The city's noise faded as they climbed higher into the old quarter. The streets narrowed, then wound into dim, twisting corridors between buildings sagging with age. Moss clung to the walls. Faint lanterns flickered like tired stars.
Their shrouded savior walked ahead of the carriage, guiding it without speaking. The beasts followed as if lulled by something beyond scent or voice. Ashem held Sahir upright inside, pressing a blood-soaked cloth to his wound while Nareen clutched their daughter in the corner, lips white with fear.
They stopped before a tall, leaning house of faded stone and timber. Ivy crawled up its side. The windows were shuttered, but not broken—still cared for, in a way only long-forgotten places were.
The mysterious figure opened the door with a simple key. No locks, no sigils. Just a creak and the smell of old herbs and rain-damp wood.
Inside, the air was warm. A hearth crackled low in the main room, casting gold across shelves stacked with bundles of dried leaves, coiled roots, and cracked clay jars. A long table stood at the center, half-covered in a stained cloth. Instruments glinted in the firelight—some metal, some bone, some unfamiliar.
He cleared a space, then helped Ashem lower Sahir onto a padded bench. Sahir groaned, breath shallow, sweat pooling at his brow.
The host moved in silence, selecting a series of vials and powders. He ground a dried husk into a fine ash with a flat obsidian stone, then mixed it with a milky liquid that shimmered faintly in the light.
Ashem hovered nearby. "Can I know your name?"
"Tameru," said the man, while hastily taking care of the medicine.
"I owe you, Tameru," thanked Ashem, yet he did not care. "Is he going to be alright?"
Tameru dipped a strip of linen into the mixture and pressed it gently to the wound. Sahir hissed, but didn't pull away. "If the blade had gone any deeper, no."
Steam rose from the cloth. The smell was sharp—citrus and iron and something like burning honey.
Tameru spread a translucent ointment over the cloth, then wrapped the wound tight with fresh bandages, murmuring words under his breath. The air pulsed, subtly. A low hum seemed to pass through the wood.
"He'll rest now. Healing takes time. This buys it."
Ashem exhaled, the adrenaline finally leaving his body. He glanced around the room—at the bundles, the shelves, the table. It wasn't a healer's hut, or an apothecary. It was something older. Stranger.
"You live here?" he asked.
Tameru shook his head, rinsing his hands in a bowl of rose-tinted water. "No one lives here. But the place remembers me."
Ashem didn't ask what that meant.
Tameru picked up a small stone bowl and poured crushed red powder into a flask. "Tomorrow, you'll go alone to Kharan's. I will stay with him."
Ashem blinked. "Alone? You don't think they'll try again?"
"They might," Tameru said. "But they won't catch you twice. Not now."
Ashem looked toward the bench, where Sahir had already drifted into a heavy, dreamless sleep.
"I don't know this Kharan. I don't know what I'm walking into."
Tameru looked up, eyes steady. "That's exactly why you must walk."
Morning broke as a muted grey over the city, seeping in through the shutters like a breath held too long. Rain had come and gone in the night, leaving the streets damp and reflective. A soft haze hung over the rooftops.
Ashem stood in the doorway of the safehouse, cloak drawn tight, the weight of the satchel pressing once again against his side. Behind him, the fire crackled low. Sahir hadn't stirred all morning—still breathing, still alive—but heavy with the cost of the wound.
Tameru sat cross-legged near the hearth, eyes closed, hands resting over his knees. He hadn't said much when Ashem rose. Only handed him a sealed pouch.
"For your return," he'd said. "If you return."
Now, with the door shut behind him and the city yawning open before him, Ashem set off.
The old quarter slowly gave way to tighter, steeper alleys. Doors sat crooked in their frames, watched by dusty windows. Stray vendors hawked roasted seeds and ink-paper charms. No one met his gaze.
Kharan's shop was tucked at the far edge of the artisan's district—if it could still be called that. The air grew warmer the closer he got. Not with sun, but with some slow burn beneath the stones. Metalworkers and glassblowers once owned these streets, their legacies hidden now behind boarded facades and iron gates.
Then he saw it.
The shop had no sign. No open door. Just a rounded arch in the side of a sloped building, set with dark wood and a single brass handle worn smooth. He stepped forward and knocked.
Nothing.
He knocked again.
This time, the door opened soundlessly.
He stepped inside—and froze.
It wasn't a pawn shop.
The room expanded wider than the outer building should have allowed. Shelves arched toward the ceiling in spirals, overflowing with mechanisms that ticked without gears, scrolls that glowed faintly with words vanishing and reappearing. Artifacts hovered in suspension, encased in orbs of humming glass. One corner held a suit of armor made of sand and stitched light. Another displayed what looked like a petrified heart the size of a man's head, still faintly pulsing.
Ashem took a slow step forward.
The room did not feel lit. It felt awake.
"Do not touch anything," came a low, guttural voice.
He startled—eyes snapping to the back of the room.
There, seated behind a curved table made of inlaid brass and polished bone, was a massive figure draped in fabrics the color of dusk and deep water. Their entire form was wrapped in layers—robes, veils, and shimmering studs that caught the light like constellations. Their face was completely obscured beneath a translucent covering, except for a slight impression where eyes should be.
Kharan.
They didn't move. Didn't breathe. Just stared.
"Sit," they said.
Ashem crossed the room slowly, pulling a stool from the shadows of the shelves. He sat, uncertain.
"I… I was told you deal in rare objects," he said, his voice caught between fear and unease.
Kharan tilted their head just slightly, the fabric rustling like leaves in a storm. "Is… your debt… paid?"
Ashem blinked. "You… how—"
"The artifact," Kharan said, tapping a single rugged, skinny finger against the table. "Show it."
Ashem reached for his satchel, then froze.
His pocket was empty.
His breath hitched. He patted frantically—nothing.
He looked up, panic surging.
The artifact was already on the table.
It rested between them—small, golden, marked with strange sigils that shifted when stared at too long.
His mouth went dry.
"I—how did—?"
Kharan leaned closer. "It came when it was ready."
Then they placed a scroll beside it—long, aged, sealed in wax and bound with twine.
They spoke in a slow, measured cadence—each word chosen like it cost something.
"The mark was made before flesh knew its name.
The gate waits where stone drinks flame.
The seeker walks, the sigil calls—
But not all who change may pass through walls."
Ashem stared. "What… what does that mean?"
"You are not the first," Kharan said. "Nor the last. You've found the door. What you do now is what matters."
He reached toward the artifact again, but Kharan raised a hand.
The world tilted.
Ashem's eyelids turned to iron. The shelves blurred. The floor surged upward like a wave. He tried to speak—but everything was swallowed in velvet darkness.
He woke to the soft crackle of firewood.
He was on a mat in the same safehouse. The window showed early dusk.
Sahir lay nearby, pale but breathing, bandaged tightly across the hips. His chest rose in a steady rhythm.
Ashem sat up slowly. His head throbbed. Something was clutched in his hand.
The scroll.
Still sealed.
Still warm.