Kiran sat with a cracked bowl and a thin crust of bread when Lysandro slid into the bench across from him.
The hall smelled of boiled beans and burnt oil; voices rose and fell like a tide against the stone.
Lysandro's stare was a blade folding back on memories from the square — the dock, the punch, the Test of Silence — and he said, flat, "Lucky, aren't you?"
Kiran kept his hands on the rim of the bowl.
He let the sentence hang like a coin between them.
The sword leaned against his knee, leather worn at the grip where his palm had closed.
He tasted old iron and the amulet's hard seam pressed at his chest.
Lysandro's laugh was small and sharp.
"You walked into the chamber and the whole thing stopped. People pay for miracles."
He chewed, eyes like scales.
"Don't think that buys you friends."
"Didn't ask for friends," Kiran said.
He kept the words clipped.
He had learned how to make nothing sound like a threat and everything like a promise.
Around them, murmurs moved like loose thread.
Two women in second tier leaned over a ledger and glanced his way.
A clerk spat into the corner and then looked contrite; rumor had weight, and weight made corridors bend.
"Watch your pockets," Lysandro muttered.
"Some men will see that as a weakness to harvest."
Kiran nodded once, the movement small.
He swallowed bread and let the hall's noise press against his ears.
The amulet on his chest was cold under shirt cloth; he did not touch it.
A tray rattled and a voice said, "You should be careful who you show the sword to."
It was not a warning so much as a ledger entry.
Kiran glanced up.
Sylas leaned against the far pillar with the easy posture of a man who had practiced being unthreatening.
His clothes were stitched with expensive repairs; his smile was tailored to fit openings.
He watched Kiran with an interest that smelled like auction rooms.
"You're the one who halted the Test," Sylas said as he crossed the hall.
His voice unwrapped like fine ribbon.
"Luck favors the peculiar."
Lysandro's jaw twitched.
"Keep your charm to yourself, prospector."
Sylas inclined his head.
"Lysandro. Always a pleasure to find a familiar face."
He slid into the bench beside Kiran without asking.
"You and I should talk privately."
Kiran kept his palms on his bowl.
He did not rise.
"Later," Elias called from the far end of the hall, the word casual but carrying an iron thread.
The veteran's eyes met Kiran's briefly; there was a question there that did not ask itself aloud.
Sylas lowered his voice.
"I deal in artifacts," he said.
"Old things that remember what most people forget. I collect them, polish them, and then sell them to men who like having history as a pet."
"And?" Kiran asked.
He let boredom mask the wariness.
"And silver," Sylas said, producing a small cloth pouch like a conjurer revealing a trick.
The sound of coins nudged the air.
"A handful. Not enough to buy comfort, but enough to make choices easier."
Kiran's fingers tightened around the spoon.
The pouch's rattle sounded like a verdict.
"You want my sword?" Kiran asked, voice even.
Sylas's smile widened into a measurement.
"I want what's special about your sword. That mark it left in the chamber, that silence that followed. I don't care for rust. I care for the story it tells—and the doors it opens."
Lysandro's laugh had a hard edge.
"You trade in stories, thief. Don't expect loyalty."
Sylas's eyes sharpened.
"Loyalty pays poorly. Information pays better."
He flicked a finger and the coin pouch winked.
"Fifteen silver. Enough to get you off the quay and two decent weeks. Think about what you could do with that."
Kiran let the offer sit like a stone.
The number had immediacy; it also had finality.
He thought of Meira's grin when coins slid across her palm, the way she stretched a small thing into a meal.
He thought of the train ticket he had not yet earned.
"No," he said.
Sylas's face shifted to something practiced and pleasant.
"I like direct people."
He pushed a small card across the bench.
A dove with a key in its beak was stamped in the corner, ink dark as old wine.
"Keep my card. If you change your mind, come to the East Gate at dusk."
Kiran slid the card under his bowl without folding it.
The action was small and deliberate.
Sylas rose.
"And a word of advice, kid: in the Threshold, the curious attract collectors and hunters in equal measure. Know who you invite."
He left the hall with the soft tread of a man who was used to not being noticed until the numbers mattered.
Lysandro spat the end of his stew into his palm and pushed away.
"Watch your back," he said.
"Some doors you open, you can't get out of."
Kiran swallowed and kept the bowl between his hands.
The hall's chatter resumed, but under it was a new sound: the slide of deals being considered.
The Guild's corridors had teeth; someone had shown them to him.
