The forge was exactly as Thal remembered — an open, cavernous space with the roof removed to accommodate his height. Joren's anvil sat in one corner, cold now, tools arranged in meticulous order on the walls. The heat of the day's work still lingered in the stones, radiating upward into the afternoon air.
Merek stood near the centre, measuring tapes draped around his neck like a scholar's chains. He held a bundle of dark fabric and gestured toward the rough-hewn table where the rest of Thal's kit lay arranged.
"Good," Merek said, not bothering with greetings. "I thought perhaps you'd decided to go naked through the city after all. Trousers first — cut loose for movement, but they'll stay where they need to."
Thal stripped off his makeshift kilt without ceremony. Merek took the worn fabric, examined it, set it aside. "We worked this into the chest piece. Joren reinforced the stitching."
The trousers were dark wool, cut fuller in the leg than Thal expected but snug at the waist. They moved with him. The chest piece followed — his old kilt transformed, sewn into a sleeveless hooded garment, the original material backed with sturdier cloth, black edging running along the seams. It left his arms free, the hood falling heavy against his shoulders.
"Walk," Merek said. "I need to see how it all moves together."
Thal walked the length of the forge and back. The trousers shifted easily with his stride, the chest piece stayed cantered, the boots Joren had finished that morning — heavy leather, steel-banded at the toes — struck the forge floor with a solid, authoritative sound. He stopped at the far wall and stood there a moment, looking at his hands — no blood on them, no dust, nothing that needed cleaning. Just hands.
"Good," Merek pronounced. "It'll hold."
"Then we're done here," Thal said.
Valen fell into step beside him as they emerged into the fading afternoon light. The Street of Bronze stretched before them, workshops closing for the evening, apprentices sweeping thresholds.
"Where to now?" Valen asked.
"The safehouse," Thal said. "I need to—" He stopped, that same refusal to name what he needed. To see that Neo was safe. To stand in the same room and pretend he hadn't shattered everything between them. To be near, even if he couldn't be close.
"Yeah," Valen said softly. "I know."
They hadn't gone twenty paces when a figure detached from the shadows between two shuttered workshops.
Commander Elira leaned against the stone wall, her tarnished silver armor dulled by the twilight, the long scar bisecting her face a pale line against her weathered skin. Her glaive rested across her shoulders, and her single good eye tracked Thal with the sharp assessment of a woman who'd seen too much war to be impressed by size alone.
"New clothes," she said. "Good. The kilt was starting to look like a casualty of war."
Thal stopped. His golden eyes narrowed but he said nothing.
Valen stepped forward. "Elira. Still holding the city together?"
"Barely," she said, pushing off the wall and moving into the centre of the street. "Two hours of telling the Merchant Council it was a gas line rupture and spontaneous masonry failure. I'm running out of lies." She stepped closer, her voice dropping. "What happened back there? The truth. Not the song and dance you gave my sergeants."
Valen glanced at Thal, then back. "There's a threat to the city. Bigger than a street murder. Bigger than the Rupture."
"How big?"
"Big enough that we're keeping it quiet," Valen said. "Panic would make it worse. Much worse."
Elira's jaw tightened. "You don't get to decide what my city can handle."
"Commander Eric knows," Thal said. "Speak to him. He'll tell you what you need to know."
"Eric," Elira said, and her tone shifted immediately — respect replacing frustration. "He's at the eastern barricade." She looked at Thal sharply. "If this is serious enough to pull him from that..."
"It is," Valen said quietly.
Elira studied them both, her single eye flicking between their faces. "If Eric vouches for your silence, I'll accept it. For now." She paused. "But I want a briefing by dawn. If he's risking my city on your word, I deserve to know why."
"The woman from the shop — the redhead with the spectacles — she's terrified," Elira continued, her voice lower. "Won't stop shaking. Keeps asking if the giant with the golden eyes is coming back." She looked at Thal. "She thinks you're a monster."
