"Something bad happened, Yumi."

Ist Madjara reeked of smoke and heartbreak. The stale air clung to my skin, gifting it a sickly glow, and the bard's drunken song slid across the dangerous atmosphere — a rotten place for rotten men.

For a narrow tavern on the fringe of Metsuva, the self-declared 'dragon' boasted a concerning number of thugs, fools who thought they owned the world. In reality, they merely owned a crammed gambling den that royal guards didn't feel like raiding the ninth time this season. Cloth washers with nothing left to gamble tended to avoid it, especially in the early morning; yet here we were.

I scratched my scalp wearily, feeling my dark hair against my fingers like slicked hay. The night hadn't treated me well. It never did. "Could it be another cloth shipment?" I mumbled, the taste of dusty air sneaking into my mouth as I spoke.

"Oh, no," she chuckled. It sounded contorted, the mockery of a laugh. Soon, her lifeless smile melted into a deadpan. "No, it's not that."

"Well, we better get going either way." I tapped my pockets in hopes a quellin or two would have sneaked in while I wasn't looking. As per usual, my search was fruitless. "The factory opens soon."

The woman sighed. "We can't. I have bad news."

Her creased face looked like cracked porcelain under the pale candlelight. She was usually like this; irritated and jumpy and ready to take it all out on whoever stood close. Tonight was different. A note of sorrow painted her firm lips, and her failed attempt at pigmenting wasn't at fault.

A twinge of uneasiness began prickling my gut, staining our perfectly dull night out. Sickness? Debt? "Lyra," I said, my furrowed brows betraying only a fraction of worry. "Did someone die?"

A stupid question. Someone always died around here.

"They might as well have," she said, and the brief squeeze of her lips meant my heart's turn to contract.

Cold seized my spine. I leaned forth, burying my jitters behind a veil of somberness. My fingers settled on her hand. "Who?" Many people in Mestuva hung from the last threads of their life, and although we would rarely care, Lyra's hesitance told me this one made an exception.

The silence thickened, stuffing my ears with a terrible ringing and stripping the breath from my lungs. Throughout the years, I had become an extension of Lyra in more ways than I felt comfortable admitting; her friends were my friends, her problems were my problems. Now I paid for my foolishness with attachment, expectations. Disappointment.

"Lyra," I called. My voice seemed distant, drowned out by the drum of my heartbeat. "Who?"

At last, she glanced up. My stomach churned at the intensity of her stare. It pierced through my skin and peered at my inner self, my life, my family.

The drums ceased. I trailed my hand away from hers, and the poison of the words she had not yet spoken lingered in my fingers. Was it my father? My brother? Saints knew I didn't have much more to lose. "Tell me," I demanded, and my voice's waver shattered the spirit I tried to feign.

With another sigh, Lyra took a tattered envelope from her coat's equally shabby pocket. I snatched it from her hands, squinting my eyes as I struggled to make out the letters. My heart thumped wildly as a few words started making sense. Mess, penalty fee. Don't come back tomorrow. Out of a hundred-word letter, those were the only ones I needed to read to rub a sweaty hand across my face and release a shaky breath. "Don't tell me I have to pay for that."

"Keep reading."

"I'd rather not," I muttered, my tone suddenly squeaky, and handed the note to her. There was nothing more I needed to know. Nothing more I wanted to know.

Lyra's dark chocolate irises observed me with something resembling pity. She hadn't been the most supportive in the factory; she always yelled at me when I sewed a sequin the wrong way, or when I insisted on taking the night shifts when I clearly couldn't keep my eyes open. Yet despite having put me through everything one could imagine, her crooked nose and bulky arms were the first thing I sought when I needed guidance. I didn't want to hear this from her.

With a taste of dread, realization settled in my turbulent mind. It wasn't my father who was as good as dead, nor Hai. It was me.

I was fired.

