The bounty notice was still crumpled in my hand when the sound started — not the polite sort of footsteps you hear in a civilized city, but the ragged, hungry rhythm of pursuit. Many feet, moving fast, some heavy enough to make the stones beneath us hum, others light enough to vanish between the thuds.
It was the kind of sound that told you the people making it weren't here to discuss terms over tea. I glanced up at the nearest rooftop, half-hoping it was just paranoia, but no — there they were.
Shapes, all angles and motion, leaping the gaps between buildings with an ease that made me briefly reconsider every life decision that had led me to this particular street at this particular moment.
Salem didn't speak — he didn't need to. He gave me one look, the kind of look that condenses a paragraph's worth of warning into half a heartbeat, and then we were moving. The two of us cut into a side street, the walls pressing in so close that the damp bricks scraped my shoulders when I misjudged a turn.
My boots slapped hard against the cobblestones, the air slicing in cold through my teeth, but the street ahead was too narrow for relief. Every window we passed was shuttered tight, every doorway closed — the city had that uncanny way of becoming a labyrinth when you needed it to be a straight road.
I could hear them behind us, the hunters — not a disorganized mob, but coordinated, spreading out to pen us in. And maybe, if I were feeling particularly masochistic, I'd admit there was something flattering in that. A bounty on my head was one thing. A bounty so urgent that this many people dropped what they were doing to try and collect it? That was practically a compliment. A deadly, currently inconvenient compliment, but still.
That thought began to sour when the street ahead began to change.
It happened almost without warning — one moment, the air was thin and sharp from running, and the next it had teeth. Greenish fog spilled from above, hissing out of squat metal canisters that bounced once on the cobblestones before rolling into the gutter. It hit like a hand to the throat, clawing down into my lungs, every breath a scrape of iron filings.
The smell was sharp, acidic, but underneath was something stranger — a faint, metallic tang that made my thoughts feel… slow. Tilted, like the world was trying to lean me sideways without my permission.
I staggered, blinking hard, and through the shifting haze I caught movement — tall, thin silhouettes began slipping between buildings, their pace quick and deliberate, boxing us in.
Salem's hand caught my shoulder — not rough, just enough to snap my focus back to him. "It's alchemical," he said between chokes, his voice low but carrying. His eyes had that hard clarity they got when he'd identified the shape of the knife about to go into his back. "Not just smoke. It's choking the flow of magic. Slows reactions. They're not here to fight fair."
I wanted to say something appropriately bitter, but the fog was already making it hard to shape words without coughing. My tongue tasted like pennies. Fighting in this would be like boxing underwater.
"We split up again. I'll act as a decoy," Salem said, and I hated how calm he sounded when he said it. "Meet at sunset in the Canal District. If you're not there, I'll assume you're dead."
I opened my mouth to argue, to tell him that leaving each other in the middle of a hunting ground was the kind of decision usually followed by funerals. But before I could get the sentence out, he was moving — straight into the densest part of the fog, toward a knot of shadowy figures whose heads all turned to track him. His short sword flashed once in the haze, silver catching what little light bled through, and then the shapes closed around him.
That left me the other direction.
I didn't linger — didn't look back, didn't weigh the odds. My boots tore at the cobbles as I lunged into a narrow offshoot, air clearing just enough for my lungs to scrape some oxygen back together. The ring on my finger clicked faintly, the number shifting lower.
I heard them peel off after me — three sets of steps, distinct in their weight.
I risked a glance back.
The leader was tall, broad-shouldered, with a lean face that had the kind of bone structure that made "wolfish" seem less like a metaphor and more like a bloodline. His hair was cut close to his scalp, his eyes pale and sharp, and in his hand was an axe that looked like it had been forged for the sole purpose of splitting people lengthwise.
The woman to his right was almost painfully thin, her hair cropped short, her crossbow already loaded and cradled in her arms like she was just waiting for me to stop moving. Her face was unreadable in that way that meant she'd had a lot of practice keeping it that way.
And the third — gods help me — was smiling. A smaller man, wiry, with a staff carved from dark wood, the top ending in a crooked hook that hummed faintly with the kind of magic you didn't want touching your skin.
They didn't shout. Didn't threaten. Just… followed, herded me deeper into the city, away from the familiar paintwashed facades and winding canals, toward something harsher.
