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Keeper's Adage:
"The vial of ambition tastes sweetest before the fall. The Forum's ladder leads only to the precipice. Remember, climber: in the eyes of the Crowns, your worth is measured by the emptiness you leave behind when cast down."
– From the Book of Shattered Vessels, Keepers of Stories Archive
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The lift ascended. Not with the Verge's industrial groan, but with a hushed, almost reverential whirr. Runes etched into the brass cage pulsed with cool, blue-white light, a subdued heartbeat beneath Lugal's worn boots. The steel cables sighed, not strained, but humming with contained, effortless power. With each level passed, the air thinned, sharpening in his lungs – cold, dry, sterile. The cloying reek of the Sinks – rot, iron, despair, the phantom tang of Tiri's cheap smoke – dissolved like a fever dream under a merciless dawn. Beneath him, Embermark shed its skins.
The Sinks vanished first, swallowed by engineered elegance and false light. From this height, its warrens were mere scars on the basin floor, dark and indistinct. Then the Middens receded – its frantic, colorful struggle, the smoke-hacked laughter, the raw hunger – reduced to a smeared, chaotic bruise of light and shadow. Even desperation, Lugal thought, looked ordered from afar. Contained.
He rose through a city not merely built, but bound. Bound to fire, to memory, to the myth of its own permanence. The deep thrum of Akar pulsed through the lift shaft, vibrating the polished brass railing under his palm. It wasn't the wild, resonant pulse he felt in the Forum's deep stone or the Sinks' trembling foundations. This was harnessed, channeled, a caged god's breath echoing through gilded circuitry. The very walls seemed to remember their making, vibrating softly with ingrained purpose. History here wasn't written on scrolls; it was grown from essence, shaped by obedience, etched into flawless onyx and starlit marble. The old gods of sky and flood? Tamed. Lightwoven. Docile patterns in a tapestry of curated power.
Lugal didn't gaze at the passing towers. He watched the voids between them. The deep, silent gaps where shadows pooled thickest. That ancient, watching darkness. That was where secrets weren't whispered, but excavated. Earned with blood or betrayal. His knuckles whitened on the railing.
Then, the Crowns declared themselves. Not a gradual reveal, but a sudden, breathtaking imposition. Towers of obsidian and marble, impossibly smooth, rose like glacial verdicts. Inlaid threads of Akar pulsed within their surfaces – faint, rhythmic breathing light. Above them, the upper spires bent into the bruised sky on impossible curves, forged from shimmering alloys in hues Lugal had no name for – colors unseen by Sinks-born eyes. Gardens floated, tethered by anti-gravity glyphs, Aeridor's wielding, trees blooming in eerie bioluminescent spirals of violet and toxic green. Vines, whispering across lattices of golden mesh, drank from veins of liquid memory flowing through crystal channels. Life as decoration.
The thought tasted bitter, like stale root-bread stretched too thin.
Other lifts drifted past, frictionless as thought. Nobles within regarded the city below with the mild disinterest reserved for a child's crude drawing. Their robes shimmered, woven with liquid Akar-thread that moved – a collar stiffening like a blade, sleeves exhaling perfume like silent, exotic blooms. Their laughter was soft, precise, utterly devoid of the Middens' ragged edge or the Verge's focused grit. It was the sound of consequence-free existence. Water in a sacred basin.
Lugal felt their gaze skim over him, not with hostility, but with the profound indifference reserved for dust motes caught in sterile light. He wasn't a threat. He wasn't even a person. He was beneath consequence. A familiar chill settled in his gut, colder than the lift's air. Nothing. The old word, spat from a mouth thick with rotgut, echoed in the hollow of his skull. He tightened his grip on the railing, the brass biting into his palm.
The lift stopped with a sigh softer than a held breath. The gates parted soundlessly. Before him stretched a corridor of mirrored obsidian, the floor etched with faint sigils that whispered secrets to passing soles. Light emanated from nowhere and everywhere, warm, unwavering, ageless. It cast no shadows Lugal could trust.
