The balcony was too high, far too high for someone like me, someone who had spent the majority of his new life crawling through tunnels that smelled like wet copper and the broken dreams of the unwashed masses.
I gripped the railing like it owed me money, leaning forward just enough to peer down into the sprawling city where thousands of tiny figures twisted and danced in the golden glow of the street lamps.
From up here, they looked like toys—little silhouettes flitting between stacked platforms, suspended bridges, and glowing stalls whose colors bled together in a haze of molten gold and rusty orange.
The Spire loomed behind me, its pipes and gears hissing with the steady breath of a slumbering dragon, exhaling steam that rose toward the massive cavern ceiling above like pleading hands reaching for salvation.
My stomach curled unpleasantly, and for a moment I wondered if falling from this height would kill me instantly or if I'd have time to scream something appropriately dramatic on the way down.
I slapped on a mask of bravado—because that's what I did, that's what I was, a one-succubus theater troupe who performed for audiences who never asked for tickets—and forced myself to turn around.
Iskanda leaned against the balcony doorway like she was posing for some underground deity's fresco, framed by a tangle of pipes thicker than my torso, gears the size of carriage wheels, and a cascade of amber steam that curled around her legs like affectionate mist.
She had her arms crossed, her head tilted slightly, watching me in that way she always did—as if she were quietly amused that I hadn't spontaneously combusted from my nerves yet.
"You look like you're about to faint," she said casually, voice dripping with that warm, effortlessly commanding tone that sent shivers down my spine in ways I refused to acknowledge.
"I'm fine," I lied boldly, trying to stand up straighter and immediately swaying forward like a newborn fawn whose legs hadn't been properly installed. "Just… appreciating the view."
Her brow lifted. "Of what, the city? Or your impending death?"
"Both," I admitted, gripping the railing again before I toppled over like a sack of decorative potatoes.
Iskanda pushed off the doorway and strolled toward me with the loose-limbed confidence of someone who thought gravity was an optional suggestion. I envied that. I also kind of hated it. Mostly I hated how she made my heartbeat trip over itself like a drunkard trying to climb stairs.
Before I could muster even a single vaguely coherent thought, she beat me to speaking—again.
"Why?" she asked simply.
The word sliced through the air like a thrown dagger. I blinked at her, confusion slapping me in the face so hard I nearly flinched.
"Why… what?" I managed, even though my brain was still buffering like a secondhand crystal orb with a cracked focusing lens.
She came to stand beside me, leaning against the railing so our arms nearly brushed. My skin tingled at the proximity, and of course my treacherous body responded by warming up like a furnace that had suddenly remembered it had a job to do.
"Why do you burn like that," she said, tapping one finger lightly against the railing as if marking a beat only she could hear. "Why do you have that quiet fire behind your eyes. Why do you wish to rise. Why are you willing to play this city's twisted game even though you know exactly how dirty it gets."
Her eyes flicked toward me, pupils gleaming in the steam-drenched light.
"What drives you?"
Saints above. Why did she always have to ask questions that required soul-searching instead of, say, 'Would you like a pastry?' or 'Can you hold this gear while I fix the steam valve?' I would have excelled at those. But this—this was emotional archaeology, and I didn't have the proper shovel.
I opened my mouth, hesitated, closed it, then opened it again like I was engaged in fierce debate with the air molecules around me. Eventually, instinct—not reason, not logic, not self-preservation—pushed the truth out of me in a soft, brittle voice.
"There's somebody I need to kill."
Iskanda's head turned toward me, eyebrows shooting up. Genuine surprise flickered across her face—a rare sight, like catching a noble doing their own laundry or spotting Brutus smile without someone getting punched first.
"Oh?" she said, her tone shifting into something quieter, sharper, edged with curiosity. "Care to elaborate?"
"No," I said instantly, shaking my head so fast I nearly gave myself whiplash. "It's… personal."
She studied me for a moment, expression unreadable, as if peeling apart the layers of my soul like it was a stubborn onion.
Then she shrugged lightly, returning her gaze to the city below. "Fair enough."
The silence that followed wasn't uncomfortable—just thick, humming with the weight of truths unsaid. I exhaled, shoulders releasing tension I hadn't realized I was carrying, and leaned slightly over the railing again, hoping the cool air would calm the frantic buzzing behind my ribs.
"So," I said after a moment, clearing my throat and desperately trying to lighten the mood before I accidentally spilled more secrets. "You just bring trainees up here to interrogate them over scenic vistas or is this special treatment?"
"It's special," she said without missing a beat, which did nothing to slow the sudden skip in my heartbeat.
I side-eyed her. "Oh really? Should I be honored or should I start worrying about being thrown off the balcony as part of some initiation ritual?"
She smirked. "If I wanted you dead, I promise you'd know."