That night Kiran found Elias leaning over a map, ink stains at the cuff.
The veteran's face folded into lines that had been mapped by years; his calm did not reach his eyes.
"I saw a prospector around the hall," Kiran said.
He put the card on the table.
"Sylas."
Elias tapped the dove with a pen.
He did not smile.
"Sylas traffics in salvage and secrets. He pays for artifacts and for rumors. He frequents the Court of the Weeping Shadows on the East trade routes."
Kiran let the name roll like a coin.
Court of the Weeping Shadows had the feel of a place men mentioned in taverns and then left to its own shadows.
"Is he honest?" Kiran asked.
"To his ledger," Elias said.
He closed the map and looked at Kiran directly.
"He'll buy the sword if it shows a property he can weaponize or glamorize. He'll sell half of that to collectors and the other half to men who prefer quiet power."
"Does he know about my parents?" Kiran asked, the question small enough to be practical.
Elias rubbed his jaw.
"He has ears, not eyes. He hears things. He also traffics in people's grief."
The words were heavy and precise.
"He can point you to sources, but they will cost you. Information here is currency with teeth."
Kiran set his jaw.
"Did my parents ever deal with him?"
Elias let silence answer for a beat.
Then he spoke, low.
"Your parents kept certain notes fragmented and private. There were rumors they were hunting a Catalyzer."
Kiran's thumb found the seam of the amulet again.
The word Catalyzer landed with a gravity that made the lamp waver.
Elias leaned forward.
"The Guild maps currents and tears. A Catalyzer, if the old fragments are right, is a device or relic that amplifies resonance—makes a rift more stable, or widens it. It is why men risk crossing without a guide. If your parents pursued one, they chased more than charts."
Kiran's mouth went dry.
"Would a Catalyzer explain the Rift they sought?"
"It would explain why the Rift did not close," Elias said.
"It would also explain why certain parties would want the maps and the device intact."
He tapped the table twice.
"It would also explain why some people vanish."
Kiran stared at the jet-black ink.
The room thrummed softly with distant machinery.
He thought of the Test of Silence and the way the crystal had gone dark when his hand found the sword.
He thought of the Whirlwind that had fractured near him in the canyon.
"You said they were good or foolish," Kiran said.
"Which were they?"
Elias's mouth made a line.
"Both, perhaps. The difference comes down to whether you die for knowledge or for hubris."
Kiran's fingers curled around the card Sylas had left.
He felt like a ledger with blank lines; someone else wrote the entries and he had to sign.
He let the pen slide across the table as if it might write his future without his consent.
"If I go looking," he said, the words careful, "will I find them, or will I be listed on a ledger someday too?"
Elias's gaze was steady.
"You will find what the world allows you to find. The Guild can help if you earn trust and keep your hands clean enough to be useful. Sylas can show you paths and doors, but his kind don't open them without a profit."
Kiran folded the card and slid it into his pocket.
"I'll be careful," he said.
The promise sat like a weight.
Elias's hand rested briefly on Kiran's shoulder—an action that carried the authority of someone offering a cloak.
"Do not sell the sword," he added quietly.
"Not until you understand what it is."
The words held a warning that felt like a map with missing markers.
Later, in the dim of the dormitory, Kiran set the sword across his knees and lit a single candle.
The flame drew the room into a small, truthful circle.
He worked by the light, running a rag along the blade's edge, the metal whispering under cloth.
He thought of Sylas's coins and Meira's grin; he thought of the train and the quay; he thought of Elias's map lines and of being useful rather than ornamental.
Every choice multiplied.
He pressed his thumb to the blade where rust had once hidden darker things.
The metal flaked and a speck of rust fell to the cloth.
The candle's light trembled in the small draft of the dorm.
For a moment nothing changed.
Then the speck slid aside and the metal beneath it was not reflected like ordinary steel.
It drank the candlelight—a small, impossible absence that made the flame look duller at the edge.
Kiran jerked his thumb back, breath catching.
The room snapped to attention, sound rebounding like a lid lifted.
The sword lay quiet as ever, leather warm from his palm.
He did not speak.
He did not move to test again.
The card in his pocket knocked softly against his knee as if reminding him of choices yet unpaid.
That night, Kiran examines the sword by candlelight.
The silver glyph does not reappear.
But when he rubs his thumb on the blade, a tiny flake of rust comes loose.
Beneath it, the metal is not black, but a void that seems to suck in the candlelight.
He pulls his finger back, startled.