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 the fractured alleys with purpose, the 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 in the day. 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 in with typical performance. It wasn't just bullying. It was a show. The Forum wanted to see if Hatim would break.
He hadn't. Not completely.
Someone had 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, the whispers would spread.
But Lugal had a different appointment.
He wound past shuttered lean-tos and silent forges, deeper than most would go, to where the streets dipped like a forgotten breath. The soot here clung like guilt. Above him, the rusted bell loomed—a relic that hadn't rung in centuries, now just a landmark for those who knew where to look.
He passed beneath it, beneath the 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. And 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 tables carved from emberstone. 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 in the stone humming faintly with Akar's restless pulse.
At last, the corridor narrowed into reverence.
The door at the end 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.
They were not rulers. Not priests. Not Ancients.
Just... presence. Dressed in robes the color of soot, 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 of the figures shifted. Barely.
"You listen well."
The voice came like the breath of coal. Rough. Certain.
"You do not linger in the wrong places."
Lugal said nothing. His mouth was dry. His spine rigid.
"But tonight, you are here for something else."
A hand—gloved in old leather—moved across the table, brushing a groove worn into the emberstone. A line of many hands. A memory of touch.
"A whisper reaches us. The boy met someone."
Not a question. Not a curiosity. A statement of fact. The Forum did not ask unless it already knew.
Lugal hesitated.
Hatim's face flashed in his mind—bloodied, cornered, still trying to stand.
Loyal. Or stupid.
But the vial—the Pure Akar—was real. And so was the offer.
"Yes," he said.
"And?"
"I didn't recognize the man."
The silence that followed 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 that floated above the Crowns, untouchable and mythic. He had traced their rituals by candlelight, drawn glyphs in soot with fingers that bled.
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. His fingers brushed the stone wall on his way out—rough and hot, pulsing with Akar beneath. This place had once echoed with argument, with policy, with dreams.
Now, it breathed secrets.
The Sunken Forum no longer belonged to voices.
It belonged to the silence that survived them.
Lugal emerged into the open like a diver from deep water. The ash above caught him again, clinging to his shoulders, his breath. The city roared on, oblivious and eternal.
Tomorrow, he would begin.
He would infiltrate the Sanctums. He would find the man. He would learn the truth.
And he would bring it back.
For power.
For the Forum.
For himself.
But even now, as he walked through the living streets of Embermark, 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.