Kiran's palms were dust and radio-spark; a crate slipped under his fingers.
He braced, felt the world tilt toward the Borda do Nada — that silent lip where the world ended and the sky forgot to answer.
The amulet in his jacket pocket bit into his ribs, its broken silver seam hot against bone.
He had one hour to finish the load, one thin coin to bring home, and no patience left for pity.
"Careful with those," the foreman barked, already counting the next shipment.
Kiran let the crate settle, breath shallow, and watched the abyss swallow the day's light.
A merchant's laugh split the air like glass.
"Orphan of the Edge," the man called, words polished and cheap.
He had silk on his sleeves and a smile that measured opportunities.
Behind him, a broad-shouldered guard—Lysandro—leaned against the railing, a boot tapping the planks like a metronome.
"These are dampened resonance crystals, not toys," the merchant added, inspecting a cracked case as if he owned the whole harbor.
He flicked a coin as if daring the dockhands to reach for it.
Kiran's fingers tightened on the crate's rope.
He kept his voice level.
"They won't survive another drop."
"Then don't be clumsy," Lysandro said.
He reached down, nudged a crate with the toe of his boot.
The wood shivered.
"Orphans and their big mouths."
The dock smelled of ozone and iron.
A child farther down tried to whistle; the note broke.
Kiran spotted the merchant's coin, bright against the dust, and the way the man's smile didn't touch his eyes.
It was a small thing, but it sat like a stone.
"Hands off," Kiran said.
The crate teetered.
Lysandro's boot met the corner with a crack that echoed across the planks.
A splinter of wood flew.
The crate pitched.
Kiran shoved himself forward.
"Hey!" the merchant snapped.
"Look at you—"
Lysandro's fist landed in Kiran's stomach.
Heat folded his ribs; the world became a cone of grainy light.
He doubled over, air gone.
His hand smacked the ground, palm shredding against a pile of discarded tin and rust.
Blood made a quick, bright star across the metal.
"Pathetic," the merchant said, cool as the coin between his fingers.
He turned his back and walked away with his goods intact.
Kiran stayed bent, tasting iron.
The amulet thumped against his chest like a second heart.
His breath came back in shallow pulls.
He pushed himself upright and found the crate still upright—miracle or luck.
Lysandro watched him with a casual cruelty that left no room for demands.
"Get back to work," the foreman ordered from the stairs, voice flat.
He had counted the damage with his eyes and already set his mind to numbers.
Kiran drew his hand away from the ruin.
The skin stuck to the tin, then tore clean.
He swallowed the hot, bitter air and clenched his jaw until his molars hummed.
The amulet's seam scraped his palm; he felt, for a second, the shape of a promise pressed into him long ago — a promise that never needed words.
"You're bleeding," a boy said, wide-eyed.
He held an empty crate like a shield.
Kiran wrapped his fingers with a scrap of cloth, a mechanical motion.
No thought lingered on the pain.
The dock's noise returned like tide.
The foreman counted damages as though he were carving them into the ledger of the world.
"Half your wage," he said without raising his voice.
"Lost time, broken crate, trouble."
"Sir—" Kiran started, but the foreman folded the word away.
"It's company policy," the foreman said.
He didn't look at Kiran as he spoke.
Numbers landed like stones.
Men beside him shifted their weight and spat.
Kiran's head spun.
Half a day's coin could not be replaced by apologies.
He pictured his thin room above the warehouse, the cracked wooden shelf where the amulet rested on a strip of cloth.
He could hear his mother's voice from a remembered platform, not as a memory but as an instruction: Leave nothing undone.
"That's theft," Kiran said.
His voice was small but steady.
It cut the air.
"What will you do?" the foreman asked, hand already reaching for the ledger.
His answer was a sigh that resembled finality.
"Then write," Kiran said.
"Write it down. I'll work harder tomorrow."
The foreman looked at him like a man deciding whether to swat a flea.
"You can start by moving, or you'll get moved."
Kiran's stomach tightened.
He stepped back, chest raw, and the boy with the empty crate offered him a half-smile of solidarity that made his throat close.
He picked up the old sword without thinking.
It lay half-buried in a heap of junk: a blade eaten by pocks of rust, a hilt wrapped in torn leather.
For a useless moment he let his palm hover over it, felt the roughness under his fingertips.
The metal was cold enough to bite.
He should have left it—another useless relic to be scraped for fuel.
The foreman's words were still there, an invoice stamped on his future.
"That's mine now," he mouthed to himself in the way of those who take what must be taken.
A child chuckled somewhere.
The merchant's carriage wheels faded.
Lysandro's boot-tap kept time.
Night fell without ceremony.
Lanterns along the quay sputtered and narrowed the world into circles.
Kiran wrapped the cloth tighter around his hand and shouldered the sword blade-first, awkward and heavy, like carrying a secret.
