Lugal stepped out of the Sunken Forum, and the city greeted him like an infection never properly cauterized. Heat and soot closed in, The Sinks pressing against his skin like a fever dream cast in brick and sorrow. The air—too thick, too old—crawled down his throat and clung to his lungs, as if even breathing in Embermark came with a price.
The sweat along his spine wasn't just from the heat. It was memory. Guilt. Secrets coiled beneath his ribs like living things. He could feel their weight, shifting with every step.
This city knows. Always knows.
Whispers bled from alley mouths—snatches of barter in a tongue older than coin: time traded for bread, pain pawned for warmth, silence sold to the highest bidder. And the ash, ever-present, fine as breath and just as treacherous, danced in the lamplight like the dying remnants of stars. It coated everything—skin, hope, the bones of the forgotten. Even thoughts.
Above, the sky sagged—a sick bruise of violet and ember-red, pulsing faintly from the distant veins of Akar that ran like wounds across the firmament. The glow mocked the city below: promise too distant, too divine. Myths fed to the desperate like lullabies to keep them from screaming in the dark.
In The Sinks, there was not much Akar. Just the lie of it. Down here, even dreams had rot in their teeth.
Lugal's boots grated over the broken stone, a rhythmic rasp like teeth grinding in sleep. Each footfall dragged a different ghost behind it. This street. That turn. The place he sold a man's name for a favor that didn't last. Even the stones whispered. Not words, but pressure. Presence. The city remembered.
And it watched.
Don't look back.
Ahead, the stairs twisted upward—cramped and uneven, like the spine of something ancient that had tried to rise once and failed. The soot here was thicker, the glyphs on the steps half-scoured by wind and regret. Forgotten prayers. Warnings from a time when gods still cared.
He climbed.
Every step a curse. Every breath thinner. As if Embermark itself resisted the idea of ascent.
Eventually, the Sinks exhaled him into the Middens—a district where survival masqueraded as progress. Here, life was louder. Faster. Booths choked the thoroughfares, their colors too bold, their smells too sharp. Spices that bit the nose, fabrics that shimmered wrong under the light. Smoke curled like questions never answered, and every voice carried a deal behind it.
The ash here didn't suffocate. It hovered—curious. Waiting.
A child darted from behind stacked crates. No older than five, eyes wide and clean despite the grime. Not fear. Not awe. Just curiosity.
Lugal stopped. It took him a second to realize he had.
A woman rushed after the child, her face drawn with exhaustion and years she hadn't earned. Her hands, though—quick, practiced, unbroken.
"Ryl," she hissed, scooping the child up. "Forgive him. He wanders."
"While he still can," Lugal said, the words leaving before he could filter them. "Best to wander now. Before the city teaches him not to."
The woman blinked. Then—just for a heartbeat—she smiled.
"If you're heading north, mind the ash-bakers near the lift tracks," she said. "They'll sell you a smile cheaper than bread."
He dipped his head, and moved on. But something warm lingered in his chest, glowing faintly behind the ribs like a coal he thought had gone cold.
He almost hated it.
The Verge came into view near the northern slope, where soot mixed with iron shavings and melted wax—the scent of creation forced into shape. Here worked the Engineers of the Verge, builders unblessed by noble line or academy parchment. They built because they had to. Because Embermark would break without them.
Their workshops thrummed with restrained violence—stone and metal, Akar and sweat. Small lifts crawled the cliffs like insects made of brass and intention, veins of molten energy pulsing beneath them like blood beneath skin. Every rail, every conduit, every forged gear whispered purpose.
Lugal walked with reverence. Here, craft was currency. Knowledge was weapon. The Verge didn't kneel to the Crowns—but the Crowns, quietly, leaned on them.
Kael spotted him—young, eyes too bright for this city. Grease smudged his temple. He held a crystalline lens like it was something holy.
"You missed the forgefire chant," Kael said, calm.
"Wasn't my hymn," Lugal replied.
"Hatim?" Kael asked. "Didn't you say he was looking for work?"
"He'll come," Lugal lied.
Kael nodded anyway. That was enough.
He slipped through a narrow stall—rusted iron and shadowlight, lanterns swinging like pendulums of forgotten time. Niya, the seller of skins and silences, waited with a gaze like dry wind.
"Going up, are we?" she rasped.
He gave her the pouch. She didn't count it.
Instead, she handed him a tunic dyed the color of smoke before the burn, and a scarf threaded with dust-hiding shimmer. "This one remembers shadows."
"That's the one."
Dressed anew, he vanished into the crowd—no longer Lugal, just another shape in motion. Purpose shielded him better than armor. Eyes flicked past him. No one lingered.
He moved like he'd always belonged.
He knew which paths dodged patrols. Which lifts hesitated. Where a forged token—Akar-deep and false as hope—would pass with a glance.
And as he moved, a face returned. Hatim.
Bruised. Proud. Reckless.
Lugal had offered him a way out. Atonement disguised as opportunity.
"That Job might cost you," Hatim had said.
Lugal hadn't argued. Just smiled. But the sting hadn't faded.
This was supposed to be the payment.
But redemption in Embermark was always one-sided.
Still, the path remained open. And Lugal walked it.
The Crowns loomed ahead.
Not titles—structures. Monuments. Obsidian towers pierced the sky, bound to heavens by chain and ritual. At their heights: the Sanctums. Floating slabs of black stone, lit from within by a golden pulse that didn't flicker.
He wasn't headed there.
Not tonight.
Tonight, his steps led to a lesser spire—noble but not supreme. Marble, not Akar. Power, but diluted. The kind that still needed locks on its doors.
At the lift base, the world changed. The air bit instead of clung. Light sharpened. Scent shifted from rot to crushed mint and a breath of something distant—floral, foreign, fake.
Two guards. Silent. Immaculate. Swords still sheathed, but their gazes were already cuts.
He handed them the stone.
Unmarked, but heavy with meaning. Akar sang inside it, a tune only the attuned could hear.
The taller guard nodded.
The gates opened.
And the lift began to rise.
Steel groaned. Runes glowed.
The city peeled away beneath him, layer by layer.
Soot gave way to silence. Light to clarity. Heat to cold.
He rose through a city bound by memory and fire, the veins of Akar humming beneath every polished tile and arched corridor. Gods once wild, now chained and useful.
He looked up.
Not at the towers.
But at the space between them.
The void that watched back.
Where secrets waited not to be whispered—
But earned.
Tonight, Lugal didn't climb to run.
He climbed to arrive.
To become something Embermark couldn't forget.