Even now, deep into Embermark's second dusk, Akar pulsed beneath its veins, shifting unseen currents through the stone. It wasn't just life, but a presence—ancient, burning, listening.
Boots shuffled against soot-stained floors. Voices threaded between bartering hands. All around, the scent of ember, sweat, and raw energy clung beneath flickering torchlight.
Some came for trade. Some for power. Some because the Sunken Forum, once it chose you, did not let go.
It wasn't on any map, but everyone knew where it began: past the rusted bell that never rang, beneath the carvings of faces worn smooth by centuries of glances. This was the Sunken Forum, nestled deep in the Sinks, where the unwanted were born and buried.
Here, the air grew dense, choked with ash, as if memory itself thickened and held you in place.
Lugal didn't whisper when he entered. He belonged here. Tonight, though, he wasn't here for survival. He was here for Akar—and the promise attached to it.
The Forum's corridors coiled like a serpent, folding into themselves, an architecture that forgot symmetry. Light was caught in iron sconces shaped like claws, and every turn carried the echo of a conversation you never fully heard.
Lugal never looked directly at the men who owned the Sunken Forum. Not out of fear. But because he knew the rules.
The Forum wasn't led by kings—it was governed by unseen hands, by those who dictated the flow of Akar through silence rather than decree.
Their names were never spoken, only inferred by the movement of trade, the shift in torchlight, the feel of the stone beneath one's boots.
The passage twisted, narrowing to force humility. Moss and memory grew in the cracks, remnants of old stone forgotten by the Ancients.
At the end: a door that remembered every hand that touched it. It opened without sound.Inside, the air didn't move. The flames on the torches didn't flicker. The heat here was ancient, dormant, watching.
Three figures waited. Not quite rulers. Not quite ghosts. Something in between. They wore silence like armor.
Lugal stepped forward but didn't cross the line where light met shadow. He didn't sit. He didn't bow. He only waited. That, too, was part of the test.
The Sunken Forum was built on Akar, but power wasn't gifted—it was earned through tempering, through trials, through knowing when to listen instead of speak.
Lugal remained still. His heart pounded with a desperate eagerness he barely contained. The Sanctums beckoned, shimmering in his dreams.
The figure nearest to the torchlight moved—not much, just enough to let expectation settle, thick and undeniable.
"You listen well." A voice like soot and certainty.
"You do not linger in the wrong places."
Silence stretched between them. Deliberate. Weighted.
"But tonight, you are here for something else."
One of the three leaned forward, gloved fingers brushing across the ember-stone table—a movement so slight it could have meant nothing. It never meant nothing.
"A whisper reaches us. The boy met someone." Not a question. A truth they had already decided.
Lugal swallowed, a knot of guilt twisting in his gut. He'd seen Hatim's eyes when he spoke of the Pure Akar, knew what that meant. A part of him recoiled at trading Hatim's desperate secret, but the lure of the Sanctums was a siren song he couldn't resist. "Yes."
"And?"
"And I didn't recognize the man."
The silence shifted. Not disappointment. Not approval. A pause meant to make him feel the weight of what came next.
"You have wanted this for some time."
Lugal didn't pretend to misunderstand. He had studied the laws, the trials, the rituals of the Ascended—those who tempered Akar into something more. He had imagined walking the Sanctums, where power didn't bend—only ruled.
The offer came without embellishment.
"You will go to them. You will listen. You will not speak unless spoken to." A breath. "And when you return—you will tell us what the Ancients refuse to say aloud."
Lugal's breath hitched. He had long dreamed of reaching the Sanctums. Now, the Sunken Forum was giving him the chance—but at a price that would brand him forever. The moment he stepped into their world, there would be no turning back.
This was it.
His chance to shed the clinging ash of the Sinks, to rise above the life he'd sold Hatim out for.
The Forum's past lingered in its walls—once a place of debate, now a place of shadows where power moved in whispers. Lugal traced his hand along the stone as he left.
Once, voices had filled this space. Men arguing laws, deciding futures, raising banners that no longer flew. Now, only whispers remained.
The Sunken Forum had been claimed by those who knew power didn't need to be spoken aloud. And tonight, it had named him.
The mission was his. The opportunity was real.
But his pulse didn't quiet. Akar shifted beneath the floor—the city's veins pressing against his own.
Embermark had always been a force moving beneath him. Now, he would move within it.
He stepped into the streets above. Tomorrow, the infiltration would begin.