My pulse galloped tantivy in my ears, in my throat, all over my quivering fingers as I held my fragile head. The air had left my lungs, leaving me gasping for another breath, another palpitation. I felt as if I would collapse in that dirty Metsuvan tavern and never stand back up. Some sick part of me wished that was the case. It would make things so much simpler.

The shop, the paycheck, the boarding house. My head drowned in my palms. Everything is gone.

Lyra puckered her lips as she watched my trembling frame. "What do you have to say?" she asked.

A sob burbled in my neck as my eyes met hers. Her glance was somber, almost sad. "What am I supposed to send to Kasa? How will I afford the room?"

"There are institutes, Yumi. For—"

"Homeless beggars? They die over there!"

She tilted her head "I don't believe you have the luxury to be picky right now."

"Can't you talk to the manager?" I demanded, my voice yielding to desperation. The tingle overwhelming my nose forecasted tears I was not ready to shed. "Surely there's something you can do! For my family, Lyra."

Lyra chewed on her lip. Her silence was not a pondering one; her jaw was set and the obstinance in her gaze burned every inch of me. She would never change her mind. "I'm sorry, Yumi. I really am." She reached into her pocket, letting a brown pouch drop on the table with a sad jingle. "Go home. Leave this wretched town. You always looked too soft for this place."

Within a lyric of the bard's sonnet, Lyra had vanished.

My bones had turned into steel — no, copper. Cheap, corroded copper that could bent at any moment, leaving me crumpled in Ist Madjara for the rest of my miserable life. My muscles were rubber and my lungs clouded. I could not move or breathe or even blink, and momentarily I forgot I still lived on; a comforting lethe that my frozen limbs fought hard to retain. If I remained still long enough, maybe the world would forget about me, too. Death is much easier when there are no mourners.

Yet the sack before me tempted the oblivion I so desperately craved. The cheap fabric, the terrible color of musty book pages — it was Lyra's wage. A few quellins, but quellins still. The boat to Sehira came twice a season. The captain wouldn't have the heart to charge a jobless peasant much.

Maybe I was silly to blow out a breath and slowly drag the pouch toward me. I knew my father would accept me with open arms and give me any scanty savings he had stashed under his bed. Yet his smile would be bittersweet and his eyes would droop with disappointment, and my heart would never forgive the sight.

The sun had already risen when I walked out of the tavern. Its golden rays washed Metsuva in vibrant colors; peach and magenta, amber and rose, warm hues that soaked into the meager houses and the ragged stone-paved paths. The sunrise had always been rejuvenating to me; it took away the worries of the night, the nightmares and the horrible thoughts, replacing them with the promise of another day, another chance in life.

I used to go through some sort of photosynthesis in the morning sun. It stripped the fear from my mind, giving way to hope, dreams — good dreams. Lyra always called me a plant, and later, when I told her that was quite rude, a flower.

Now, my petals had abandoned me and only the stem remained.

My sluggish steps rang across the thoroughfare as I sauntered by familiar shops, tight alleys that only I knew how to navigate out of. Metsuva was built like a maze, and as more years passed the intention became starker; to disorient tourists, trick them into buying useless keepsakes, dazzle them with all the bright colors of the gambling dens and exotic spice stores.

The city was none of that. The music only played when desperate travelers were there to hear it. The lights only shone for the eyes of the outside world. In winter, when all the globetrotters were huddled up in their own comfortable homes in the capital, Metsuva was but a town resided by ghosts. No tunes, no dancing, just a few thugs and paltry taverns serving ancient food that surely the phantoms of the streets would find heavenly.

The acrid odor of seawater scorched my nose as the already few people wandering the streets thinned out. Within a few long strides, the port appeared before me. Stone, half-derelict houses loomed over me, connected by metal wire from which limp clothes hung. The sun shamefully peaked over the sea of domes, reluctant to shine upon the dirty city.