"You'll sell that?" the boy asked, curiosity sharper than his fear.
"If it brings a coin," Kiran said.
His jaw tightened.
He had not yet decided whether he would sell the hilt for metal or the blade for a story.
Either way, the rust clung like an omen.
The streets smelled of frying oil and wet stone.
Voices thinned to echoes.
When he crossed the market lane, someone shouted a name he didn't have.
The amulet in his pocket scraped the seam of his jacket; he slid a finger into the hollow where the silver had broken and felt the empty space like a missing tooth.
He thought of the last train — there had been talk, months ago, of a final convoy to Fortress-Threshold.
People whispered it like weather: hope for some, rumor for others.
The amulet had been his mother's last object, pressed into his palm on a platform he could still see when he closed his eyes.
The memory steadied him more than the coin would.
A cat darted across his path and knocked over a tin.
The sound made him flinch.
He walked faster.
Near the city gate a patrol stood, leaned and chatty.
One of them glanced at the sword and sneered, then looked away.
The world had small allowances for broken things if they wore the right brand of patience.
Kiran kept moving.
His ribs still ached.
The cloth on his hand soaked a thin stripe across his thumb.
He tasted the city: salt, smoke, the metallic edge of his own blood.
A shadow detached itself from a doorway as he passed.
The capataz from the docks stepped into his path before Kiran could sidestep him.
He smelled of oil and ledger-ink.
"You're late," the capataz said.
"And short."
Kiran stopped.
His feet rooted to the cobbles.
"You took half, sir. There's nothing more to give."
The capataz's eyes flicked to the sword.
"Where did you get that?"
"From the dump. It was loose," Kiran said.
His voice was careful; nothing in it invited a fight.
"That blade's property of the warehouse now," the capataz said.
"Everything discarded becomes inventory until sold. Rules."
Kiran tightened his grip.
The leather on the hilt left a pale smear on his palm.
"I need metal to trade," he said.
"I need the money."
The capataz studied the cut on Kiran's hand and the dirt crusted at the knuckles.
"You could have cashed in the amulet," he said.
"Seen towns buy relics for better prices."
His tone was almost conversational; the edge pressed anyway.
Kiran's mouth closed.
The amulet in his pocket seemed suddenly heavier, its broken seam a map of all the small humiliations that had led him here.
He had promised, once, not to pawn it.
The promise was older than his hunger, but hunger had its own geometry.
"Then sell the scrap," the capataz said.
"Or leave it."
Kiran looked at the street behind the man.
Night folded around warehouses and the sound of distant trains rumbling like an animal.
He imagined Fortress-Threshold as a rumor made solid: a place where fate could be bargained, traded, fought for.
If the train was real, it left at an hour that did not wait for poverty.
"Fine," he said.
"Take it."
His voice was quiet enough to be mistaken for resignation.
The capataz nodded, satisfied.
"You know where to return it if you change your mind."
Kiran walked away, shoulders tight, the sword heavy and strange against his hip.
The city's lamps pinned thin stars to the cobbles.
He kept his steps small and steady until the docks were a thin line behind him.
A silence came over the street that was not empty but expectant, as if the city itself were pausing to watch a slight thing decide its fate.
He wiped his bloody palm on his trousers and, out of habit, touched the amulet through the cloth of his jacket.
The seam pressed into the pad of his finger; a single memory bloomed—his mother's hand on his cheek, a promise pressed into metal.
The sword jutted forward, rustline catching the lanterns.
He walked faster.
Halfway down the lane a drop of blood slipped from the wound on his palm, slow and certain.
It hung at the tip of his finger and fell, a small, unimportant thing in the city's breath.
The rust along the blade brushed the cobbles as he moved; it seemed to drink the night's air.
He paused beneath a narrow arch where the lamps were weak.
The sound in the street thinned to a paper-whisper.
For a heartbeat the world held its noise.
Kiran's foot found a loose stone and wobbled; his balance corrected itself, muscles working without thought.
The rust on the blade touched the droplet.
Everything contracted to that contact.
The rust receded a single, impossible millimeter.
Kiran's breath hitched but he did not look up.
The silence pressed against his ears the way the ocean presses against a cliff: with weight but without sound.
The fragment of metal revealed looked like a wound in the blade—black, flat, a depth without reflection.
It had no luster, no grain, only an absence that threw the lanternlight away.
He had no language for it.
He had only the muscle-memory of survival: move, sell, eat; keep the amulet safe.
The air felt colder, and not because the night had thinned.
Something in the blade changed the space around it, a small rearrangement that demanded attention.
Kiran swallowed.
He could smell his own blood clearer than before.
He could not take his hand from the hilt.
As he walked away into the falling night, the rust on the blade touched a drop of his still-fresh blood.
The rust receded a millimeter, revealing a fragment of metal as dark as a hole in reality.