The afternoon sun cast long shadows across Osov's cobblestone streets as Charlemagne stepped off the tram at the Merchant's Quarter station. The city sprawled before him—a maze of Gothic spires and baroque facades, their stone faces weathered by centuries of Orient summers and harsh continental winters.
He wandered without particular purpose, hands shoved deep in his uniform pockets, the white dove sigil catching occasional glints of light. The downtown district was alive with the peculiar energy of a capital city: street vendors hawking crystallized mana potions in glass vials, their contents swirling with ethereal colors; a group of third-year students from a rival academy arguing loudly outside a tea house; the distant cry of a strider from the commercial stables two blocks over.
Maria's lunch sat contentedly in his stomach—some kind of herb-crusted chicken with roasted vegetables that had been far better than anything the academy break room offered. Her friends had been insufferable with their teasing, but she'd taken it in stride, only her reddening ears betraying any embarrassment. He'd have to remember to thank her properly tomorrow. Maybe actually wake up on time for once.
The thought made him yawn again.
He paused at a shop window displaying the latest issue of Strider Racing Weekly, the cover featuring last week's champion—a magnificent rust-colored bird with iridescent green tail feathers. The Callosum Stables race from last night seemed like days ago now, though his lighter coin purse reminded him of his losses.
"Should've bet on Crimson Wind instead of that temperamental mare," he muttered to himself.
A clock tower chimed the fifth hour. The streets were beginning to fill with the evening crowd—bureaucrats from the Imperial Administrative buildings, merchants closing their shops, and students like himself with nowhere particular to be.
As we continue to walked though the streets our blade at our side with a lazy expressions we came in front of a small stall with a flap as a cloth and pushing it we saw it was a ramen stall and we quickly order some meal.
Searching in our pockets to find only our last bronze 12 coins which we paid for a simple ramen, it was unfortunately we couldn't get anything with meat and so we had to contents with just getting some vegetable.
____
The ramen was disappointing—limp noodles floating in a broth that tasted more of salt than anything substantive, a few sad vegetables bobbing at the surface like shipwreck survivors. Charlemagne ate methodically, his chopsticks moving with the kind of resigned efficiency that came from seven years of frequently empty pockets and poor financial decisions. The twelve bronze coins had been his last, and the strider races had taken everything else.
The stall was cramped, lit by a single flickering mana-lamp that cast everything in a sickly amber glow. The proprietor, a hunched man with burn scars covering half his face, minded his own business behind a cloud of steam rising from his cooking pots. Two other patrons sat at the far end, dock workers by the look of them, arguing quietly about union rates.
When the woman entered, Charlemagne noticed her peripherally—the way anyone notices a beautiful woman entering a confined space—but kept his attention on his disappointing meal. She was tall, probably five-ten, with legs that seemed to go on forever beneath a fashionable split skirt that was decidedly not standard Orient fashion. Her glasses caught the lamplight, obscuring her eyes. Professional. Deliberate.
She sat two seats away, close enough to be conversational but far enough to maintain propriety. "The usual, " she said to the proprietor, her voice carrying the precise diction of someone educated in the capital's better districts.
Charlemagne slurped his noodles.
Then, barely audible beneath the hiss of the cooking pots: "Der Himmel brennt bei Sonnenuntergang."
His chopsticks paused halfway to his mouth. German. Specifically, the challenge phrase he'd taught Ruby during one of those long nights in the abandoned monastery they'd used as a base when he was—what, eight? Nine? He'd been going through a phase where he'd thought speaking in another language made their little two-person bandit-hunting operation seem more professional. More mysterious.
He'd been an idiot.
He resumed eating, giving no outward sign he'd heard. Two can play at being professional.
The woman's order arrived—something with actual meat in it, he noted with mild envy. She ate delicately, each movement precise. Then, in the same low murmur that could've been her talking to herself: "Die Raben sammeln sich im Westen, sieben Tage lang. Der weise Fuchs bleibt in seinem Bau."
The ravens gather in the west, seven days long. The wise fox stays in his den.
He nearly laughed. Ruby had always been dramatic. Even at eleven years old, freshly rescued from that nightmare of a cave—God, that flesh thing, he could still smell it sometimes when he had nightmares—she'd had a flair for the theatrical. He'd thought it was trauma response. Maybe it had been, initially.
The woman paid—not just for her meal but for his as well, sliding coins across the counter with the kind of casual wealth that made Charlemagne acutely aware of his empty pockets—and left without another word. The bell above the door chimed softly.
Charlemagne finished his ramen, scraped the bowl clean, and considered the warning.
Chaos tonight. Hide for a week.
He thought about Ruby as he'd last seen her, about six months ago. She'd shown up at his dormitory window at three in the morning—because apparently, doors were too pedestrian for her—babbling excitedly about "interest rates" and "fractional reserve banking" and "revolutionary new fabric weaving techniques that will transform the textile industry." He'd been half-asleep and mostly just nodded along while she'd paced his small room like a caged strider, her red hair wild, her eyes alight with whatever manic genius was possessing her that week.
"That's nice, Ruby," he'd said, patting her head like she was an overexcited puppy. "Very creative. Maybe focus on, I don't know, graduating primary school first? Learning to talk to people without the secret code phrases?"
She'd pouted at him, called him a "hopelessly mundane normie"—whatever that meant, some phrase from his old world she'd picked up—and disappeared back into the night.
He'd gone back to sleep.
Now, standing outside the ramen stall as the evening crowd thickened, he tried to parse what "chaos tonight" might mean. Ruby had always been prone to exaggeration. When she was fourteen, she'd warned him about "massive upheaval in the southern provinces" that turned out to be a minor trade dispute. When she was fifteen, she'd insisted he avoid the Merchant's Quarter for a month because of "impending financial catastrophe" that never materialized.
The girl was brilliant, no question—he'd taught her everything he could remember from his previous life, from basic Earth history to what little he recalled about science and mathematics, and she'd absorbed it all like a sponge in a rainstorm. IQ probably off the charts.
But she also had the social awareness of a particularly enthusiastic brick and the tendency to see patterns that weren't there.
Still.
He looked up at the darkening sky, where the first stars were beginning to appear above Osov's spires. The Imperial Palace loomed in the distance, its countless windows beginning to glow with mana-light.
Somewhere in this city, Ruby was apparently orchestrating... something. A coup? That seemed excessive, even for her.
Although.
He frowned, trying to remember the last few times she'd visited. She'd mentioned something about "networking with the reform faction" and "leveraging the Chancellor's overreach to build grassroots support among the merchant guilds." He'd assumed she was talking about some kind of school project. Politics class or something for her university.
"She's probably fine," he muttered to himself, adjusting his sword belt. "Just being dramatic. As usual."
A group of Imperial Guardsmen marched past, their movements crisp and purposeful. More than usual for a Tuesday evening. He watched them disappear around a corner toward the administrative district.
"Definitely fine," he repeated, more convincingly.
The smart thing would be to go back to the academy. Maybe even hide in his dorm for a week, like Ruby suggested. But the academy was boring, and his roommate was insufferable, and Maria had spent all of lunch break looking at him with those concerned green eyes that made him feel like a charity case,
and—
"I'm probably overthinking this," he said to no one in particular.
A street vendor nearby gave him an odd look.
Charlemagne shrugged and started walking, no particular destination in mind. The evening was young, his stomach was finally full, and whatever chaos Ruby had planned was probably just her usual overly-elaborate nonsense.
Probably.
In the distance, toward the western district, he heard what might have been an explosion. Or thunder. Hard to tell.
"Definitely thunder," he decided, and kept walking.