The rain didn't stop.
It fell like ash. Cold, clinging, and dirty. Southdell didn't look like a city. It looked like a graveyard no one had the heart to bury.
Bent signs. Hollow-eyed vendors. Walls stitched together with rusted plate and spiritwood. The buildings groaned with every gust of wind like they were still deciding whether to collapse or wait for someone else to.
Braken adjusted the cracked pistol on his hip and scanned the plaza. Spirits flickered in gutter lanterns. No real light, just ghost-embers — half-burnt fragments of mana left behind by the dead.
Tali stood beside him, her coat three days soaked through, her hands under her arms.
"This is Southdell?" she murmured.
Braken nodded. "Better than I pictured."
She gave him a look. "That's not a compliment."
"It ain't meant to be."
⸻
They walked through puddles thick with oil and spell residue, past guild halls that looked like butcher shops and market tents rigged with bone charms. One stall sold mana cigarettes dipped in dreamroot. Another hawked "black vein elixirs" — half-poison, half-fix.
But no one looked too close. Because in Southdell, staring too long meant you wanted something.
And wanting something got you cut.
They ducked into a half-roofed tavern built inside the husk of an old forge. A rune-lock clicked open as they entered — broken, but still flashing red.
Inside: low voices, bruised tables, a ceiling fan spinning like it was afraid to fall.
No one looked up.
Not even the barkeep — a half-blind woman with ritual scars curling down her neck. She just said, "Weapons on the counter or get cursed."
Braken placed his pistol slow. Tali set her throwing knives down like whispers. The woman nodded and poured muddy tea into two rust-brown mugs.
"Room's two embers."
"We don't got coin."
"Then sleep in the alley."
Braken reached into his bag and pulled out the slum-made medallion — iron, stamped with an old outlaw crest. He set it down, staring her in the eye.
"This worth a night?"
The barkeep's one good eye twitched. She slid one of the mugs closer.
"You get till dawn."
Braken nodded. "Appreciate it."
They sat. The tea tasted like root rot and regret.
⸻
Tali leaned close. "How are we supposed to build anything here?"
Braken looked past the broken walls, into the street — where desperate men sparred with wooden staves under flickering ward-lights. A woman bled from the mouth while laughing into a bowl of fire-wine. A limping man with no arms was training two kids how to punch.
He gestured with his chin. "You see it?"
Tali followed his gaze. "See what?"
"The hunger."
"…You want to recruit these people?"
"I want to teach 'em how to bite back."
Tali shook her head, half-laughing. "You really think someone like you can become something here?"
"No," Braken said.
Then he smirked.
"But someone like us?"
⸻
The door burst open.
Three men entered. Tattooed arms. No uniforms. Scarred fists. One had his shirt half-burned — recent fight. Their eyes locked on Braken and Tali.
"You the one who dropped Tullik's boys by the river?" the tallest asked. His voice was slow. Tired. Dangerous.
Braken didn't answer.
"That was a warning crew," the man continued. "Not meant to die. Meant to scare."
Braken stood, quietly.
Tali moved with him.
The man took one step forward.
"You don't know how it works here. You don't get to walk in and—"
Braken punched him in the throat.
Fast. Clean. The man collapsed, choking.
The other two moved — but Tali was faster. She spun low, slicing a heel tendon with her boot-blade. The third froze — then backed off, hands up.
Braken grabbed the coughing man by the collar. Pulled him close.
"You wanna talk order, talk to House Caelis," he hissed. "I ain't here to follow nothing."
The man gurgled, "What are you then?"
Braken dropped him.
And answered loud enough for the tavern to hear:
"I'm the first king of nothing. And I'm taking this city from the dirt up."
⸻
That night, they didn't sleep in the alley.
They slept in the old forge's back room, breathing smoke and hope and silence.
Outside, word spread.
Two outsiders. No guild. No sigils. No crest.
But they beat Tullik's boys and walked into Southdell like it was theirs.
The streets started whispering.
Whispers turned into that they have fucked up and shouldn't have went against the tullik boys and that they haven't paid entry fee taxes nothing braken and tali doesn't know what's to come.