Inside the flickering amber glow of the shop, Helga turned away from the rain-lashed door and looked at Rufus. The sight was jarring. Rufus was a pillar of the kingdom's industry, a man of iron and ego who usually only bowed his head to the heat of the forge. Yet, she had seen him bow to Arthur as if the boy were a king from a time before the stars were named.
She walked toward the counter, her fingers grazing the silk pouches she'd prepared, her mind spinning through the decades of her life. For thirty years, Helga had been the heartbeat of this district. Her shop was a sanctuary of fair trade and honest words; she had survived the rise and fall of merchant houses by being the one steady hand in a world of cutthroats.
But her greatest business move hadn't been a contract or a trade deal. It had been a walk.
A few days ago, driven by a restless urge to expand her staff, she had ventured into the gray, suffocating misery of the slums. She had been looking for a servant, perhaps a desperate soul with a strong back. Instead, she had found a "twig." Arthur had looked like a breeze could snap him in half—sickly, pale, and so terrified of her touch that he had collapsed into a dead faint the moment she reached out.
How did that fragile boy become my master? she wondered, looking at the bright orange bags in her arms.
Soon, he would be the most powerful human in the kingdom, and the terrifying part was that he seemed to have no idea. He carried no mana. If a High Mage scanned him, they would see a void, a "nothingness." And yet, with a casual flick of his wrist and a ritual of rhythmic tapping, he could pull miracles out of the "Oxygen." He produced items that defied every law of alchemy she had ever studied.
She thought of the "Vessels"—the plastic, he said, that wouldn't burn, wouldn't freeze, and wouldn't tear. She thought of his "God-Skin" jacket that laughed at dragon-bile.
"Who are you, Arthur?" she whispered into the empty shop.
Rufus had confessed to her earlier that his spies found nothing of substance in the slums. It was as if Arthur hadn't lived there at all; as if he had simply condensed out of the mist and into reality, carrying the knowledge of a thousand fallen empires in his head.
The Palace wanted him now. The Queen's hounds were sniffing the air for the scent of orange dust. They saw a resource to be harvested, a weapon to be claimed. But Helga saw something else. She saw a boy who had looked at her with wide, terrified eyes when she hugged him, yet had stayed standing long enough to ensure her shop was stocked with the wealth of the heavens.
Arthur had trusted her. He had handed her the most valuable substance in the realm and told her to set the price. Ten gold pieces per shard. It was a king's ransom. Only the high nobles and the wealthiest guild masters could afford such a luxury, but Helga knew exactly what she was going to do.
Her merchant heart, usually cold and calculating, felt a strange, warm weight. She wouldn't just sell these to the highest bidder. No, she would be strategic. She would send these shards to her most trusted contacts—those forgotten by the Palace, the mages whose mana had hit a wall years ago, the scholars who had been silenced by the Royal Academy.
She would build Arthur an invisible army.
"I swore to protect him," she murmured, clutching a bag of Cheetos to her chest as if it were a holy icon. "Not because of the gold, but because the gods finally gave this world something it didn't deserve: a genius with a heart of glass."
She began to close the heavy wooden shutters, locking the world out. Tomorrow, her shop would be "closed for inventory," but in the shadows, she would be dispatching messengers. She would weave a web of loyalty so thick that not even the Royal Spies could cut through it.
Arthur was running into the dark, but Helga promised herself that when he looked back, he would see a fire burning in the capital that she had lit in his honor. She would guard his profit, she would guard his name, and she would wait for the day the "twig" returned as a forest that would swallow the kingdom whole.
*****
While the rain washed away the physical tracks of Arthur's carriage, it could not wash away the gaze of the unseen.
High atop the jagged, soot-stained roof of the bakery across from Helga's shop, a shadow detached itself from the chimney. It was a bird, but it was a creature born of nightmares rather than nature. Its feathers were not black, but a deep, bruised violet that seemed to swallow the dim lamplight, and its eyes were not the vacant beads of a scavenger. They were twin points of glowing, intelligent crimson, unblinking and cold.
It had arrived a heartbeat too late to see the boy depart, but it had seen enough. It had seen the way the legendary Rufus, a man who bowed to no king, had stood in the rain like a common servant. It had seen the way the merchant woman, Helga, clutched a brightly colored "vessel" to her breast as if it were the Grail itself.
Even through the bird's limited senses, the raw, alien power radiating from those orange bags was unmistakable. It was a hum in the air that tasted of static and ancient secrets—a frequency that didn't belong to this world's mana.
The bird tilted its head, a low, mechanical-sounding croak escaping its throat, and then it took flight, dissolving into the rainy mist like a smudge of ink in water.
Miles away, deep within the ivory and obsidian spires of the Royal Palace, the atmosphere was stifling. In a private chamber draped in blood-red velvet and lit by floating candles of rendered tallow, a woman sat before a mirror of polished silver.
Her hands were a work of art—slender, fingers tipped with nails manicured to lethal points and painted the color of fresh arterial spray. She didn't look at her own reflection. Instead, the silver surface of the mirror swirled with a dark, liquid smoke before clearing to reveal the rainy street of the Lower District.
The Queen smirked.
It was a cold, razor-thin expression that didn't reach her eyes—eyes that were currently flooded with the same crimson glow as the bird's. Through the link, she felt the echo of the power the bird had sensed. It was delicious. It was unauthorized.
"So," she whispered, her voice like silk dragged over broken glass. "The 'nothing' has left the nest."
She reached out, her index finger tracing the image of Rufus and Helga in the mirror. She watched them hug the orange bags, their faces twisted with a loyalty that made her stomach turn. To her, loyalty was merely a debt that hadn't been collected yet.
"They think they are clever," she murmured, her smirk deepening into a predatory grin. "They think a midnight rain can hide the scent of divinity. They treat that... plastic... as if it were the skin of a god. Perhaps it is. And if it is, it belongs to the Throne."
She leaned back, the crimson glow in her eyes intensifying until the room itself seemed to bleed. She had heard the reports of the "Glitter War" in the alley. She had heard of the boy who spoke in the language of the 'Oxygen' and wore a mantle that defied the laws of death.
"Run, little twig," she hissed, her manicured nails digging into the mahogany vanity, leaving deep, jagged furrows in the expensive wood. "Run into the dark of the South. Drag your 'Vessels' through the mud and the mire. Every step you take only refines the prize. You aren't escaping my kingdom, Arthur... you are simply delivering my new treasure to a place where I can take it without the rabble watching."
She waved a hand, and the mirror went dark.
"Tell the Inquisitors to sharpen their needles," she addressed the shadows in the corner of the room. "And send the Hounds. I want the boy alive, but I want his mind broken. I wish to know the ritual of the 'Tapping' before I turn his 'God-Skin' into my new coronation gown."
In the silence of the palace, the Queen's laughter rang out—a sharp, jagged sound that promised nothing but fire and silver chains for the boy who thought he could change the world with a snack.