Mornings in narrowridge always smell like ash and steam.
The mossfires never really go out in the lower quarters. They burn quietly beneath the cooking pits, curling their pale blue smoke through the hallowstone alleys. The air tastes of damp bark, boiled roots, and old coal-tea.
I walk the market path like I've done a hundred times before. But this time, everything fels… quieter.
Not dead.
Just waiting.
The fragment in my satchel hasn't pulsed once since I woke up.
That worries me more than if it had.
"Back again?" Grumbles a voice behind a woven stall curtain.
A large women steps out, arms crossed, eyes narrowed. Old Merra. She sells barkcloth, storm leaf and the kind of bitter tea that clears nightmares from you're head.
I nod. "Looking for coppersmith root."
"You? You don't even eat half what you buy."
"I trade most of it to Trinn."
She snorts. "That last plant licker should come himself."
I shrug.
Merra grumbles again but turns to grab a bundel of coppervine from her wall hooks. I glance around the marked as I wait.
Children chase eachother with reed knives.
A blind man plays a three string Lyla.
A pair of traders argue over a skin of sky ink .
It's all so normal. Like the world didn't shift last night .
Like a voice didn't whisper from the stone under my bed.
When Merra hands mentee root, her fingers pause.
Her eyes flick down towards my satchel.
"You're humming."
I blink. "What?"
"Not you." She leans in, voice low. "That thing you carry."
My breath catches.
"You need to be carful, boy. This city may be slow to wake, but not blind."
I leave without saying another word.
Walking to the water, I find trinn. He's sitting by the water grinders covered in moss.
Turning steadily bye the waters streams. He's barefoot, sleeves rolled, arms green stained from brewing.
"You're late," he says. "The coppervine won't boil itself."
"I ran into Merra."
"That explains the twitch in you're eyes."
We sit on the low wall beside his kettle pit. He hands me a barkruk of steaminess. I hand him the root.
For a while, we just drink. Watch the steam drift upward.
The he speaks.
"You've been different lately."
"So have you."
"I don't have a glowing stone in my room."
I pause. "It's quiet today."
"To quiet." Trinn says.
I nod.
Trinn pulls something from his sidebag a folded cloth. Inside it: a small glass shard, violet and sharp, like a silver night.
"A new one fell two days ago." He says.
"They found this one in the east orchard."
My pulse jumps.
"And?"
"Dead zone now. No birds. No sound . The soils black."
He looks at me carefully.
"You think it's connected?"
I don't answer.
Because I know it is.
As I walk back through the winding corridors of the upper ridge. My hand brushes the satchel.
Still silent. Still still.
But just as I pas the old statue of the rain mother, I feel it:
One pulse.
Not warm. Cold
Like a warning.
I look up at the night sky and see something, something beautiful, and terrifying all at once. Red, like a glide cutting through the dark sky.