The first rays of sunlight crept through the cracks of a dirty window, casting bars of golden light across a room that smelled of damp wood and the mold clinging to the walls. The cold morning air carried the distant echo of the lower city awakening: the creak of distant gears and the murmur of voices rising from the alleys.
Beside one of the beds, Gunder was already on his feet, moving with a silent efficiency that contrasted with his feigned laziness from the day before. His short, black hair framed a focused face as he organized his belongings, preparing for the day ahead. His cat-like eyes with their vertical pupils shifted to the bed next to him. There, under a white sheet, a small lump refused to accept the start of the day, shifting and rustling the thin fabric in protest.
"Come on, the sun's already up," Gunder proclaimed, his voice calm but firm.
A thin, muffled groan was the only reply. His eyes narrowed with impatience.
"I won't repeat myself!" he growled, and with a swift, unceremonious motion, he yanked the sheet away.
Lying on the bed, curled up against the sudden cold, was a girl. Her eyes were still squeezed shut, an expression of pure sleep stamped on her delicate face.
"It's cooold!" she complained, her voice drowsy and undeniably spoiled, like a disgruntled child's.
"Honestly…" was all Gunder sighed in response, the exhaustion of a familiar routine weighing down his words.
Still with her eyes closed, the girl sat up in bed. She wore only a simple, sleeveless white nightgown that did little to hide the transformation the night had brought. The soft curves of her waist and legs, her finer, more delicate shoulders… her feminine features had returned, betraying the slender, more masculine body she'd had the day before.
"It grew a lot last night, Ingrid…" Gunder commented, kneeling behind her on the bed. His left hand touched her hair with a clinical familiarity. The military cut was almost undone. The strands were visibly longer, nearly matching the length of his own.
The tips maintained their vibrant scarlet color, but the most shocking change was at the roots. A pure snow spread from her scalp, a white so pale it was almost gray, marking all the new growth. A visible scar of the magical instability that had overcome her.
"…Call me Tom…" she replied, her voice sleepy and petulant, refusing to accept the other identity.
"Don't worry, Tom," Gunder gently mocked, the name sounding like an ironic concession. "I don't sense any vital signs nearby. And even if someone wanted to overhear your morning tantrum, they couldn't. I sealed the room with a sound barrier as soon as we arrived."
Ingrid, or Tom, let out another sleepy groan at the comment. With his right hand, Gunder raised a pair of steel scissors, their blades glinting in the morning light. With a series of precise, quick snips, he began to trim her hair. Small tufts of white and scarlet fell silently onto the sheet. Her head gradually drooped, surrendering to drowsiness, until he warned her.
"Hey! Don't fall asleep! Or I'll end up cutting off your ear!"
When he finished, her hair was once again in a short, severe military cut, the white blemish at the roots now even more prominent. Still wearing the same sleepy expression, she obeyed his next command.
"Arms up."
Ingrid raised them slowly. Gunder pulled the nightgown up and over her head, leaving her in her undergarments. Her arms began to drop, heavy with sleep, but a sharp look from him made them shoot right back up. Positioning himself behind her, he took a thick fabric compression binder. With a firm tug, he wrapped it around her torso, tightening it until her chest was completely flat and hidden.
"GUH!" Ingrid choked, the air forced from her lungs.
"Too tight?" he asked, without a hint of sympathy in his voice.
"Yes… be more careful… It hurts," she complained, her voice strained.
"It was supposed to hurt! Wake up already!"
She looked away, pouting. Gunder got off the bed and threw the clothes he had already laid out for her. The thick-fabric shirt landed beside her, and the pants landed directly on her face.
After getting fully dressed, she faced her reflection in a broken mirror above a small dresser. The fragmented image staring back at her was a disturbing dissonance. The figure wore loose, masculine clothes, but the narrow shoulders and the subtle outline of her hips still betrayed the feminine curves of her body. And above all, her hair, despite the cut, shone with that unnatural white. The farce was incomplete, fragile.
It was then that the air in the room grew denser. She heard the chants, words in an unknown, ancient tongue, intoned in Gunder's low, resonant voice. As was custom, Ingrid turned to him. Gunder, chanting the incantation, brought his index finger to the girl's forehead. His feline eyes glowed with an intense, purplish-blue light.
