The sun hadn't risen yet, but Val was already up and about.
She slipped through the narrow alley behind the tannery, her footsteps silent on the packed earth. The smell was awful— with the mixture of chemicals and rotting hide. but she had learned to ignore it years ago. The tannery was her morning route. And no one else came that way before dawn.
At the end of the alley, she crouched behind a stack of crates and watched.
The market square was waking up. Merchants were setting up their stalls, their voices carrying in the cold air. A baker's cart rolled past, the smell of bread made her stomach clench. She ignored it. She wasn't here for bread. She had something better in mind.
She was watching the cloth merchant at the corner stall. He was fat, slow, and kept his coin purse tied to his belt like an idiot. Every morning, he would count his stock with his back to the alley for exactly three minutes while his apprentice fetched water. This was a sweet routine.
Val had timed it. One minute, forty-seven seconds. It was a little faster than yesterday. She would have to move quick.
The apprentice disappeared toward the well. The merchant turned his fat back to his bolts of silk.
Val moved.
She crossed the square in seconds, her feet carrying her around the edge of the stall, close enough to smell the man's sweat. In a split second she squeezed her face in disgust. Her fingers found the purse, slipped the knot, lifted it free. She was gone before the merchant finished counting his reds.
She didn't run. Running would draw eyes. She had learnt from a bitter experience where she ran and she got caught and beaten. So She walked, easy and unhurried, the purse hidden beneath her coat.
Behind her, the merchant kept counting in oblivion.
---
By the time the sun cleared the rooftops, Val was three districts away, sitting on the edge of a collapsed fountain in a courtyard no one used anymore. She counted her take: twelve silver marks and a handful of cordes. Enough for food for a week. Maybe two, if she was careful.
She tucked the cordes into the pouch she kept sewn into her coat and leaned back against the crumbling stone.
The courtyard was empty, as always. The buildings around it had been abandoned for years, their windows dark, their doors were boarded. It was one of her places— her mansions one of many. She never stayed anywhere too long. She didn't really know why. Maybe it was because of him.
She pulled her knees up and rested her chin on them.
She was seventeen. And She'd been on her own for six years.
---
Her name was Valerie, but everyone decided to call her Val. Val was shorter. Easier. And It didn't sound like it belonged to anyone.
She'd been born in a village she barely remembered, somewhere in the eastern farmlands. Her mother had died when she was young—sickness, she'd been told. Her father had followed a year later. A hunting accident, or something about a Fallen Constellation. The details were fuzzy. She didn't really care plus She'd been six.
Her brother, Corin, had raised her after that. Or had tried to. He'd been twelve when their father died, already old enough to work, old enough to keep the both of them fed. They'd moved from village to town to city, always looking for better work, better pay. Corin had been kind, in his way. He'd shared what he had, made sure she ate first, told her stories at night to drown out the sounds of the streets. She'd always looked up to her big brother. Until he left.
When he'd turned seventeen, he'd left.
"I'll find something better," he had told her, standing in the doorway of the boarding house room they'd shared. "I'm tired of this life. I'll go out there I'll find a place, a place for both of us. I'll come back for you. I promise."
She'd believed him and she still did.
That had been six years ago. She hadn't seen him since.
She didn't think about it anymore. Or at least that's what she told herself.
---
The morning was cold. Val pulled her coat tighter. It was too big for her, it was a man's coat she'd taken from a wash line two winters ago. It was patched in a dozen places, and the wool worn thin at the elbows, but it was warm. And it was now hers.
She made her way to the eastern market, where the stalls were cheaper and the merchants didn't ask a lot of questions. She bought bread, dried meat, a handful of winter apples that were small and bruised but edible. She ate one as she walked, the tartness sharp on her tongue.
She kept her eyes moving. Always, that was her routine.
The city was a map of dangers she'd learned to read. The watchmen who could be bribed. And the ones who couldn't. The gangs that controlled the southern docks. The merchant's guards who'd beat a thief bloody if they caught her. The other street kids who'd slit her throat for a single silver mark if she wasn't careful.
She'd survived six years by being smarter than all of them.
---
She spent the afternoon on the rooftops above the main thoroughfare.
It was a good spot. The roof was flat, hidden behind a parapet, with a clear view of the street below. She could see the students from the academy that she had never attended. walking back from their classes, their dark uniforms crisp, their faces clean. Some of them were her age. Some were younger.
She watched them pass, and something twisted in her chest. Something that she couldn't name.
They had families. Homes. Futures that didn't involve stealing bread and sleeping in abandoned buildings.
She looked away.
---
At dusk, she found a place to sleep. An old warehouse near the river, half-collapsed, the door rusted open. No one came here. The floor was cold stone, but there was a corner sheltered from the wind, and she'd stashed a blanket there weeks ago.
