The first thing anyone should know about Glass City is that it's a city of illusions. Not the kind that sparkles under the sun, inviting fingers to trace smooth surfaces. No, the kind of illusions here are darker, sharper, and far more dangerous. From afar, Glass City gleams like a jewel, its towers cutting the sky like needles, windows reflecting light in all directions. Up close, the shine fades. The streets smell of burnt coal, damp stone, and stale blood. Broken glass crunches underfoot, and smoke curls from chimneys and alley fires like lazy serpents. The air carries whispers, rumors, and the kind of lies polished so well that they almost hurt when you see them.
I've lived in those shadows all my life. I've learned that in Glass City, the things that glitter the brightest often hide the sharpest edges. The streets are unforgiving, the people unforgiving, and the city… well, the city doesn't care if you live or die.
The nobles, of course, have a different perspective. They dwell high in the inner rings, in towers so tall they seem to pierce the clouds. Their wine tastes like crushed rose petals, their perfume like distilled spring breezes. Sorcerers sweep the streets with invisible wards, banishing the stench and filth. From up there, the undercity doesn't exist except as an inconvenience—shadows, rats, background noise. I overheard a noble boy once call us that. "Background noise." He laughed, and his friends joined him, faces painted with smug amusement. I often wonder if he would have laughed as hard had he known the background noise could slit his throat one day.
I am not just background noise. Shadows watch. Shadows wait. Shadows move without being noticed. And after twenty-one years in the undercity, I've learned one simple truth: survive, or be consumed.
My name is Aradia Duskborne. Don't ask where the surname came from. People whisper it like a curse, not a badge of honor. My mother named me Aradia, claiming the name held power. By the time she died, power was just another bitter word, spat out like blood after a fight.
A familiar voice dragged me back from the memory. "Oi, Aradia! You gonna stand there brooding all day, or do you actually plan to steal something useful today?"
I didn't need to look. I knew it was Jarek. Leaning casually against the crumbling brick wall of the alley, arms crossed, smirk plastered across his annoyingly handsome face. His hair was messy, in a way that looked deliberate, and his eyes were green, the kind of green that made people forget to breathe. He survived on charm as much as skill.
"Stealing implies intent," I said dryly, scanning the market beyond the alley. "I'm merely redistributing wealth."
"Redistributing," he echoed, laughing like I'd said something philosophical. "Gods, Aradia, you always make crime sound like some noble cause."
"Maybe it is," I muttered, tugging my hood lower. "The rich won't miss what they have. The poor die if they don't take."
Jarek pushed off the wall, sauntering closer with that maddening swagger. "Spoken like someone who actually believes she's destined for something bigger."
I didn't answer. Because the truth? I didn't. Not yet.
The market was chaos personified. Merchants shouted over one another, hawking everything from greasy pastries to exotic trinkets. Children darted between carts, sticky fingers seeking what they could grab. Guards strolled with careful ignorance, letting a few shoves and thefts slide as long as their palms were greased. In Glass City, survival wasn't polite. It was a gamble. Sometimes you walked away with treasure. Sometimes you walked away with a knife in your ribs. I liked keeping both outcomes in mind.
Jarek was already whispering nonsense, plotting to lift a jeweled hairpin from a noblewoman's stall. Dangerous, yes. Possibly fatal, yes. Fun? Absolutely.
"If you spent half as much time planning as you do talking," I said, sidestepping a cart stacked with steaming bread rolls, "we'd be rich by now."
"Rich?" Jarek grinned. "What's the fun in being rich? Gold's useless if you can't laugh while taking it."
"Or live long enough to spend it," I muttered under my breath, but Jarek was already vanishing into the crowd, blade sliding silently into his palm. Sometimes I worried that reckless charm would be the death of him.
I lingered at a fruit stall, feigning interest in bruised apples while scanning the bustling crowd. That's when I saw her.
She moved like a noble moving through air too thin for the rest of us. A gown woven with silver thread clung to her, hair piled high, decorated with ornaments that mirrored the city's spires. Nobility, unmistakable. But it wasn't her wealth that made me pause. It was the way her eyes darted constantly, calculating, sharp, alert. She wasn't shopping. She was being hunted.
Shadows moved behind her. Not ordinary shadows, but trained shadows—assassins. Silent, precise, waiting for a mistake, an opening.
I should have walked away. I should have kept moving. This wasn't my fight. My life barely belonged to me as it was. But something about the fear in her eyes rooted me in place.
Jarek's voice broke through my thoughts. "Don't even think about it. That's noble trouble, Aradia. The kind that gets you gutted and left in an alley."
"Something's wrong," I murmured, my pulse quickening.
"Something's always wrong," Jarek hissed. "And it usually ends with me dragging your reckless corpse home. So unless you want today to be the day…"
He never finished. Because the shadows lunged.
In an instant, chaos erupted around me. I slammed into the noblewoman, knocking us both to the ground. A dagger whistled past, slicing the air where her neck had been a heartbeat ago. Screams tore through the market, stalls overturning, children screaming, merchants shouting. The smell of baked bread and blood mingled into a haze of panic.
"Gods above, Aradia!" Jarek cursed, already drawing his knife, moving with deadly grace. I shoved the noblewoman behind me, heart hammering, senses stretched taut.
The first assassin came at me, blade flashing. I grabbed a shard of broken bottle from the ground and jabbed upward, not elegant, but effective enough to make him stumble back.
The noblewoman stared at me, eyes wide, as if I had grown another head. "Why—why are you—"
"Shut up and run!" I snapped.
