The outer districts were designed to be passed through.
Aron learned that early—learned it the way you know not to touch a hot stove twice. Nobody sat him down and told him. It just happened over and over until his body remembered before his mind did: keep moving, keep your head low, don't make yourself a question people feel like answering.
They sat between the inner city's polished stone and the borderlands beyond the walls—dense, overworked, and permanently temporary. No one planned to stay here. Some never left.
The streets were narrow enough that laundry lines crossed overhead like soft barriers, cloth fluttering between buildings that leaned too close together. The air always carried something metallic—iron from old pipes, blood from scraped knuckles, the faint sour bite of water that had sat too long in the gutters. If it had rained, the stone held that damp chill all day. If it hadn't, dust rose with every footstep and found its way into your teeth.
Aron liked it anyway.
Not because it was good. Because it was known.
He knew which stones were loose, which ones would roll under your heel and betray you if you were in a hurry. He knew which alleys flooded first when it rained, which stairwells always smelled like piss, which corners the inspectors favored because it made them feel brave, and which ones they avoided because it didn't.
He knew where to stand when the elevated transit lines thundered overhead so the dust wouldn't get in his eyes.
Normal things.
He mainly worked on courier jobs—documents, small parcels, items important enough to move quickly but not significant enough to warrant proper protection. That suited him. He was careful. Reliable. Invisible in the way outer district people learned to be.
Invisibility wasn't a lack. It was a skill.
On good days, he brought home enough to cover rent and food with a little left over. On bad days, he made do. "Made do" meant watering soup down until it became broth, sleeping with his coat on when the landlord "forgot" to fix the window, smiling at people who could ruin you if they felt like it.
Today was supposed to be good.
The crate he carried, sealed with a pale blue strip, hummed faintly when he adjusted his grip. Stabilized. Expensive. Noble work.
He hadn't asked what was inside. You didn't.
There were rules when the job smelled like money. Don't stop. Don't look directly at sigils you don't recognize. If something feels wrong, move away slowly and let it be someone else's problem.
Aron followed those rules.
That was why he noticed the convoy before it arrived.
The street quieted in stages. Not all at once—first the vendors dropped their voices, then the laughter thinned, then even the little noises faded: a spoon against a bowl, a dog's paws on stone. People stepped aside instinctively, pressing close to walls or doorframes as if trying to become part of the architecture.
Nobles.
The carriage glided forward without jostling, its wheels hovering a finger's width above the stone. Silver crest. Old family, if Aron had to guess—he couldn't read the exact branch marks, but he recognized the posture of money: effortless, bored, certain. The guards walked alongside it with practiced ease, artifacts at their belts emitting a soft, regulated hum.
Stabilizers.
They made causality behave.
Everyone knew that much.
You didn't need to understand to know the difference. Around nobles, accidents didn't happen the same way. A dropped object would roll to a stop rather than shatter. A stumble became a near miss. Arguments softened before they reached fists. Small consequences were adjusted and redirected to something less important.
Somewhere else.
Aron shifted his weight as the convoy passed. The hum brushed against his senses—not something he could see or touch, just a faint awareness that the world was being asked to cooperate. Like a hand smoothing wrinkles out of cloth.
Most people found it comforting.
Aron found it unsettling.
Because it wasn't kindness. It was priority.
The convoy moved on, and the street exhaled. Noise returned in little bursts, like people testing whether they were allowed to be loud again. A vendor shouted too high and laughed it off. Someone muttered a curse under their breath and didn't get struck by bad luck for it. Life resumed its worn grooves.
That should have been the end of it.
Aron adjusted the crate under his arm and turned toward the transit intersection ahead, already thinking about dinner and whether he could afford something warm tonight. He'd been craving something with spice—real spice, not pepper dust. He pictured it too clearly for a second and felt almost guilty.
That was when the ground hesitated.
Not shook. Not cracked.
Hesitated.
Aron slowed without deciding to. A prickle crawled up his spine, and his stomach did the small, stupid drop it did when he misstepped on a loose stone. The air felt thick, resistant, like walking into water without seeing it first. He looked down at the street as if the stone might confess.
Someone laughed nearby—too loud, too sharp. The laugh cut off halfway, as if it had been pinched.
Aron stopped.
He didn't know why. There was no rule for this. No visible danger. Just a sense—faint, insistent—that something had been delayed for too long.
Then the street dipped.
Just a fraction. Enough to throw people off balance. Enough to send a stack of crates sliding, wood groaning against stone. Enough for a child running too fast to trip.
She fell hard.
Aron saw it all at once—not in slow motion, not dramatic, just sudden clarity. The angle of the stone. The way her hands missed their mark. The shadow overhead as an awning groaned under sudden strain. He saw the rusted bracket flex, saw the cloth sag, saw the heavy beam shift like a tired shoulder giving out.
No stabilizers here.
No one important enough to absorb the cost.
The world corrected itself.
Badly.
Aron dropped the crate and ran.
He didn't think about the rules. Or the convoy. Or why the air felt wrong. He saw a small body where a heavy thing was about to land and moved because that was what people did—what he wanted to believe people did—before the world taught them otherwise.
He reached her—and the weight arrived.
Not as force.
As inevitability.
For a heartbeat, Aron understood something without knowing how to name it: the street had already decided who would pay.
It just hadn't finished choosing.
He caught the child under the arms, yanking her backward. His knee slammed into the stone. Pain flashed bright and clean, almost welcome for its simplicity. The beam came down—and the air thickened.
It wasn't magic in the way stories described magic. There was no light, no sound. Just pressure. The sense of a hand tightening around the moment.
Aron's breath stuck. His mind went blank, then crowded: too late, too late, too—
The beam shuddered as it fell, not slowing, not stopping, but… shifting. The point of impact drifted a finger-width. Then another. Like something nudging it with careful impatience.
Like the world correcting its own correction.
The beam hit.
Stone shattered.
Dust exploded.
And Aron felt the choice break.
Not relief. Not victory.
A snap, as if something taut had been cut.
He hit the ground hard enough to taste grit. The child screamed—alive, raw, close. People shouted. Feet thudded around him. Someone's hand grabbed his shoulder and hauled him partly upright.
He blinked through dust, lungs burning, and looked at the beam.
It should have crushed him.
It hadn't.
Not cleanly.
Not kindly.
It lay at an angle, biting into the street like an ugly tooth. The spot where his head had been was caved in. The place where his leg had been was scraped raw. Blood was already slicking down his shin.
He stared at the distance between death and what happened instead—a space you could measure with two fingers—and his stomach turned.
Because it hadn't been luck.
He didn't know what it was.
But he knew it had noticed.