There was not much to like about the small harbor. It wasn't build in a favorable position — it seemed more like an accidental cavity in the concrete than a merchant hotspot — yet its blurry waters and packed buildings were weirdly scenic to my filth-accustomed mind.

The light spring breeze brushed the skin of my cheeks. I sat down on one of the wooden planks, gazing at the docks. Thoughts and worries crept into my mind, but I pushed them out sharply. When the boats started to float in, I would finally be home.

My hands fiddled with the pouch. The weigh dug into my palm — a good thing, considering Kasa was weeks away. With a long sigh, I pinched it open.

I froze.

No quellins laid inside. No yellow coins, no ticket to Kasa, no future; simply what looked like a pendant. My heart twitched with horror as I thrust a trembling hand inside, brushing my fingers against the glimmering stone. A slick, cyan pearl the same color as my curious eyes nested in a silver dragon's embrace, attached to a thin chain. The metal glowed — was it silver? Iron? — yet it could not outshine the stunning gem it enveloped. The shock was such, I almost forgot about my woes.

A razor-sharp grip yanked my throat back before I could recover, cutting into my flesh.

I gasped suddenly, my eyes flying wide open as I clawed on the grasp desperately. All I managed was to further injure my neck. The screams clogged my throat, unable to escape, and my heart hurtled manically like a lashed horse. Is this how I die? I wondered between the excruciating pangs of pain all over the muscles of my head. The necklace slipped into the water with a miserable plop, but the wild ringing in my ears stopped me from lingering on it.

Another tug on my neck. I could feel the thick blood dribbling down my throat. It was no hand that choked me. It was a wire.

Somehow I could see my father before my eyes, kneeling to smile at me right before I stepped into the scruffy carriage to Sehira's port. His eyes were red and his tired features dreary, yet his smile pierced through the gloom as he beamed at me. 'Keep going for me, and don't look back,' he whispered, gently caressing my cheek. 'When it's all over, I'll come find you. If I don't, it's not over. Wait for me, Yumi.'

My father couldn't save me now. He wasn't here. It was not over. It couldn't be.

Wait for me, Yumi.

Taking a shuddering breath in, I shoved my elbow back with the force I had left. It smashed against something solid, sending a shock of pain up my arm. It didn't matter. A scream bounced off the sea, and for a second I thought it was ripped from my throbbing neck. Yet the grip on me loosened and my body lurched into the foggy waters, splashing red all over the docks behind me.

In Lyra's books I had reluctantly agreed to read, drowning was usually loud and splashy. Someone yelled and flailed their arms, dipping below the waves and resurfacing dramatically as those on shore scrambled to rescue them. They lasted two, three minutes, and then their knight in shining armor found them and leaped off his horse and heroically jumped in the water to retrieve the damsel.

The books were wrong. So wrong.

Darkness enveloped me, folding me into a stifling embrace. I begged my limbs to move, to bring me to the surface. They had stopped following my commands long ago. Red and black splotches danced in front of me. Were my eyes open or closed? The coldness I had felt upon entering the water had fled entirely. A desperate, hot wave had come over me, warming even my frosted toes.

I couldn't help it anymore. My mouth snapped open and water came rushing into my body. I knew drowning wouldn't take two to three minutes. I knew no knight would come to rescue me, because I was no damsel. I was a peasant, and peasants in the Ashaban Empire were as good as drowned the moment they were born.

Death felt odd. It was more comfortable than sleep and surely more comfortable than sleep on the boarding house's stabbed mattresses. My consciousness slowly glided from my grasp. Maybe it was better this way. Maybe giving up was fine as long as I gave up a life of eternal misery.

A bright flash suddenly punctured the dark. My heavy lids fluttered open, allowing me to peek at the light's source. The necklace. Why was it shimmering so brightly?

Before I could resume my peaceful death, a weight smashed against me,banging my head on a sharp rock beneath me and delivering me to a darkness even the most luminous star could not perforate.

❧

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