Cold.
That was the first thing I knew.Not the biting, dry cold of snow or frost, but the kind that clings to your skin like damp cloth, sinking slow and deep until it feels like it's part of you.
My eyes opened to grey.
Above me, the sky was just a sliver between two looming walls, framed in cracked brick and crooked gutter pipes. A drop of water fell somewhere nearby, landing with a soft plink that echoed down the narrow space.
The ground beneath me was rough. When I shifted, my fingers traced jagged edges cobblestone uneven and lined with gritty dirt that stuck to my skin. My shoulder brushed against a wall slick with moisture. The smell that rose from it was sour, faintly moldy.
I sat up slowly.
For a moment, the world tilted sideways, my vision swimming as though the alley were swaying. My hand pressed flat against the ground to steady myself. The texture was cold, wet in some patches, sticky in others. My palm came away black with grime. I wiped it against my leg. It didn't help.
There were no memories.
No name. No place I'd come from. No reason for why I was here.
Only one thought, sharp and clear:Lying here is dangerous.
I turned my head, scanning.
The alley stretched maybe ten meters in either direction. One end was blocked by a wall of stacked crates and broken barrels. The other opened toward the sound of voices, wheels, footsteps life.
Shapes moved near the alley mouth. People, though at first I mistook them for shadows. Their clothes hung loose, patched and frayed. A man shuffled past carrying a sack slung over one shoulder, his face hidden by the brim of a hat. A woman in a faded shawl passed him, her head down, not looking at anyone.
A few were closer.
On my left, slumped against the wall, was a figure wrapped in rags. His hair was long, matted. His eyes were open but fixed on nothing not me, not the rats that ran over his legs to reach the garbage heap beside him. His lips moved faintly, mouthing silent words.
The heap itself was a mix of rotting food scraps, broken wood, and something that might once have been leather. Flies hovered above it in a sluggish cloud.
On my right, a boy no older than twelve crouched behind an overturned crate. His eyes flicked toward me, quick and sharp, then away again. He stayed crouched, his thin fingers busy with something I couldn't see. The quiet scrape of metal on stone reached me, followed by a soft click. A knife, maybe. Or a tool.
None of them spoke to me.
The air in the alley was heavier than I liked. Every breath tasted faintly of ash and rot, as if a fire had burned nearby weeks ago and the smell still clung to the stones.
Somewhere above, a window opened with a squeak. A man's voice barked something in a language I didn't recognize. A second later, a small bundle of refuse landed in the alley with a wet slap. The beggar didn't flinch.
I shifted my weight, rising to my feet. My knees felt steady, but my fingers…They were trembling.
The sight of them almost startled me. But instinct moved faster than thought. I closed my fists and stilled them.The shaking stopped.
I didn't know why that mattered so much. But it did.
I looked down at myself.My clothes were rough-spun, the fabric coarse and worn thin in places. The cuffs of my shirt were frayed. A faint reddish-brown stain marked the hem old blood? Dirt? I couldn't tell. My boots, if they could be called that, were more like stitched scraps of leather barely holding together.
A rat darted past my foot, vanishing into a hole in the wall. The sound of its claws scratching on stone faded quickly.
A sudden shout from outside the alley pulled my attention.The noise swelled boots on cobblestones, wooden wheels creaking, a chorus of voices shouting prices and names. Somewhere, a bell rang three times in quick succession, followed by the clatter of something metal dropping to the ground. No one in the alley moved to investigate.
I took one slow breath, testing the air. The stench of the alley was familiar now, but beneath it I caught new scents meat roasting, the sharper tang of smoke from burning wood, something sweet like overripe fruit.
The world outside was alive. Which meant it was dangerous.
I crouched briefly, my hand brushing the ground. A small shard of glass lay there, half-buried in dirt. I turned it over in my fingers, catching a glimpse of my reflection in the greenish tint. The face staring back was gaunt, eyes too sharp for comfort. I didn't recognize it.
I set the shard down and straightened.
