The harbor of Meridian smelled of salt and oil and the faint metallic tang of starsteel filings. Ships of every size and temperament drifted in the basin: merchant barges with patched sails, a sleek courier with a humming quantum keel, and a cluster of fishing skiffs bobbing like tired moons. The city itself was a patchwork of eras—stone piers scarred by old wars, glass towers that caught the suns, and narrow lanes where lanterns swung like slow, patient hearts. Kade Voss stepped off a battered transport with a cloak that had seen better suns and boots that had walked more roads than most magistrates could name. He carried nothing visible but a small satchel and a smile that made the gulls quiet for a moment.
He noticed the child before anyone else did. A boy no older than seven had climbed the market railing to watch a freighter unload and had slipped. Time narrowed to the arc of the fall and the ragged breath of the crowd. Kade moved as if the world had given him a single, simple instruction: catch what is falling. He reached out, and the air around his hand hummed like a plucked string. The boy's descent slowed, not with a gust of wind but with a soft, resonant tug that felt like the city itself had decided to hold him.
The crowd's gasp turned to a cheer. The boy's mother sobbed and kissed Kade's hand. He shrugged, embarrassed by the attention, and the sound of his laugh was low and oddly musical. A vendor pressed a coin into his palm; he refused it with a shake of his head. "I'm passing through," he said, and the words were true in the way travelers speak: they mean it for the moment, not for the future.
Meridian was a city of thresholds. Its docks were a place where people left things behind and took new things on. Kade walked the market lanes, listening to the rhythm of the city—the creak of ropes, the bartering cadence, the distant bell of the shipwright. He felt the city's memory like a faint aftertaste: laughter from a hundred years ago, the echo of a festival, the sorrow of a burned warehouse. He hummed a note under his breath, a small, private chord that matched the city's heartbeat. A stall's broken awning righted itself. A stray dog stopped barking and lay down at his feet. People glanced at him with curiosity and a little awe.
By noon he had a place to sleep: a room above a noodle house whose owner insisted on feeding him. He accepted the food and the roof and, more importantly, the quiet. He sat by the window and watched Meridian move—its people like beads on a string, each with their own weight and pull. He did not know why he had come here. He only knew that the city had a question in its bones, and he had a way of answering questions.
As the suns dipped and the market lanterns blinked awake, a rumor threaded through the stalls: a sky‑whale had been seen near the outer freighters, a great beast that sometimes drifted close to the city to feed on the luminous plankton that bloomed in Meridian's currents. Sky‑whales were rare and dangerous; they could tear a freighter's hull with a careless flick of a fin. Kade listened to the rumor and felt, like a chord resolving, the tug of something else—an invitation. He rose, paid for his meal with a promise to return, and walked toward the docks where the freighters moored like sleeping leviathans.
He did not know then that a single night would change the course of his passing through Meridian. He did not know that a freighter captain with a starsteel arm would watch him with a curiosity that would become a tether. He did not know that a sealed library would open its doors because of a note he hummed. He only knew that the city had a rhythm, and he had come to listen.