The walk home from the factory was different. The familiar streets of Oakhaven, the cracked pavement, the tired faces of workers heading home from the functioning factories, the scent of coal smoke and fried onions—it was all the same, yet Frics saw it through a new, distorting lens. Every shadow seemed to hold a secret. Every person who glanced his way felt like a potential threat.
He felt as if the name 'Zaneraya' was branded on his forehead, a glowing sigil that only he was blind to. He kept his head down, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, the right one clutching the two coins from the grocer. They felt pathetically small now, a currency from a world he no longer fully belonged to.
When he arrived home, the familiar weight of his family's quiet struggle settled back onto his shoulders, but it felt different tonight. It was no longer just a burden; it was a reason.
Dinner was a thin vegetable soup with heels of stale bread. His mother, a woman with exhaustion etched into the lines around her kind eyes, served it with a tired smile, pretending it was a feast. His father sat at the table, his breathing shallow, a wheezing cough punctuating the silence every few minutes. Across from Frics, his sister Elara, who was only seven, meticulously arranged her bread crusts into a little house on her plate.
"Did you find anything good today, Frics?" she asked, her voice a small, bright light in the dim room.
Frics flinched. The lie came to his lips before he even had time to think. "No. Nothing today, Ellie. The whole place is picked clean." It was the first lie, the first brick in the wall he was building around his secret. It tasted like ash in his mouth.
He watched her small face fall for a second before she brightened again, pushing her bread-crust house towards him. "Look! It's our house. But this one has a big garden."
Frics managed a weak smile. Her innocence was a sharp, painful thing. He was dealing with curses and magic and a creature that called him 'mortal boy', all so Elara could one day have a real garden, or at least a new pair of shoes without holes in them. The thought solidified his resolve. The risk was worth it. It had to be.
That night, sleep offered little escape. His dreams were a chaotic swirl of sapphire eyes, rusted machinery, and a melodic voice that spoke of bargains and luck.
The next afternoon, Frics bypassed Mr. Gable's grocery. Instead, he went to a fruit vendor near the market's edge, a place known for selling bruised but edible produce for next to nothing. He used one of his two coins to buy a single, slightly soft apple. It felt like a ridiculous luxury, but he remembered Zaneraya's pride. An apple, he reasoned, was more dignified than another offering of stale bread.
Back in the cold, silent sanctuary of the factory, he found her in her usual spot. She watched his approach, her posture as regal as ever.
"An apple," she commented as he placed it on a clean patch of concrete. Her voice, even in his head now that he was anticipating it, was a quiet shock. "A marginal improvement."
"It's what I could get," Frics said, a little defensively. He watched as she delicately bit into the fruit, her small, sharp teeth making surprisingly clean work of it.
He stood there awkwardly for a moment, the deal from yesterday hanging between them. Now what? He was fulfilling his part, but doubt was a persistent weed in his mind. What if he'd imagined it all? What if her voice was just a trick of his mind, and her promise of 'luck' was the rambling of a strange, sick animal?
"So," he began, trying to sound casual, "you mentioned... nudging things. Guiding me."
Zaneraya paused her meal, lifting her head to fix him with an unblinking stare. "Did you expect gold coins to rain from the ceiling the moment you agreed?"
"No, but..." Frics trailed off, feeling foolish.
"The world does not bend to crude demands," she said, her tone that of a tutor lecturing a particularly slow student. "It responds to currents. To intention. You came here to scavenge. So, scavenge."
She turned back to her apple, dismissing him. Frics felt a surge of frustration. That was it? No magical map, no glowing clues? Just 'go scavenge'? He almost turned to leave, convinced he'd been played for a fool. But then he remembered the weight of his father's medical bills and the hope in Elara's eyes. He had to try.
With a sigh, he picked up his worn canvas sack and headed towards a section of the factory he'd always avoided—a massive, collapsed pressing machine that lay on its side like a dead metal behemoth. Its front was a mangled mess of gears and plates that looked like broken teeth, and the whole structure groaned when the wind blew. It was dangerous.
He spent the next hour prying at panels and digging through layers of grease and grime. He found nothing but rust flakes and shattered bolts. The frustration grew, turning into a bitter certainty. He was an idiot. A lonely, desperate idiot who'd started believing in talking cats.
He was about to give up when Zaneraya's voice echoed in his mind, as clear as if she were standing beside him, though he knew she hadn't moved from her spot.
The beast's stomach is seldom seen. Look deeper, where its heart used to beat.
Frics froze, his hand hovering over a rusted lever. The beast's stomach? Its heart? He looked at the machine. He was working on the outer casing, the 'skin'. The 'stomach' would be the main processing chamber, accessible through a maintenance hatch he'd thought was rusted shut. And the 'heart'... that would be the main motor housing, deep inside.
His heart began to hammer against his ribs. It was a direct instruction. Cautiously, he moved to the maintenance hatch. He put his shoulder into it, grunting with effort. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, with a prolonged, tortured screech of metal, the hatch scraped open a few inches.
He squeezed through the gap into the dark, cramped interior. The air was thick with the smell of old oil and stagnant water. Using the faint light from the opening, he located the motor housing. It was protected by another plate, this one held on by four large bolts. They were rusted solid. It took him twenty minutes of brutal, straining work with a pipe he was using for a wrench, his knuckles getting scraped raw, but one by one, the bolts groaned and gave way.
He pulled the heavy plate off. And he stopped breathing.
It wasn't a treasure chest. But to Frics, it might as well have been. Tucked inside the dry, protected housing was not one, but three pristine spools of thick-gauge copper wire. They were gleaming, untouched by the decay that had consumed the rest of the factory. Beneath them, nestled in a dusty cavity, were two small but solid brass gears, their teeth perfectly intact.
Frics stared at the haul, his mind unable to calculate its value fast enough. This wasn't just a few coins. This was more than he could make in a month of odd jobs. This was medicine for his father. This was a new pair of shoes for Elara. This was a full pantry for a week. This was… hope.
He slowly gathered his treasure, his hands trembling slightly as he loaded it into his sack. The weight was real. It was solid.
He backed out of the machine's guts and stood up, blinking in the dusty light of the factory floor. He looked across the vast, empty space to where Zaneraya was finishing the last of her apple. She paused and began to clean a paw, as if she hadn't a care in the world.
But she lifted her head and her sapphire eyes met his from across the distance. She gave a single, slow blink.
And in that moment, Frics understood. It wasn't luck. It wasn't a coincidence. It was a promise, whispered and delivered. The bargain was real. The ghost in the rust was real. And his life, for better or for worse, would never be the same again.