The first rays of sunlight crept through the cracks of a dirty window, casting bars of golden light across a room that smelled of damp wood and the mold clinging to the walls. The cold morning air carried the distant echo of the lower city awakening: the creak of distant gears and the murmur of voices rising from the alleys.
Beside one of the beds, Gunder was already on his feet, moving with a silent efficiency that contrasted with his feigned laziness from the day before. His short, black hair framed a focused face as he organized his belongings, preparing for the day ahead. His cat-like eyes with their vertical pupils shifted to the bed next to him. There, under a white sheet, a small lump refused to accept the start of the day, shifting and rustling the thin fabric in protest.
"Come on, the sun's already up," Gunder proclaimed, his voice calm but firm.
A thin, muffled groan was the only reply. His eyes narrowed with impatience.
"I won't repeat myself!" he growled, and with a swift, unceremonious motion, he yanked the sheet away.
Lying on the bed, curled up against the sudden cold, was a girl. Her eyes were still squeezed shut, an expression of pure sleep stamped on her delicate face.
"It's cooold!" she complained, her voice drowsy and undeniably spoiled, like a disgruntled child's.
"Honestly…" was all Gunder sighed in response, the exhaustion of a familiar routine weighing down his words.
Still with her eyes closed, the girl sat up in bed. She wore only a simple, sleeveless white nightgown that did little to hide the transformation the night had brought. The soft curves of her waist and legs, her finer, more delicate shoulders… her feminine features had returned, betraying the slender, more masculine body she'd had the day before.
"It grew a lot last night, Ingrid…" Gunder commented, kneeling behind her on the bed. His left hand touched her hair with a clinical familiarity. The military cut was almost undone. The strands were visibly longer, nearly matching the length of his own.
The tips maintained their vibrant scarlet color, but the most shocking change was at the roots. A pure snow spread from her scalp, a white so pale it was almost gray, marking all the new growth. A visible scar of the magical instability that had overcome her.
"…Call me Tom…" she replied, her voice sleepy and petulant, refusing to accept the other identity.
"Don't worry, Tom," Gunder gently mocked, the name sounding like an ironic concession. "I don't sense any vital signs nearby. And even if someone wanted to overhear your morning tantrum, they couldn't. I sealed the room with a sound barrier as soon as we arrived."
Ingrid, or Tom, let out another sleepy groan at the comment. With his right hand, Gunder raised a pair of steel scissors, their blades glinting in the morning light. With a series of precise, quick snips, he began to trim her hair. Small tufts of white and scarlet fell silently onto the sheet. Her head gradually drooped, surrendering to drowsiness, until he warned her.
"Hey! Don't fall asleep! Or I'll end up cutting off your ear!"
When he finished, her hair was once again in a short, severe military cut, the white blemish at the roots now even more prominent. Still wearing the same sleepy expression, she obeyed his next command.
"Arms up."
Ingrid raised them slowly. Gunder pulled the nightgown up and over her head, leaving her in her undergarments. Her arms began to drop, heavy with sleep, but a sharp look from him made them shoot right back up. Positioning himself behind her, he took a thick fabric compression binder. With a firm tug, he wrapped it around her torso, tightening it until her chest was completely flat and hidden.
"GUH!" Ingrid choked, the air forced from her lungs.
"Too tight?" he asked, without a hint of sympathy in his voice.
"Yes… be more careful… It hurts," she complained, her voice strained.
"It was supposed to hurt! Wake up already!"
She looked away, pouting. Gunder got off the bed and threw the clothes he had already laid out for her. The thick-fabric shirt landed beside her, and the pants landed directly on her face.
After getting fully dressed, she faced her reflection in a broken mirror above a small dresser. The fragmented image staring back at her was a disturbing dissonance. The figure wore loose, masculine clothes, but the narrow shoulders and the subtle outline of her hips still betrayed the feminine curves of her body. And above all, her hair, despite the cut, shone with that unnatural white. The farce was incomplete, fragile.
It was then that the air in the room grew denser. She heard the chants, words in an unknown, ancient tongue, intoned in Gunder's low, resonant voice. As was custom, Ingrid turned to him. Gunder, chanting the incantation, brought his index finger to the girl's forehead. His feline eyes glowed with an intense, purplish-blue light.
Magic enveloped her. She felt the illusion settle over her body like a second skin. Her shoulders seemed to broaden, and the muscles in her arms and hands, though still fine, gained a more masculine definition. The line of her waist straightened, and her legs lost their softness, appearing firmer. Her body had transformed, or rather, seemed to have transformed into a boy's. For beneath the illusion, Ingrid was still a girl.
She turned back to the mirror. Her face changed little; her neck seemed a bit thicker, but her chin, lips, nose, and especially her large eyes with their long lashes remained the same—the hardest part of her farce to hide.
Her eyes narrowed, a frustrating worry clouding her face as she studied the reflection. But then, the last missing change appeared. Her eyes widened, and a smile of relief spread across her lips. Slowly, like ink spreading on paper, the white hair gained color, sinking into the deep scarlet hue she knew so well. The Blemish of the Moon had vanished. Tom was back.
