Dawn was awake before the ring above the city had fully shifted to gold.
He lay there for a while staring at the ceiling, listening to the faint pulse of the crystal walls. Elara was still asleep in the chair across from him, her breathing slow and even. The golden-haired man stood by the window exactly where he'd been when Dawn had closed his eyes, or at least that's how it seemed. Dawn wasn't entirely sure the man ever actually moved.
Noir and Rias hadn't stirred.
He sat up quietly, rolled his shoulders, and reached for his coat.
The pull was still there.
He'd felt it since yesterday, that faint thread of something in the air, too deliberate to be residual arcana, too foreign to belong to any sequencer he'd encountered. It had been easy to push aside in the Guild, easier still when exhaustion had finally caught up with him. But now, in the quiet of early morning with nothing pressing on his attention, it was harder to ignore.
He glanced at the golden-haired man. "I'm going out."
The man didn't turn from the window. "Don't cause problems."
Dawn paused at the door. "When have I ever caused problems?"
Silence.
"...Don't answer that," Dawn muttered, and stepped out.
The merchant district was already alive.
Even at this hour, whatever hour it was by Crysallis's strange internal reckoning, the streets hummed with activity. Stalls were being set up along the crystal-paved roads, vendors calling out in half a dozen languages Dawn didn't speak. The smell hit him first, spice and smoke and something sweet he couldn't identify, layered over the ever-present mineral sharpness of the city itself.
He pulled his coat a little tighter and started walking.
From the inn the district had looked vibrant. Alive. The kind of place that sustained itself on the constant flow of travelers passing through on their way deeper into Flauria or back out into the wider world.
Up close it was something different.
The stalls were busy but the faces behind them weren't warm. They were watchful. The kind of watchful that came not from curiosity but from years of learning that in a place like this, not paying attention was how you ended up with nothing. Children weaved between the legs of adults not playing but working, carrying parcels, running messages, eyes too old for their faces.
Dawn walked slowly, taking it in.
The crystal here was different from the upper levels he'd glimpsed from the inn window. Up there the spires were tall and polished, the light clean and even. Down here the crystal walls were dimmer, some of them cracked, the light they gave off flickering faintly like a candle in wind. The floating platforms that glided overhead carried goods and people to the wealthier sections of the city, and from down here Dawn could see quite clearly that none of them stopped in this district.
He filed that away quietly.
The pull in the air was stronger here. Not overwhelming, more like a thread tugging at the edge of his awareness, persistent and directionless. Whatever was causing it, it wasn't close. But it wasn't far either.
He kept walking.
He found them by accident.
A group of six, clustered around a low table outside one of the smaller stalls, sharing what looked like food from a communal pot. Human, mostly, though one had the faint pointed ears of a half-breed.
Dawn couldn't quite place his feeling. They were loud in the comfortable way of people who'd known each other long enough not to bother filtering themselves.
Dawn would have walked straight past them if one hadn't stuck a foot out to block a cart that was about to roll into him from behind.
He stopped. Looked down at the foot. Looked up at its owner, a broad-shouldered man with a shaved head and a scar running from his jaw to his collarbone, who was already looking back at his food like nothing had happened.
"...Thanks," Dawn said.
The man shrugged. "Cart would've taken your leg off. Happened to Pell last month."
"Still hasn't forgiven me for it," said someone else at the table, presumably Pell, a wiry woman with paint-stained fingers who didn't look up from her bowl.
Dawn glanced at the cart as it rumbled past, loaded with what looked like slabs of raw crystal the size of his torso. He watched it go, then looked back at the group.
None of them had arcana. Not a trace. He'd have felt it immediately, even the faintest star left a signature in the air if you knew what to look for. These six had nothing. No inner world bleeding through, no residual energy, no constellation pressing against the edges of their presence.
Just people.
He stood there for a second longer than he meant to.
*People like that,* he thought, eyes drifting briefly across their faces. *Born without the potential of stars. How pitiful.*
He turned and kept walking.
Behind him, the broad-shouldered man watched him go. Said nothing. But his eyes stayed on Dawn's back a beat longer than casual interest would explain. Across the table, Pell set down her bowl.
"Sequencer?" she asked quietly.
"Young one," the man replied. "Strong though."
Nobody said anything else. They went back to their food.
But the man's eyes didn't quite return to his bowl.
Dawn moved deeper into the district.
The further he walked from the main thoroughfare the more the city's shine faded. The crystal underfoot was duller here, some of it grey and lifeless, drained, Dawn realized, like whatever energy the city ran on had simply stopped reaching this far. The stalls gave way to makeshift structures, walls of salvaged crystal and scavenged metal that leaned against each other for support. The people here moved differently too, slower, heavier, with the particular kind of tiredness that sleep didn't fix.
He passed an alley where three men were settling what looked like a dispute with their fists and nobody around them even looked up.
He passed a wall covered in markings — names, Dawn realized after a moment. Hundreds of them carved into the crystal surface, some fresh, some so old the edges had smoothed over.
He stopped in front of it.
*A memorial?* he thought. *Or something else.*
He stood there long enough that a passing child glanced up at him curiously before a woman yanked the child along without breaking stride.
Dawn looked at the names for another moment, then moved on.