"She's right to be scared," Thal said.
"Of you?"
"Of everything." His hands curled into fists at his sides. "The boy is safe. That's what matters. Talk to Eric."
Elira held his gaze for a long moment, then nodded once — sharp, military. "Fine. But if another crater appears in my district, you bring me answers before the Church does. Understood?"
"Understood," Thal said.
She turned to Valen. "And you. Stop looking at me like I'm about to arrest you. If I were, I'd have done it hours ago."
Valen smiled, though it didn't reach his eyes. "Old habits."
"Old stupidity," she corrected. She started to turn, then stopped. "Oh, and that shopkeeper — Sera, the one with The Violet Measure — she was muttering something about Black Hollow Remedies. Claims they're moving corrupted product into the district." Elira shook her head. "Probably just jealous they're outselling her on fever tonics. You know how these alchemist rivalries get."
Thal's eyes narrowed slightly. "What exactly did she say?"
"Didn't listen long enough to care," Elira said, already walking away. "I've got actual crimes to worry about."
At the corner, she paused and looked back over her shoulder. "Two hours," she said again. "Next time, I might not be able to hold them off at all."
Then she was gone.
Valen exhaled, running a hand through his blond hair. "She knows we're holding back."
"Everyone holds back," Thal said, resuming his walk. "It's the only way to survive."
They walked in silence after that. When they reached Jason's inn, the lion's head sign swaying in the evening breeze, Thal pushed open the door without pausing. The warmth spilled out around them, and they stepped inside, leaving the dark street behind.
The inn stood shuttered from the street, the carved lion's head sign turned backward against its chains. No light spilled from the door, yet Thal could see the faint glow of firelight bleeding through the gaps in the shuttered windows, and shadows moving within.
Valen tried the latch. Locked.
He rapped twice, paused, then three times more. A bolt scraped back, and Jason's face appeared in the crack — grim and watchful. He said nothing, just stepped aside, then threw the bolt again behind them with a solid thunk.
The common room was transformed. No laughter. No clinking mugs. The long table sat under a single hanging lamp turned low, casting the gathered figures in shades of amber and black.
Neo sat at the far end, his broad shoulders hunched, staring into a mug of cold tea he hadn't touched. His jaw was set, his brown eyes fixed on the table's scarred surface, distant, hollowed out, still reeling from the wall. He didn't look up when Thal entered.
Alinda sat beside him, rigid as a drawn blade. Her white hair fell loose around her pale face, crimson eyes lifting immediately to meet Thal's. There was no teasing in her gaze now — only a hard, protective warning that said don't you dare make this worse.
Tar filled the corner bench, his massive bovine head bowed so low his horns nearly scraped the wood. The minotaur's single eye remained fixed on his clasped hands. He looked diminished — a mountain crumbling under the weight of its own failure. When Thal moved past, Tar didn't look up. Didn't rumble. Just sat in his shame like a cloak.
Luken sat near them, his wiry frame tense, fingers drumming an anxious rhythm against the tabletop.
But Nyra was already moving before the bolt had finished sliding home. She crossed the room with quick, hunter's strides, her silver hair catching the lamplight, stopping in front of Thal and Valen with her arms crossed tight across her chest.
"What happened?" she demanded, low and urgent. She glanced past them toward the door, then over her shoulder at the hunched figure at the far end of the table. Her shoulders dropped slightly but the tension didn't leave her frame. "He's not alright. What did you do to him?"
"Nyra," Valen started, hands raised.
Her voice rose slightly. Luken stopped drumming. She stepped closer to Thal, crimson eyes burning up at him. "He looks like he's been shattered. Alinda looks like she's ready to kill someone, and Tar hasn't looked up since we got here. What happened out there?"
Thal met her gaze, his golden eyes flat and exhausted. "He knows," Thal said quietly. "He knows what he is."
Nyra's brow furrowed. "He already knew he was Kruu'Voth. We all knew that. What—"
"Leave it be, Nyra," Thal said, stepping around her.