A chill skittered down my spine, followed immediately by a thrill, because apparently my survival instincts were deeply broken.
"How comforting," I muttered, crossing my arms like that would shield me from impending doom.
She let out a soft laugh, the sound rich and warm as melted chocolate. "Relax. If anything, I should be worrying about you throwing yourself off the balcony to escape your tendency for overthinking."
"I don't overthink," I said indignantly, even though that was a blatant lie. "I simply… analyze aggressively."
"You spiral," she corrected.
"I loop with enthusiasm," I snapped back.
She chuckled again, and something within me unwound at the sound.
For several long heartbeats, we simply stood there, watching the underground metropolis shimmer like a false heaven stitched together from gold lamps and oily shadows. Then, out of nowhere, Iskanda's tone shifted—dropping low, taking on a gravity that pulled the air tighter around us.
"There's something you need to understand," she murmured, tapping her fingers against the railing again, almost rhythmically. "This city… everything you see here… it's a lie."
I straightened a little, interest sharpening. "Well that bit's fairly obvious. You know, the brothel system, the caste hierarchy, the rampant corruption, the human trade networks, the theatrical violence—"
"Loona."
"Right, yes, continue."
She inhaled slowly, eyes tracing the lantern-lit streets far below us.
"Prismillya sells the idea that anyone can rise," she said. "That anyone can claw their way out of the gutter if they push hard enough. But that's the mask. Underneath? It's rot. Ancient, calcified rot held together with gold paint and propaganda." Her voice grew quieter. "And the higher you climb, the worse it gets."
I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry as dust. "Tell me," I murmured. "Tell me how to reach the next rank… and how to escape this damn place."
She let out a long, controlled exhale through her nose, as though she'd been expecting that question and dreading it all at once.
When she straightened to face me fully, her posture was stiff, formal, almost ceremonial. "To climb to the next rank," she said, "you need more than skill. More than ambition. More than that uniquely stubborn brand of suicidal determination you flaunt like a badge."
"Wow," I muttered. "Attack me, why don't you."
She ignored me.
"You need to secure a position in one of the top brothels. The elite ones. The ten institutions that uphold the Spire's pleasure trade."
I blinked. "The top ten? Like… is there a sign-up sheet? Open auditions? Should I prepare a monologue? I can juggle. Badly. But still."
She clicked her tongue, eyes narrowing at me with fond irritation. "They're called the Pantheon." The name settled in the air like a phantom. Heavy. Mythic. Soaked in danger.
"All ten of them sit at the very top of the Spire," she said, lifting a hand to gesture upward at the mile-high beast of machinery towering behind us. "The highest layer of the structure. A place where only the powerful can step. Not your common slave or noble. Not even the Velvets. Only those chosen by patrons of extreme influence."
She sighed, pushing hair back from her forehead with a weary elegance. "If you wish to reach that level, you'll be walking into ten thousand years of bureaucracy, political sabotage, underground feuds, corporate warfare, bribery networks, and more assassination attempts than birthdays."
She paused a second before continuing. "You need backing. Connections. Knowledge of the city's inner workings. That's the only way you can thrive in this city."
"Teach me."
The words tumbled out of me far too quickly, far too eagerly, and the moment they left my mouth I realized just how stupidly earnest I sounded.
My heart did that wonderful suicidal leap inside my chest, thumping around like it was trying to break out through my ribs and escape the situation entirely.
Iskanda didn't answer at first. She just looked at me, really looked, in that slow predatory way she did when she wanted to make me regret opening my mouth. One brow flicked up, the corner of her lips tugged into something between amusement and pity, and for a brief, suicidal heartbeat, I thought she might actually laugh at me.
Instead she leaned closer. "Oh?" she drawled, voice smooth as oiled steel. "You want me to teach you?"
My pulse jumped. My brain screamed at me to run or faint or commit some other dramatic exit, but I forced my back straighter, plastering on a grin that was about ninety percent bravado and ten percent I-might-fall-off-this-balcony-and-die. "Yes," I said, and Saints I could hear the waver in it. "Teach me."
"And what," she purred, "would you be willing to give in return?"
There went my soul. Just—gone. Evaporated. The primal part of me, the dark hunger that lived in my bones ever since I woke up in this body, jolted awake like a starving dog smelling meat.
It was so sudden and so intense my breath hitched, heat prickling along my neck. She saw it, Saints damn her, she saw everything, because her smile sharpened into something dangerous.
I opened my mouth. I truly didn't know what was about to come out—something clever, something stupid, something embarrassing enough to make me jump off the balcony voluntarily—but before I could launch myself into new humiliations, Iskanda suddenly froze.
Her head tilted a fraction, gaze snapping not to me, but out toward the skyline. For a moment she didn't breathe. The shift in her posture was so sharp, so sudden, it felt like the entire cavern inhaled with her.