The boy behind the crate was watching me now. Not directly his head was turned, but his eyes had shifted in my direction. He looked at my hands, then at my face. His gaze was steady, assessing. I knew that look. It was the way you measured something to see if it was worth taking.
A second later, he glanced away and vanished deeper into the shadows.
I stepped toward the mouth of the alley. The cracked cobblestones grew slightly cleaner as I neared the light. The sound of the marketplace sharpened, individual words cutting through the noise though I couldn't understand all of them.
A woman's voice called out in a sing-song tone. A man laughed. The snap of fabric in the wind followed, probably from a stall's awning shifting in the breeze.
I paused just before stepping into the open. My eyes adjusted to the brighter grey, my ears filtering through the chaos for anything that sounded like a threat.
The city waited beyond.
And I was going to have to step into it.Name or no name. Past or no past.
I tightened my fists once more steady, controlled.Then I walked out of the alley.
The street hit me like a wall.
Noise, movement, smell all layered over each other until it was hard to tell where one ended and another began. The voices were loudest, dozens of them overlapping in a constant rhythm: haggling, calling, cursing. Somewhere in the chaos, a woman laughed sharply. A man's voice barked orders to someone I couldn't see.
The air was thicker here, heavy with smoke from open braziers. The smell of roasting meat fought against the stench of unwashed bodies and the sharp tang of piss running in the gutters. The ground under my boots was still cobblestone, but worn smooth here, with grooves where countless wheels and feet had passed.
Stalls crowded both sides of the street, each one a jumble of color and motion. Piles of fruit with skins bruised but still bright, rolls of cloth spilling onto the street, baskets of crusted bread stacked high. A merchant waved a copper pot in the air, shouting something I didn't understand at least, not at first.
The words slid past my ears like water. Foreign. Distant.
Then something shifted.
It wasn't a sound so much as a click somewhere in the back of my head. The next sentence he shouted wasn't foreign anymore. I understood it.
"Best pot in Ashvale! Ten Varnis! Won't find it cheaper!"
I stopped walking.
My eyes scanned the crowd. The words flying between people still jumbled together, but now and then, one landed clear in my mind: fresh bread, two for one, watch your pockets. Each clear word was like a pin driven into my thoughts, anchoring me to the noise.
I frowned. My body felt… different. Not stronger, not faster not yet. But more awake. My heartbeat felt more deliberate. My thoughts sharper. The edges of my awareness stretched farther into the crowd, noting who was closest, who was moving toward me, who wasn't paying attention at all.
I kept walking, letting my ears test the words around me until they became more and more familiar. By the time I spotted the shop, I could follow most of what was being said.
It wasn't a stall. This was an enclosed space, its walls timber and stone, with a faded sign above the door. I didn't know the language on the sign, but the symbols meant nothing. I didn't need to. Inside, I could see shelves lined with goods and the faint flicker of lamplight.
I pushed the door open.
A small bell chimed above me.
The air inside was warmer, though it carried the stale tang of dust and oil. Wooden shelves lined the walls, some stacked with food wrapped in brown paper, others with folded cloth, coiled rope, and tools. The counter at the far end was clean compared to the rest of the room, its surface rubbed smooth by years of use.
Behind it stood a man early twenties, maybe with brown hair that fell over one eye. His clothes were simple but neater than most outside, a dark vest over a shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He looked up as I stepped in, and his smile was instant, practiced.
"Morning," he said, his tone easy and friendly. "Looking for anything in particular?"
I froze for half a second.
I understood him. Perfectly. The words slid into place in my mind as if I'd spoken this language all my life.
The sensation was… unnatural. My thoughts whispered that I shouldn't understand him not when moments ago, the words outside had been alien noise. But now? Now I could hear the subtle rhythm in his speech, the small rise at the end of a question.
Something in me was waking up.
"I'm… not sure," I said, testing my own voice. The words came easily. Too easily. "What do you have?"
He chuckled. "Depends what you're after. Food? I've got fresh bread, some good jerky, even a bit of cheese if you've coin to spend. Or maybe you're looking for gear? I've a few coats left for the season."
