Crystalis still smelled like smoke.
Not fire. Not blood. Just that stubborn, bitter smoke that settles into stone and soul, refusing to leave no matter how many windows you open. The servant pulled her cloak tighter as she stepped around a cracked fountain, its basin now filled with blackened snow and old embers.
The city had begun its repairs.
But she wasn't here to watch bricks being laid.
She ducked into the shade of an alley, exhaling through her nose.
"Of course she thinks it's too perfect," she muttered. "She's never liked stories with tidy endings."
Her voice was low. Bitter only at the edges.
She passed a vendor sweeping up broken glass from a shuttered cart, then a boy scrubbing soot from a cracked wall with a grimy rag. All of them working, surviving, but no one talking about what really happened.
She stopped beside a charred statue at the edge of the main square. Smoke-stained wings stretched above her like some holy guardian meant to shield the city. It didn't look like it had done a very good job.
She reached into her coat and pulled out the familiar paper again.
Folded corners. Smudged print. She knew the words by heart now.
Lilyana Krilanova: First Responder
Fourteen civilian lives saved
No confirmed casualties
She snorted faintly. "Too clean."
Just like she said.
The woman refolded the page and tucked it back into her coat.
"Find the name they didn't write," her lady had told her. "Find the shadow that made the fire look like light."
She sighed, and walked on.
She asked quietly, never the same question.
The first man she asked, an older butcher, sleeves still rolled from lifting crates, just shook his head and muttered something about "angels and luck."
The second was worse.
A teenage girl, sweeping up shattered glass from her mother's shop, gave a tight smile and said, "They say she dropped from the sky. That's what I remember."
"But someone else was there," the woman prompted gently. "Yes?"
The girl blinked, then looked past her. "Maybe. It all happened so fast."
The third, a baker missing two fingers on his left hand, gave her a long stare.
"They're not allowed to say," he said. "Some things are better left unnamed."
She asked more.
A guard. A seamstress. A man with burn marks on his collarbone who only muttered something about wings and disappeared into the alley.
Eventually, she sat down on the edge of a broken wall, pinched the bridge of her nose, and let out a long breath through her gloves.
"They've rehearsed this," she whispered.
Each voice gave her fragments.
But no pieces fit.
No one mentioned another name.
No one spoke of a second hero.
Not even a shadow.
Across the square, someone leaned against a railing near the burned-out bakery. Half-shadowed by the slant of the afternoon light.
The servant caught his eyes for just a second. He looked like he'd barely walked out of a war.
She felt it in her spine.
But when she stepped forward, someone called to him from the market stalls, and he turned, slipping into the movement of the crowd like water into cracks.
She pressed her lips into a line.
The shadow was there.
But no matter how many stones she turned, no one wanted to name it.
***
She was almost ready to leave.
The questions had run dry, and the city's silence had turned polite. People still smiled, still answered, still nodded when she asked, but nothing new came out. Their words were too even, their eyes too careful. Whatever she was looking for, they'd learned not to speak it.
The woman crossed a narrow bridge between two rows of burned buildings. Ash still clung to the cracks like powdered bone. Below, the river ran grey with soot.
She adjusted her coat.
"What a waste of time," she muttered to herself. "A missing name can't hide in plain sight."
Then she stopped.
Two figures walked up the far side of the street, just silhouettes at first against the drifting haze. A girl, bright-voiced and bouncing lightly on her feet. And beside her, a boy.
He walked like he didn't want to take up space.
His head slightly bowed. Scarf high around his mouth. Boots soft on the stone.
They were just passing.
But as they neared, the boy glanced up.
And her heart hiccuped.
It was nothing dramatic. No flash of light. No moment of magic. Just a pair of eyes, tired and much too old for the face they lived in, meeting hers across three heartbeats of distance.
He looked away before she could speak.
The girl tugged on his sleeve, laughing about something. He gave a faint smile.
The kind of smile people wear when they've learned how to hide.
The servant stood there, unmoving, throat dry.
He was just a child, she told herself. Just a quiet, unlucky boy.
But her feet didn't move.
Not right away.
Even after they were gone.