I followed her gaze, expecting to see… I don't know. A monster. A collapsing structure. A child juggling knives. Anything.
There was nothing. Just the glowing maze of The Velvet Chamber's cavern city sprawled below like a jeweled bruise. And yet her eyes had narrowed—focused so intensely the air around her felt tighter.
"…Iskanda?" I whispered.
She didn't answer for a moment. Then, slowly, she blinked, as if remembering I existed. "That's right, I nearly forgot my reason for coming here in the first place." she murmured.
My heart stuttered. "A reason? Besides tormenting me?"
"Oh, that was just a bonus," she said, smirking again. "But no. It's time."
"Time for what?" I asked, because apparently I enjoy being terrified.
Instead of answering, she stepped back from the railing, rolling her shoulders like someone preparing for battle. Then—without warning—she crouched low, palms pressing flat to the metal floor.
I laughed.
It just slipped out. I couldn't help it. She looked like she was about to do pushups on the world's most dangerous balcony. "What are you doing?" I snorted. "Is this some sort of ritual? A stretch? Are we summoning something? Please don't summon something, I'm not emotionally stable enough for that."
She didn't dignify me with a response.
Instead, the metal beneath her hands began to darken.
No—that wasn't right. It wasn't darkening, it was pulling shadow into itself. The light around us warped, bending toward her fingers like she was gravity and everything else was obedient debris.
My laughter died in my throat as a low hum filled the air, vibrating through the metal, through the railing, through my legs.
Something sharp rose up from the floor.
At first I thought it was obsidian, two jagged shards forming like teeth rising from a mechanical beast. But no—obsidian didn't look like this. Obsidian didn't make my lungs feel squeezed or my skin crawl with instinctive recognition.
This was something else. Something older. Something wrong. Something that felt like it shouldn't exist in the world without ripping seams in reality.
The two jagged pieces twisted, fused, lengthened—reshaping themselves in Iskanda's grip until she was holding…
A bow.
A massive one.
A monstrous, curved instrument of elegant death, its surface the same impossible shadow-material that drank in the light instead of reflecting it. It looked like someone had carved a weapon out of a black hole and then decided to make it fancy.
I stared. Blinked. Stared again. "Okay," I whispered hoarsely, "I take back every joke I've ever made about you. Also, what the hell is that?"
She didn't answer.
Because the bow wasn't finished.
The ends began to drip. Not liquid—something thicker, heavier, something like shadows liquefying into ropes. The black substance stretched downward, pulled by some invisible force, and then met in the center, solidifying into a taut string that hummed with lethal intent.
I took a step back, gripping the railing behind me so hard my knuckles cracked. "That's not normal," I whispered. "That's extremely not normal. That is the opposite of normal. That's—"
Then her fingers touched the string.
And the world changed.
Dark matter twisted up from the bow like smoke reversing its fall, spiraling into the air, coalescing in front of her fingers. It stretched outward—growing, thickening, sharpening—until an arrow the size of a spear formed, forged from that same impossible material. My breath caught, because I recognized it.
It was the same kind of arrow that had torn through the High Warden's chest.
Iskanda stood perfectly still. Perfectly calm. Perfectly composed. She raised the bow, the monstrous arrow glowing faintly with an inner darkness that made no sense at all, and drew back her arm.
The air tightened. The shadows leaned toward her. And something deep inside me whispered, this is not meant for mortal hands.
She paused.
Inhaled.
And then released.
The bowstring snapped forward with a sound like the world cracking open. The platform exploded in a deafening boom that tore through my skull so violently I slapped my hands over my ears and dropped into a half-crouch.
The steam around us burst before dissipating into nothing.
And then it was gone. Completely gone. It didn't even leave a trail.
It merely ceased to be visible.
When the echoing roar finally faded, I lifted my head slowly, heart pounding, ears ringing. The entire balcony vibrated under my feet, the air smelling faintly of ozone and something ancient, something cold.
"…What," I croaked. "What the fuck was that?"
Iskanda lowered the bow—if you could call such an eldritch monstrosity a bow—and exhaled through her nose like she'd simply loosened a stiff muscle.
"A message," she said.
I blinked rapidly, brain struggling to reboot. "A message? To who?"
She didn't answer. Which terrified me even more.
Her expression didn't shift, didn't flicker, didn't soften. She simply turned her back to the ruined air, to the impossible shot still echoing somewhere deep in the cavern.
She turned on her heel before walking toward the balcony doorway with a steady, predatory stride—no rush, no hesitation—like she'd just remembered something far more important was waiting inside.
"Come along," she ordered without even looking over her shoulder.
No explanation. No reassurance. Not even a smug smirk.
Just a command.
My stomach dropped through several floors of the Spire as I scrambled after her, already regretting everything I'd ever said, thought, or breathed in her general direction.