The city hummed beneath Lavender's steps, alive yet somehow... lacking. The dust had settled from the chaos she spun into it, and new leadership marched with renewed vigor, trying to make sense of what had happened. But Lavender? She wasn't looking back.
She strolled through Kael'Tun's winding alleys and structured lanes, her parasol twirling lazily in one hand, and an unreadable look perched beneath her lashes.
Market stalls buzzed, the scent of roasted roots and smoked meats thick in the air. Children of mixed tribes darted past her like breeze-caught leaves, laughing in three different dialects. The guards nodded respectfully as she passed, warily polite.
And yet...
"There's nothing," she murmured to herself, almost mournfully. "Nothing worthy."
Lavender had searched every crooked street and marbled courtyard, every hidden nook and quiet shrine Kael'Tun had to offer. Not even the underground tunnels-where rumors whispered of cursed heirlooms and forgotten treasures-yielded anything that sparked her.
Nothing whispered her name. Nothing called out pick me.
Her boots tapped on polished stone as she wandered deeper into the city, skirts brushing against the edge of flower carts and pottery displays. Vashir, as ever, trailed her like a tall shadow, silent but keenly observant.
"There should have been something," she said, barely a whisper now. "Something more than a bitter woman and dull-eyed slaves. A rare trinket. A blood-stained tapestry. A caged mystery. Anything..."
But the city had already given her its best, and Lavender had deemed it commonplace.
She paused beneath a stone archway, gazing at a mural half-faded with time-a depiction of a forgotten beast tribe perhaps, now worn by moss and weather. Her violet eyes lingered on it, not with reverence, but mild irritation.
"It would have been beautiful in a frame," she muttered. "But the cracks ruin it. Shame."
She pulled out a small glass lens from her pouch and peered through it at the mural. Still, nothing. No secret markings. No hidden enchantments. Just... stone. Old and tired.
The disappointment settled like ash in her chest.
She turned away.
---
Later, as dusk kissed the city's high towers and cloaked its corners in deep blue shadow, Lavender sat atop a bell tower, legs swinging idly as if she were a child on a garden bench.
Vashir stood below, leaning against a wall, watching the horizon.
Lavender stared at the sky. "Why do you think the totem brought me here?" she asked suddenly, voice like distant windchimes. "Was it fate? Madness? A cosmic joke?"
Vashir looked up. "I've wondered."
She tilted her head, smile faint and bitter. "It hasn't told me anything. Not a whisper, not a vision. It just... bit me. Dragged me here. Dropped me into a world of claws and tribal politics and-" She swept a hand toward the city. "-this. As if I'm meant to find something."
Her fingers brushed the snake totem, always coiled around her hip like a sleeping guardian.
"I don't know why I'm here," she admitted quietly. "But I've decided I don't care. Whatever reason it had-it doesn't matter. I will roam this world. I'll pluck its wonders one by one until my collection sings."
She turned her head slowly, her violet gaze shimmering with obsidian hunger.
"Only the best. Only the unforgettable. And I will not settle for less."
Vashir said nothing, but something in his expression darkened. He had seen beasts hunger before. But Lavender's craving was something more-something sacred, savage, and terrifyingly beautiful.