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"Yes, young master," the steward said, and bowed his head.

"Do not come back without news," Fartray said, and then, because rage likes a threat to sit beside it, he added, "Or I will find another steward who understands fast."

The steward did not flinch. "As you wish," he said. He backed out with the same small steps he used for wild dogs and noble boys. The door closed.

Fartray stood alone with his breathing. He put his hands on the window frame and squeezed wood until the skin across his knuckles went pale. In his mind he saw two faces: a calm boy with bad hair; a bright thing with rude jokes. He pictured ropes. He pictured jars. He pictured a yard full of people laughing at someone else. He smiled then, a thin, hungry line.

"Gates," he whispered to the glass. "All gates."

Somewhere below, the steward's soft steps moved down the stairs. In his sleeve, he hid a folded paper with three names. He did not trust the men from the alley anymore. New hands would move. He would make sure of it.

Meanwhile…

The Bent Penny slept the way old inns sleep: with one eye open and one hand on the broom. The yard held the night like a bowl. The cat on the shed roof had chosen the warm spot and pretended he had invented warmth.

In room three, Fizz was a round ball on the pillow by the window. He made a tiny whistle sound on the end of each breath, like a kettle about to be proud. A half crumb clung to his whisker. He did not mind.

John slept and then he did not. He had a nightmare.

The dream was very plain. He was back in the lane. No crowd. No hedge. Only the stone and the three shadows that had stepped out to take him. The fight took one heartbeat and also forever. The void in his hand swelled. The breath left the first man. The breath left the second. When they fell, they did not bleed in real life that much. In the dream, they bled hundreds times more. Dream blood always finds a way to be where it wasn't.

They looked at him. They spoke together with the same mouth. Why did you kill me?

He tried to answer. His throat made the wrong sound. He looked for the reason he knew was true: I chose to live. I chose to protect. I aimed low. I did not play. The dream did not care about it. It put warm red on his hands and pushed the smell of iron into his nose and tied his feet to the ground.

He jerked awake. His shirt stuck to his skin. His breath came hard and loud. He sat up and the room swayed a little and then steadied because the room was only a room.

Fizz slept on with the absolute peace of a creature who thought cookies solve all problems. "No mushroom in the soup," he mumbled, and rolled to face the window. "I hate mushrooms."

John sat with his feet on the floor and his palms on his thighs. He looked at his hands. They were the same hands that had made hooks and stamped leather and picked up a token. They did not shake much. His chest did.

His mouth tasted like old coins. He wanted to spit. He did not want to wake Fizz. He swallowed. It did not help.

A cool line of thought slid into place inside his head, the other voice that was not a voice.

[System Notification: Elevated stress response detected. The host's emotional index is very high. The system can reduce emotional load via void alignment.

Do you want to proceed?]

[Yes/No]

John kept his eyes on his hands. He did not want to carry the wrong kind of fire into the morning. He did not want his hand to remember wrong things when it needed to write right ones. He did not want the faces to stand in front of the door to sleep and demand a toll.

"Yes," he thought. "Do it. I do not like this feeling."

[System Acknowledgement: Initiating Affective Damping (Hollow Sheath).]

A line explained what that meant, simple and neat, the way the system always spoke:

[Explanation: The void can hold not only matter and force, but also the "heat" of recent feelings. The system will form a thin sheath around the host's peak emotional signal. It does not erase memory. It lowers the spike. Morals remain. Judgment remains. Empathy remains. Panic reduces. Side effects: brief chill, mild sense of distance. Reversible.]

John breathed once, slow, because slow felt like control. "Yes," he said again, a whisper this time, because saying it out loud made the choice stop being a thought and become a thing.

The coolness was not from the air. It rose from under his ribs like someone had opened a window inside him on a clean night. The heat drained only a little. The bad weight lightened only a little. But the little was enough.

His breath evened. His shoulders lowered. The taste in his mouth faded from iron to almost nothing. He could still see Brann's eyes if he wanted to. He did not need to want that. The picture did not jump at him now. It sat where it should, on a shelf in his head with other hard pictures he would not lie about.

He tested it. He thought of the soft way a body meets stone when breath is gone. He did not flinch. He thought of Edda's voice when she said Do it clean. Respect moved in, in place of the hot noise. He thought of his palm at her sternum and the seed that now answered him from far inside her chest. The weight of that choice felt right. Not pretty. Not simple. Only right.

He let a long breath out and watched it leave him, an empty thing that had been taking up too much room.

Fizz made a small pop with his lips and said, "Majestic… Lord Fizz…" in his sleep. His tail twitched like a very lazy snake.

John lay back down. He turned to the wall and tucked one hand under the thin pillow. He left the other open on the blanket, palm up, like a man who had set a cool stone there and did not want to drop it. His breathing steadied: four in, four out, the rhythm he had built on roads and in rooms that were not his.

The system left one more note somewhere just behind his thoughts:

[Status: Affective Damping active. Reduction: 62%. The "charge" will bleed off with rest and understanding. The host may release the sheath at any time. Recheck recommended in three days.]

John did not read it with his eyes. He did not need to. He slept. Not heavy. Not deep. Enough to calm his mind.

Outside, the city did what cities do at night: fixed nets, counted coins, turned bread, made plans that would be foolish in the morning and seem wise now. A cart with oiled wheels went by. A woman laughed once and then hushed herself because she had a baby asleep in the next room. A guard leaned on a spear and counted heartbeats and imagined soup.

At the Aqua house, the steward lit a small lamp and wrote three lines on a scrap. He folded it. He put it in his sleeve. He thought about gates and men and which of them could keep their mouths shut for forever if paid enough.

Fartray stared at his ceiling and smiled a thin smile and did not know why it made him colder.

In the high office, the white-dressed spirit stood with the dark and watched the old man not touch his hat. She did not sleep. She did not need to. She simply was, the way mountains are.

The hookah made one last tiny sound. It felt like a nod.

Night held on to the last small corners of the world for a little while longer, and then began to loosen. It always does, even when men have made their own extra darkness to scare themselves. A few moments later… The first thin gray of dawn came up behind the roofs like a quiet hand lifting a curtain.

The day was not here yet. But it was close.

Edda was sleeping in a room on the black market. She had finished her work. She cleaned the streets and made her old team mates body disappear. She became a servant of a young man. She never imagined that. She was very busy with her hobbies. She never paid close attention or made emotional bonding with her team mates. She didn't care if they lived or died. She only cares about her prevented pleasure.

As long as she is satisfied with her weirdness they don't need anything else. In the morning she will go to her master with some bread. She will do whatever it takes to be alive. She only cares about her well being. But now that needs to be changed. If John wants he can kill her in one thought.

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