At some point, Kael stepped out into the evening air, letting the tavern's oppressive heat peel away from his skin. His boots squelched through mud as he made his way down a nameless side street.
The stone and timber buildings lining the road showed only faint light within. Well, it was cheaper to not use oil lamps.
Above him, the silver moon cast its quiet illumination. The red moon was nowhere to be seen tonight. In its absence, the Celestial Court stretched across the darkening sky, a beautiful backdrop of distant lights.
Kael's thoughts drifted.
Miss Mira would like a view like this, wouldn't she?
He did too, in his own way. He had always been easy to sway by such things. Fortunately, he'd been surrounded by decent people when he was young. As he grew older, he learned to be more careful about what—and who—he allowed to influence him.
He was seventeen now, an age that could reasonably be called adult, or at least independent.
And ten years had passed since the day both of his parents died.
He still remembered how withdrawn he had been when Mira took him in. She was an innkeeper in the Eastern District, and over the years she taught Kael far more than how to carry a tray or clean a room. She taught him manners, patience, and—most importantly—how to deal with irritating people without inviting trouble. The foundation of his silver tongue owed almost everything to her.
Mira had even indulged Kael's selfish wish to live with a widow hunter for a time, so he could learn more about the world beyond the city. Considering the dangers of that life, Mira had every reason to refuse. Even so, she respected his choice.
Maybe I should visit her tomorrow…
It was a rest day. I could help around the inn while I was there.
By the time he entered the Southern District—the Merchant Quarter—he saw people along the roadside who looked even more ragged than he did. Their gazes followed him: pleading, appraising, searching for something to cling to.
Unfortunately for them, I have almost nothing of value on me.
Most of his coin had been deposited at the Redstone Bank, an iron-fronted banking house near the central square. It charged an unreasonably high monthly holding fee, but it was the only place in Last Light that could mostly guarantee secure storage. Kael didn't like it, but he understood why—maintaining security in a city this isolated wasn't cheap. Anything truly valuable, he kept hidden back at home.
Kael ignored the stares and continued on toward the district's main thoroughfare.
The road stretched nearly twenty meters wide and was still bustling despite the late hour. Lines of merchants crowded both sides—peddlers with handcarts, permanent shopfronts with open shutters, and stall owners under canvas awnings. They sold everything from dried meats and skewered street food to bolts of cloth, cheap trinkets, tools, and imported spices.
Kael scanned the crowd, looking for somewhere selling food.
He hadn't had dinner yet.
Because of its location—and the importance of Last Light as a border town of Primordis—the city offered an astonishing variety of food, each bearing the unmistakable influence of the many places of Vastara.
From Tianxia, the Eastern Continent, came rice dishes that were all but guaranteed to be found somewhere along the street. Aldermarch of the Western Continent contributed its dense breads and simple, filling loaves. Savari, the Southern Continent, was represented through rich spices and fragrant stews, their heat and aroma cutting through the night air. And from the Kaimetsu Archipelago arrived seafood-based dishes, fresh or dried, carrying the briny scent of distant waters. Last Light itself is in the western hemisphere.
Kael wrinkled his nose as he passed a Kaimetsu stall where dried squid hung from hooks like leathery curtains. The vendor—a weathered woman with sun-darkened skin and the telltale tattoos of an archipelago sailor—called out to him in accented Aldermaric.
"Fresh today! Only two copper per—"
"Fresh?" Kael lifted an eyebrow without breaking stride. "That squid's been dead longer than I've been alive."
Her sales pitch died mid-sentence, replaced by a sharp scowl. Kael kept walking.
He wasn't particularly in the mood for seafood tonight. Or rather, he wasn't in the mood for that seafood. One glance was enough to tell it had spent weeks in a ship's hold, crossed an ocean, and now hung in the humid night air doing its best to attract flies. His stomach had standards. Low ones, admittedly, given his budget, but standards nonetheless.
His gaze swept the street and landed on a Tianxian food cart near the intersection. The vendor was younger—maybe late twenties—with flour dusting his forearms and the efficient movements of someone who'd made the same dish a thousand times. A wok sat over a charcoal brazier, flames licking up the sides as he tossed rice and vegetables with practiced flicks of his wrist.