She ate her bread and meat in the dark, listening to the sounds of the city outside. Voices, distant laughter, the clatter of carts on cobblestones.
She pulled up her system screen. It appeared in her vision, soft light in the darkness.
```
User: Valerie
Status: Awakened
Rank: D
Sign: Aries
Stage: Awakened
Aspect: — (pending)
Element: Fire
Special Powers: Wildfire, Ember Step, Flame Cloak
Mauri: 85/100
Experience: 73/100
Memory: —
Echo: —
Flaw: —
```
She'd awakened two years ago, in the middle of a fight she'd been losing. Three boys from the Ironhand gang had cornered her in an alley, and she'd been so angry, so terrified, that something inside her had exploded.
She'd nearly burned the whole block down.
The boys had run. She'd run too. She'd been running ever since. It wasn't normal for a peasant to awaken but for her it was so. Maybe she wasn't a normal peasant after all.
Her powers were strong—stronger than they should be, she knew. The few awakened she'd encountered had been surprised by her fire. One of them, a merchant's guard who'd tried to help her once, had said her output was closer to an astral stage than an Awakened. He'd told her to go to Zodiakos Academia for the awakened, to get training, to make something of herself.
She'd laughed in his face. The academia was for nobles. For people with families and money and futures. Not for orphans who stole to eat.
He'd given her a pitying look and left.
She'd been alone again.
--
For each person who had Awakened their was 12 stages and no human had gone past the 10th stage.
The stages were from Awakened, Stargazer, Astral,Eclipsed,Wanderer, Hollow, Eclipse, Celestial, Void‑Touched, Abyssal, Eternal, Singularity.
And some one had just told her she was already at the third stage. She laughed her brains out.
---
She lay on the cold stone, her blanket pulled tight, and stared at the ceiling. The warehouse creaked around her, settling into the night.
She thought about Corin sometimes. She wondered if he was still alive, And if he'd found what he was looking for. She wondered if he ever thought about her.
She hated that she still wondered. She wanted to stop caring. But somehow it was impossible for her to do.
She closed her eyes. Tomorrow, she'd find work. There was always something—carrying crates, cleaning stalls, running messages. Honest work, if she could get it. She had picked a new part of the city, and she'll keep her head down, and try to stay invisible.
It was what she'd always done. What she would always do. Or so she thought.
But as she drifted toward sleep, the image of those academy students came back to her. Their clean faces. Their dark uniforms. The way they walked like they belonged somewhere.
She pushed it away.
She was Val. She didn't belong anywhere.
---
She woke to noise.
Voices, low and rough, coming from the front of the warehouse. She was on her feet before her eyes were fully open, her hand closing around the knife she kept strapped to her thigh.
She crept to the edge of the collapsed wall and looked.
Three men. Hard faces, worn clothes, the kind of men who'd made the city their hunting ground. They were carrying torches, their light spilling across the warehouse floor.
One of them kicked at a pile of debris. "Heard some kid's been sleeping here. Worth something, maybe."
"Not worth the trouble," another muttered. "Come on. There's easier pickings in the market."
The first man shook his head. "Check the back. I want to be sure."
Val moved.
She slipped through the shadows, her feet finding the quietest paths, her body low. She knew this building better than they did. She knew the about gaps in the walls, the collapsed beams, And they didn't.
She reached the back window—a narrow opening that led to an alley—and slipped through just as the men's torchlight reached her corner.
She dropped into the alley and ran.
---
She didn't stop until she was across the river, in the northern district where the streets were wider and the watchmen patrolled regularly. She ducked into a doorway and caught her breath, her heart pounding.
Her hand was still on her knife.
She looked up at the sky. The stars were fading. Dawn was close.
She'd lost her blanket. Her stash of dried meat. The apples she'd saved for the next day. What an unlucky day.
She leaned her head against the doorframe and closed her eyes.
It was fine. She'd find another place. Another blanket. Another meal.
She always did.
But for a moment—just for a moment—she let herself feel tired. Not the tiredness of a sleepless night, but the deeper exhaustion of six years of homelessness, six years of hiding, six years of being no one, belonging to no one.
She thought of Corin again. She couldn't help it.
You said you'd come back.
She opened her eyes. The sky was lighter now, the first orange of sunrise bleeding through the clouds.
She pushed off from the doorframe and walked.
There was work to find. There was always work to find. And maybe, somewhere in the city, there was a blanket someone wouldn't miss.
She was Val. She didn't need anyone. She didn't need him. He'd probably forgotten her or better still unalived himself.
She repeated it in her head as she walked, a rhythm to match her footsteps.
I don't need anyone. I don't need anyone. I don't need anyone.
And She almost believed it.
---