Ash clung to Embermark like breath on glass.
Not dust. Not decay. Something alive.
It whispered through alleys, curled in gutters, kissed the backs of necks like a secret. It knew the streets better than those who walked them.
Hatim ran.
Boots slapped stone—fast, frantic, staccato—echoing off walls that leaned too close. His breath came in ragged pulls, heat clawing down his throat. Each gasp drew in more ash: fine, white-gray, and constant. It coated his tongue. It whispered inside his lungs.
Behind him, a merchant's curses knifed through the air, swallowed whole by the living roar of Embermark.
Faster.
The city pressed in around him, streets winding like memory—never straight, never still. Hatim veered past a woman balancing syrup-dripping pastries, the scent sweet and sickening. He ducked under a butcher's hook—flesh still steaming—and nearly crashed into a man cloaked in cloth that shimmered like starlight on water.
Spices bit at his throat. Iron. Clove. Something floral, rotting at the edges.
Don't stop.
Not for the pain. Not for the hunger gnawing his ribs.
Not when survival had sharper teeth.
He darted into a narrow slit between leaning tenements, the light dying instantly. The alley swallowed him. Ash here was thicker—old, settled, as if remembering every soul who'd hidden here before.
Hatim pressed his back to the wall, chest heaving, pulse hammering in his ears. Stone scraped against sweat-slick skin. Heat radiated up through his boots from the veins of Akar beneath—the city's lifeblood, always pulsing, always burning.
A voice slid from the shadows.
"Still running like a streetrat."
Lugal.
Lean, sharp-eyed, his voice always half-laughing. He peeled himself from the gloom, arms folded, one foot propped against the wall like he'd been waiting all day.
"Took you long enough," he said.
Hatim wiped ash and sweat from his brow. "You followed me?"
"Watched you lose him. Sloppy. Lucky he was fatter than you."
"What do you want?"
Lugal held up a glass vial—no longer than a thumb.
Inside: golden light. Not reflected. Alive. Swirling.
Pure Akar.
Hatim froze. His gut tightened, something cold coiling deep.
"Where did you get that?"
"Not mine," Lugal said. "Yet. Payment. For whoever finishes the errand."
Hatim didn't blink. "What kind of errand?"
Lugal's grin didn't reach his eyes. "For an Ancient."
The air thickened. Hatim's breath caught, the heat pressing harder. The Ancients didn't reach into the Middens. Not the Sinks. Their world—the glass towers of the Crowns, the floating Sanctums above—felt like a different continent, a different truth.
From the dark rafters above, a soft chittering.
Wings.
A Bab fluttered down—then another. Five. Their ember-lit wings cast golden flickers through the ash, spiraling around the vial. Drawn by the purity. Lugal pocketed it. The glow vanished.
"You in?" he asked.
Hatim hesitated. This wasn't coin. This was something else. Something with hooks.
"That job might cost you," he said quietly.
"So might hunger."
Lugal tossed a crust of bread—stale, flaking. Hatim caught it, chewed slowly. Dry. Bitter. The ash curled at their feet, restless.
"You're not ready," Lugal said finally. "Didn't think you'd bite."
Hatim said nothing.
Lugal shrugged. "Try Bolun. He's near the old furnaces. Lower Middens. Scrap work. Dirty, slow. But safer."
Hatim nodded. They parted with no goodbyes, only the ash shifting in their wake.
He followed the winding threads of soot. Embermark pulsed beneath his soles, the heartbeat of something massive and half-asleep.
He moved through archways rusted to lace, beneath metal vines twisted by centuries of heat. The scent of molten sand and burnt iron thickened—molten fire and old glass. The alleys narrowed. The light dimmed.
Ash here was heavier. Faces wore it like masks. Eyes blinked from beneath it, glinting and silent.
Children chased each other between barrels of scrap and vats of glowing slag. Traders barked prices from under patched hide lean-tos. Glass furnaces towered ahead, their chimneys bleeding red smoke into the sky—like wounded gods exhaling.
Hatim kept his head low.
Too many eyes.
Too many that didn't blink.
Then—
"Oi. Whispered Void."
He froze.
Ahead, leaning against a scorched pillar, stood Tiri. Masad beside him, silent. Watching. The square around them seemed to lean in. The street's breath caught.
The first time, Hatim had run.
The second, he'd fought.
Neither had gone well.
Tiri cracked his knuckles. "Still pretending?"
Masad's voice was gravel. "We should toss him. Let Asha sort through his lies."
A vendor paused mid-shout. A child was pulled back by their mother. Heads turned—not openly. Just enough to witness.
Hatim stepped back.
A mistake.
The punch caught his ribs—sharp, cracking. A fist slammed between his shoulder blades. Then a boot. Then ash. Heat pulsed up from the stones, brighter, faster, almost eager.
The city fed on pain.
He curled in, arms over head. Breath wheezing.
Then—
Something shifted. Not just the ground. Something deeper.
The veins beneath him throbbed in time with his heart.
A murmur swept the crowd.
A hand gripped his arm. Not rough. Firm. Inevitable.
"Enough."
The word wasn't loud. But everything stilled.
Even the ash.
Tiri's sneer faltered. Masad stepped back. Something in the air had changed—charged, weightless and heavy all at once. The Akar veins shimmered faintly, casting ghostlight across faces.
Hatim opened one eye. Blood trickled down his lip.
The grip tightened. Still not cruel. But absolute.
"We need to go," the voice said.
Not a question.
Hatim didn't argue. His legs moved before his thoughts caught up. He was pulled into the alleys, the grip never loosening.
Behind them, Embermark exhaled.
Voices rose. The market resumed. Life rushed back in like floodwater.
But something had changed.
Something had seen him.
And the city, beneath its skin of ash and fire, remembered.