The market was alive with noise and hunger. Canvas awnings sagged between crooked stalls, their faded colors blotched by rain and sun. The air stank of fish guts, overripe fruit, and wood that had never dried since the last tide.
"Fresh oysters! Still twitchin'!"
"Three for a coin!"
"Don't touch if you won't pay!"
The shouts piled one on top of another until they became a wall of sound.
Khaliq slipped through it without being noticed. His coat was frayed, his boots worn down to their stitching, yet his stride was steady, deliberate. Not hurried. Not lazy. Just… nothing. He was good at this, passing unseen.
His eyes skimmed the stalls without interest. Fresh bread, too closely watched. Dried fish, too strong a stink. A basket of figs, valuable but too heavy to hide. He didn't want wealth. Didn't even want flavor. Just something to keep his body from emptying out.
At the end of the row, a woman bent over, fixing the torn strap of her son's basket. Beside her, a tray of uneven bread sat unguarded, the kind left too long, hard as wood.
Khaliq's hand moved once, clean, practiced. A crust slid into his sleeve, swallowed whole by the folds of his coat. He kept walking.
But the woman looked up, saw her tray lighter than before. Her eyes snapped to her son.
"Again?" she hissed, shaking him by the arm.
"I didn't!" The boy's voice cracked.
"Don't you lie to me!" She struck his shoulder, shoving him back toward the basket. He bit his lip hard, eyes wet, but said nothing.
Khaliq didn't turn his head. Didn't flinch. He chewed the inside of his cheek, his stolen bread still hidden, and moved on.
"Oi!" another voice bellowed. A flour-dusted vendor two stalls away jabbed a finger at him. "You! What's in your coat, boy?"
Khaliq stopped. Slowly turned. The vendor's face was red and slick with sweat, apron smeared with dough. His eyes narrowed, sharp with certainty.
"Bread thief," he spat. "I saw you snatch it."
The market's rhythm faltered. A guard near the corner straightened his spear, watching. Shoppers leaned back, hungry for spectacle.
Khaliq slid the crust from his sleeve. He broke it with his thumb, raised it to his mouth, and bit down. Chewed slowly. Swallowed. His face didn't change.
The vendor glanced toward the woman's tray—impossible to count the broken scraps. The mother was still berating her son, convinced it was him. Others noticed this but pay no mind.
"Tch. Not worth the chase," muttered a man with a scarred cheek.
"All that shouting over a scrap of bread," another said.
The guard spat into the dirt and leaned back against the wall. The vendor cursed under his breath, shoving his hands into his apron, and turned away.
The noise of the market swallowed the moment whole.
Khaliq licked the crumbs from his thumb, face unreadable, and walked on.
Minutes later, Khaliq sat at the lower docks, perched on a broken crate with his boots swinging above the water. The tide lapped against the posts, a dull, endless sound, black-green foam curling around barnacle-crusted wood.
The crust of bread in his hand was dry, flaking into his palm. He chewed without taste, eyes drifting over the harbor. Ships leaned like weary beasts against their ropes. Masts groaned. Nets sagged heavy with yesterday's catch.
Behind him, the stowaway quarter lived its usual rhythm.
Children darted after rats, shrieking when one bolted under a crate. A one-eyed sailor cursed at a merchant over the price of a chipped knife. A woman scrubbed her baby in a bucket of gray water, swatting at the curious hands of other children.
All of them desperate. All of them clinging.
Khaliq's eyes followed them without interest, as if watching ants crawl over dirt. He didn't envy them. Didn't pity them. Their hunger, their shouts, their small triumphs and failures—none of it stirred him.
Just then, he heard footsteps coming toward him, his eyes darted toward the person.
A boy his age stopped at his crate, soot streaking his cheek.
"You're hogging it again," the boy said flatly. "Planning to move sometime this century?"
Khaliq looked at him, slow and steady. "It's just a box."
"Yeah, and it's where I sleep."
"Then sleep standing up."
The boy grumble, spat on the planks and stalked away. Khaliq didn't bother to watch him go.
He leaned back, eyes half-lidded. The crust crumbled in his fingers, dropping to the tide where a fish snapped it up.
"All of this," he murmured, almost too quietly for his own ears. "Pointless."
The words were not bitter, not sad. Just flat.
The dock hummed with noise: footsteps on boards, the cry of gulls overhead, the splash of a dropped bucket. Life went on around him, busy and loud.
Khaliq let it all wash over him like water over stone. He could have stayed like that forever—breathing, existing, hollow.
Until the scream shattered it.
It rose sharp and raw, cutting through the marketplace behind him, slicing the hum of the dock in two. Then another scream, and another, and the sound of bodies crashing against stalls.
Khaliq opened his eyes, slow, unhurried, and turned his head toward the noise.
The first scream came from the spice stall. A woman staggered back, clutching her arm, her basket spilling red powder across the dirt.
Then the crowd surged, breaking like a tide. People shoved past each other, faces white, voices climbing over one another.
"Rage Echo!" someone shouted.
"He's lost it!"
"Get back, get back!"
Khaliq pushed himself lazily off the crate, half-turning toward the commotion.
Through the shifting bodies, he saw him, a man in torn leathers, veins standing out like cords across his neck and arms. His face was twisted, teeth bared, but it wasn't his own fury that warped him—it was the Echo made flesh around him.
The air rippled, heatless but violent, like the pressure before a storm. Crimson light licked at his shoulders, jagged and wild, flickering into the shape of claws one moment and flames the next.
Rage Echo.
