me, and the ember died, leaving behind smoke that burned in my throat.
The boy who had promised his dying father he would take care of his sister had broken that promise. All my cunning, all my newfound strength, had been hollow.
But then, a whisper. "Analyze the problem." It was Kael's voice. "A grave is not a body. A story is not the truth." The training fought against the grief. A new, desperate hope flickered to life. I would not surrender to the silence. I would find the truth.
My new life began the next morning, a life of dual servitude. By day, I was the Warden's Steward, overseeing the relentless, orderly churn of the prison workshops. The work was a shield of familiarity against the chaos of my own thoughts. But when the final bell rang and the gates were barred, I was a different kind of prisoner, released into the city for a few precious hours of darkness. My freedom was a frantic race against the dawn, a hunt for answers in a city where I now had to look over my shoulder, seeing the face of the furious Elder Ermias in every shadow.
My first stop was the man who had tolerated our existence for years. I found Old Man Gazbar locking his livestock pen. He squinted, his eyes taking in my scarred face and missing eye before recognition settled, not of me, but of my context.
"You're the brother," he stated, his voice flat. "From the loft."
"The grave," I said. "Who dug it?"
He grunted, not bothering to look at me. "Two women. Paid me. Said the girl died of the fever." He held out a calloused hand, palm up. The meaning was clear. His tolerance had always had a price. Now, his information did, too. I pressed the few coins the Warden had given me into his hand. He pocketed them without a word of thanks.
"Who were they?" I pressed.
"One was that innkeeper, Hamil," he mumbled, finally turning his flat, incurious eyes on me. "The other? Looked rich, but dressed poor. Spoke like she was used to being obeyed." He shrugged, the transaction complete.
His words were a blow, but the mention of Lady Hamil was a lifeline. A solid thread. The next evening, my heart hammered with a nervous energy as I walked to the inn. Lady Hamil had been kind. She would have answers.
The sign above the door was new, the air inside stale. A portly man with a stained apron met my question with a snort.
"Lady Hamil? Gone. Sold the inn to me a month back. Her and her husband, packed up and left the city. Said they were starting a new life somewhere the King's shadow doesn't reach."
The laughter followed me out the door, a fresh layer of filth on a world already covered in it. The thread had snapped. The hope that had carried me through the day collapsed, leaving a hollow ache.
For days, I was adrift. The work at the prison was a mercy, its rigid logic a dam against the flood of despair. But I forced myself back out each night, haunted by my promise.
I found a fruit vendor who remembered Dalia. "Ah, the little bird," she said, her face softening. "Always so polite." Her eyes grew distant, and for a moment, a fragile hope stirred in me again. "She loved the bruised peaches. The ones no one else would buy. Said the sweet part was sweeter when you had to eat around the bad." The memory was a fresh twist of the knife. "Lady Hamil came by one afternoon, after the girl took ill. Bought the best peach I had. Said it was for Dalia, to tempt her appetite. It was a kindness, I thought."
A kindness. The word echoed in my mind. It wasn't an answer, but it was something. My last stop was a hovel near Gazbar's barn. A small boy with wide, curious eyes remembered the women. "The serious ladies," he called them. "They didn't talk. Just dug. Like they were doing something important. One of them looked important, like a queen, even though her clothes were plain." He held out a small, smooth stone. "I left this for the girl. So she wouldn't be lonely."
"Important, like a queen." The words repeated in my mind, a detail that didn't fit. I walked away from the hovel, my thoughts racing, trying to assemble the pieces. "Analyze the problem." A noblewoman, dressed plainly, helping an innkeeper bury a destitute girl? It made no sense. Unless… unless she was a patron. A wealthy woman who frequented the inn, who had taken a liking to Dalia. A secret benefactor. This was the missing piece. This explained the proper burial, the kindness. It was a new theory, a new structure of hope, built on a logical foundation. Perhaps this woman of importance had taken Dalia from the city, away from the fever, to a place where she could heal.
This was the hope I carried with me, the one I polished and protected as I stood before the grave one last time. My analytical mind had found a path through the grief.
And then I remembered the boy's other words.
"They didn't talk. Just dug. Like they were doing something important."
The image struck me. The solemnity of it. The quiet purpose. It was not the hurried work of a secret rescue. It was the deliberate, heart-breaking work of a funeral. My carefully constructed theory, my final, logical hope, shattered into dust. The kindness of the vendor, the involvement of the "queen"—it all dissolved in the face of that one, simple image. They weren't saving her. They were honoring her.
The voice of the imposter, the one I had fought so hard to silence, returned, no longer a whisper, but a roar. "You see? You built an empire of efficiency, you commanded men, you earned a pardon. But it was all a game. In the one test that truly mattered, you failed. You weren't there. You didn't save her. You broke your promise to your father."
There was nowhere else to look. There were no more threads to pull. The truth, it seemed, was exactly what it appeared to be: a tragedy I was too late to prevent. The weight of it settled in my gut, a cold, hard certainty that finally, completely, extinguished the last ember of my quest.
My new life was waiting. The Warden expected me at the prison at dawn. I had a position, a wage, a purpose. But as I walked back toward the walls that had been my world for so long, I was more of a prisoner than I had ever been. The bars were gone, but the cage of my own failure had just been welded shut around my heart.