His eyes flicked over me, taking in my worn clothes, the thin boots. "Coat'd do you some good."
I stepped closer, scanning the shelves without reaching for anything. My gaze swept the room, mapping it: the small back door behind the counter, the wooden ladder leaning against the far wall, the knife on the counter's edge small, sharp. My eyes lingered there for just a moment too long before moving on.
"How much?" I asked.
"For the coat? Hundred Varnis." He tapped his fingers against the counter. "Bread's twenty. Jerky's thirty-five. And before you ask no, I don't haggle down for first-timers."
The currency meant nothing to me. I tilted my head. "What's a Varnis?"
That made him laugh. "You serious? Varnis is money. Paper, mostly. We use coins for smaller bits. You from the countryside or something?"
"I don't have any," I said, voice flat.
The smile slipped from his face. His eyes narrowed slightly, though his tone stayed polite. "Well then… I guess you're just here to look. Go ahead, but don't touch unless you're buying."
He turned his back to me, muttering something under his breath. This time, I caught every word: waste of time… not even a copper to his name…
I stayed where I was.
Inside my chest, something slow and cold uncoiled. My body felt steady now, the earlier tremor in my hands gone. My thoughts moved in measured steps, each one locking into place.
This man saw me as nothing. That didn't bother me. But I understood now, clearly: contempt meant people stopped seeing you as a person. And when they stopped seeing you, they stopped watching you.
Which made them easy to take from. Easy to remove.
The part of me that recognized this felt… familiar. As if it had been sleeping until now, and this moment had called it back.
I let my gaze drift lazily around the shop, as though still deciding what to buy.
Inside, I'd already decided something else entirely.
The backroom was dim, lit only by a crack of daylight bleeding through warped shutters. Dust hung in the air, stirred each time the young shopkeeper shifted his weight. He was muttering under his breath, rifling through stacked crates and half-broken boxes as if annoyed to be wasting his time.
"Should've kept the my attitude towards the nobles," he grumbled, his tone somewhere between greed and laziness. "But a fool with coin is still coin. Easy pickings…"
The words drifted back to me, sharp and distinct. My body moved before thought caught up. The edges of sound were clearer now. His language once incomprehensible when I first stumbled into the market was no longer foreign. It slotted into place in my head as if I had always known it, buried beneath a fog that was now lifting.
Strange.My pulse should have quickened at the realization, but instead it steadied. Cold, even.
I felt the weight of silence in the shop. The boy thought me clueless. A lost, wandering fool ripe for exploitation. His footsteps scuffed over wood, careless. He had no sense of danger. That was his mistake.
And my opportunity.
My hand brushed the shelves beside me. Old tools, chipped glass bottles, a row of knives with dull but serviceable blades. My fingers closed around one, the handle rough, the balance awkward but it would do.
The shopkeeper bent over a crate, back exposed.
Instinct clicked into place like a trap springing shut. My mind narrowed, every detail magnified: the curve of his neck where skin met collar, the rhythm of his breathing, the faint sway of his shoulders.
One strike. That's all it will take.
A shadow of hesitation flickered, thin and weak. Why kill? Why not leave? Why not reveal nothing and walk away?
Because survival was not passive. Because hesitation in this place this city with its rotting alleys and hostile eyes was death. And death did not frighten me, but failure did.
My body acted. Smooth. Silent.
I stepped forward and drove the knife in.
The sound was wet, muffled, almost fragile against the heavy quiet of the room. His body jerked, a startled gasp escaping his throat, cut short as steel carved through flesh. His hands clawed at the edge of the crate, nails scraping wood with a screech before strength failed him.
He collapsed against the boxes, sliding down like a sack of grain. The impact sent a cloud of dust swirling. His eyes were wide, confused, lips moving around a word that never fully formed.
Then stillness.
The knife remained in my grip, warm now, coated in the metallic tang of blood. I pulled it free with a soft tearing sound.
Silence again.
I stood there, breathing steady, gaze fixed on the boy's crumpled form. He couldn't have been older than his early twenties his face smooth, almost childish in death. A thin red line crawled down from the corner of his mouth, staining his chin.
