My first official mission as the new scout for the Builder Faction had officially, and spectacularly, careened off a cliff. I was now, for all intents and purposes, a glorified babysitter.
Lyra had been true to her word. She had vanished back into the depths of the headquarters, her duties too important to be derailed, leaving me alone in the vast, empty dining hall with Nara, who was now nervously nibbling the last crumbs of her biscuit.
An awkward silence descended. I was a man of logic and, more recently, of rage. I knew how to fight, how to analyze, and how to build a wall. I had absolutely no idea what to do with a seven-year-old child.
"So… uh," I began, my voice echoing slightly in the big room. "You... good?"
Nara just nodded, her eyes wide, still taking in the sheer scale of the stone hall. This was not working.
My eyes scanned the table, desperate for a distraction. My data-slate. My map. Useless. I thought about my own childhood, a distant, blurry memory from another life, another world. What did kids... do?
I stood up. "Wait here."
I walked to the workshop area, my mind racing. There had to be something. I bypassed the tools and the power conduits and found a bin in the corner, a collection of scrap. Discarded cogs from some failed mechanism, gears of varying sizes, and a roll of old, rejected blueprints. It was perfect.
I returned to the table and unceremoniously dumped the pile of "junk" in front of Nara. Her eyes widened, confused.
"Okay," I said, trying to sound like I knew what I was doing. "This is... a game." I picked up two of the heavier cogs. "It's called... 'Structural Integrity.' You have to see how high you can stack them before the foundation becomes unstable and it all collapses."
I demonstrated, carefully balancing one gear on top of another. It was, I realized, the single most boring-sounding game in the history of the world. It was a physics problem.
Nara, however, seemed intrigued. She tentatively picked up a small, complex-looking cog and placed it on my two-story tower. It wobbled, but held. She looked at me, a flicker of pride in her eyes. I nodded, a serious, formal approval. "Good. Solid placement."
We spent the next hour in a profound, focused silence, our tower of scrap growing higher and higher. It was a ridiculous, pointless exercise. And it was the most at-peace I had felt since arriving in this city.
The tower finally collapsed, clattering across the table with a sound that made us both jump. And then, a new sound. A small, high-pitched giggle. Nara was covering her mouth, her eyes sparkling with amusement.
My heart, which I was convinced had been replaced with a cold, hard stone of grief, gave a painful, unfamiliar lurch.
I found a discarded blueprint, the design for a support buttress that Krauss had apparently rejected. I smoothed it out. "Alright," I said, feeling a new, strange confidence. "Now I'll show you aerodynamics."
I began to fold the stiff, thick parchment. I remembered doing this once, a lifetime ago, in a world of blue skies and green grass. My fingers, now calloused from hauling rock and gripping a magun, moved with a surprising, forgotten dexterity. A few precise folds, a final crease, and I held a perfectly formed paper glider.
"This is a prototype reconnaissance vehicle," I explained, my face serious. "Its design allows it to utilize air currents for prolonged, unpowered flight."
Nara just stared at me, her head tilted, before giggling again. "It's a paper plane."
"It's a prototype," I insisted, though a smile was pulling at my own lips. "Watch."
I launched it. It soared across the long dining hall, a silent, white bird in the stone expanse. It banked perfectly near the kitchen doorway and then glided to a soft, three-point landing on the bench where Silas used to sit.
The silence that followed was heavy. But Nara broke it, scrambling off her bench and running to retrieve it. She ran back, her face flushed with excitement. "Again! Do it again!"
And for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, my mission, my anger, my grief... it all just... faded. There was only the quiet hall, the endless supply of scrap blueprints, and the sound of a child's laughter echoing off the stone walls.
Later, as the afternoon light began to wane, we sat on the floor near one of the large windows, our small fleet of gliders scattered around us. Nara was leaning against my side, her small body finally relaxed, her earlier terror completely gone. She had been quiet for a while, just watching the busy, distant figures of the Administrator Sector moving in the streets below.
"Why is your house made of stone?" she asked, her voice a small, curious murmur.
I looked at the thick, perfectly-cut blocks that formed the wall. "Because the Builder, my boss, he... he likes stone. It's strong. It lasts. It keeps us safe."
"Oh," she said, processing this. "Our house is made of rust. When the wind blows, it... it sings. But it's cold."
My chest tightened. That simple, innocent observation hit me with more force than Valerius's punch. A house made of rust. A house that "sings" in the wind. A child's description of a hovel that was slowly, inevitably, falling apart.
She pointed out the window. "Why does the city glow?"
I followed her gaze. The sun was beginning to set, and the ward-lights of the city were flickering to life. The spires of the Admin Sector, the fortified walls of the Adventurers', and the gaudy towers of the Merchants' were all beginning to pulse with a soft, protective, blue light.
"Those are the lights that keep the city safe," I explained. "They keep the monsters out."
Nara was quiet for a long moment, her small face pressed against the cool crystal of the window. "Not my street," she whispered. "The lights are broken."
I froze. "What?"
"They're broken," she repeated, her voice simple and factual. "It's dark. Why does the city only glow from the middle? The outside is dark."
I looked out the window, and for the first time, I saw it. Our headquarters, the Core, was the brightest point. The three main Faction sectors were all illuminated. But the Neutral Sector, the entire western spoke of the city... was a black, lightless void on the map. It wasn't just a turn of phrase. It was literal. They didn't even have power.
My official mission had been to inspect structural decay. But Krauss had to have known. He hadn't just sent me to find cracked stone. He had sent me into a place he had abandoned, a place left to rot. The anger I had felt before, the suspicion that the summons were hiding things, it returned with a cold, sharp focus. This wasn't negligence. This was a policy.
The joy I had felt just moments ago, playing with Nara, was soured by a new, bitter guilt. I was living in the glowing, protected heart of a city that purposefully, deliberately, left a district full of its own people to live in the cold and the dark.
Nara snuggled closer, her breathing becoming slow and even. She was falling asleep, lulled to a sense of security she had probably never felt before. I took off the black-and-gold cloak, Silas's cloak, and draped it over her small body. A protector's cloak. It felt right.
"It's warm here," she murmured, her voice thick with sleep, her eyes fluttering shut. "The lights are nice..."
"Yeah," I whispered, my voice thick with an emotion I couldn't name. "Yeah, they are."
She was almost gone, drifting in that quiet space between worlds.
"Mama said... Mama said the lights stopped listening," she mumbled, her words slurring. "Not... not after the big wall fell..."
I went rigid. My blood turned to ice. The sleepy, nonsensical words hit my brain like a coded message, a key unlocking a door I hadn't known was there.
"Nara?" I whispered, my voice suddenly urgent. "Nara, what did you say? What big wall?"
But it was too late. She was fast asleep, her breathing deep and regular, safe in the heart of the glowing, protected city that had forgotten her.
I stared out the window, at the black, empty void of the Neutral Sector. The child's words echoed in my head, over and over.
The lights stopped listening.
It wasn't a child's fantasy. It was a quote. A piece of history. A reason. It was the first real clue I had. Something had happened in that sector. A wall had fallen. And ever since that day, the system, the city, the Founders... they had stopped listening.