I keep walking.
The district spreads outward in a maze of narrow streets and stacked buildings, the canal branching off into smaller waterways that snake between warehouses and trading halls.
Most of the work I pick up comes from this part of the city. Today’s jobs are simple—a broken water pump behind one of the older market stalls and a rusted gate mechanism that’s been jamming for weeks in a storage yard near the southern canal.
I reach the pump first.
The stall owner—a squat Glowranth woman named Meran—waves when she sees me. “About time.”
“Nice to see you too.”
She snorts. “You said yesterday.”
“Yesterday was busy.”
She gestures towards the broken machinery behind the stall. “Fix it, and I’ll give you bread and two jars of honeyroot.”
“Deal.”
I roll up my sleeves and crouch beside the pump.
The mechanism is unmistakably human. Old. Probably dragged through one of the first rifts and patched together repeatedly with whatever spare parts the city could scavenge.
It takes me about forty minutes to get it running again. While I work, the street noise grows around me. Market stalls open, voices rise, and carts clatter along the canal road.
And underneath it all are whispers.
Rumours travel fast in Terrafeara.
Today’s rumour seems to revolve around the Queen. More specifically her youngest son, Aelith.
I hear the name twice before I finish tightening the final bolt.
“—extending their search?—”
“—focussing on the rebel group?—”
“—the prince hasn’t been seen in weeks?—”
“—with a Rethburg mate?—”
“—the Queen’s furious?—”
I wipe my hands on a rag and glance towards the cluster of merchants talking nearby.
Aelith, the arrogant Glowranth prince who apparently vanished after bonding with a Riftborn mate—or nearly bonding—not that anyone here knows that for sure—but rumours have started. Some are even close to being accurate. They’ve just got the species of his Riftborn wrong.
From what Shanae said last night, he’s very much alive. And very much not under his mother’s control anymore. That alone is enough to send the palace into a panic.
A Glowranth prince openly siding with Riftborn? That’s the kind of scandal that destabilises entire governments.
I pack my tools and accept the bread and honeyroot Mera hands me.
“Keep your head down today,” she mutters quietly.
“Why?”
“More patrols moving in from the upper district.”