There was no remorse. Not truly. Only a faint emptiness, like stepping into a familiar room that should be full but finding it bare. The human response guilt, horror hovered somewhere beyond reach, dulled as if behind a wall.
I tested myself: Did my hands shake? No. Did my heart race? No. Only calm, an unnatural calm that was both alien and… familiar.
A memory tried to surface blood on my hands before, countless times before but it scattered like ash in wind. Nothing held. Only the instinct remained.
I crouched beside him, studying the lifeless body. The smell rose fast iron, sharp and bitter, mixing with the dust and dampness of the room. My mind cataloged it clinically. Another detail. Another truth of survival.
He had underestimated me. That was his final mistake.
And I had proven something to myself: I was not helpless.
Not here.Not anywhere.
I exhaled slowly, a whisper of air leaving my lungs, and straightened. The knife gleamed faintly in the thin slice of daylight, coated dark. My reflection warped on the blade's surface, unrecognizable, a stranger looking back.
Who was I before this moment? It didn't matter. That man was gone or buried.
This… this was who I was now.
The shop was quiet except for the faint creak of settling wood. Somewhere outside, the marketplace still roared with life vendors shouting, wheels grinding over cobblestone, voices overlapping in chaos. But in here, death had carved a pocket of silence, a void only I remained to fill.
My body relaxed, as though it had been waiting for this release. Tension bled from my muscles, clarity filling its place. My senses sharpened. Every breath of air, every flicker of shadow, every heartbeat mine alone now felt vivid. Awake.
The fog was lifting.And with it, something darker stirred inside.
I looked down one last time at the boy. His eyes were still open, staring at nothing, disbelief frozen there. He had thought himself clever. He had thought me a fool.
But in this city, only one rule mattered.
Survive.
I tightened my grip on the knife, then loosened it. The handle was slick, my palm sticky. A faint trail of blood was already soaking into the wooden floorboards beneath him.
The moment stretched, heavy, irreversible.
And then I stepped back, retreating into the shadows of the room.
The kill was done.
The silence remained.
The corpse lay still at my feet. The silence inside the shop pressed heavily against the walls, a suffocating weight that made every faint creak of the wooden beams sound like a shout.
Blood seeped into the grooves of the old floorboards, dark and sticky.
I reached out and closed his eyelids with the back of my hand. Not out of respect. Not even out of pity. Just practicality. Staring into glassy eyes could distract me, and I had no space for distractions.
The smell of copper mixed with dust and stale tobacco. My breathing slowed until it was barely noticeable. My mind didn't scream What have I done? It whispered only What must I do next?
Survival had no room for guilt.
I patted the shopkeeper's pockets. My fingers moved with methodical precision, as if I'd done this before. Maybe I had. I didn't know who I was or where I had come from, but my body remembered.
Coins clinked against my palm small, dull copper pieces and one silver disk. Then came the crisp feel of folded paper. I unfolded it in the dim backroom light, my eyes adjusting to the fine engravings etched into the notes.
"Varnis," I muttered under my breath. The letters looked strange, but my mind stitched their meaning together as if language itself were waking up inside me. Symbols I didn't recall ever learning now carried weight and value.
On the front of the notes were elaborate etchings of stern-looking men in long coats, holding blades and banners. On the back blood-red insignias shaped like a rising sun split by jagged lines. They felt alien, yet oddly familiar, as though my thoughts had already catalogued them long ago.
I slid the currency into my pocket. My stomach remained calm, my pulse steady.
Next, I searched further. A small iron key on a chain. A handkerchief with embroidered initials R.K. A curved dagger strapped under his belt that he clearly hadn't reached for in time. I weighed it in my hand. Not balanced, not forged for war, but sharp enough to serve. I kept it.
My eyes turned to the shelves lining the backroom. Dust coated unopened crates and jars. Some contained dried roots, others oils sealed with wax. My hand hovered over them but moved on. I didn't know what they were. Carrying useless things would only slow me down.
