Even now, deep into Embermark's second dusk, Akar pulsed beneath its veins—quiet and burning, alive in a way only those born in the Sinks could feel. To most, it was just heat. To Lugal, it was a current. Listening. Always listening.
He stepped through fractured alleys with purpose, ash licking around his boots like it recognized him. The scent of clove, iron, and old fire hung thick in the air. Torchlight flickered, caught in puddles of glass-slick rain from earlier. Embermark bled memory through every wall, and tonight, it bled it for him.
Hatim had run. Of course he had.
Still too soft around the edges, still clinging to hope like it might save him. Lugal had watched the scuffle unfold—Tiri's gang laying into him with practiced cruelty. This wasn't mere bullying. It was a show. The Forum wanted to see if Hatim would break.
He hadn't. Not completely.
Someone intervened. A figure—unfamiliar. Controlled. Not from the Sinks. Not part of any crew Lugal knew.
Interesting.
He slipped away before the crowd unraveled. The city would digest what it had seen, and by morning, whispers would spread.
But Lugal had a different appointment.
He wound past shuttered lean-tos and silent forges, deeper than most dared go, to where the streets dipped like a forgotten breath. Soot clung like guilt. Above him, the rusted bell loomed—a relic that hadn't rung in centuries, now a landmark only those who knew where to look.
He passed beneath it, beneath worn faces carved into stone—features so weathered they blurred into one another, like memory losing shape.
The Sunken Forum was not on any map. Yet it had always been here. Beneath the Sinks. Beneath the lie of order.
It welcomed him with silence.
The corridors folded in, strange and wrong in their angles. The architecture made no promises—only warnings. Sconces shaped like claws clutched dying light. Shadows slithered like breath. Lugal didn't flinch.
He had walked these paths before—but never this far.
Not as one summoned.
He moved past traders with eyes like coins, past silent shapes hunched over emberstone tables. Deals here were not made in coin. Here, you bartered with truths. With secrets. With loyalties.
The deeper he walked, the more the walls changed—moss clinging to memory, each crack humming faintly with Akar's restless pulse.
At last, the corridor narrowed into reverence.
The door waited—not locked. Not sealed. Just... watching.
He placed his palm against the blackened wood. It opened without sound.
Inside, the air was thick. Unmoving. Even the flames stood still.
Three figures waited beyond the table.
Not rulers. Not priests. Not Ancients.
Just... presence. Dressed in soot-colored robes, their features half-shadowed, their silence heavier than any voice.
Lugal stopped at the edge of light. He didn't speak. Didn't bow.
He waited.
That was the first test.
One figure shifted—barely.
"You listen well," a voice came like coal breath. Rough. Certain.
"You do not linger in the wrong places."
Lugal said nothing. Mouth dry. Spine rigid.
"But tonight, you are here for something else."
A gloved hand moved across the table, brushing a groove worn into emberstone—a line of many hands. A memory of touch.
"A whisper reaches us. The boy met someone."
Not a question. Not curiosity. A statement of fact. The Forum did not ask unless it already knew.
Lugal hesitated.
Hatim's bloodied, cornered face flashed in his mind.
Loyal. Or stupid.
But the vial—the Pure Akar—was real. So was the offer.
"Yes," he said.
"And?"
"I didn't recognize the man."
The silence wasn't judgment. It was calculation.
"You have wanted this for some time."
A truth that burned.
He had studied the stories. The Ascended. The Sanctums floating above the Crowns, untouchable and mythic. He had traced their rituals by candlelight, drawn glyphs in soot with bleeding fingers.
And now they were within reach.
"You will go to them," the voice continued. "You will listen. You will not speak unless spoken to. And when you return—you will tell us what the Ancients refuse to say aloud."
Lugal's pulse kicked. Hard. Fast.
It was happening.
But it felt less like a reward, more like a collar.
Still, he nodded once.
The figures said no more.
He turned to go. Fingers brushed the stone wall—rough and hot, pulsing with Akar beneath. This place had once echoed with argument, policy, dreams.
Now, it breathed secrets.
The Sunken Forum no longer belonged to voices.
It belonged to the silence that survived them.
Lugal emerged like a diver from deep water. Ash clung to his shoulders, to his breath. The city roared on, oblivious and eternal.
Tomorrow, he would begin.
He would infiltrate the Sanctums. Find the man. Learn the truth.
And bring it back.
For power.
For the Forum.
For himself.
But even now, as he walked Embermark's living streets, the ash whispered warnings. And the Akar beneath him burned warmer than before.
As if the city knew what he'd done.
As if it waited to see if he would survive what came next.