Magic enveloped her. She felt the illusion settle over her body like a second skin. Her shoulders seemed to broaden, and the muscles in her arms and hands, though still fine, gained a more masculine definition. The line of her waist straightened, and her legs lost their softness, appearing firmer. Her body had transformed, or rather, seemed to have transformed into a boy's. For beneath the illusion, Ingrid was still a girl.
She turned back to the mirror. Her face changed little; her neck seemed a bit thicker, but her chin, lips, nose, and especially her large eyes with their long lashes remained the same—the hardest part of her farce to hide.
Her eyes narrowed, a frustrating worry clouding her face as she studied the reflection. But then, the last missing change appeared. Her eyes widened, and a smile of relief spread across her lips. Slowly, like ink spreading on paper, the white hair gained color, sinking into the deep scarlet hue she knew so well. The Blemish of the Moon had vanished. Tom was back.
"Phew!" Gunder sighed dramatically, wiping his arm across his forehead as if clearing away non-existent sweat. He puffed out his chest with exaggerated pride. "Another great work done by my own excellent hands!"
"Yes. Good job, Gunder," Tom replied, her voice dry but with a hint of resignation.
After the suppression routine was over and they'd had a hasty breakfast—stale bread and a warm, dubious-tasting liquid the inn called tea—the two finally stepped out into the gray light of the lower city. The streets were already teeming with chaotic energy. The smell of burning coal and heated metal mixed with the stench of sewage wafting from the grates in the ground. Dirt-faced workers jostled each other in narrow passages, and the sound of hammers striking anvils created a relentless, industrial soundtrack for their journey.
They walked in silence for a few minutes, Tom observing the corroded metal structures that rose like the bones of forgotten titans, until Gunder's voice cut through the ambient noise, low and sharp like a shard of glass.
"You need to be more careful about that, Tom."
"What did I do?" Tom retorted, her gaze shifting to an oily puddle on the ground, the innocence in her voice as fake as the illusion covering her body.
"You let that man's provocations get to you yesterday," Gunder continued, his tone rising from a warning to a clear scolding. "You dropped the performance and let the seal break. Now that man knows about you! He saw the Blemish manifest." Gunder stopped suddenly, forcing Tom to halt as well. He turned, and the irritation on his face was cold and genuine. "What did you want with that drunk so badly, anyway?"
"He was a Sage…" Tom murmured, her gaze still lowered, the confession nearly inaudible amidst the street noise.
The irritation on Gunder's face faltered, replaced by a sudden, intense focus. "Oh? A Sage, you say?" He raised a hand, his fingers resting on his chin in a thoughtful gesture, his cat-like eyes narrowing as he processed the information. A Sage. A dangerous wild card in a game that was already far too complicated.
"Forget it!" Tom protested, feeling exposed.
Gunder ignored her completely, lost in his calculations. The pair's murmuring, stopped in the middle of the flow of people, began to draw curious glances. A few faces in the crowd seemed vaguely familiar, shadows from the previous night's tavern. Tom glared at Gunder with growing irritation, but something in her posture had changed. Her shoulders were straighter, her chin higher. The frustration was there, but it wasn't the tantrum of a spoiled child; it was the discontent of an equal.
The subtle change did not go unnoticed by Gunder. He glanced at her from the corner of his eye, and a flicker of surprise appeared. "Oh? You're actually taking what that brat said yesterday to heart, aren't you?"
"He said if I wanted to look like a man, I needed to see myself as one first," Tom admitted, her face heating up, turning as scarlet as her hair. "And… well… You already know!"
A slow, genuine smile spread across Gunder's face, and he felt a small but real pang of pride. "I see…" He raised his hand and placed it on Tom's short hair, ruffling it in a deliberate, affectionate gesture. "That's right. Good boy," he said with a suppressed laugh.
Tom slapped his hand away. "You could have shown up sooner yesterday, too!" she protested, changing the subject to hide her embarrassment.
"Hey! It's that brat!"
The voice, hoarse and familiar, tore through the air. The same three thieves from the night before emerged from the crowd, blocking their path. The leader's broken arm was in a dirty sling, and his eyes burned with hatred and humiliation.