She let him go but her eyes stayed on Neo. Then she looked Thal up and down, taking in the new sleeveless hood, the black-edged chest piece, the steel-banded boots, forcing a lighter note into the heavy air. "At least you got the fitting done. Look at you — all dressed up and nowhere to go but into more trouble."
She glanced toward Alinda, a mischievous tilt to her head. "What do you think, Alinda? Doesn't he clean up nice? Usually you've got some comment about his assets by now."
Alinda didn't look up from Neo. Her hand remained on the boy's arm, protective and still. When she spoke, her voice was flat, stripped of its usual edge.
"Yeah," she said. "It looks good."
Nyra opened her mouth. Closed it. Sat down.
Thal stood at the table's edge, his shadow falling across the wood. He looked at Neo — at the rigid set of the boy's jaw, at the way his hand kept drifting to the gem beneath his shirt. The argument had already happened. The words had already been said, up on that wall, with the wind screaming and the city spread out below them. Now there was only the aftermath.
Without a word, he turned and walked back toward the door. Jason looked up from behind the bar, surprised, but said nothing as Thal lifted the bolt and stepped out into the night. The door closed behind him with a soft click.
Valen watched him go, then looked at the others. "He'll be back," he said quietly. "Eventually."
Outside, the night air hit like cold water. Thal walked without choosing direction, letting the new boots find their own path—solid, certain steps leading nowhere in particular. The city's labyrinth opened around him, familiar and foreign at once. The boots struck cobblestone, then packed earth, then cobblestone again, and somewhere in that rhythm he almost forgot why he'd left.
Almost.
He had gone perhaps two streets when he saw him.
To anyone passing, the man was unremarkable — slight build, dark hair, leaning against a doorframe with his arms folded, watching the street with idle patience. The kind of face that dissolved the moment you looked away. Two merchants walked past him without a glance.
Thal stopped.
Beneath the illusion, something else entirely stood in that doorway. Not human. Not close. The shape of it pressed against the borrowed face like a hand inside a glove, and the eyes — even wearing a stranger's features — couldn't quite hide what burned behind them. Black sclera. Purple iris. Patient and luminous in the dark.
Velmyn smiled. The merchant's face did the work of it, but the smile was his. Thal knew that smile.
"Walk away," Thal said.
"Not tonight." Velmyn pushed off the doorframe and glanced up the street toward a narrow alley between a closed cooper's workshop and a chandler's. "There's a courtyard through there. Quiet." He looked back, something in his expression sitting uncomfortably between amusement and urgency. "I'm not asking for long."
"I have nothing to say to you."
"No," Velmyn agreed. "But I have things to say to you." A pause. "I'm asking, Thal. I could have made this considerably more inconvenient."
The street was quiet around them. A cat crossed between two barrels. Somewhere above, a shutter banged in the wind.
"The courtyard," Thal said. "You have until I decide to leave."
Something moved through Velmyn's expression. Not relief. Not triumph. He turned and moved toward the alley without checking whether Thal followed.
He didn't need to.
Thal followed.
The alley was narrow enough that his shoulders nearly brushed both walls, opening after twenty paces into a small courtyard — a forgotten space between four buildings, a dead fountain at its centre ringed by cracked stone benches. No windows looked down into it. No lamplight reached it. Just the cold open sky above and the distant murmur of the city beyond the walls.
Velmyn stopped at the fountain's edge and turned. He dropped the borrowed face — not dramatically, just let it go, the human features dissolving until what stood in the courtyard was unmistakably Kruu'Voth, black sclera and purple iris catching what little light existed.
Then his gaze went slightly distant.
Not vacant — occupied. The particular quality of a man listening to a second conversation running beneath this one, his attention split between the courtyard and somewhere else entirely. When it returned, something had shifted in his expression — not his own feeling, something heavier wearing his face.
