(Fragment's POV, with Narrative POV intrusions marked)
The walk ended not with defiance but with surrender.
My body gave its verdict in silence, and the wall received me as if it had been waiting for this moment all along. I slid down its damp face until stone caught me, hard and unforgiving. Breath rasped between my teeth. I thought of standing again, of proving to myself that motion could not yet be taken away, but thought was no longer enough. My legs folded as if they belonged to someone who had long since stopped listening.
Sleep claimed me without my consent. It was not the dreamless stillness of the silence beyond the ladder. This was different—heavier, slower, threaded through with the cold of stone and the ache of ribs. My eyes closed, not by will, but by weight.
When I opened them again, night was gone.
Gray had replaced it, a pale tide rolling over rooftops and spilling down walls. Smoke coiled uncertainly between chimneys, as if the houses themselves had argued about who would feed the morning. A bird tried its voice once, uncertain, then vanished from hearing. Cold clung closer now, burrowed into joints and wound alike.
Then came the scent.
It threaded the air with quiet boldness: warm, yeasty, edged with sweetness. My stomach clenched, a hollow twist that startled me with its urgency. Bread. The word was Known, precise, yet now it lived differently inside me. It was not merely grain and fire. It was salvation written in crust and crumb.
I tried to rise. My arms shook as they pressed against the stones. Pain spoke sharply from my side where timber had struck me the night before. Knees faltered, then locked. I leaned against the wall, ribs aching, until the city steadied enough for me to stand.
Boots found the alley before I could take a step.
***
Narrative POV
This district woke early under watchful eyes. Patrols passed here each dawn, ensuring that beggars and drifters did not linger to frighten merchants or unsettle buyers. Orders had grown stricter in recent months—rumors of tax levies, of displaced families spilling into the city's gates, had sharpened the tone of every command. The Watch were told to move the weak along, to sweep the streets as clean as the shopfronts. A man collapsed in an alley was not a man; he was an offense to order.
Narrative POV END
***
Leather struck stone in rhythm, steady and uncompromising. Torches hissed faintly, their light unnecessary in the gray dawn but carried anyway. Voices followed—sharp, dismissive, not shaped for kindness.
"Up. Move on," one barked.
A figure farther down stirred—a bent man wrapped in rags. He struggled upright, stumbled, and shuffled off under the command of words alone.
Another voice spoke, closer now. "Leave him. Barely worth the ink if we haul him in."
I pressed tighter against the wall, ribs protesting, bandaged hand curling into the stone. Firelight brushed the cloth briefly, painting it orange, then passed. None of them looked at me, but the rhythm of their boots lingered long after they had gone.
The echo of their intention clung heavier than their presence. I did not know the word for them, not in my mouth. All I knew was boots that could command, voices that could move bodies without touching them. The air felt shaped by their passage, and I had nearly been shaped with it.
The scent of bread lingered, stubborn against the cold. Hunger pressed harder, more insistent than fear. I stepped from the alley and into the waking street.
***
The city moved with the indifference of routine. A woman drew water from a barrel, spilling thin streams that darkened the stones. A boy swept dust from a threshold, raising a storm smaller than himself. A man bore sacks that bent his back into their likeness. None spared me more than a glance, if that. Eyes were coins, and I was not worth the purchase.
The smell drew me onward, weaving past shuttered windows and half-lit doors until it led me to a sign above a propped-open entrance. The paint had long faded, but the carved outline of a loaf remained. Heat spilled from the gap in the doorway, carrying with it the scent that had ensnared me.
A man emerged carrying a tray of loaves, his apron dusted with flour, his arms freckled with burns earned long ago. He set the tray on a plank stretched across two barrels, then disappeared inside again.
I moved closer. The bread's crust crackled faintly in the air, releasing steam like whispers escaping stone. My body leaned forward before my mind agreed.
The baker returned, another tray balanced on his arms. He saw me then. His gaze measured, weighing not just the body before him but what trouble it might bring.
"You buying?"
The words landed flat, heavy with assumption.
"I… don't have coin," I managed.
"Then you're not buying." His tone was not cruel, just final, shaped by years of this same exchange. He turned to arrange the loaves.
"I can work," I said. The word came awkward, ill-fitting in my mouth. "Later. When I… stronger."
The baker's eyes flicked over me, taking in the bruises, the stagger in my stance. "Work? You'd slow me down. Better you move on before someone else decides you're theirs to deal with."
A voice behind me cut in. A woman stood with coins already in her palm, face pinched against the cold. "Don't waste your loaves on strays, Jonn. The Watch will clear him soon enough. No sense feeding someone the city doesn't want."
The baker glanced at her, then back at me. His jaw tightened. "You've got a mouth, madam. Maybe keep it for your own bread."
Her lips pressed thin, but she said nothing more.
The baker leaned closer, lowering his voice. "Look, boy—or whatever you are—you stand here long enough, the Watch will see you. Then I'll have them asking why I let you linger." His eyes shifted to the corner of the street where the boots' echo had come from minutes before. "That's trouble I can't afford."
Behind me, the rhythm returned—boots, steady and near.
The baker's decision came quick. He pulled a smaller loaf from the edge of the tray, still steaming, too hot to eat. He wrapped it in paper with rough haste and pushed it into my hands.
"Here. Away from the door. Quickly."
I took it, heat biting through the paper. "Thank you," I whispered.
"Go," he said, already turning to face the approaching patrol.
***
Narrative POV
Bakers like him walked a thin line. To give bread to the hungry was to risk being seen as encouraging idleness. To refuse was safer, yet each refusal carved something out of a man until all that remained was flour and silence. He had chosen, this time, to risk a sliver of himself. If the Watch had noticed, the price could have been a fine, or worse. In these months of shortages, pity was dangerous.
Narrative POV END
***
I crossed the lane and pressed into the shadow of a doorway. The loaf seared my fingers until I tore it open, steam rushing free. The crust cracked reluctantly, yielding soft crumb that collapsed into my mouth. Warmth spread down my throat, and for the first time since falling, my body fell quiet.
The boots stopped at the baker's stand. Voices questioned, clipped and official. "Seen any runaways from the mill?" "Anyone loitering?" The baker answered in numbers—loaves, batches, times. He had not seen what they asked about. His voice carried no tremor.
A shout rose from farther down the street, harsh and urgent. The patrol turned toward it, boots striking again, torches flaring. One lingered half a moment longer, torchlight grazing the bandage on my hand. My breath stilled. Then he moved on.
The city exhaled around me, resuming its rhythm. A woman left with her bread. A boy tugged at his mother's sleeve. The baker set out another tray as if nothing had happened.
I finished the loaf slowly, each bite less urgent than the last. When it was gone, I kept the paper, folding it into a strip to bind my wound anew. The gesture was clumsy, but it was a promise to myself that the hand would not be left to rot.
The fountain in the square caught me next, its water falling from a stone mouth worn blank by years. I washed the crumbs from my fingers, cooled the sting of my cut. The water was cold, honest, and it asked nothing of me.
I remembered the stranger who had bound me once before, who had told me to keep to the lamps. I owed him more than silence.
The bell tolled then, deep and resonant, carrying across rooftops. The sound gathered the city's pulse to itself. I took it as a measure: the day had begun, and I had survived its first demands.
I turned back toward the street of lamps, toward the path where the stranger might walk again.