Coffee. Oil. Flour. Something sweet Sable will pretend she didn’t ask for. Something bitter Rhazek will claim is medicinal.
I turn toward the road that leads back to the house.
And then?—
Something pulls.
Not physically.
Nothing so crude.
It’s a sensation that starts low in my chest, a sharp, electric thread that tightens without warning. My breath stutters, not from pain, but from the sheer unexpected intensity of it. It’s not the bond. I know the bond. I know Sable’s presence, Rhazek’s steady infernal weight. This is… different.
Focused.
Directional.
“Now what,” I mutter.
The pull sharpens.
I stop walking.
The crowd moves around me, annoyed but not enough to comment. A cart wheel creaks past my knee. Someone swears about spilled grain. The world continues, stubbornly indifferent to the fact that something inside me has just locked onto a point I cannot yet see.
I follow it.
Of course I do.
Curiosity is a fatal flaw I have no intention of curing.
The sensation draws me down a narrower street, away from the market’s noise into something quieter, more deliberate. The buildings here are taller, older, stone instead of wood, their windows narrow and shadowed. There’s a different smell here too—less bread and livestock, more incense, ink, something faintly metallic beneath it all.
I recognize the architecture.
Dark Elf construction.
Refined. Controlled. Just unsettling enough to remind you that you are not entirely welcome but not so overt as to give you a reason to leave.
“Wonderful,” I murmur. “This seems like a good life choice.”
The pull intensifies.
I slow as I approach one particular building. Its windows are cleaner than the others, glass polished to a clarity that borders on unnatural. Dark wood frames the panes, carved with patterns that catch the light in ways that suggest intention rather than decoration.
I shouldn’t look.
I know that instinctively.
I look anyway.
Through the window, I see her.
Human.
Unmistakably so.
She stands near a table, head bent over something I can’t quite make out—papers, perhaps, or a ledger. Her hair falls over one shoulder in a loose, unguarded way that suggests she hasn’t noticed it slipping free. The light from inside the room touches her skin, warm and soft, catching at the curve of her cheek, the line of her throat.
