---
After the meal, they stepped back into the open air.
The lanterns in the courtyard had started to glow, soft green and amber casting uneven light on the walls.
Nyx stretched, hands behind her head, and let out a satisfied sigh.
“Alright,” she muttered, “I take back what I said. That stew was worth the trip.”
John dusted off his hands, still holding the last corner of bread. “Wasn’t it your idea to begin with?”
“That’s how I operate. Low expectations, frequent surprises.”
Gorin joined them at the gate, rolling his shoulders like someone shedding the weight of a long day.
“You both got room for a walk?”
Nyx raised an eyebrow. “You coming with?”
“Don’t trust you not to start a fight without me,”
She rolled her eyes, a smirk creeping in.
They set off through the winding side streets of the Lower Quarter. The stone underfoot was uneven, some of it patched with wood planks or flattened scrap.
Overhead, ropes stretched between buildings, some draped in drying herbs, others in washed cloths catching the breeze.
John walked in the middle, hands in his coat pockets.
Gorin and Nyx flanked him, still tossing mild insults at each other, like the back-and-forth had kept them sharp over the years.
At one corner, they paused near a crooked staircase where two kids were arguing over a cracked spinning top.
Nyx went to there to check.And after thinking for a bit, a light-bulb had turned on in her mind.
She knelt and fixed the top with a flick of her wrist—binding the split with a bit of wire she’d plucked from her own belt.
“Careful with that now,” she said as the kids ran off again.
“Or else that’s gonna end in someone’s elbow.” she shouted.
“You just made their week,” Gorin muttered, smiling faintly.
John stopped.
He didn’t know why at first.
Just something about the angle of the alley up ahead—a quiet tension in the stillness.
They stood at the edge of an intersecting street, mostly empty. The buildings here leaned tighter, crowding the space like they were whispering to each other.
And in the narrow slice of light between two walls—
shadows moved.
Two men.
One in a long cloak with sharp embroidery across the shoulders.
The other in tight black armor, marked by the unmistakable crest of the Governor.
John stepped back slightly, motioning for Nyx and Gorin.
They didn’t speak. Just followed his eyes.
“…he’s losing patience,” the cloaked one muttered.
---
The armored man’s voice was lower. Harder.
“Expansion takes time.”
“You said that last cycle.”
“There’s resistance. People hiding. Avoiding work zones.”
“Then you take them. Quietly. Don’t need them willing—just breathing.”
Nyx’s jaw tensed.
Gorin didn’t move. His expression had gone blank in that way that meant calculation.
“The orders are ready,” the cloaked man added.
“Sector six first. Then eight. Workers are to be ‘reallocated.’ No returns.”
The armored one shifted. “I Need more time than this.”
“Make due. It's a direct order from him.”
A silence followed.
Then the cloaked man said, almost bored,
“Clean. Quiet. No ripples. The Governor doesn’t want noise.”
John’s hands clenched in his pockets.
The men turned, boots whispering over stone,
and vanished into another alley, their voices swallowed by distance.
John exhaled through his nose. Steady, but sharp.
“Did you hear that?” Nyx muttered, low and bitter.
“Reallocated.”
“Don’t have much time,” John said, quietly.
Gorin’s voice rumbled out, low and solid.
“They’re going to gut the Quarter. Strip it slow so no one sees until it’s done.”
Nyx turned to him.
“What do we do?”
John didn’t hesitate.
"We investigate."
"You sure?" Gorin asked.
"..Absolutely."
A brief silence followed.
“You really don’t scare easy, do you john?”
John looked at her.
“Told you didn't I,”
She smirked at the response.
"Well.."
“Lucky for you,” she added, already turning toward the alley,
“I know a guy.”
---
Nyx and john weaved through alleys that twisted like veins—
past shuttered stalls, under slanting beams, through narrow gaps between buildings that barely admitted moonlight.
John followed without question, boots brushing against stone worn uneven by time and use.
“He doesn’t like surprises,” Nyx said over her shoulder.
“So don’t say anything stupid.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“No, seriously. If he thinks you’re a threat, he’ll vanish. And I don’t even mean run—I mean vanish.”
John raised an eyebrow.
“Noted.”
They turned one last corner and stopped in front of what looked like a storage shed wedged between two larger homes. Its door was half-rotted, hinges mismatched.
A faded sign hung above it—just a symbol, scratched deep into wood.