Khaliq had seen it before. It wasn't rare for them to snap in public. Rage wielders drew power from fury, and when that fury grew too sharp, too consuming, the Echo fed on it, swelled with it, and drowned the wielder in their own wrath.
Once it happened, they weren't fighters anymore. They were storms.
The man roared, a guttural sound that wasn't entirely human. His fist smashed into the side of a cart, and the wood exploded into splinters. A woman dragged her child away just in time, her cries swallowed by the crowd's panic.
"Somebody stop him!"
"Where's the guard?"
"They can't hold a Rage, not like that!"
Khaliq didn't move. He stood on the edge of the chaos, watching with the same blank eyes he had used to watch the rats and the children and the ships.
People ran. People screamed. People clung to each other.
And Khaliq thought, the words sliding flatly across his mind Useless.
The Rage Echo surged again. Crimson tendrils lashed out, catching a man by the shoulder and flinging him across a stall. The vendor shrieked as her cabbages rolled into the dirt.
The wielder's eyes were bloodshot, unfocused. He wasn't aiming anymore. He was simply breaking, smashing, lashing out at anything that moved.
Khaliq stepped back as the man swung around, wild, half-blind in his fury. The Echo clawed at the air, tearing gouges into the ground as though the earth itself had angered him.
The tide of the crowd was pushing away now, leaving Khaliq stranded on the edge of a clearing.
The Rage wielder's gaze locked onto him.
A roar split the air, and crimson claws came crashing down.
Khaliq shifted only half a step to the side. The strike smashed into the planks where he had stood, ripping the wood apart in a spray of splinters. The dock shuddered beneath the blow, waves crashing against its sides as though startled.
The man bellowed again, swinging upward, eyes wild. His Echo flared brighter—jagged shapes of light lashing from his arms, tearing grooves into the ground. His fury wasn't directed at Khaliq, not really. It wasn't directed at anything. It was rage for the sake of rage, a storm tearing apart whatever lay in its path.
Khaliq's empty gaze followed the motions with no urgency. He stepped back as another claw carved through the air, the force of it kicking dust and splinters into his face.
Around them, the crowd had fled, leaving only toppled stalls and abandoned baskets. A few guards lingered on the edges, but none dared approach. Rage Echoes were unpredictable. To touch them was to risk being caught in the blaze.
The wielder's movements grew harsher, his breath ragged, his face red. The Echo wasn't serving him anymore. It was devouring him, feeding itself on his fury, sharpening it until it carved everything down to ruin.
Another swipe came, wide and reckless. Khaliq ducked low, the wind of it stirring his hair. His hand brushed the ground for balance, and that was when it happened.
A thread.
He felt it, sudden and sharp, like a string snapping across his chest. Not his own, but the man's. A strand of Echo, pulled taut by rage, vibrating with wild, destructive energy. Khaliq's fingers tightened, instinct moving where thought did not.
And the thread came loose.
For a moment the world went hollow, sound sucked out, colors dimmed. Then crimson light licked across Khaliq's skin, crawling up his arms, coiling over his shoulders. His body hummed with heatless fire, jagged and fierce.
The Rage was his.
The wielder froze mid-swing, confusion flashing across his bloodshot eyes as if some piece of himself had been stolen. His next blow came slower, weaker, like the Echo resisted him now.
Khaliq raised his hand. Crimson claws burst into existence, sharp and perfect, mirroring the rogue's—but steadier, controlled. He slashed once, the air itself splitting under the strike, and the rogue staggered back, stunned.
For the first time, the crowd gasped.
"He… copied it?" someone whispered from behind an overturned stall.
Khaliq didn't answer. Didn't even acknowledge them. He moved forward, calm, detached, his steps deliberate. The crimson claws hummed in rhythm with his breath.
The rogue came at him again, bellowing, half-mad. His strikes were sloppy now, desperation bleeding through his fury. Khaliq caught the first with a sweep of his own claws—the impact cracked the air like thunder. He twisted, brought the second strike down, and splintered the man's defense.
The fight turned.
Each time the wielder roared, his Echo sputtered, misfiring, sparks instead of flames. Each time Khaliq struck, the claws cut clean, steady, efficient. The difference was terrifying. Rage was supposed to be chaos, uncontrollable—but on Khaliq, it was precise.
The rogue stumbled, panting, his Echo dimming, flaring, dimming again.
Khaliq stood over him, crimson light still crawling over his arms. His eyes were empty, his face calm, as if he weren't fighting at all, only moving through a practiced routine.
The man collapsed to his knees, his Echo flickering out like a dying ember. His chest heaved, sweat pouring down his face.
Khaliq lowered his claws, watching without expression as the crimson light receded into nothing.
The market was silent now, save for the lap of water against the dock. People peered from corners, guards whispered among themselves, no one daring to step forward.
A boy pointed with trembling fingers.
"He… he used it. He used the man's Echo."
Khaliq didn't look back.
But someone else did.
Across the broken stalls, leaning casually against a crooked lamppost, a man had been watching the entire fight. His clothes were too clean for the lower docks, dark fabric cut sharp at the shoulders, but he blended into the shadows as though he belonged there.
Round sunglasses hid his eyes—until he tilted his head forward, letting them slip just enough down the bridge of his nose.
A flash of green. Sharp, bright, amused.
His gaze followed Khaliq's retreating back, unblinking, calculating.
He didn't call out. Didn't move to stop him. A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, a smile that knew more than it should.
"Interesting," he murmured under his breath, voice low enough to be stolen by the sea breeze.
Then he pushed the sunglasses back up, hands folding neatly behind his back, and disappeared into the shifting crowd as if he had never been there at all.