Then my gaze returned to the body. His clothes were better than mine or rather, better than the ragged scraps I had awakened in. A woolen coat, dark brown, with only a small tear near the hem. A linen shirt, sweat-stained but whole. Sturdy boots, broken in but not broken apart.
I stripped him quickly. The motions were mechanical, detached. Dead men didn't need coats. Dead men didn't walk into the streets. I did.
The fabric brushed against my skin, warm compared to the damp rags I discarded in a pile. For a moment, I stared down at myself. The reflection in the cracked mirror near the wall caught my attention.
A stranger stared back.
Dark hair, unruly but not filthy anymore. Sharp eyes, colder than I expected. The coat fit well enough to pass as mine, though faint traces of blood dotted the sleeve. I rolled it up to hide the worst of it.
The face in the mirror didn't look like a murderer. It looked like someone meant to survive.
I found a leather satchel under the counter. Empty. I slung it over my shoulder anyway. A bag could carry whatever I decided to take from this world.
On the worktable near the wall, scraps of parchment lay scattered. Numbers, lists of goods, crossed-out names. I traced the lines with my eyes, absorbing the shapes of the words, and again the strange sensation washed over me: my mind knew. Symbols bent into meaning.
"Inventory… debt… shipment…" I whispered the words aloud. My tongue stumbled on them at first, then smoothed into fluency.
It was as though my body and mind were slowly reassembling, pulling knowledge from somewhere beyond memory. I still didn't know who I was. But I knew how to read, how to count, how to kill.
Piece by piece, the fragments of me were stitching themselves together.
The floor creaked above me faint, but enough to freeze my body in place. My hand tightened around the dagger. I waited, every muscle taut.
Nothing followed. No footsteps descending, no voices calling. Just the building settling with the weight of the city pressing down upon it.
I exhaled slowly.
Dragging the shopkeeper's corpse to the corner, I pushed him behind a stack of crates. It wasn't a perfect hiding spot. Blood still smeared across the floorboards, a dark trail betraying violence. But it would buy me time. Enough for me to leave.
I wiped the dagger clean on his shirt before sliding it into my belt.
For a long moment, I stood in the dim backroom, silent. The air was thick with the iron tang of blood and the faint sweetness of dried herbs. My heartbeat was steady, my thoughts cold.
This wasn't a beginning. It was a continuation. My instincts didn't belong to a helpless man. They belonged to someone trained, someone dangerous. I didn't need to remember the past to know the truth survival was my nature.
And survival demanded masks.
I adjusted the coat, checked the satchel, secured the dagger. Then I looked once more into the cracked mirror.
The man in the reflection no longer looked like he had just killed for the first time. He looked ready.
The corpse was gone from my mind before I even turned the key in the backroom door.
The market slammed into me the instant I stepped outside. Voices collided with the clatter of wooden wheels on cobblestones, mingling with the smells of smoke, sweat, and overripe fruit. The heat of the day pressed down unevenly, pockets of sunlight striking the stone streets in bright, almost painful shards.
I moved cautiously, feeling the weight of the new coat, the dagger snug at my side, the satchel resting against my shoulder. Every sound, every movement, every shadow seemed to stretch unnaturally long in my mind. My eyes scanned, flicking from figure to figure, cataloging detail after detail.
And then I saw him.
A man balancing carefully on a single Varnis coin stacked on the curb, the tiny disc wobbling slightly under his weight. His arms were stretched out, fingers splayed for balance. To any normal person, the man's feat should have ended in a crash to the stones below. But he stood there perfectly poised, shifting ever so slightly as if the coin were solid ground.
I blinked, certain my eyes were playing tricks.
Impossible.
Yet the man hopped off, collected a bundle of papers from a passing courier, and vanished into the crowd as though nothing unusual had happened. My mind raced to rationalize it. Was he a gymnast? A performer? Even then… a coin?
I forced myself forward, weaving through the dense throng. People brushed against me, and I responded instinctively, sidestepping with careful precision. My gaze caught something else.
