The soot never left your clothes in Drovengar. The capital's skies were a perpetual dusk, the chimneys vomiting smoke even at dawn. Coal ash mingled with the morning mist, coating the cobblestones and the iron rails that webbed through the streets like veins of a restless beast.
For Alaric, it had been another wasted day.
The historian—once a promising graduate of the Velstrath Academy—now found himself wandering from tavern to tavern, chasing rumors of work. Professorships had long since dried up; the universities had no coin for scholars who could not invent machines or heal the sick. Builders, doctors, chemists—those were the jobs worth something now. Men of history were little more than ornaments, polished but useless.
He told his story often, too often. In a dim tavern called The Brass Flagon, he recounted it again, voice carrying over the clatter of mugs.
"Did you ever hear about the monster in the forest? They say a family lived there years ago—a father and his daughter. They sold herbs and potions to the villagers. Then came whispers of a shapeshifter roaming the woods. The villagers warned them to leave, but the father scoffed. Days later, deer began turning up headless in the underbrush—"
"Stop yapping and pay for your drink." The bartender, Amir, cut him off.
Alaric gave a weak grin, golden eyes flashing with mockery. "All right, all right. Twenty licks, yes?" He slapped the coins down.
Amir sighed. "That's the tenth time you've told that tale this month. You ought to find a job before your brother throws you out."
"I know," Alaric admitted, running a hand through his dark hair. "It's hard to find anything nowadays. Nothing left for history graduates." He stood, drained his cup, and forced a smile. "See you tomorrow, Amir."
The streets of Drovengar swallowed him whole.
The city was still scarred by last year's catastrophe. A dense smog had descended on the Northern District—three days and three nights of choking gray. When it finally lifted, every inhabitant had vanished. Thousands gone, as though erased. The Church of the Veiled Mother declared it the work of a sacrificial cult. Others whispered of experiments gone wrong, of machines that had devoured men.
Whatever the truth, life staggered on.
When Alaric returned home, his sister-in-law Meriem was waiting in the garden. She sat with her hands folded, her gaze sharp.
"So? Did you find work this time? Adam can't support us all forever. You're educated—you should be thinking of your future, of a wife."
Alaric lowered his eyes. "I tried Dreymarch Forgeworks, but they laughed me out of the office. No use for history."
"Don't press him," a deeper voice interrupted. His older brother, Adam, emerged from the doorway—tall, broad-shouldered, brown-eyed, with the calm strength of someone used to carrying burdens. "He's lazy, yes, but he won't stay idle forever. Isn't that right, little brother?"
Alaric smiled faintly. "Of course. I'll keep asking around. Someone, somewhere, needs me."
They laughed together that evening, but Adam's smile didn't quite reach his eyes.
That night, Alaric dreamed.
He was running through endless dark. No horizon, no sky—just blackness stretching forever. His breath tore from his lungs, yet no light appeared. Then, at last, a voice: deep, echoing, neither man nor woman.
"Hollow."
The single word struck his chest like a hammer. He awoke drenched in sweat, his heart clawing against his ribs.
"It was just a dream," he whispered.
But it did not feel like one.
Weeks passed. He pawned the last of his textbooks to keep fed. Each rejection from the academies and archives hollowed him further. He haunted taverns, searching for scraps of work.
The tavern that night smelled of coal smoke and stale beer. Alaric sat alone, staring into a half-empty mug, when a man approached his table. Well-dressed, moustached, with the air of someone who didn't belong in the slums.
"Mister Alaric, isn't it? I hear you're a man of history. Educated, though down on your luck."
Alaric gave a bitter chuckle. "You could say that."
The man slid a paper across the table. A contract. Its seal bore the sigil of the Drovengar Iron Line, one of Velstrath's most powerful—and most whispered-about—companies.
"All we need," the stranger said smoothly, "is a man who can read old maps. The further north our rails stretch, the more… obstacles we encounter. Ruins, tombs, local legends. We need a scholar to separate truth from superstition."
Alaric scanned the document. The pay was generous, suspiciously so. More than enough to keep him alive for months. But a clause caught his eye: 'All discoveries property of the Company. Silence expected.'
The man leaned closer, voice lowering.
"Take it or leave it, Mister Alaric. Men like you don't get second chances in Velstrath. The rails march north with or without you."
The word ruins echoed in Alaric's skull, mingling with the memory of the dream. He hesitated, then signed.
When he told Adam later, his brother's face darkened.
"The job sounds vague. Dangerous, even."
"It's just artifacts," Alaric replied with a grin. "These companies hoard things or sell them in secret all the time. Nothing unusual. This could be my chance."
Adam didn't argue further, but the worry in his eyes was unmistakable.
The next morning, Alaric packed his belongings into a single satchel and took a carriage to the northern station. The man with the moustache was waiting, along with clerks in neat coats and guards with rifles of blacksteel—the alloy that made Velstrath feared across the continent.
After a brief exchange, he was handed a badge etched with the Syndicate's sigil: a crowned gear, its teeth broken at the top.
The moment he pinned it to his coat, he felt it hum faintly against his chest. Not with heat, nor with any mechanism he knew, but with something deeper, as if the metal itself remembered a voice.
And beneath the station, beneath the rails humming with steam, Alaric thought he heard it again—
A whisper.
"Hollow."