Lucian Rook stepped out of the Kalkata Slave Registry Hall and into the noon glare, the iron-banded oak doors booming shut behind him. In his hand lay a single roll of vellum, brittle with wax seals: the document that had branded him chattel for two long years. Now it was his to destroy.
For a heartbeat he simply stared at the scroll, pulse drumming in his ears. The sensation was hauntingly familiar—half elation, half hollow dread— like the day the legion's press-gang released him from compulsory levy back in the Border Marches. They had shoved a copper groat into his palm, barked "Dismissed, soldier," and left him blinking at an open road that suddenly belonged to him again. Today's freedom felt the same, only sharper: the stakes of misstep were exile, chains… or worse.
He turned the scroll over. Once a slave, always a slave, the bald registrar had sneered while counting Lucian's hard-earned thirty silvers and verifying Finley Aster's receipt. Новый документ (24)Новый документ (24) You'll be back—by debt or by accident. Perhaps. But not today.
Lucian struck a spark with his flint. Flame licked parchment; wax hissed. When nothing remained but curling ash, he ground it beneath his boot.
"Freedom," he whispered, testing the word like a new blade.
Warm summer wind from the Aldertide River carried the smell of horse dung, yeast, and distant forges. No overseer's shout hurried him; no whip snapped at his heels. Yet the emptiness of command was unsettling. During war service someone always barked the next order; as Elfriede's porter he had risen, marched, eaten, and collapsed on cue. Now every decision—from bread to bed—was his alone.
So what comes first?
Shelter: The coin pouch at his belt was comfortingly heavy, but an honest roof in Kalkata cost at least five coppers a night.
Gear: If he meant to register as an adventurer, he needed more than a chipped dagger and a leather satchel.
Identity: A freedman's paper carried little weight in a realm where a baron's word could still re-enslave an unlicensed vagrant. The Mars Guild charter he'd glimpsed on Elfriede's table might be his best path to legality.
The to-do list felt overwhelming, but terror quickly transmuted into resolve. After two years of obeying, deciding for himself was a privilege he refused to squander.