The change was gradual — pastel walls giving way to bare brick, brick giving way to iron ribs and soot-stained glass. The air thickened with the smell of smoke and hot oil, the streets cutting at odd angles now, built less for beauty and more for whatever got the job done quickest. Overhead, the occasional balloon still drifted, but their shadows looked out of place here, sliding over smokestacks and rusted gantries.
An industrial district.
I didn't know the city well enough to be certain, but the buildings here had that kind of feel to them. Somewhere ahead, I could hear the slow churn of machinery — a deep, steady groan, punctuated by the occasional hiss of steam.
The three behind me didn't slow.
I cut into another alley before finding myself ankle-deep in warm water that stank faintly of rusted copper. The alley glowed orange ahead, the light flickering like fire, and I realized it wasn't fire at all but molten runoff spilling through a grated channel from some unseen foundry. The heat hit like a slap, the kind that sinks into your bones and makes your skin want to crawl right off.
It was here, in this narrow, rust-streaked vein of the city, that I decided my best option was to double back. The path ahead bent toward the source of the heat, and I wasn't eager to see what kind of welcome a foundry gave to uninvited guests.
I'd barely taken a step when it happened.
A blur at my feet — low, fast, a scatter of movement so quick I almost missed what it was. Rabbits.
No, not rabbits. Bunnies. Dozens of them, each barely the size of my boot, fur in a chaotic range of white, ears twitching like antennae locked on a signal I couldn't hear. They poured past me like water, their tiny bodies weaving between my ankles without so much as brushing them.
They didn't even look at me.
Instead, they looked at him.
The wolfish man had just stepped into the alley, axe raised, when the first bunny leapt. Its teeth sank into his forearm, and then the others were on him, a tide of fur and claws and teeth moving with a speed and precision that didn't belong to anything born in a meadow. He roared, swinging the axe in wide arcs, but every strike met only empty air or the sickening thump of another rabbit too small to catch properly.
And then they started tearing.
It wasn't neat. It wasn't clean. I had seen men dismembered before, but rarely by something that looked like it belonged in a child's storybook. They went for his legs first, dragging him down under their collective weight, then his arms, their teeth flashing wet in the orange light. His roar became a scream, then a gurgle, and then nothing at all.
The crossbow woman froze. The staff-bearer stumbled back a step.
And then she appeared.
She stepped into the glow like she'd been painted there — a girl, beastfolk, maybe my age, maybe younger, her rabbit-like ears twitching high above her head. They were soft-looking, the kind of soft that probably hid an absurd capacity for hearing you breathe from fifty paces away.
Her hair fell in loose waves around her shoulders, a deep red that seemed to shimmer in the orange light, catching it in strands like molten copper. Her eyes mirrored the same hue, a gentle, more fiery red that gleamed with curiosity and something sharper beneath it, like embers barely contained.
There was a restless, coiled energy in the way her tail twitched behind her, and every subtle movement hinted at a vigilance that belied her delicate appearance.
A bright orange armband hugged her upper arm—a clear mark of her status as a graduated mage of the Pawn-Class, a subtle warning that her skills, though early in the hierarchy, were not to be underestimated.
"Sorry about him," she said, jerking her chin toward what was left of the wolfish man. Her voice was light, cheerful, as if she'd just apologized for stepping on someone's foot in a crowded market. "But damn, he looked like he wanted to rip you apart. You insult his mother or something?"
I blinked, coughed, and realized I was still holding my breath. "Something like that. Nothing a polite funeral wouldn't fix."
The other two didn't wait for introductions. The crossbow woman backed into the staff-bearer, murmured something sharp and low, and then they were gone, vanishing into the maze of alleys without a backward glance.
That left me, the girl, and the swarm of bunnies now licking blood from their paws like they'd just finished dessert.
She grinned, and it was not the grin of someone entirely safe to be around. "Name's Nara."
"Callie," I said.
"Well, Callie," she said, rocking back on her heels, "I think you owe me one now. And I think we should stick together. Safety in numbers, you know?"
I looked at the still-twitching remains of the wolfish man, then at the dozen pairs of rabbit eyes now turned in my direction, and decided that arguing with her was an idea I would regret before the first sentence was out of my mouth.
"Sure," I said. "Why not? What's the worst that could happen?"
Her smile widened.
I had the distinct feeling I was about to find out.