The music was low, worn thin by repetition, as if it had survived too many nights to remember where it came from.
A woman sang in a tongue I didn't recognize, her voice steady but distant, like a memory that refused to fade.
Heat rolled across the wooden floorboards, carried by bodies packed too closely together.
The air smelled of wine, beer, and old mead, sweet, bitter, and stale all at once.
The bartender poured me a small glass of mead, its surface catching the firelight in a dull yellow sheen.
I wrapped my fingers around it, letting the warmth seep into my skin.
The white cloak I wore softened the cold's bite, though the fire above did most of that work.
Solstice was warmer than the capital, but the warmth here felt artificial, borrowed, like everything else in the city.
Around me, people laughed and leaned close, voices overlapping. Jokes passed easily between them.
Plans did too.
Some spoke with excitement, others with resignation, but all of it blended together into something practiced.
Nothing said here felt accidental.
As the bartender finished and slid the glass toward me, I lifted it slightly. "You know," I said, casually, "peace is quite a lovely thing."
He met my eyes. For a fraction of a second, the world split.
Paths opened, thin, sharp, countless. Roads where I broke his wrist. Roads where I drove my blade through his throat.
Roads where I burned the tavern down to its foundation.
They appeared with terrifying clarity, branching endlessly, each ending clean and final.
Mirabel had left herself open to me.
With her, the paths tangled, uncertain. With everyone else, they separated neatly.
I blinked, and the visions vanished, though they remained etched behind my eyes like an afterimage.
The bartender was an ordinary man.
A rough beard, pale skin softened by age, wrinkles pressed deep beside eyes that had learned when not to look too closely.
His greying hair was slicked back, his suit simple but well-kept.
He smiled faintly, the kind that suggested he'd already chosen what parts of the world to believe in.
"I think peace is a lie," he replied. "Always has been."
I turned the mead slowly, watching the liquid cling to the glass. "I've heard some things since arriving," I said. "About a trade."
He paused, not long enough to draw attention, but long enough to matter.
His face didn't change. Even his breathing stayed steady.
"Careful," he said quietly. "You're carrying a sword. From the looks of it, though, I doubt you'd know how to use it."
I smiled. He couldn't see it.
A thin layer of rune magic darkened my hood, swallowing my features in shadow.
"Trust me," I said, tapping the hilt at my back. "This sword is very strong."
He shook his head as I took a sip. The mead was sweeter than I expected.
"The trade isn't something you mention out loud," he said. "The higher-ups don't even know about it."
I exhaled slowly. "And yet I've been in this city barely a week, and I've heard about it more times than I can count."
He let out a soft chuckle. Maybe it was to hide his sadness with the current reality.
"That's because they only hide it when the right people are around. The Count's a good man. He's also a greedy one."
I stiffened before I could stop myself.
Damn it, Ouroboros.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
The bartender sighed, the sound heavy with familiarity.
"You really are from the capital, aren't you? The Count doesn't ask questions as long as the coin keeps flowing. If money's shown, he looks away. Simple as that."
So that was it.
I had known Ouroboros wasn't fully aware of everything happening here, but this, this was negligence bordering on complicity.
Whether he meant it or not hardly mattered.
A ruler didn't get to claim ignorance when blood paid his taxes.
It didn't matter now. I was here.
I had prepared poorly for this. I had hoped Malachi would notice.
I had hoped Mirabel would sense something wrong before it spread this far.
Hope, it seemed, was a habit I still hadn't broken.
I reached into my pocket and placed four silver coins on the counter. They rang softly as they settled.
"Speak my name," I said.
He frowned, confusion flickering across his face.
In the same instant, steel scraped against leather.
Every man in the tavern drew a sword.
Blades leveled toward me from all sides as the coins finished ringing, the sound suddenly deafening in the silence that followed.
Chairs scraped back. Someone cursed under their breath.
I turned slowly and raised a single finger. "You misunderstood me," I said evenly. "I said speak my name."
That was when they moved.
Not out of anger. Not fear. Recognition.
Only one kind of person said those words.
Only one man demanded his name be spoken like a command.
And he always did so just before everything went wrong.
They moved because they understood the choice in front of them.
Either I was a traitor who knew too much, or I was something far worse.
Killing them would have been easy. That, in itself, was the problem.
I let out a quiet breath and lifted my hand, tracing a small circle through the air with my finger.
The motion was casual, almost lazy, but the power behind it was anything but.
When I reached the fifth wall, new authority had revealed itself to me.
Cradella's gift did not announce itself with spectacle; it simply worked.
Gravity answered more cleanly now, no longer blunt or crude.
This time, I didn't rely on runes. I didn't need to.
I tightened the space around their chests.
For a single, precise moment, gravity compressed inward, focused not on their bodies, but on their hearts.
It wasn't enough to crush, only enough to interrupt.
One by one, the blades slipped from numb fingers as every man collapsed where he stood.
Unconscious before fear could fully take hold.
There were other ways I could have done it. Louder ways. Crueler ones. This was simply the most efficient.
The strain hit me immediately.
My vision swam, and I steadied myself against the counter as the weight of magicae drained through my limbs.
Without runes, the cost was higher, the margin for error thinner.
I had nearly lost myself in the pull, and only a last-second reinforcement kept me upright.
Runes were safer. They forced structure, demanded intention.
But they were slow, and they bound creation to logic and preparation.
Without them, I only had to imagine.
My logicae completed the rest, shaping the spell without conscious interference, as natural as breathing.
When I turned back, the music had stopped.
The woman's voice cut off mid-note.
No one moved. A few people were still standing, hands half-raised as if unsure whether to reach for weapons that no longer mattered.
These weren't criminals. Just people who had come to drink, to forget, and had instead learned something they couldn't unlearn.
I finished my mead and placed the glass back on the counter. My hand shook once before I stilled it.
The bartender stared at the unconscious men, then at me. He opened his mouth, closed it, and swallowed.
I exhaled slowly. Not to calm myself, but to keep from fainting.
"Well," I said, keeping my voice even, "that answers one question."
No one replied.
Good.
This city was louder than I expected. Not in sound, but in how much it hid in plain sight.
Ouroboros should have known better.
If this was happening openly enough for a tavern to recognize the signs, then the problem wasn't secrecy.
It was permission.
I turned toward the door, already cataloging what I had seen, what I would need, and who would have to disappear before Solstice could pretend to be clean again.
"It seems I have work to do."