The market erupted. The silence of the "crack" was replaced by a wave of screams as people scrambled away from the cooling corpse. The silver-scaled fish Lucidia had just bought felt heavy and cold in her hand, but she didn't move.
She looked up at the balcony again. The shadow was gone. She blinked, shaking her head. Just a resident, she told herself, trying to force the logic of a sane world back into her mind. Just a curious neighbor looking down at the noise.
She stepped closer to the body, her boots clicking on the soot-stained cobblestones. She knelt, her tired eyes scanning the man's twisted neck and the way his fingers were still locked like iron hooks around his own throat.
"The guy couldn't have morphed into a Deranged Creature from a Lucid Remnant," she muttered, her writer's mind automatically cataloging the scene. "So he probably died by a Remnant... but I haven't seen anyone self-destruct like that before."
"He didn't."
The voice was calm and carried the unmistakable ring of authority.
Lucidia looked up. Cutting through the panicked crowd was a young man who looked like he belonged in a palace rather than a soot-choked market. He had long, flowy blonde hair and clothes fashioned from high-grade silks and gold-threaded embroidery. Two knights in heavy plate armor marched behind him, their mechanical gear hissing with every step.
The knights stepped forward to push Lucidia back, but the blonde man raised a hand to stop them. He looked down at the corpse with a look of clinical disdain.
"The guy did not die by self-destructing from a Lucid Remnant," the young man said, his eyes shifting to Lucidia. "The guy got manipulated by someone in the shadows."
A collective gasp rippled through the onlookers.
The noble leaned in slightly, his blue eyes piercing. "Did you witness anything?"
Lucidia stood up, brushing the soot from her cape. She didn't bow. "I saw a shadowy figure in one of the balconies. I thought it was just a bystander."
The young man's expression sharpened. He turned to his guards. "Knights, go investigate. It is probably the Blood Seeker." He then turned back to Lucidia, his gaze traveling over her industrial sword. "And peasant? Don't act so tough."
Lucidia felt a flare of her morning irritation return. She matched his stare, her hand resting on the pommel of her cold-iron blade. "Hey, Golden Head. So what exactly is the 'Blood Seeker'?"
The noble stiffened at the nickname, his lip curling in a brief flash of annoyance.
"The Blood Seeker is a wanted man for murdering multiple people near the country," he replied, his voice dropping to a low, cold tone. "He is a disgusting man. He doesn't just kill he plays with the minds of his victims until they break."
Without waiting for another word from her, the noble turned on his heel. His golden-threaded cloak snapped in the wind as he began to walk away, his knights immediately falling into step behind him. He didn't offer a name, and he didn't offer protection. He simply retreated toward the higher districts, leaving Lucidia standing alone in the middle of the blood-stained market.
To him, the conversation was over. To Lucidia, the tingling in her fingers had just become an electric jolt.
Lucidia didn't head home. The itch in her hands was too intense to wait, a frantic pulse that demanded she record every detail of the man's twisted neck before the image blurred. Instead, she rushed toward the Central Hub, the massive brass-domed building that served as the district's heartbeat.
As she pushed through the heavy iron doors, a wave of heat and Aether-pressure hit her. She felt a sharp, electric tingle crawl up her spine—a sensation she had never felt before, having never stepped foot in this den of secrets. It was a space where the air felt thick, and the people inside looked like they were carved from the very iron and soot that built the city of Asgard.
The room was vast, filled with a heavy, watchful silence. Along the curved walls of the hub, several individuals stood like statues, clearly strangers to one another. A young woman with thick dreadlocks leaned against a stone pillar, a cigarette dangling from her lips and smoke curling around her head. Further down, a man with shoulder-length green hair leaned back with a sinister, permanent smile, his purple eyes tracking every movement in the room with predatory interest. In the shadows of the far corner stood a juggernaut of a man with a blonde buzz cut, a metal jaw, and heavy limbs of cold steel; a massive axe, as large as a child, was propped against the wall beside his metal leg. Finally, standing near the high-arched windows, was the "Golden Head" noble she had just witnessed in the market, looking out at the city with cold indifference.
Lucidia ignored the tension. She didn't look for a seat or a table. Instead, she dropped straight to the floor in a dark corner, her back against the cold stone and her knees pulled up to act as a desk. She pulled out her journal and pen, her fingers finally flying across the paper as she bled the morning's horror into words. She wrote about the man's hands, the wet crack of bone, the way his muscles had betrayed him, and that lingering, mocking shadow on the balcony.
"Writing a tragedy? Or just a grocery list?"
The voice was smooth and entirely too close.
Lucidia looked up, her pen hovering over the page. A charismatic young man had wandered over and was now leaning casually against the wall right above where she sat on the floor. He had messy, brown mop-like hair and a pair of brass goggles pushed up onto his forehead. He gave her a crooked, confident grin, looking down at her as if her sitting on the ground was the most interesting thing he'd seen all day.
"You've got that look," he said, tilting his head to try and catch a glimpse of her journal. "The 'I've seen a ghost and now I have to tell everyone about it' look. A girl as striking as you shouldn't be sitting on a dirty floor alone. How about you let me buy you a drink and you tell me what's got your ink so agitated?"
Lucidia looked up at him, her face a mask of exhausted indifference. She didn't smile. She just stared at him with flat, tired eyes, her mind still replaying the man's final, desperate gasps. The man with the goggles didn't flinch; he just waited for the bite he clearly expected from someone who looked as irritated as she did.
Finally, Lucidia snapped her journal shut with a decisive thud.
"I'm not interested in the conversation," Lucidia said, her voice dry. "But I've had a long morning, and I'm not in the habit of turning down something free."
She stood up, brushing the dust of the Hub's floor from her grey cape. She was taller than she looked when she was hunched over her notebook, and the cold-iron sword at her hip clacked against her leg as she straightened out.
The man's grin widened. "The name's Aero."
"Busy," Lucidia replied shortly, walking past him toward the brass bar at the center of the room.
As they walked, she felt the weight of the room shifting. The woman with the dreadlocks exhaled a long plume of smoke, her eyes following Lucidia's every step. The green-haired man with the purple eyes let his sinister smile grow just a fraction wider. Even the Golden Head noble turned away from the window, his cold blue eyes narrowing as he recognized the "peasant" who had called him out in the street.
Lucidia climbed onto a stool, her hand resting instinctively on the hilt of her blade.
"Get her whatever keeps that pen moving," Aero told the bartender, tossing a copper coin onto the counter. He leaned his elbow on the wood, looking at her. "So, 'Busy,' what brought you to the Hub today? People don't usually come here just to sit on the floor. Especially not after a man decides to play his own neck like a violin in the square."