A child, small and frail-looking, dragged a crate far heavier than any human that age could carry. Straining and sweating, the kid moved with a determination I could barely comprehend. Each step should have buckled the child beneath the weight, but he pressed on, never faltering, never dropping the box.
I stepped back instinctively, letting a merchant's cart pass between us. My pulse quickened. The world felt… off.
Then I saw a merchant hoisting a full cart onto the curb with one arm, gesturing casually with the other toward his customers. His face was relaxed, his posture natural, almost conversational. My mind ran through the impossible angles of leverage, the human anatomy and muscle limitations I had studied once, vaguely, in a past life.
No human should do that without some aid… yet he does it like lifting a sack of grain.
I swallowed hard, my fingers tightening around the strap of the satchel. My pulse hammered in my ears, not from exertion but from recognition recognition that I was seeing things that defied normal human limitations.
Above, I caught movement across the rooftops. A thief leapt from one building to another, small shadows slipping between low eaves and wooden beams. The path he took would have shattered a normal person's balance, sent them crashing onto the street below. But he moved fluidly, effortlessly, as though gravity itself were a suggestion rather than a rule.
I stopped in my tracks for a heartbeat, tilting my head back. The city felt… alive in a way that unsettled me. Every impossible motion I saw reminded me of the fragility of my own body. Every seemingly minor feat carried with it the reminder: this place was different. Dangerous.
I moved again, keeping my distance. I didn't approach, didn't interact. Observation was enough. I cataloged, stored, noted: the child with the crate, the balancing man, the cart-lifting merchant, the rooftop thief. All anomalies, all beyond what a normal human could do.
They move like shadows, but stronger, faster, sharper than any person I've known.
I passed a fruit vendor whose knife cuts were precise enough to slice through apples without crushing them, tossing halves into baskets with mechanical perfection. Another vendor hurled a sack of grain to an assistant three meters away, the weight never causing the man to stumble or falter. My eyes followed the arc, calculating trajectory, weight, effort. It should have been impossible.
The market pressed on all sides. Children ran between legs, shouting and laughing, but even their small motions carried surprising strength a boy flung a heavy bucket of water across a short distance, and it sailed exactly where he intended without spilling.
I ducked as a cart nearly grazed my shoulder. My muscles tensed, ready, reacting without conscious thought. The movement was human, reflexive, but the world around me felt almost… exaggerated. Every act of physicality was slightly beyond normal.
I observed silently, taking in every detail, storing it like currency for later use. My heart didn't race with fear yet there was a twinge of unease. The world was alive with impossible motion, subtle enough that anyone else might not notice, but I could see it. Every gesture, every movement, every feat of strength or balance whispered a truth I didn't yet understand.
This was not normal.
I didn't know what it meant. I didn't know why it was happening. But I knew it mattered. Every subtle impossibility carried weight. Every anomaly was a thread in the pattern of this city, and I was determined to notice, to catalog, to survive.
I stepped through a narrow alley, pressing close to the walls. My eyes flicked upward, catching the movement of rooftops again. The thief's path traced shadows that no ordinary person could navigate. He vanished from sight, leaving me with the faint echo of impossible motion in my mind.
I exhaled slowly, blending back into the flow of the market. The impossibilities continued around me: a merchant tossing a crate, a child hefting what should be unbearable weight, a man balancing on a tiny coin. Each act alone might have seemed like coincidence. Together, they created a pattern.
My thoughts spun, uncertain, uneasy, but precise. Observation first. Understanding would come later. Action could wait.
I kept moving, careful, quiet, alert. Nothing touched me, nothing threatened me, yet I was aware that the city itself was alive, breathing, and somehow different from what I had known before.
And though I didn't know the rules, I knew one thing: I would need every ounce of attention and cunning to survive here.
Step by step, I navigated the crowded streets, eyes flicking constantly, mind storing detail after detail. Every impossible feat, every tiny anomaly, every motion that a normal human couldn't perform, was logged silently in my memory.
The market stretched on endlessly, chaotic and vibrant. I didn't speak. I didn't act. I only observed.
And I would remember.