Her hands clutched a silver chain around her neck. A pendant shaped like a shard of glass glowed faintly, impossibly bright. I had seen many strange things in Glass City, but that light… that light wasn't ordinary magic. And suddenly, saving her felt far more dangerous than I had imagined.
The shadows regrouped, fanning out to box us in. Jarek moved like a storm, his knife a silver blur, but I realized something terrifying. I wasn't trained for this. Survival instincts were all I had, and they were about to be tested in ways I had never imagined.
And then, for just a heartbeat, the pendant flared brighter, illuminating the chaos, the faces of the assassins, the panic-stricken market.
And in that moment, everything began to shift.
The market had transformed from a cacophony of mundane life into a battlefield in less than a heartbeat. Screams, shouts, and the clash of metal filled the air, creating a sound that felt almost physical, pressing against my skull. Smoke from overturned braziers mingled with the scent of baked bread and blood. Glass crunched beneath our feet, sharp edges catching the light and cutting into flesh, leather, and pride alike.
"Move!" I yelled at the noblewoman, shoving her toward a narrow gap between two carts. Her eyes were wide, almost too wide, and she clutched that silver pendant like it was the only thing keeping her alive. Maybe it was.
Jarek was already a blur beside me, blade flashing, grinning with that infuriating mix of amusement and deadly focus. I wanted to curse him for making the fight look like a game. I wanted to tell him to stop smiling like this was a party. But there was no time for words. Not with trained killers advancing.
The first assassin lunged. His blade was short, honed for speed, and aimed precisely at my chest. I ducked instinctively, feeling the air whistle where it would have pierced my ribs. My hands scrabbled for anything to defend myself. A shard of broken bottle glinted on the cobblestones. Desperate, I picked it up, finger trembling, and jabbed upward. It sank into the assassin's side with a wet, satisfying resistance. He cursed, staggered, but didn't fall. Professional. They were trained to ignore pain.
I gasped for breath, lungs burning from the adrenaline surge. This wasn't like surviving a pickpocket's knife in a back alley. This was life and death on a scale I wasn't ready for.
The noblewoman faltered. "Why… why are you helping me?" she whispered, voice tight with terror. Her eyes flicked to the pendant, now glowing faintly brighter.
"Because I don't like dying," I snapped, more to myself than her. Then I realized the words were true. This wasn't heroism. It was survival. And instinct. And something else… something dangerous that I didn't yet understand.
Another assassin came from my left, masked face calm, hands deadly. I twisted, barely dodging a blade, and slammed my shard against his forearm. The glass cut, not deep enough to stop him, but enough to make him hiss. Pain slowed a human. Pain never slowed a professional.
Jarek's voice cut through the chaos. "Aradia! Behind you!"
A third assassin had dropped silently into the fray, dagger aimed for the noblewoman's throat. I dove, slamming her behind me and rolling into the cobblestones. Pain shot up my arm from the shards beneath us, but adrenaline made it bearable.
The pendant flared, and everything changed. The market, the chaos, the screaming—it all dissolved into a prism of shards. Glass floated in infinite darkness, reflecting faces, places, and memories that weren't mine. Each shard caught a fragment of light, a fragment of truth, and the world tilted. My stomach lurched. My pulse thundered so loudly I feared the assassins could hear it.
Aradia. The voice whispered. Soft, intimate, echoing in the empty expanse between the shards. My name, carried on a wind that wasn't there.
"Aradia!" the noblewoman's voice called from somewhere distant, panicked. Her form flickered among the shards, blurred.
I reached for her, hands cutting through the floating glass like air, and then pain lanced through my head. Too many images, too many reflections, too many possibilities all at once. Faces I didn't know, faces I couldn't place. Memories that weren't mine. And at the center, the pendant's light pulsed like a heartbeat. It was alive. And it wanted me to see.
Everything snapped.
I gasped, eyes snapping open. The market returned, but the assassins hesitated, frozen mid-strike as if something invisible had pushed them back. The noblewoman clutched her necklace tighter, and I realized she had been waiting for me—not just waiting, expecting me.
The world felt off. The market smelled sharper, the screams more urgent, the edges of buildings sharper, like I was seeing everything for the first time. My hands shook, and my lungs burned. Jarek's grin had vanished, replaced by that rare, serious look he wore when things were truly bad.
"Aradia… what the hell just happened?" he muttered, eyes scanning the frozen assassins.
"I… I think she saved us," I breathed, staring at the necklace, glowing faintly, almost mischievously. "Or… maybe she saved herself. I don't know. But it's not normal. Nothing about that pendant is normal."
The first assassin recovered, lunging again, but the glowing light flared once more. For a heartbeat, every movement slowed, every blade froze midair, every breath seemed measured by some invisible force. The chaos paused, and in that pause, I saw her clearly. Fear. Determination. Relief. Hope. All tangled together.
And then the light dimmed, the shards disappeared, and the market roared back to life. Screams, panic, glass underfoot. But something fundamental had shifted inside me. Survival was no longer enough. I had seen a sliver of something else—something beyond petty crime, beyond undercity survival. Something… powerful.
Jarek's voice broke the spell. "We need to move. Now."
I grabbed the noblewoman's arm. She flinched but didn't resist. Together, we slipped through the stalls, past overturned carts, past screaming merchants and terrified children. Every corner, every shadow could hide death, but something in the pendant's faint glow kept me steady.
As we ran, I realized a truth I hadn't admitted even to myself: this was only the beginning. Whatever had just happened… whatever she was carrying, it had chosen me. And Glass City, for all its lies and illusions, was about to get a lot more dangerous.
Because from the shadows, I could feel it—the hunters wouldn't forget. They never did.
And neither would I.