Elara preferred the bones when they were quiet.
Before the polishing.Before the glow.Before the dust turned her fingertips into shimmering proof of a crime worth execution.
The attic above Grimshaw's Quay smelled of salt-rot, wet rope, and the faint copper edge of her own blood. She hunched over the bleached vertebra of a Risen Fish, a needle flicking across the surface. The etched lines formed a serpent swallowing a fractured moon. A commission. A good one. Enough gold to survive the next two weeks.
She knew the law. No one in the Northern Territories could carve the bones of the Risen. Officially, it was "desecration." Unofficially, it was monopoly. The Magistrates wanted ether for themselves, and scrimshaw dust—raw luminous marrow—was ether in its wildest form.
She'd carved anyway.
The drop of blood slipped down her thumb exactly as the knock hit the door below.
Not the knock of coin buyers.
Not the knock of smugglers.
Heavy. Flat. Final.
The kind of knock that ended people.
Her breath caught. For a second, the attic felt too small for lungs.
Elara shoved the vertebra, the dust box, and her needlework tools into a canvas bag and jammed it beneath the loose floorboard. The footsteps downstairs weren't hurried—they were patient. Sure. They already knew.
A voice, granite-dry, called up through the boards:
"Tenant. Open the door. Inspection."
Inspections never happened after curfew. Not unless someone whispered a name.
Elara eased toward the attic window overlooking the black water of the harbor. Lantern light from below cut through the rain. Three Magistrate patrolmen waited by her door.
And a fourth stood apart.
He didn't wear the crest.
No silver badge. No rune cloth.
Just a deep-blue coat, rain sliding off it like ink. A dull iron disc on a chain rested at his collar. His hand touched the hilt of a sword wrapped in black leather.
A Cutter.
Not a man who fined.
A man who erased.
Elara's pulse went sharp. She'd heard of Cutters—ether-burned men who carved problems out of the world the way she carved fishbone. Rumors said their magic was sloppy, hungry, and always left a ghost behind.
She had seconds.
Elara swung the window open, teeth gripping the bag, feet on slick tile. Rain lashed sideways, driven by sea wind that always tasted like drowned iron. She scrambled along the roofline, boots slipping toward the gutter.
Below, the Cutter tilted his head up.
His eyes were the color of smoke after a house fire—gray, cold, unbothered.
"Elara of the Broken Shell," he called. "You left light in the marrow."
He didn't shout. He didn't hurry.
He simply lifted one hand toward her attic door.
The door didn't open.
It disintegrated.
Wood burst outward like shrapnel under invisible force. Ether. Bare hand sorcery. No sigils. No catalyst.
Elara leaped across the gap to the fish market roof, boots scraping. The harbor below was a maze of wet ropes, open crates, rusted hooks, and sharpened opportunity.
The Cutter never broke eye contact.
Magic. Authority. Men who thought consequence was a toy.
They expected her to freeze.
So she ran.
And in that moment—heart roaring, bones vibrating with stolen starlight—Elara understood something simple and awful:
she was not hunted for what she carvedshe was hunted because she was useful
and useful things don't get trials in Grimshaw's Quay
only extraction
only repurposing
only silence