The dogkin forced herself deeper into the storm. Every nerve screamed, every thought frayed, but she pushed through the pain. Not butcheries. Not bakeries. Not brothels. Not guards, not nobles, not children splashing in fountains. Layer by layer, she shredded the noise apart, burning herself alive just to narrow the world.
Her heart felt like it might explode.
Her vision swam with red.
Her soul roared.
'Ah!'
She found it.
A single thread of scent that cut through everything. So sharp it felt like it had been carved into the air for her alone.
It wasn't filth.
It wasn't sickness.
It wasn't even hunger, though hunger clung to it.
It was worse.
The scent was sorrow itself, rotting into the bones of the woman who carried it.
A body steeped for years in grief until misery had fused with her very flesh. Hunger that had never been fed. Pain that had never been healed. A tragedy so complete that her existence exhaled it with every breath.
