Morning in Vaeroth didn't arrive like a blessing. It arrived like a tally.
Light struck the hanging panes above the central square—glass, mirror, and thin sheets of hammered metal—and the Market of Fractured Light broke dawn into colored slivers. Red slid across wet stone. Blue crawled over faces. Gold made cheap cloth look expensive for half a heartbeat.
People liked it because it made hunger look softer.
Riko sat on the lip of the old fountain with his toy dragon tucked under one arm. His feet swung above the water-stained stone, not reaching the ground. He watched the market wake the way other kids watched street plays: with careful attention and a quiet fear of the moment the actors stopped pretending.
The grain line was already forming.
Not a riot line. Not yet. A waiting line—long, disciplined, and tense in the way animals got tense when they knew food was limited and the strongest were pretending to be patient.
A pair of clerks stood behind the grain booth with a ledger laid open between them. Ink pots. Seal wax. A stack of stamped tokens sorted into neat piles like coin.
One clerk called, "District marks forward. Tokens visible."
Another repeated, "Tokens visible. No exceptions."
"Like we're cattle," someone muttered.
A mother hissed back, "Like we're alive."
Riko's ears flicked at that. He'd heard it before—alive as a defense. Alive as an apology.
A hammer rang out—sharp and steady—from the stall near the fountain.
Kethra Stonehand worked with her shoulders squared, her face set like she'd made an agreement with pain and neither of them planned to break it today. She barked prices at a man holding a bent buckle.
"I fix it, you pay," she said. "If you want mercy, find a temple. Mercy doesn't keep my forge lit."
The man swallowed and nodded too quickly.
Kethra's eyes softened for a fraction, then hardened again when she noticed Riko watching. Without looking like she was doing it, she slid a crust of bread to the edge of her counter where a small hand could reach later.
Riko pretended not to see. He preferred gifts that came disguised.
Across the square, Garron Hale leaned against a post, watching the enforcers the way a veteran watched weather. Human. Broad shoulders. An iron arm from shoulder to wrist—built blunt, not pretty, like it had been made for siege work instead of ceremony. He flexed the metal fingers once, slow, listening to the joints whirr.
"Enforcers look jumpy," he said.
"They look unpaid," a voice replied behind him.
Maera of the Crescent Fur slid into view, hood half on, half off, like she couldn't be bothered to commit to hiding. Fox ears twitched through the illusion-charm at the edge of her hood anyway. Two slim knives sat where anyone with sense could see them.
"Underpaid enforcers," she said lightly, "are the most dangerous kind. All that authority and no gratitude."
Garron's mouth moved like it was almost a smile. "Thought criminals were the most dangerous kind."
"Oh, they are," Maera said. "We just cost extra."
Riko's gaze drifted past them, back to the line.
A boy near the middle—older than Riko, younger than Garron—held two tokens in his palm and kept glancing toward the clerks like the tokens might change if he watched them wrong. His sleeves were too thin for the season. His hands shook from cold or hunger; it was hard to tell which.
Beside him stood a woman with a patched coat and a tired face. She wasn't yelling. That was the point. She kept her voice low and her posture smaller than she needed to be, as if her body had learned that visible anger cost more than it earned.
Her name was Iri. Riko knew because she had a habit of speaking children's names gently—like she was trying to make the city remember they were human before they were hungry.
"Riko," she'd said once, handing him a bruised apple. "If things go loud, you go quiet. You hear me?"
He'd nodded. He always nodded when adults spoke like rules were shelter.
Today, Iri murmured to the boy with the tokens, "Hold both. Don't show fear. Fear makes them pick you."
The boy swallowed and tried to stop shaking.
A shadow moved through the market—quiet, clean, controlled.
Lyria Vens—Silvershard—walked along the edge of the grain line, gaze skimming the crowd like she was reading it. Her rapier sat at her hip, still and narrow, not drawn. She looked ready to help, or ready to cut, depending on which direction the day tipped.
Riko had once seen her training in an alley: three steps, pivot, a flick that didn't feel flashy so much as inevitable. Moonweave Footwork, she'd called it when she caught him staring, as if she found curiosity more forgivable than fear.
Now her eyes lingered on the clerks, then on the enforcers stationed nearby.
Her hand stayed close to her hilt.
Not on it.
Restraint, Riko thought, like it was something heavy she carried instead of something noble.
Under a faded canvas awning, Sable Crier arranged small glass vials in rows too neat for a market stall. Powders shimmered inside—blue, gold, ash-grey. He spoke to passing laborers in a voice made to sound like comfort.
"Sleep without dreams," he murmured. "Forgetfulness by the breath. Cheaper than hope. More reliable."
People paused. People listened. People with hollow eyes handed over coin like they were buying silence.
Riko didn't like Sable. The air around his stall felt wrong—not magical, not monstrous. Just… practiced. Like a man who had learned exactly how to make desperation look like choice.