"Looks like that drunk isn't here to protect you today," one of them commented, a cruel smirk forming on his lips.
"Now I'll get my revenge!" the leader snarled.
But Tom and Gunder's attention was elsewhere. They continued their own argument, treating the three men as if they were an invisible part of the scenery.
"What? Aren't you the one who's always saying you don't need help? That you can handle things yourself?" Gunder mocked, shrugging and closing his eyes with an air of disdain.
"Well… Yes!" Tom shot back, her voice rising. "But not when that happens!"
"DON'T IGNORE US!" the third thief screamed, a vein throbbing on his forehead.
They were ignored. Gunder opened just one eye, a taunting glint dancing in his vertical pupil. "But that's what I did. I only showed up when that happened…"
"Then you should act sooner!"
Exasperated by the humiliation, the leader, with his arm in the sling, used his good hand to draw a dagger and point it at Gunder's chest. "YOU BASTARDS! STOP MESSING WITH US!"
For a single, brief instant, Gunder looked at him. His face was serene, almost bored. His lips moved, forming a single word, spoken without anger, without effort, but with an absolute authority that seemed to suck the sound out of the air around it.
"Fall."
Immediately, Gunder turned his full attention back to Tom, resuming his provocation as if nothing had happened. Tom, still annoyed with Gunder, also paid the man no mind.
But the other two thieves did. They saw it. They saw their leader's eyes go vacant, like a porcelain doll's. They saw his body go limp, the dagger slipping from his fingers and clattering to the ground. They saw him collapse like a sack of potatoes, completely inert before he even hit the pavement. No struggle, no sound. He simply… switched off.
A terrified silence formed around them. The two remaining thieves were frozen, pale with dread.
"Let's go," Gunder said finally, patting Tom's shoulder and starting to walk. "The Regent of the Sentinels is waiting for us."
◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇
The path to the Upper City wasn't a staircase, but a flight. Leaving the two fear-paralyzed thieves behind, Gunder led Tom to a circular platform in the center of a small square. With the clink of a few coins into a slot, a cage of gilded metal and glass descended from the heavens, its gears turning with a soft, melodious hum—the very opposite of the chaotic grinding of the lower city.
The cage then rose. It gave a slight shudder as it detached from the suspended metal holding it. The sound of gears turning filled the air. Tom looked up, watching the dark steel chain pulling them upward.
The ascent was dizzying, a silent flight inside a cage of gilded metal and glass. The girl pressed her face against the transparent wall, the air leaving her lungs in a gasp of pure awe that fogged the panel for an instant.
"Gunder… we're so high," she whispered, her eyes wide, reflecting the Lower City as it became an intricate model of rust and life. The hive of rooftops and crowded streets, which had once been her entire world, now looked small, a distant anthill.
"It's just an elevator, Tom… Keep your composure," Gunder replied without looking at her, his calm voice serving as an anchor to the girl's excitement. His cat-like eyes, however, were not still; they swept across the panorama. He wouldn't admit it, but the landscape of the low sun in the background, the desert and the arid mountains surrounding the city, left him with a calm feeling in his chest.
She glanced down into the dizzying depths where the light barely reached and glimpsed the absolute darkness of the Abyss, a pit of forgotten misery that served as the foundation for it all. A shiver ran down her spine.
Then, passing through a sort of vertical tunnel, they broke through the layer of yellowish mist, and the light hit them with the force of a wave.
The capsule opened, and the air that greeted them was clean, fresh, and carried the subtle scent of unknown flowers. Tom took a step out and froze, her jaw slack, her breath caught in her throat. It was a world bathed in gold.
The energy here vibrated with a stunning intensity, a symphony of life, color, and ambition. Towers of polished steel and spirals of bronze scraped a perfect blue sky. Hanging gardens, bursting with flowers of impossible colors, cascaded from graceful structures.
"Look at that!" she exclaimed, running to the edge of the platform and pointing at a waterfall of crystal-clear water flowing through a channel of sculpted metal on a building's facade. "The water… it runs down the walls! How is that possible?"
"Human engineering has come a long way, huh…" Gunder said, a note of surprise in his voice. He walked over, placing a firm hand on her shoulder to guide her. "But focus. We're not here on a tour."
