Morning came with color this time.
Not bright.
Not triumphant.
Just… enough.
The city woke up like it always did—arguing with the day before it had even properly started. Vendors sharpened their voices. Someone cursed at a cart wheel. Somewhere a mage yelled at a kettle that had decided boiling was beneath it.
Life resumed.
Aiden tried to pretend he blended into it.
He didn't.
He couldn't.
Even in the half-broken quiet of the slums, he looked like he'd stepped out of the kind of religious painting people stared at too long and then felt guilty about. Fallen-angel grace, elven sharpness, lines too perfect to be natural. Dark hair that caught the light wrong in a way that made it unfair and eyes that seemed too deep and too blank at once, like someone had painted the night sky into them and forgotten to add stars.
Desire hadn't just made him functional.
Desire had gone for aesthetics.
People did what people always do with unbearable beauty: they stared for a breath, looked away quickly so they wouldn't be obvious, and then pretended nothing had happened. You couldn't survive down here if you stopped to worship every impossible thing that wandered by.
"Get up," Seris said.
He was sitting on a step, elbows on his knees, trying to figure out how to feel like anything other than a loaded weapon in nice packaging.
"I am up," he muttered.
"You're brooding. Suspicious behavior. We're leaving."
"For what?"
"Normal."
He looked at himself, then at her.
"I'm not exactly built for normal."
"That's why you need practice," she said, already turning away.
He should've argued more.
He didn't.
The market wasn't glorious; it was loud. Colorful cloth hung from lines like flags of stubborn survival. Rune-screens displayed cheap ads above cracked brick. Street food smoked on battered grills, spices thick in the air. Children raced through crowds, nearly colliding with carts. A couple argued lovingly over whether a potion counted as medicine or dessert.
All of it messy.
All of it alive.
Aiden walked through it and tried not to think about probability, cost, or cosmic weight. Someone's eyes lingered on his face, then his ears, then the strange blankness in his gaze. Then they moved on. He wasn't the weirdest thing this city had ever seen.
A pastry seller shoved something into Seris' hand with a muttered, "Inspector tab, same as yesterday." She shoved it directly into Aiden's.
"Eat."
He stared at it.
"Is this cosmic stabilizing bread?"
"It's sugar," she said. "Same thing, emotionally."
He took a bite.
Warm.
Soft.
Cinnamon.
Sweet.
It didn't fix anything.
But it softened the edges.
He laughed, a short breathy thing that felt like it had been stuck in his chest for days.
Seris didn't grin like she'd accomplished something. She just nodded, satisfied.
They argued with a vendor about price.
They lost.
They complained about losing.
They bought the thing anyway.
Nobody bowed.
Nobody whispered "chosen" or "anomaly" or "that thing in the report."
Here, he was just an absurdly pretty man eating too much sugar and haggling badly over onions.
It helped.
"This matters," Seris said quietly when they paused near a stall selling cracked trinkets and old books.
He glanced at her.
"Me failing at bartering?"
"You knowing what a day feels like when no one's asking you to save them," she corrected. "You need that. If all you remember is crisis, you'll start thinking the only time you're real is when you're breaking something or fixing something."
He looked at the crowd.
At the child trying to steal bread and the baker "not noticing."
At the old woman loudly criticizing everyone alive.
At the mage trying to impress teenagers with failed light spells.
"Feels like I don't deserve it," he admitted.
Seris snorted softly.
"Good. Hold onto that. The day you start thinking you automatically deserve things because of what you are is the day I start planning how to take you down."
He glanced over.
"You'd really fight me?"
"In a heartbeat," she said.
Then, after a beat:
"But I'd fight with you first. As long as you keep looking at the world like this."
He took another bite of pastry.
It tasted like something worth protecting.
He didn't say thank you out loud.
But he stayed near her.
That was thanks enough.
Elsewhere, in a quieter street where the noise didn't quite reach, Liora walked beside Ardent Thornewyn.
She didn't walk close.
She didn't walk away.
Exactly where she'd chosen to be.
"You're still angry," he observed.
"Correct," she said. "Currently debating whether that should be my permanent emotional state with you."
"Healthy," he replied. "Admiration is dangerous in my general vicinity."
She frowned.
"What's the worst thing you've ever done?" she asked. "Not the prettiest story. Not the one that makes a nice metaphor. The worst. I need to know how far you might go."
He didn't deflect.
He didn't give a riddle.
He didn't even smile.
"There was a nation," he said quietly. "Rich. Proud. They believed suffering built character. From a safe distance. Their leaders spoke about struggle as if they invented it. They taught that comfort made people weak."
Liora's jaw tightened.
"The ruler wished—loudly, sincerely—for a guardian that would make his people 'strong forever.' Someone who would ensure they never grew soft."