Nyx knocked once. Then twice, then paused,
then knocked again—
three times, faster.
A small hatch slid open near the bottom.
A single, glowing eye blinked out at them.
Then:
“Nyx.”
“Heya, Vesh.”
A beat.
“You’re late.”
“I wasn’t planning on showing up at all, but then I found something interesting.”
The door creaked open on its own, slow and deliberate.
Inside, the air shifted immediately. Cooler. Denser. The smell of old paper, ink, and something sharp—ozone, maybe.
John stepped in behind her.
The space was bigger than it looked from the outside.
Bookshelves lined the walls, curving upward, mismatched and overstuffed. Scrolls, maps, coils of wire, crystal fragments suspended in jars.
Every inch was covered in information—or the tools to extract it.
Behind a counter stood, Vesh.
Tall, slight, and ageless in the way that made it impossible to guess what he was. His skin shimmered slightly under the hanging lanterns—like it was made of paper and shadow.
His eyes didn’t quite match in color, or in focus.
He looked John over once.
“Well,” he said.
“If it isn’t my favorite little thief. And... someone very out of place.”
Nyx leaned against the counter casually.
“Not a thief, Vesh. More of a redistributor. And, he’s someone who needs information.”
Vesh raised an eyebrow. “You’re a headache is what you are.”
Then his gaze returned to John.
“An Elf.. in the Lower Quarter. You don’t look like you’re here for candles or binding twine.”
John stepped forward. Calm, but deliberate.
“I need information. And she said you’re the one to ask.”
Vesh didn’t smile. But something about his posture shifted—interest, maybe.
“..What kind of information?”
“Worker movements. Assignments. Orders that didn’t come through official channels.”
Vesh blinked slowly.
“You know what you’re asking for, right?”
“I do.”
Nyx chimed in, “Come on, Vesh. You must've seen the shifts. The governor’s moving pieces again. We need to know what kind.”
Vesh studied them both, then turned,
rummaging through a chest behind the counter. Parchment crinkled. Glass clinked.
Finally,
he returned with a weathered ledger—thin, bound with wire, marked in a script John didn’t recognize.
“Three nights ago,” Vesh said, flipping to a specific page.
“Special orders. Quiet. Routed through secondary handlers, not the main office.”
He slid the ledger across the counter.
John scanned the entries. His stomach tightened.
“Scheduled roundups,” he muttered. “Targeting laborers. Reassignments to sector nine. No return listed.”
Vesh nodded once. “That means they’re not coming back.”
Nyx cursed under her breath.
“That’s half the Quarter.”
John closed the ledger carefully.
“When?”
“In six days, maybe a week from now,” Vesh said.
“Soon enough you won’t be able to stop it without drawing real blood.”
Nyx looked at John. Her usual smirk was gone.
“We don’t have much time, John.”
“No,” John agreed. “We don’t.”
Vesh folded his arms, watching them carefully.
“What exactly do you plan to do?”
John looked him in the eye.
And for a moment, that quiet, steady calm in him shifted—just slightly—into something sharper.
"The governor likes that we’re elves. And from what I’ve seen, that means we have influence."
"If we play our part right, we might be able to disrupt whatever’s coming before it even happens."
Vesh didn’t speak. But his gaze lingered a little longer this time.
Nyx let out a breath, half-laugh, half disbelief.
“You’ve really got guts, you know that.”
John gave her a quiet smile.
He picked up the ledger, tucked it under his arm, and turned toward the door.
---
The archives were quiet.
Harry sat cross-legged on the floor between two towering shelves, surrounded by books he wasn’t entirely sure he was supposed to have.
Most were open. Some were stacked. A few had bits of ribbon or bone tucked between their pages as makeshift markers.
He rubbed his eyes.
“Okay,” he muttered to himself.
“So… the city was built on a convergence point for ley lines. Great. And that means…”
He flipped back a page.
“…absolutely nothing unless I can figure out what these symbols mean.”
The book groaned softly as it bent—some old binding charm reluctantly giving way.
A shadow-familiar blinked at him from the top of a stack of books.
It had appeared earlier. Soft as smoke, shaped like a cat—but not quite. Longer, flatter. Too still. Its eyes glowed faintly like candlelight caught in black ink.
Harry had tried to shoo it away.
It had not left.
Footsteps echoed faintly down the hall—soft and deliberate.