The pull was stronger now. Not close enough to pinpoint but close enough that he was certain it wasn't residual. Something, someone, was out there carrying mana through these streets as naturally as breathing. A Celestian, moving through the merchant district of an underground city at the edge of the world.
He wasn't going to chase it. That wasn't why he'd come out here.
But he noted it. Filed it away with everything else.
He heard it before he saw it.
Not the sound of the crowd, that was constant, a low undercurrent of voices and movement that the district ran on. This was different. A sharp sound, repeated, cutting through the noise with the particular quality of something that made the people nearby look away rather than toward it.
Dawn slowed.
He rounded a corner and stopped.
The space opened up into a small irregular plaza, the kind that formed naturally in a city that had grown without a plan, buildings pressing in from three sides, a gap in the middle that had become a makeshift market. Stalls lined the edges. People moved through them with their eyes down.
In the center, a man stood over a child.
He was large, not in the way of someone who trained but in the way of someone who'd spent a lifetime doing heavy work and eating well while others didn't. His clothes were expensive by the district's standards, the kind of expensive that was meant to be noticed. A ring on each finger. A chain at his belt that clinked faintly when he moved.
The child was small. A girl, maybe eight or nine, with matted hair and bare feet on the cold crystal ground. She'd dropped something, a crate of some kind, its contents scattered across the plaza floor, and the man was making sure she understood that was unacceptable.
Dawn watched.
The first hit he saw. The second. The people around the plaza kept moving, kept their eyes down, kept their voices at the same low murmur as before. Like this was weather. Like it was just something that happened.
Dawn's jaw tightened.
He noticed the collar around the girl's neck. Thin metal, etched with markings he didn't recognise, fitted too tightly for something that had probably been put on when she was smaller.
*A slave,* he realised.
The word sat in his chest like something cold.
He stood there for three more seconds. Told himself it wasn't his business. Told himself he didn't know this city, didn't know its rules, didn't know what stepping in would cost. Told himself he was already drawing too much attention just by existing here and the last thing he needed was to make it worse.
The man hit her again.
Dawn was already moving.
He crossed the plaza in a few strides, not running, not drawing his weapon, just walking with the kind of purpose that parted the crowd without him having to ask. He stopped two feet from the man and said nothing.
The man turned, slow and annoyed, clearly not used to being interrupted.
He looked Dawn up and down. Took in the coat, the calm expression, the complete absence of fear.
"You lost, boy?"
"No," Dawn said.
The man's eyes narrowed. "Then walk away. This doesn't concern you."
Dawn glanced down at the girl. She'd pressed herself back against the scattered crate, knees pulled to her chest, watching him with eyes that had stopped expecting help a long time ago.
He looked back at the man.
"It does now," he said quietly.
The man stared at him for a long moment. Then something shifted in his expression, not fear exactly, but the particular recalculation of someone who'd just noticed that the thing in front of them was harder than it looked.
The air around Dawn hadn't changed. He hadn't reached for his arcana, hadn't let his stars bleed through. He was just standing there.
But something in the way he stood there was enough.
The man's jaw worked silently for a moment. Then he took a step back. Just one. But it was enough.
"...You'll regret this," he said. His voice had lost some of its weight.
"Maybe," Dawn replied. "Walk away."
The man looked at him for another long second. Then he turned, straightened his coat, and walked, quickly, without looking back, the chain at his belt clinking with every step until the crowd swallowed him.
The plaza exhaled.
Dawn stood there a moment, then looked down at the girl.
She hadn't moved. She was still watching him with those same eyes, cautious, unreadable, waiting for whatever came next in the way of someone who'd learned that what came next was rarely good.
Dawn looked around the plaza. The crowd had resumed its usual rhythm but the eyes hadn't. Vendors pretending to arrange their stalls. Travelers suddenly very interested in the crystal walls. A cluster of people near the far entrance who weren't even pretending, just watching openly, murmuring to each other.
He'd made a scene.
He looked back at the girl.
She hadn't run. Hadn't spoken. Just sat there on the cold crystal ground surrounded by the contents of a dropped crate, a collar around her neck, waiting.
Dawn exhaled slowly through his nose.
*I didn't think this through*, he thought.
He crouched down to her level, keeping his distance, and said nothing for a moment. Then... "You hurt?"
The girl stared at him.
No answer.
He hadn't expected one.
He straightened up and looked out across the plaza again, at the watching eyes, at the dim crystal walls, at the pale flicker of the ring far above casting its thin light down through layers of city into a district that felt like it existed specifically to be forgotten.
This was Crysallis. The entrance to Flauria. A city of crystal and light and a king who ruled it all.
And in its merchant district, in the open, in front of everyone, a child had been beaten for dropping a crate and every single person had looked away.
Dawn's expression didn't change. But something behind his eyes did, quiet and settled, the way things did when you stopped being surprised and started simply understanding.
*So that's how it is here.*
He slipped his hands into his pockets.
Above the city, unnoticed by anyone in the plaza, a figure stood on a high crystal ledge overlooking the merchant district below. Blue hair caught the dim light. Behind round glasses, sharp eyes tracked the scene in the plaza with quiet interest.
A slow smile spread across her face.
She hadn't expected to find anyone from the academy out here.
But then again, she thought, watching Dawn stand there in the middle of a plaza full of staring strangers with a slave child at his feet and not a single trace of concern on his face.
Dawn had always had a habit of ending up exactly where things were about to get interesting.