In the twenty-ninth year of the Reign of the Veiled Empress Liraathi IX, High Daughter of the Thousand-Year Line, Mouth of the Sun-Seers, Keeper of Balance and Flame, the Empire of Saadira proclaimed a new economic purification:
No foreign-born trader shall henceforth conduct commerce within the Inner Rings of Aresh-Kala, upon pain of seizure, banishment, or death.
So read the decree — carved into red stone, mounted at every gate, and spoken by every priest-official with honeyed contempt. Saadira, swollen on its own divinity, had decided that the world beyond its borders was no longer worth the scent of incense or the rustle of its coin.
To Rounan of Velm, the decree was not politics. It was a funeral.
He stood where his shop used to be — a place once called The Amber Ark, three streets into the White Pavilions — now just blackened stone and broken beams. The scent of smoke lingered, not fresh, but baked deep into the walls by three days of dry sun.
His fingers brushed over a melted silver weight scale half-buried in ash. The other merchants were long gone. Some arrested. Some beaten. Some just vanished. Rounan had stayed, like a fool, trying to bargain with a burning house.
He had spent six years clawing his way into the Aresh-Kalan market, into the trust of the powerful merchant-houses of the Inner Rings. Saadira's capital was a dream in marble — a city of divine design, supposedly mapped by the first Empress while she fasted on dream-lotus and drank moonwater. The Empire worshipped order: concentric rings, casted zones, approved speech registers. And at its heart: the Temple Spire, taller than mountains, where the Sun-Seers interpreted the Will of Flame.
Outlanders, like Rounan, were tolerated but never welcomed. They were permitted only in the Fifth Ring, the domain of trade and tribute, far from the sacred inner zones where only full-blooded Saadirans could walk unveiled.
But for a merchant of ambition, the Fifth Ring was enough — so long as he paid the right tithes, swore on the right gods, and never raised his voice too high.
That illusion ended three days ago, when the Ashen Guard came.
No knock. No warrant. Just the decree and fire.
They arrived in full regalia: cloaks of smoke-threaded silk, armor adorned with the sunwheel sigil of the Empress. They wore veils scented with myrrh and brimstone. Their captain recited the edict with theatrical calm, as though announcing the start of a festival.
"In accordance with the Vision of Purity received by the Crown-Mouth during the Sixth Moon of Silence, the Empress declares all foreign coin polluted, and all foreign trade unlawful within the sacred body of the city."
Rounan remembered screaming. Not pleading — not yet — just roaring with disbelief as they shattered his amphorae, split his chests of starfruit and preserved lizard tongues, and dragged his peon and clerk out of the establishment.
He'd begged when they began setting fire to the ledger wall. That wall held his trade permits, his house contracts, his proof of dealings with House Kharan and the Temple of Seasons. The lead guard stared at him through mask-slits and said:
"Get out, you are polluting our lands."
Now he stood among the embers, boots sunk in ash, cart half-loaded with salvaged goods. A cracked spice drum. Three bolts of storm-silk from the floating forges of Ur. A broken compass from the iron dunes of Narh.
More than wares, he had debt.
The kind that doesn't vanish with fire.
The Dusk Syndicate, his lenders, were not a guild, nor a family, nor a bank. They were a whisper-system — a cross-border web of oath-keepers and assassins who funded risk-takers like him in exchange for promises sealed in blood-oil. If he failed to repay them by the next cycle of the moon-twin Kireh, they would collect — flesh, soul, or name.
And now, with his shop gone and his name blackened in Aresh-Kala, he can only flee, like the rest of the merchants and their newly unemployed workers.
At dawn, he reached the Alm-Gate, one of twelve gates to the city, manned by both guards and priests. Dozens waited in line — scavengers, fleeing merchants, and street mystics hauling idols wrapped in cloth.
A guard in bronze-lamellar squinted at him. "Trader?"
Rounan nodded and handed over a carved seal-stick. On it, the sigil of House Kharan, a golden sparrow within a chain-circle — a token proving he had supplied goods to the inner temple markets.
The guard examined it with clear disdain.
"Dead seal. House Kharan has submitted to purification. Their foreign contracts were nullified two days ago."
"I'm owed," Rounan said, voice low. "Six crates of preserved sunfruit. Delivered last moon. I have ledger copies."
The guard scoffed. "Coin Office is in the Third Ring. Take your pity-mark and go."
The Coin Office of Mercies was housed in a marble dome beneath the Temple of Records, where scribes chiseled decrees into memory-slabs while incense burned to honor the god Saan, deity of debt and erasure.
Rounan waited for two hours, then approached the desk of a red-robed clerk with stained fingers.
"I am Rounan a small merchant" he said. "Can I claim the debt owed by House Kharan to me."
The clerk didn't even look his way and just smirked as she continued ignoring, him scribbling something on her book.
Rounan stared, breath tight. He slid a few silver coins besides her.
"Do you think I take bribes." The clerk spat, garnering the attention of a few people around them.
He then slid a few more coins her under the book besides her. He knew how these bureaucrat operated, he payed too much bribes not to know it.
In the end he received a single obsidian coin. Heavy. Ugly. Empire-stamped.
That night, he slept on the edge of the Cistern District, near the aqueduct markets. Under a bridge carved with faded imperial proverbs. He had enough money to pay for a place to stay but with his business closed it would be a while till he can earn something.
In the Age of Ash and Oaths, Rounan had lost everything. But so had every fire that ever burned — eventually.
Now, he would flee. And perhaps, begin again.
He dreamt of fire, his shop burning down, spitting guards as the words "get out" rang in his ears.
A jab to the ribs woke him.
"Get up," a voice said.