Above them, on the carved balcony overlooking the square, High Warden Soryn watched.
She wore shawls instead of armor, but no one who lived in Vaeroth mistook softness for safety. Her gaze moved like a tactician counting pieces: enforcers, clerks, merchants, hungry children, the grain line, the exits.
She wasn't watching for heroics.
She was watching for pressure points.
A scribe stood half a step behind her with a thin board and a sheaf of paper. A seal stamp waited at the edge of the board like a quiet threat.
"Inventory?" Soryn asked.
The scribe swallowed. "Down again, Warden."
"How much?"
"Two wagons failed to arrive from Fallow Mill. One rerouted. One… lost. The reports say 'bandits,' but the report is also unsigned."
Soryn's jaw tightened. "Unsigned reports are how lies learn to walk."
"Council wants a statement," the scribe said. "To calm the districts."
Soryn looked down at the line. At the tokens. At the way people stood close enough to share breath but far enough to pretend they weren't a crowd.
"Give them structure," she said quietly.
The scribe blinked. "Structure?"
Soryn didn't raise her voice. She didn't need to.
"Temporary stabilization measures," she said. The words came out clean, already shaped like they belonged on a notice board. "Expanded verification. Additional patrol presence at distribution points. A curfew proposal for the Old District if unrest rises."
The scribe hesitated—just long enough to be human.
"And if unrest rises because we tighten?" he asked.
Soryn's eyes didn't leave the market.
"Then we call it prevention," she said. "And we do it anyway."
The scribe looked down, wrote fast, and tried not to look like he was writing history.
Near the market's edge, a young man in plain clothes moved between stalls with careful steps. He wasn't armed openly. He wasn't laughing. He wasn't bargaining like the others.
His eyes caught the fractured light—and for a breath they looked threaded with silver.
Riko felt the hair rise along his neck.
People to watch, he decided, and held the thought like a small knife.
The young man stopped near the grain booth, not joining the line, just observing it. He watched the clerks' hands. The tokens. The ledger. He watched like he was measuring a machine.
Then he murmured, barely audible, "This would work better if the verification happened before the line formed."
The words weren't dramatic. That was what made them dangerous.
Riko blinked and stared.
The young man didn't notice him. Or if he did, he filed Riko away like another number in the square.
His gaze moved to the enforcers, then to the posted notices from yesterday—old rules, old promises.
He frowned as if the city's math didn't balance.
Kael, he said to himself, like naming the thought would make it real. Riko didn't know how he knew. He just knew the name belonged to that kind of mind: one that organized even when it didn't mean to.
A bell rang once near the grain booth.
Not a ceremonial bell. Not a festival bell.
A clerk raised a hand. "New distribution directive," she called.
The market's noise thinned, like someone had pressed a palm against the city's mouth.
The clerk read from a parchment with the seal of the High Wardens.
"Effective immediately: provisional ration adjustment. Token validation requires district mark and registered household count. No secondary collection without written authorization. Lines will be separated by district. Enforcers will oversee compliance to prevent escalation."
A pause, just long enough for the crowd to understand the phrase to prevent escalation meant because we expect you to escalate.
A man near the back shouted, "So my sister can't pick up for my mother anymore?"
The clerk didn't answer him like a person. She answered like a system.
"Household count must match," she said. "Temporary measure."
"Temporary," someone echoed, bitter.
Iri's face tightened. The boy beside her clutched his two tokens harder, like they might dissolve under scrutiny.
An enforcer stepped forward—not threatening, not yet. Just present. A reminder.
Lyria's hand hovered closer to her hilt.
Still not on it.
Garron straightened slightly, iron fingers flexing once.
Maera's tail went still.
Sable glanced toward the grain booth and then away, like he didn't want his stall associated with hunger politics. Like he knew what hunger became when it stopped being private.
Kael watched the clerks separate the tokens into district piles, and something in his eyes settled—not relief, not anger. Recognition.
He counted under his breath. Not coins. Not friends.
People.
"How many clerks?" he murmured. "How many enforcers? How many in line?"
It wasn't heroic.
It was inevitable.
Riko hugged his toy dragon tighter.
Because the market didn't feel like it was about to explode.
It felt like it was about to be organized.
And somehow, that scared him more.
Above, on the balcony, Soryn watched the districts begin to separate—slowly, reluctantly, like a body being taught to accept a brace.
She didn't smile.
She didn't look proud.
She looked like someone who had just signed something she would justify for the rest of her life.
And in the grain line, Iri leaned down to the shaking boy and whispered, "Keep your head down."
Riko heard it anyway.
"Because once they start counting," she said, "they stop seeing faces."
The mirrors overhead scattered light across the square—shards of color sliding over people who were learning, quietly, how to become categories.
And the market, for a moment, went very still.
Not peaceful.
Just waiting.