Two Crownsguard materialized from alcoves. Not armored, but sheathed in Akar-infused plating that seemed like living skin, pulsing with restrained power. Their halberds hummed, not with enchantment, but with contained violence.
Their eyes, flat and devoid of pity, fixed on him. Eyes like his father's on a bad night, just before the belt sang.
Lugal stepped forward. His heartbeat, a frantic drum against his ribs, felt obscenely loud in the pristine silence, shaming the subtle hum of the runes. He forced his breath steady, the way he'd learned to do huddled under the table, waiting for the storm to pass. Purpose is armor. He delivered the codewords, the passphrases. Each syllable, drilled into him during sleepless nights by his Forum contact, felt like handing over a sliver of his soul, exhaled into the sterile air. "Azure Serpent seeks the Sundered Sky. Bearing the weight of forgotten tides."
The guard on the left remained impassive. But the one on the right… a flicker crossed his eyes. Not recognition. Not confusion. Something colder. Sharper. Anticipation. A predator scenting weakness. Lugal's spine stiffened instinctively, the ghost of a belt lash tightening across his shoulders.
Then came the laugh.
Low. Amused. Like shards of glass dragged across silk. The sound scraped down Lugal's nerves, triggering a primal flinch he barely suppressed.
A figure detached itself from the deeper gloom near a towering, abstract sculpture of light-forged crystal. Younger than Lugal expected, draped in robes of deep, serpentine green that seemed to drink the corridor's light. Around his waist hung a silver-encased orb, pulsing with a slow, patient rhythm. His face was a study in cruel beauty – sharp cheekbones, a perfectly sculpted mouth curved in a mocking smile, eyes ancient and ravenous beneath elegantly arched brows. Vayne, Lugal realized with a jolt of cold dread that tasted like blood in his mouth. Minor house, but clawing upward. Dangerous. Like a bigger rat in a cleaner cage.
"Well, well," the noble purred, stepping closer, his voice dripping with a delight that chilled Lugal's blood. "What fascinating detritus has the Sunken Forum dredged up and polished this time? A Sinks rat with aspirations?" His gaze raked over Lugal's Verge-bought greys, seeing through the shadow-weave to the grime beneath. "You climbed quite diligently, little vermin. Scrabbled right up the cliff-face of our regard." He chuckled, the sound devoid of warmth.
"You sold us just enough truth to be convincing. The herd movements east of the Verge… the Golem patrol schedules near the old Foundry Sinkhole…" He waved a dismissive, beringed hand. "We even bothered to check. All deliciously accurate. You did your… part." He lingered on the word, imbuing it with profound worthlessness.
Lugal's chest tightened, a vise of foreboding crushing his earlier, fragile triumph. His voice, when it came, was too tight, betraying the panic clawing up his throat, the same panic he'd choked down under the table. "I was promised passage. A position within the Sanctum's periphery. Steward to the lower archives. That was the—"
The noble's laugh cut him off, sharp and derisive, echoing the drunken mockery of the hovel. "Promised? Oh, you sweet, gullible little grub. That's the Forum's oldest trick. They trade glittering fiction for blind obedience. It's remarkably efficient."
He leaned in slightly, his expensive, floral scent cloying in Lugal's nostrils, a sickening counterpoint to the remembered stench of ale and vomit. "You believed them. You ached for it. That's the real magic, isn't it? The wanting makes you pliable. Makes you nothing."
The word struck like the belt buckle. Nothing. Lugal flinched, a tiny, involuntary tremor he couldn't control. Vayne saw it. His smile sharpened.
He turned his back on Lugal, addressing the guards with bored finality. "The outer mines. The extraction sites beyond the Gloomfens are proving… unstable this season. They require fresh ballast. This one seems sturdy enough. Dispose of him appropriately." The order was delivered like a request to remove spoiled fruit, or sweep out ashes.
Ballast. The word slammed into Lugal, colder than the cell he knew awaited him. Disposable weight. The carefully constructed future, the Sanctums, the stolen power, the desperate need to be something– it all crumbled to ash in an instant. "No!" The denial ripped from him, raw and desperate, the cry of the child he thought he'd buried. He took an involuntary step back, hand instinctively reaching for the knife hidden in his sleeve – a futile gesture. "This isn't the deal! I earned this! I gave you—"
"You earned," Vayne interrupted, not even bothering to turn fully, his voice icy with finality, "exactly what you were worth. Scrap for the furnace. Take him."