But it was hard to focus. Every detail was a marvel. The people filling the wide avenues were the very pulse of the city. Men and women in immaculate work attire, groups of friends laughing loudly, entire families out for a stroll. The scarlet-haired youth had never seen so many smiles in one place. She understood the nature of this place instinctively: it was a destination, a stage where everyone came to work, to shop, and to dream.
The walls of the buildings were alive, covered in holograms and luminous panels that danced with hypnotic images.
"What are these places?" the girl asked, stopping before a sign that read "The King's Whim," which showed a deck of golden cards magically shuffling in mid-air. "Is it some kind of mage's guild?"
"Something like that, I imagine," Gunder replied, his voice low and sharp, gently pulling her by the arm to keep her moving. "A guild that practices the kind of magic that makes coins disappear. Not something real mages do!"
"But… But… The King?" Tom protested, her voice nearly a whine as she was dragged along.
"Just hurry up, you stubborn brat!" Gunder grumbled, his irritation and lack of patience beginning to show.
She obeyed, but her curious gaze continued to sweep over everything. She looked up and saw, even higher, beyond the commercial metropolis, the tips of serene, silver spires that seemed to belong to another world: the City's Apex, a silent and unreachable Olympus. "I wonder what's up there."
Gunder glanced sideways toward the top of the city. His feline eyes narrowed, a look of disdain on his face. "The kind of people we don't get involved with," was his only reply.
As they walked, a sleek, silent vehicle made of dark metal and smoked glass glided to the edge of the avenue. The flow of pedestrians parted for it without a command, an instinctive gesture of respect. A door opened and a woman in a silver dress stepped out, the fabric seeming as if woven from moonlight. She didn't look at anyone, her face a mask of bored beauty as a liveried doorman welcomed her at the entrance of an opulent shop.
While Gunder maintained his pace, Tom's slowed for a fraction of a second, almost imperceptibly. Her eyes never left the woman, tracking the way the silver dress floated around her ankles with each step. The fabric seemed alive, drinking the golden city light and returning it in liquid fragments.
Unconsciously, the girl's hand brushed against the coarse seam of her own trousers, her fingers feeling the rough, functional texture of the fabric that hid her. It was just an instant, a lapse in her facade as a wonder-struck boy, a silent moment where her gaze held not surprise, but a deep, melancholic fascination. When the woman disappeared inside the opulent shop, Tom blinked, forcing her gaze forward and quickening her pace to catch up with Gunder, an inexplicable warmth on her face.
Their walk took them away from the commercial avenues. The melodious sound of fountains and crowds was gradually replaced by a heavy silence. They entered a vast and austere civic plaza, paved with slabs of obsidian so polished they reflected the sky like a dark mirror. And in the center of the plaza, like an anchor of darkness holding the golden city in place, stood the fortress.
The excitement that had been bubbling in Tom's chest vanished, replaced by an intimidating awe. The air here was colder. "That place… it doesn't look like part of the rest of the city," she murmured.
"That's because it isn't," Gunder said, stopping beside her, his gaze fixed on the structure. "The rest of the city is a constant farce. That thing is what came after its founding, after the Kingdom arrived. What we're looking for…"
The structure rose like a blade of obsidian, a monolith of bluish-black metal with sharp angles and smooth walls that seemed to absorb light and sound. Its architecture was brutal and efficient, a declaration of pure power, not beauty. Above a colossal gate of reinforced steel, a banner hung, motionless in the filtered air. It depicted a large gear, symbolizing the city. At its center was a crest with a shield, emblazoned with a downward-pointing sword flanked by two spears. The symbol of the Sentinels of the Order of the city of Chisanatora.
Two guards flanked the entrance, as still as statues. Their functional, matte-gray armor covered them from head to toe, their faces hidden by impersonal helms. The cold aura of discipline and danger that emanated from them betrayed their nature—they were soldiers, and their presence was an invisible wall, more imposing than the steel gate itself.
This place was the cold steel foundation upon which the city's golden dream was built.
Gunder took a step forward, and the girl followed, their footsteps echoing in the oppressive silence of the plaza.
"We're here," he said, his voice devoid of any emotion. "The Headquarters of the Sentinels of the Order."