The librarian glided into view, a swirl of soft robes and a voice like a whisper with a smile in it.
“You’re still here,” she said gently.
Harry looked up. “I bet time doesn’t exist here.”
She chuckled.
“Not in the way it does outside.”
She glanced at the creature beside him.
“It seems that one has taken a liking to you.”
“It’s a cat-shaped curse,” Harry replied.
“But thanks.”
She stepped closer, hands folded lightly.
“It’s not a curse. It’s a familiar. And they only stay where they’re needed.”
Harry finally looked up. “So it thinks I’m useful?”
“No,” she said, smiling.
“It thinks you’re close.”
He blinked. “To what?”
The librarian tilted her head.
“To remembering what the city worked so hard to forget.”
---
Harry glanced at shadow-familiar,
then back to his notes.
Then back at it.
"So, you’re gonna help out here or what?”
The creature blinked once.
It made a face, like it was deciding on something.
Then, slowly it extended one paw and pushed a small parchment scroll off the shelf.
It hit Harry in the shoulder and flopped to the ground with a papery sigh.
He picked it up.
“…Okay. That could’ve been an accident.”
The creature yawned, wide and toothless, like a shadow melting into more shadow.
Harry unrolled the scroll—faint glyphs, a few half-legible margins, and a tiny corner drawing of a creature that looked suspiciously like the familiar itself.
“So.. are you in all the old stuff, or was that meant to be just vanity?”
The familiar hopped down with a fluid motion, landing without a sound. It circled once, then plopped itself right in the middle of his open notes.
Harry stared.
“Really?”
---
Aurora didn’t move.
Neither did Finn.
The book stayed half-hidden behind her, pressed tight against her spine.
“And.. if we say no?”
Aurora asked, voice steady, eyes narrowed.
Moss raised an eyebrow.
“Then you’ll still be in it. Just blind.”
Finn shifted his weight. “Not loving the cryptic mentor act, my guy.”
Moss looked at him—really looked. Not just scanning, but reading something beneath the sarcasm.
“Look, I’m not here to teach you anything,” he said.
“Just trying to keep you guys alive.”
He pointed—not at the book, but at the cracked ground where the glyph had shimmered earlier.
“That thing? It wasn’t just ink and parchment. That book—it’s a key.”
Aurora’s grip tightened. “To what?”
“To something older than the Governor. Older than this city’s walls. Maybe older than the lie everyone here is living in.”
She scoffed under her breath.
“You’re gonna have to be more specific.”
Moss took a breath, glancing up at the buildings stacked tight above them, eyes narrowing as if listening for something.
“You think this place is built on order. Control. Power, maybe. It’s not.”
He looked back at them.
“It’s built on chains.”
Finn frowned. “Chains?”
Moss nodded once. “Ley lines. Memory stones. Forgotten paths. This whole city’s sitting on top of something—buried deep. Kept quiet. But not dead.”
Aurora’s voice dropped. “And this book?”
“It remembers,” Moss said.
But before either of them could ask more—
A sharp whistle split the air.
Not close.
But close enough.
Moss stiffened.
“Shit.”
---
(Somewhere Above)
The city hummed below.
Not loud. Not urgent. Just steady—like breath held between words.
Inside the upper halls of the estate, the shadows were longer. Cooler. The kind cast by high ceilings and silent decisions.
A figure stepped into the chamber, bowing slightly.
“My lord,” the attendant said, voice careful,
“The elf boy was seen in the Lower Quarter. Walking alone.”
Across the room, the Governor stood with his back to the window.
He was looking down—far below—where the smooth veins of Vash’Kael’s streets cut through the stone like deliberate scars. From up here, everything seemed quiet. Managed.
Expected.
He smiled.
“Bold of him,” he murmured.
The attendant didn’t speak.
The Governor turned slightly, still facing the view. One hand behind his back, the other resting lightly against the edge of the stone window frame.
“No guards. No handler. No message first.” His tone wasn’t amused. Not exactly. More like… intrigued.
“He’s wandering. Testing the edges.”
A pause.
Then he nodded once to himself.
“Let him.”
The attendant blinked. “Sir?”
The Governor turned fully now, eyes sharp beneath his easy smile.
“Let him roam,” he repeated, walking back toward the center of the room.
“Let him meet people. Ask questions. Feel clever.”
A beat.
“Let’s see what he does next.”
---
[TO BE CONTINUED IN EPISODE 10]
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