They speak my name before they know it’s me.

  The tavern’s half-empty. Dust rolls across the warped wood floor, voices carrying more than they should.

  I sit in the far corner—back to the wall, eyes on the door. A slab of meat bleeds on my plate. I tear into it with quiet teeth. Tastes like ash and copper, but I chew anyway.Appetite’s a habit now, not a hunger.

  Across the room, a man with spiked hair slams down a mug big enough to drown a rat. The table groans. Foam spills. He doesn’t drink.

  He stares.

  Then he says it—loud enough for me, soft enough to pull ears closer.

  “You know the tale, don’t you? Wanderer.”

  Murmurs ripple. A whisper-glide of recognition.

  “They say the city burned down to the spine. Guards, nobles, priests—gone. Nothing left but ash, bones… and one survivor. A child with eyes like blood and hair black as old coal.”

  He lets it hang there.

  I keep chewing.

  He takes his drink and walks over. His boots scrape. The wood moans under him.

  Sits at my table without asking, takes a big gulp.

  “Heard of you before,” he mutters, wiping foam from his lip with the back of his hand. “Didn’t believe it. Not Really.”

  A pause, then, “Thought you'd be taller.”

  I glance at him.

  He trembles. Takes a large gulp.

  “You wish to enter the world Ojim?” he asks, now grinning wide. A gold tooth catches the high noon. “Vladimir Gulvir, wasn’t it?”

  I say nothing. Just look at him.

  The beer in his cup stills. His grin falters, just for a second.

  Mother used to say I had a hard stare. She wasn’t wrong.

  The man gestures. “This way.”

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  We move through the market—a collage of rare goods and old treasures from Ojim. The world I intend to descend upon.

  Eyes follow me like hair standing on ends.

  A merchant hides his daughter. A hooded seller fingers a blade he won’t draw. Laughter dies at a nearby table. Others look away when I meet them.

  My boots tap stone with deadpan steps, my coat trailing behind like a shadow. I don’t speak. Most think my silence hides knives.

  They aren’t wrong.

  The market's noise returns in ripples once I pass.

  Then I see an old man—bearded, with gold hoops in both ears, skin browned and cracked by time. He sits on a wooden stool by a stand of fruits no one’s buying.

  He watches me without blinking. Like he’s seen this before. Then he stands, joints popping. Not tall—but solid.

  “A walking corpse,” he says. “That a curse, or just your gait?”

  He asks the spiky haired man, dull eyes studying me further.

  I let him.

  “...Hells,” he mutters, a breath caught in memory. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

  I let my eyes answer. That’s usually enough.

  His throat bobs. “Oi,” he barks, flicking his chin at the man with spiked hair. “Bring the sack. That one.”

  No hesitation. The man moves.

  “Come on then,” the old man says to me, lifting a wooden crate like it’s weightless. He sets it aside, revealing a hatch buried beneath rotting boards. “Gate’s down here. Not locked, never is.” He taps the wood. “Some say it breathes through this floor, listening, waiting for when a new meal’s above.”

  He opens it. Dust breathes out.

  I watch the spike-haired man approach, sack held out like a peace offering.

  The old man snatches it from him, doesn’t even look his way. Turns to me. “Map’s inside. Drawn by some bastard who crawled out half-dead. There’s food, rope, flint. The sort of things the confident forget.”

  He pauses. His gaze sharpens. “Been four years since the last one tried. Blue-skinned lad with bones too soft for Ojim.” He nods toward a Yartun—barely four feet, skin like dry riverbed clay. “You?” He steps closer, “You might go deeper than any of ‘em.”

  Then he steps down into the dark.

  My boots strike stone beside him down the hollow cave; dust and silence reigning the air. Ahead, a slab of pitted stone stands crooked in the lantern light, its surface etched with symbols that writhe if you stare too long. A gate, or a throat. I step closer.

  It breathes.

  The old man presses a hand against my chest. “Little advice for you. Walk through a desert, and you’ll find yourself in a forest—but the trees will have the same faces as the men who died there. Don’t look too close.”

  I don’t respond.

  The old man chuckles. “We’d make fine wine down there, you and me.”

  I reach into my coat, pull out a pouch of coins. Offer it. He shakes his head. “Not for gold. I do this so that someone makes it.”

  I press it into his palm. “I won’t need it down there.”

  He stills. Laughs again. “A man who carries death like a shadow,” he mutters. “And a voice like stone grinding in its sleep, you carry a conscious most lack.”

  Mother mistook my voice for Father’s the night he left. I was six then.

  He weighs the pouch in one hand. “Alright. I accept. Just… hand me your word.”

  I wait.

  “Make it to the Golden City. Spit on its streets for me.”

  The words hook into my ribs. That’s where the bastard will be. Where he boasted I would never dare follow.

  I kick the gate open.

  The stone cracks inward into black that drinks lantern light like water.

  Ojim exhales.

  The darkness clamps shut behind me.