Crawler's office was as warm and welcoming as a tax audit. The walls were lined with faded wanted posters from thirty years ago, and the only smell was stale milk.
Crawler himself sat behind a mountain of papers, his wiry frame lost in a huge leather chair. His mustache—thick, dark, and immaculately combed—twitched like a living creature when he saw Tryn enter.
"You're early," Crawler said dryly, his voice the texture of crushed gravel. "For the next job, I mean."
"So there is a next job?" Tryn said, adopting his most charming grin.
"There are several," Crawler replied, sipping from a glass of milk with solemn disdain. "But whether you'll be doing any of them is still under debate."
"You've found another alchemist, then?" Tryn asked, as though casually discussing the weather. "How rare. Did they come with a halo?"
"When one's first choice vanishes," Crawler said, "one must settle for the second."
"Of course," Tryn nodded gravely. "Reliability is the highest virtue—next to modesty."
Crawler's mustache twitched dangerously. "The Department cannot afford incompetence."
"Nor can it afford two alchemists for one job," Tryn said mildly. That was bait—Crawler never missed bait.
Crawler glared. "You'll do the next one for free… for letting down the department… for letting down me."
Tryn pressed a hand to his chest, scandalized. "Free? Sir, that's practically heresy. Alchemy requires ingredients—unless, of course, the Department provides them?"
He said it innocently enough, but the glint in his eyes betrayed him.
Crawler scowled. "You know full well the Department can't buy ingredients."
"Then I'm afraid I'll have to purchase them myself," Tryn said, lowering his voice to a confession, "which, regrettably, requires… money."
Crawler muttered something that might have been a curse and yanked open a drawer. He scribbled furiously, then thrust a signed promissory note across the desk.
"One hundred Darics. House of Quinn. Don't spend it on nonsense."
Tryn accepted the slip with a polite bow. "Nonsense? Sir, I assure you, nonsense is far too expensive for me."
The Quinn office on Olive Alley was the exact opposite of Crawler's den. Grand, golden, and self-satisfied, it buzzed with the music of wealth. Clerks scribbled, stamps thudded into wax, and coins clinked in a rhythm that made every poor man outside twitch with longing.
Tryn handed over the note, and a teller—an older woman with spectacles sharp enough to cut—counted out 100 heavy Daric coins into his palm.
The weight was reassuring. Solid. Real. Yet as he pocketed the money, that hollow space in his head throbbed like a bruise.
He had his gold.
He had his name.
But he still didn't have his missing three days.
And that glowing green bottle—still sitting on his workbench—was the only clue to what they had cost him.
In his rush to meet Crawler, he had forgotten it entirely. Now, as he trudged home through the thin, chalk-grey streets of Rockshire, the thought of that strange, pulsing glow began to gnaw at him again. What was that green liquid? A potion? A poison? A mistake?
It wasn't in a vial, but a trinket—delicate and ornate, as if meant for display rather than use. The sort of thing one wouldn't brew in, but hide something inside.
By the time Tryn reached his building, the fog had settled low over the rooftops. His "home" was technically a large room, though "relic" might've been the more accurate word. The place had once served as a war shelter during the Great Mage War—a bunker of stone and wards, deep enough to survive bombardment and superstition alike.
After the war, the place had been abandoned. People still respected it—some even left offerings at the gate—but none dared live there. The old stone was said to remember screams. Tryn rented it from the descendant of the war hero Meryculus, who was more than happy to be rid of it and its ghosts.
Tryn wasn't superstitious. Not exactly. But he'd learned never to ignore history when it smelled of ozone and regret.
Inside, the air was still. Two massive tables took up most of the floor space—each large enough to fit three sleeping men, which was fortunate, since one of them was half-covered by a mattress and a lopsided pillow. The other was chaos incarnate: glass tubes, pipettes, a gas burner, a dozen unwashed flasks, and—at the center of it all—that trinket.
The green liquid still shimmered faintly, casting ripples of light across the wall.
Tryn leaned in. "You again," he muttered. "Let's see what sort of trouble you are."
He'd seen countless potions in his short but explosive career—he'd brewed most of them himself. Green was the most common color in alchemy: herbs, extracts, toxins, restoratives, all of them pretending to be nature in a bottle. But this… this was different. It didn't look brewed. It looked alive. Like melted emeralds, or moonlight trapped under water.
He brought it closer to his nose and hesitated. Alchemists weren't supposed to sniff unknown mixtures. The rule was practically carved in stone. But then again—what were the stakes?
"Another three days, perhaps," he said wryly, and inhaled.
The effect was instant. A spike of pain shot through his head, sharp enough to make his vision white out. He dropped into his chair, breathing hard, the room tilting on its axis.
"Sedative," he gasped. "Potent one."
His temples throbbed. When the dizziness ebbed, curiosity took over again—the sort of curiosity that killed not just cats but entire labs.
He reached for a thin glass tube, poured the glowing liquid in, and sealed it with a cork. "One sample, secured."
Next came the trinket itself. It was spherical, smooth, and too perfect to be handmade. A thing like that would cost at least two thousand Darics—money he would never see unless Crawler died and left him a will.
He frowned. "Who gave you to me, then?"
No answer, of course. Only the steady gleam of the green residue clinging to the inner surface.
He picked up his iron pen-mallet and struck it lightly. The sound that rang out wasn't the crisp chime of glass. It was low, resonant—metallic.
Tryn froze.
"That's… not possible."
He lit the burner at once, fumbling with the valve. His fingers were still unsteady from the sedative, but instinct guided them. He mounted the trinket on a clamp, fixing the flame beneath it with a surgeon's precision.
Within minutes, the sphere began to glow. Red crept up from its base, spreading like dawn. The air shimmered with heat.
He took a single drop of water from a pipette and let it fall onto the surface. It hissed violently—steam curling upward in a thin white halo.
But the sphere didn't crack. Didn't even distort.
Tryn stared, mouth dry. The trinket blazed red-hot before him, unmelting, unyielding.
"Not glass," he whispered. "Metal. A metal that's… transparent."
He sat back slowly, the realization settling in his bones.
Alchemy had many laws—most of them cruel, a few of them absolute.
And one of them was this: metal does not shine like glass, and glass does not ring like steel.