"Phew!" Gunder sighed dramatically, wiping his arm across his forehead as if clearing away non-existent sweat. He puffed out his chest with exaggerated pride. "Another great work done by my own excellent hands!"
"Yes. Good job, Gunder," Tom replied, her voice dry but with a hint of resignation.
After the suppression routine was over and they'd had a hasty breakfast—stale bread and a warm, dubious-tasting liquid the inn called tea—the two finally stepped out into the gray light of the lower city. The streets were already teeming with chaotic energy. The smell of burning coal and heated metal mixed with the stench of sewage wafting from the grates in the ground. Dirt-faced workers jostled each other in narrow passages, and the sound of hammers striking anvils created a relentless, industrial soundtrack for their journey.
They walked in silence for a few minutes, Tom observing the corroded metal structures that rose like the bones of forgotten titans, until Gunder's voice cut through the ambient noise, low and sharp like a shard of glass.
"You need to be more careful about that, Tom."
"What did I do?" Tom retorted, her gaze shifting to an oily puddle on the ground, the innocence in her voice as fake as the illusion covering her body.
"You let that man's provocations get to you yesterday," Gunder continued, his tone rising from a warning to a clear scolding. "You dropped the performance and let the seal break. Now that man knows about you! He saw the Blemish manifest." Gunder stopped suddenly, forcing Tom to halt as well. He turned, and the irritation on his face was cold and genuine. "What did you want with that drunk so badly, anyway?"
"He was a Sage…" Tom murmured, her gaze still lowered, the confession nearly inaudible amidst the street noise.
The irritation on Gunder's face faltered, replaced by a sudden, intense focus. "Oh? A Sage, you say?" He raised a hand, his fingers resting on his chin in a thoughtful gesture, his cat-like eyes narrowing as he processed the information. A Sage. A dangerous wild card in a game that was already far too complicated.
"Forget it!" Tom protested, feeling exposed.
Gunder ignored her completely, lost in his calculations. The pair's murmuring, stopped in the middle of the flow of people, began to draw curious glances. A few faces in the crowd seemed vaguely familiar, shadows from the previous night's tavern. Tom glared at Gunder with growing irritation, but something in her posture had changed. Her shoulders were straighter, her chin higher. The frustration was there, but it wasn't the tantrum of a spoiled child; it was the discontent of an equal.
The subtle change did not go unnoticed by Gunder. He glanced at her from the corner of his eye, and a flicker of surprise appeared. "Oh? You're actually taking what that brat said yesterday to heart, aren't you?"
"He said if I wanted to look like a man, I needed to see myself as one first," Tom admitted, her face heating up, turning as scarlet as her hair. "And… well… You already know!"
A slow, genuine smile spread across Gunder's face, and he felt a small but real pang of pride. "I see…" He raised his hand and placed it on Tom's short hair, ruffling it in a deliberate, affectionate gesture. "That's right. Good boy," he said with a suppressed laugh.
Tom slapped his hand away. "You could have shown up sooner yesterday, too!" she protested, changing the subject to hide her embarrassment.
"Hey! It's that brat!"
The voice, hoarse and familiar, tore through the air. The same three thieves from the night before emerged from the crowd, blocking their path. The leader's broken arm was in a dirty sling, and his eyes burned with hatred and humiliation.
"Looks like that drunk isn't here to protect you today," one of them commented, a cruel smirk forming on his lips.
"Now I'll get my revenge!" the leader snarled.
But Tom and Gunder's attention was elsewhere. They continued their own argument, treating the three men as if they were an invisible part of the scenery.
"What? Aren't you the one who's always saying you don't need help? That you can handle things yourself?" Gunder mocked, shrugging and closing his eyes with an air of disdain.
"Well… Yes!" Tom shot back, her voice rising. "But not when that happens!"
"DON'T IGNORE US!" the third thief screamed, a vein throbbing on his forehead.
They were ignored. Gunder opened just one eye, a taunting glint dancing in his vertical pupil. "But that's what I did. I only showed up when that happened…"
"Then you should act sooner!"
Exasperated by the humiliation, the leader, with his arm in the sling, used his good hand to draw a dagger and point it at Gunder's chest. "YOU BASTARDS! STOP MESSING WITH US!"
For a single, brief instant, Gunder looked at him. His face was serene, almost bored. His lips moved, forming a single word, spoken without anger, without effort, but with an absolute authority that seemed to suck the sound out of the air around it.
"Fall."
Immediately, Gunder turned his full attention back to Tom, resuming his provocation as if nothing had happened. Tom, still annoyed with Gunder, also paid the man no mind.
But the other two thieves did. They saw it. They saw their leader's eyes go vacant, like a porcelain doll's. They saw his body go limp, the dagger slipping from his fingers and clattering to the ground. They saw him collapse like a sack of potatoes, completely inert before he even hit the pavement. No struggle, no sound. He simply… switched off.
A terrified silence formed around them. The two remaining thieves were frozen, pale with dread.
"Let's go," Gunder said finally, patting Tom's shoulder and starting to walk. "The Regent of the Sentinels is waiting for us."