Ardent's eyes were calm.
"So I granted it."
She stayed silent.
"I made life hard," he said. "Perfectly. Cleanly. Every harvest barely enough. Every winter biting. Every disease survivable, but only just. No miracle relief. No fortunate windfalls. No unearned luck."
He looked at the cracked stone under their feet.
"They adapted. They became strong. Hard. Efficient. They praised their own endurance. Parents taught children to despise rest. Kindness became a luxury they couldn't justify. Joy became suspicious."
His voice did not tremble.
That made it worse.
"People didn't die in great numbers. No apocalypse. No holy judgment," he said. "It was too… reasonable for that. That was the cruelty."
Liora swallowed.
"And when they realized?"
"The people begged for mercy," Ardent said. "Not the ruler. He was proud. But mothers, workers, children—they begged for life to be more than surviving."
"And you?" she asked quietly.
"I stopped," he said. "But not quickly. You can't unwind a culture with a gesture. You have to let it fracture into something new."
She let out a breath she didn't remember inhaling.
"That is… horrible."
"Yes," he agreed.
"And you knew it would be."
"Yes."
"And you chose it anyway."
"Yes."
Silence folded in.
It wasn't comfortable.
It was honest.
He was quiet for a moment.
"There was another time," Ardent continued, almost reluctantly. "Smaller scale. One man. One wish. Those are usually the worst ones."
She didn't tell him to stop.
He took that as permission.
"He was charming," Ardent said. "Beloved in public. Efficient in private. No conscience. He believed morality was a lie. He wanted the world to prove him right."
"How?" Liora asked, even though her stomach already hurt.
"He wished," Ardent said, "that cruelty would be rewarded. Cleanly. Consistently. That those who took advantage would prosper more than those who tried to be good. He wanted reality to unmask itself."
"And you granted it."
"Yes."
The air seemed to cool around them.
"For six months," he said, "the universe stopped quietly favoring the decent. No sudden miracles. No subtle advantages. No tiny coincidences that help good people survive."
Liora's hands curled into fists.
"Every betrayal paid well," Ardent continued. "Every kindness failed. Those who tried to do right lost more often than not. Those who exploited were rewarded. Not loudly. Just… steadily."
"You broke goodness," she whispered.
"No," he replied softly. "I stopped helping it. That's all."
He looked tired.
"People adapted very fast," he said. "They started calling cruelty 'practicality.' Cynicism became wisdom. Anyone who still believed in decency looked naive. Eventually, very few people tried."
"What about the man?" Liora asked.
"He prospered," Ardent said. "Of course he did. He walked through that world flawlessly. No guilt. No friction. He finally felt correct."
"What changed?" she pushed.
"His daughter," he said simply. "She grew up in that world. Smart. Cold. Brilliant. She learned every lesson he wanted the world to teach. Then she turned those lessons on him."
Liora closed her eyes.
"When he begged me to undo it," Ardent said quietly, "he used words like 'fairness' and 'morality' again. He demanded the universe punish the cruel. He asked for justice."
"And you?"
"I ended it," he said. "No dramatic punishment. No holy retribution. I just put the world back where it usually is—tilted, flawed… but willing to occasionally reward goodness enough for it to matter."
"And him?"
"He lived," Ardent said. "Knowing exactly what he had proven about the world. Knowing he had raised something perfectly suited for it."
He met her eyes.
"That was his punishment. And his mercy."
Liora looked away, throat tight.
She didn't excuse him.
She didn't absolve him.
He wasn't just "dangerous but secretly kind."
He was absolutely capable of monstrous choice—cold, precise, philosophical cruelty.
And the only reason the world hadn't broken more?
He chose not to be like that most days.
"Thank you for telling me," she managed.
"You're welcome," he replied. "You should know what I could be, so you understand how carefully I am trying not to be."
She swallowed.
"I still don't fully trust you."
"Good," he said. "Trust makes people lazy. Questions keep them alive."
"I hate that you make sense."
"Most well-built horrors do."
She laughed, helpless and shaky.
And kept walking next to him.
Not closer.
Not farther.
Exactly where she decided to be.
By the time the sun slid lower, the day had given all it could.
Aiden had sugar on his shirt and the phantom memory of being just a person among people. Seris' shoulders had relaxed by an inch. Liora's anger had not vanished, but it had changed shape into something more complicated. Ardent remained what he was—storm, tutor, monster, guardian—all in one patient frame.
Nothing exploded.
No cosmic messages dropped from the sky.
There was only:
bread,
laughter,
terrible honesty,
and four beings trying very hard to choose who they'd be…
before the universe chose for them.
And somewhere high above all of it,
Desire smiled.
Balance waited.
And the Void, as always,
did nothing at all—
which was never as comforting as it sounded.