Chapter eleven: Collision in the Lower Ring

The Lower Ring didn’t welcome. It swallowed. The moment your feet touched its crooked, groaning cobbles, the city leaned in, as if sniffing for weakness.

Here, where Kavessra sagged under its own weight, the world frayed at the edges. Stone flaked. Glyphs fizzled. Light came in shades of rust and bruise. The air tasted like old batteries and burnt sugar, and every breath felt like a gamble.

Atlus Veneral didn’t flinch.

He moved through the alleyways like he was above them—because he was. Not in elevation, but in expectation. His coat, tailored and ash-dark, cut clean lines through the mire. His boots clicked where others shuffled. But his eyes never stopped scanning. Not because he feared what lurked in the shadows. Because he loathed being surprised.

He was late for a meeting with a restoration glyph broker. A man with no last name and three different voices, if rumors held. Atlus didn’t care for mystery, but he cared even less for incompetence—and in Kavessra, both came gift-wrapped in desperation.

A few blocks east, another shadow moved with quieter intention.

Leona Belottie had discarded the sigils of state this morning. Left them folded in a drawer she didn’t lock. Today, she was no princess. Just a woman in layered bark-brown cloth, boots worn thin at the seams, hair tied back in a knot that might pass for local.

She didn’t belong here. She knew it. So did everyone she passed. But she didn’t care.

She walked with the grace of someone used to sharp edges—and the awareness that some of them cut upward.

Her mission was observation. Immersion. Understanding. But Kavessra had a way of turning missions into reckonings.

They collided near a relic stall crushed between a rune-forger’s den and a falafel vendor whose grill smelled like burning regret. Scrolls and aether-trinkets teetered precariously on warped shelves.

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Atlus stepped back as a shoulder brushed his.

"Watch yourself," he snapped, tone clipped. "This isn’t a place for dawdling."

Leona turned, chin raised, gaze calm but unyielding. "Nor is it a place for arrogance."

He looked her over—no markings, no guard, but a bearing that screamed nobility in its silence. "You walk like you expect the ground to move aside."

"Better than walking like the world owes you silence," she replied.

He narrowed his eyes, just slightly. "Indifference keeps you alive."

"No," she said. "It just keeps you from living."

Neither knew the other’s name. Not yet. But they recognized the weight behind each word. One armored in cynicism. The other in stubborn fire.

The city chose that moment to snap its teeth.

A boom shook the stones—sharp, hot, immediate. The crowd around them scattered like startled birds. Shouts followed, then the clash of steel and magic. Another gang skirmish, or maybe something worse.

Two factions poured into the alley like tide and undertow.

On one side: the Vylkrin, disciplined and grim, arcane glyphs glowing like veins across their armor.

On the other: the Patchwork Orphans, a stitched-together crew of bruisers and orphans turned war-dogs. Their weapons were scrapyard-born and desperation-tempered.

"Great," Atlus muttered. "Children with grenades."

Leona’s blade was half-drawn before he finished speaking.

A rune exploded against a wall to their right, showering them in dust and sparks.

Leona grabbed his arm. "This way."

He wrenched free. "I don’t need a guide."

She stepped forward, voice suddenly cold steel. "You need to survive. Pick one."

Another blast rocked the alley. Something howled—not human. Not whole.

Together, without another word, they ran.

Overturned crates. Collapsing signs. The smell of burnt ozone and fresh blood.

They ducked into a side corridor so narrow Atlus had to turn sideways. Leona led, one hand trailing along the wall, counting glyph pulses by feel.

When they emerged, the chaos had faded to echo.

Atlus leaned against the wall, wiping ash from his coat with a handkerchief worth more than most families earned in a month.

"You're reckless."

"You’re slow," she countered. "And more concerned about creases than casualties."

He shot her a look that was more tired than angry. "What are you even doing down here?"

She didn’t answer.

He didn’t press.

The silence between them was tightrope-thin, strung over something deep neither wanted to name.

Finally, Leona exhaled. "This city eats people."

Atlus nodded once. "Then we bite back."

They didn’t part ways immediately.

Not because they trusted each other.

But because, for one breathless moment in the Lower Ring, they both understood:

Survival demands allies. Even the inconvenient kind.