Fried rice?
Kael approached, watching as the vendor cracked an egg directly into the wok, the whites sizzling instantly against the metal. The smell was clean—garlic, oil, a hint of soy sauce—and the ingredients were visible. Rice. Chopped greens that looked like they'd been purchased that morning. Bits of... something that was probably beast meat, though Kael couldn't identify the species at this distance.
"What's the meat?" Kael asked, leaning against the cart.
The vendor didn't look up from his wok. "Ember Rat. Freshly trapped this morning."
Kael made a face. Ember Rat was F-rank—barely above vermin—but at least it was very likely to be fresh. And the vendor seemed competent enough not to poison him. Probably.
"How much?"
"Eight copper with egg. Six without."
Kael fished the coins from his pouch and set them on the cart's wooden counter. "With egg."
The vendor took the money and went back to work. A few more expert tosses, a quick sprinkle of something green, and the fried rice was scooped into a wooden bowl and pushed across the counter.
Kael accepted it, grabbed a pair of wooden chopsticks from a cup on the cart, and stepped aside to make room for the next customer.
The rice was hot, slightly crispy from the wok's heat, the egg scrambled through it in golden ribbons. The Ember Rat tasted… fine. Gamey, a little tough, but not bad once he got past the mental image of what he was eating. The vegetables added some crunch, and the seasoning was simple but effective.
Not great. But not terrible either.
Good enough, Kael decided, which was about the best endorsement he gave most meals in Last Light.
He ate standing at the edge of the street, watching the flow of people pass by. A group of adventurers staggered past, drunk and loud. A merchant argued with a customer over the price of lamp oil. Somewhere deeper in the quarter, a beast roared—probably from one of the pens near the southern edge of the district.
Kael quickly finished the rice, returned the bowl to the vendor with a nod, and continued deeper into the Merchant Quarter.
The stench of the tannery reached him before he saw Thornwood & Sons General Shop—his place of work, and his place of residence. The three-story building squatted between the tannery and a fletcher's workshop, wedged into the street.
He started up the external stairs, each step announcing his presence with a loud creak.
His room was on the third floor, at the very end of the hall. He pushed the door open.
Three meters by four meters of kingdom.
A straw mattress on a wooden frame. A table with one wobbly leg that he'd shimmed with folded paper three times before giving up. A chair. A chest. Inside should be two spare shirts, a whetstone that no longer worked, a chipped blade, and a small collection of books: survival guides, beast manuals, herbalism notes, a widow hunter's journal, language primers, and a handful of others he'd picked up over the past three or four years with his savings.
In the corner near the window, barely visible in the evening gloom, sat the rat trap he had set two days ago.
A rat was squirming inside the trap.
The creature was remarkably ordinary: matted dark fur, beady black eyes, twitching whiskers.
Kael's mouth curled upward despite himself.
The damn things had been getting bolder lately, chewing through the corner of his spare shirt and leaving droppings across the floor. He'd borrowed the trap from his neighbor, Jonas: a simple spring-loaded cage designed to catch without killing. The homeowner—and his boss—Garrick, didn't like dead rats stinking up the building, and frankly, neither did Kael.
He walked closer, boots soft against the floorboards. The trap shuddered as the rat lunged again, then stilled, breathing hard.
When he was close enough to reach it, his attention snagged on something else.
Kael slowed.
His expression shifted, a crease forming between his brows as confusion flickered across his face.
"What… is that?"
Beside the rat—half-hidden beneath a torn scrap of cloth the animal had apparently dragged into the cage—lay a circular object no larger than his palm.
***
A/N: Uh… sorry. I got a bit too invested while writing the cuisine scene.
Maybe I'm just too impatient or something. I've been revising the chapters for the past week—almost two, actually—and I finally got sick of it. This is the result.
That said, the main hook of the story really starts in the next chapter, as you've probably already guessed.
I tend to overthink everything, you see. And honestly, that's not something I want bleeding too much into the story.
I resigned from my job in late December last year, and—once again—I've realized I really don't like 9-to-5 work.
Rate it from 1 to 10, and include your reasoning if possible. That would really help me identify what's still lacking in the story.