The guards moved with terrifying, practiced efficiency. No shouted commands, no drawn weapons. Just sudden, brutal strength. Rough hands clamped onto his arms like iron manacles, yanking them behind his back. Cold metal – manacles infused with dull, numbing runes – snapped shut around his wrists, leeching the warmth from his skin. He struggled, a feral twist born of pure panic, a cornered animal fighting the inevitable. But he was a reed against oak. The taller guard, the one whose eyes had held that flicker of anticipation, drove a gauntleted fist into the base of Lugal's skull.
Stars exploded behind his eyes. The world tilted, fractured. The sterile light, Vayne's mocking smile, the humming halberds – all dissolved into a roaring darkness that smelled of stale ale and old blood.
Consciousness returned in agonizing fragments. Cold. Unyielding stone pressed against his cheek. Damp seeped through his clothes. The air was a thick, choking miasma of mildew, stale urine, unwashed bodies, and despair. It clawed into his nostrils, his throat, a physical violation after the Crowns' sterile chill. It was the stench of the Sinks, amplified, concentrated. The stench of home.
He was on the floor of a cell. Not gilded. Not even Middens rough. This was rust-choked, ancient iron bars humming with containment runes too weak to glow brightly, casting only a sickly, pallid light. The floor was slick, uneven. He tried to push himself up, but his limbs felt leaden, disconnected. Pain lanced through his skull where the guard's fist had connected. Nausea churned in his gut.
He wasn't questioned. Wasn't processed. He was stored. Like surplus equipment. Like discarded slag. The realization was a fresh blow, colder than the stone. Ballast. He'd climbed so high only to be thrown into the deepest pit. The irony tasted like bile. Just like your whoring mother! You'll never be nothing! The phantom voice, thick with drink and hate, echoed in the dripping silence.
Above, through the thick stone ceiling, he could hear the faint, distant sounds of the world he'd almost touched: the low murmur of lifts ascending to impossible heights, the hiss of pressure runes maintaining perfect environments, the celestial, indifferent hum of the Crowns themselves. His promise. His ambition. His meticulously crafted escape route from the hovel, from the belt, from being nothing. It rose far above him now, cold, pristine, and utterly unreachable.
He pressed his forehead harder against the filthy stone floor, the cold biting his skin. A tremor ran through him. Not just from the chill. A raw, choking sound escaped him – not a sob, but the scrape of utter desolation. He tasted salt. Not from the stone. From his own failure, hot and bitter on his lips. The dampness felt like the condensation on the cold hearthstone he'd cracked his head against.
Hatim's voice, ragged from Middens dust and bruised ribs, echoed in the hollow of his skull, a ghost wrapped in unwanted wisdom:
"That kind of job... it burns more than it pays."
A bark of laughter, harsh and broken, tore from Lugal's throat. It echoed dully in the small cell. Burned. Oh, it had burned. It had consumed everything. The vial of Pure Akar felt like a brand in his hidden pocket, its promise now a grotesque mockery, a child's dream of power snatched away. The Forum's grand purpose? Ash on the wind. Just another lie. Just another boot.
He had gambled his soul on ascent. He had traded loyalty, traded Hatim's brittle trust, traded pieces of his own tattered conscience. For this?
For rust and damp and the crushing certainty of being discarded, used up, thrown away. Just like your whoring mother! The voice wouldn't stop. He was back under the table, the belt cracking, the world reduced to pain and the suffocating knowledge that no one cared. He'd clawed his way out of the Sinks only to land in a deeper, colder version of it. The circle was closed.
The great machine of Embermark turned on, gears grinding, Akar pulsing, lifts ascending. Indifferent. Oblivious.
He was not remembered.
He was used.
He was nothing.
And the city, breathing its slow, ancient breath far above and far below, did not mourn its broken tools. It simply found more.