"He's disappointed," Velmyn said, his voice carrying that heavier register. "He thought, after everything — after Kel, after Quincy — that you'd finally be done with them."
Thal said nothing.
Velmyn's gaze went distant again, and when it returned the weight had deepened. "You know what they are. You've always known. You've stood over the bodies. You've watched them burn Kruul out of cities and call it cleansing and you've never once believed they were worth defending." His head tilted fractionally. "You don't even believe it now. You're just performing."
The wind moved through the courtyard.
Thal looked at the dead fountain.
Velmyn let the silence sit, and there was nothing uncomfortable in him as he did. He watched Thal the way someone watched weather — with complete interest and no stake in the outcome. His purple eyes moved across Thal's face with open curiosity, cataloguing.
"She didn't judge a race by its individuals." The flatness again, precise, and beneath it something that had once been genuine hurt before it became this. "He learned that from her. He learned it, and she died for it. And you're still carrying it around like it proved her right."
Thal's jaw tensed.
Velmyn's gaze went inward briefly, then returned entirely his own — and now the enjoyment was undisguised, the particular pleasure of a man watching something exquisitely painful from a very comfortable distance. "He does have a point," Velmyn said lightly, his own voice now, warm in the way that had nothing to do with kindness. "You don't believe what you're doing. I can see it from here. He can see it from considerably further." He tilted his head. "Must be exhausting. Acting against your own instincts for the sake of a philosophy you inherited from someone who isn't here to defend it."
"She doesn't need defending," Thal said.
"No," Velmyn agreed, pleasantly. "She's dead."
Thal's eyes moved to Velmyn's face then — slowly, with a quality of attention that made the courtyard feel smaller. Velmyn held the gaze without flinching, without dropping the smile, with the serene indifference of something that had long since stopped measuring the danger of rooms it walked into.
The moment passed.
Thal looked back at the fountain.
Velmyn's attention drifted inward, and when the heavier register returned it was stripped of everything that wasn't cold.
"Quincy's mercy was the most human thing about her." Flat. Delivered like a fact. "And it killed her the way human things do. And you know that. You've always known that. And you're still standing in a city full of the people who would have lit the fire themselves, calling it protection."
The words dropped into the courtyard and stayed there.
Thal stood very still.
Velmyn watched him absorb it with open delight, head tilted, unhurried. "You know what I find most interesting?" Entirely his own voice now. "He was raised by you. Everything he became — the stubbornness, the certainty, the conviction that justice means something — that's yours. You built that." His purple eyes caught the dark, luminous and steady. "He just stopped apologizing for what he is—"
Thal's hand moved.
Not fast — or rather, fast in the way that things that don't need to hurry still arrived before you expected them. His open palm drove through Velmyn's skull with a sound like a melon splitting, the stone wall behind catching what came through. The body dropped without ceremony, boneless, the borrowed face already dissolving back into nothing as it hit the courtyard floor.
Silence.
Then, from above, a slow exhale of breath — almost appreciative.
"That one hurt."
Thal looked up.
Velmyn sat on the rooftop edge three storeys above, legs dangling over the drop, elbows resting on his knees, purple eyes catching the dark from a comfortable distance. He looked entirely unbothered, the way a man looked when he'd already decided he was safe before the conversation started.
"I felt that one," he said. "Genuinely." He pressed two fingers briefly to his temple, mock-solemn. "You're welcome for the honesty, by the way. Most people don't have the courage to say it."
Thal said nothing.
Velmyn studied him from above, the smile still in place, unhurried and warm in the way that had nothing to do with warmth. "I do hope you stay," he said. "I mean that sincerely. Whatever he's building, whatever comes next—" he tilted his head, purple eyes luminous in the dark, "—I'd very much like to see what you do when it arrives at your door."
He stood, easy and unhurried, and stepped backward off the roof's edge into the dark beyond.
Gone.
Thal stood alone in the dead courtyard, blood drying on his open hand.
Quincy's name sat in the air around him, uninvited, patient.