Rounan blinked. Above him stood a city guard, armored in layered bronze plates. His veil, dark and perfumed with sour myrrh, barely masked the stink of sweat beneath. The spear in his hand was real — and pressing into Rounan's ribs.
"No vagrants under imperial stone. By decree."
"I'm not a vagrant," Rounan muttered, voice hoarse. "Just sleeping. I was pushed out of the Fifth Ring yesterday. I'll be gone by morning."
The guard snorted and looked at another behind him. "Hear that? Not a vagrant. Just a trader with no trade."
They both laughed. Rounan sat up slowly, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. The stone beneath him was cold, the carved proverb above his head — Obedience is Light — now chipped and blackened by soot.
"You're on public aqueduct space," the second guard said. "Imperial property."
"Please let me rest for a few hours." Rounan pleaded.
The first guard jabbed his spear again, just enough to make a point. "If you insist we can give u a small room inside the jail cell or you can get out."
"Please don't do that." Rounan knelt before them.
They didn't arrest him. Didn't strike him either. Just walked beside him, herding him like cattle through the Alm-Gate and out beyond the last row of tiled houses — beyond where the paved streets gave way to trampled dust.
He was thrown into the slums.
They called it the Dust Crescent, though most just said "the camps." It was a sprawl of tents, wagons, and salvaged wood shacks pressed up against the outer wall of Aresh-Kala like a crust no one could scrape off. For the last three days, the empire had been vomiting out foreigners like spoiled meat — and here, in the crescent, they gathered.
Six years ago he came to this slum with nothing and now he's thrown back in.
Men from the salt cities of Kheret. Women from the tea-isles of Orun. Fisherfolk, relic-peddlers, translators, scribes, caravan-hands all with nowhere to go.
A line of people pushed toward a departing caravan at the far end. Horses, thin and irritated, stomped their hooves as a driver in a sunhat shouted prices from the back.
"Forty Marks to Zanzul!""Eighty for a cart seat — you carry your own food!""One child under seven free with paying mother!"
People argued. Some cried. A boy shouted that his father had money inside the city, only to be laughed off. A mother fell to her knees, clutching her daughter. Another man tried to climb onto the cart and was shoved off with a whip.
It wasn't a line. It was a struggle.
Rounan stepped back from the crowd. His throat was dry. He turned and spotted a makeshift stall nearby: a table made from a broken door, two bricks, and a steaming iron kettle at the center.
The sign, written in charcoal on a cloth scrap, read: "Boil & Blessings — 3 drops for a cup."
Behind it, a thin man with a crooked spine and sun-leathered face poured dark tea into cracked clay cups. His eyes flicked up as Rounan approached.
"Tea," he said.
"With or without sugar?"
"With..." Rounan muttered.
The tea-seller nodded and reached for a chipped jar, spooning in a pinch of coarse, dark sugar. It clinked against the clay as he stirred.
"Hard to come by these days," the man said, not looking up. "Sugar. Used to get it in sacks from the southern coast. Now it trickles in like rain through a cracked roof."
He handed over the cup, steam curling between them. Rounan took it with both hands, savoring the heat.
"Rough night?" the seller asked.
Rounan gave a tired grunt.
They sat in silence for a while, watching people stumble past. A girl with a sack of pigeon eggs. An old man offering maps drawn on rags. Two boys yelling about lucky bones.
Then it happened.
Shouts from the edge of the camp.
Seven guards. Ashen armor. The sunwheel glinting on their shoulders.
They walked with the slow confidence of men who thought they were gods.
One pointed at a bread-seller. Another grabbed a boy carrying roasted nuts.
"You can't trade here," one barked. "Not without inspection."
"This isn't the city!" a woman yelled. "We're outside the wall!"
"You think the law ends at the wall?" the guard snapped.
One shoved over a cart. The bread scattered into the dirt. A child wailed.
Rounan stood. "They're provoking us," he said to the tea-seller.
"They don't need a reason," the man replied.
A priest in white robes stepped forward. "You have not been cleansed," he called out. "You cook food with unblessed fire. You pour drinks without permission, this is impure."
"We're trying to eat," someone shouted. "You burned our homes!"
The priest raised his staff. "Obedience is survival. Defiance is corruption."
That was the spark.
A ladle flew through the air. A pot clanged off a guard's helmet. Someone threw a fist.
The guards drew their clubs.
Chaos erupted.
Smoke. Screams. Pots kicked into fires. Tents trampled. The air filled with dust and fury. A lantern smashed and ignited a cloth roof. The fire spread fast.
Rounan grabbed his pack and ducked.
He ran.
He didn't stop to check the tea-seller. The guards were swinging, screaming.
Rounan ducked under a flailing elbow, slipped through an overturned fruit stand, and darted into a narrow alley of tarp and refuse.
One hand clutched his satchel. The other gripped the obsidian coin, now warm from the tea and the tension.
He ran.
Dust clung to the sweat on his face. His satchel bounced against his side with every step. Behind him, the shouts and screams of the slum bled into the sound of crackling fire and steel striking wood. The reek of burning canvas filled the air.
Rounan ducked between two carts, slipped beneath a hanging sheet of sailcloth, and burst into a narrow alley between stalls. It was quieter here — for a moment. The world narrowed to the thud of his boots and the dry rasp of his breath.
Then something hit him.
Hard.
A fist. Gloved and fast, like a hammer swung sideways.
His vision flared white. His feet skidded out from under him and he went down — cheek first into the dirt, gritty sand scraping across his lips.
Before he could rise, a boot landed on his back. Then hands — strong, armored — gripped his arms and hauled him upright.
Two guards.
Ashen cloaks. Brimstone-veiled faces.
The one who had punched him pulled his veil back, revealing a pale, square jaw smeared with soot and sweat. His knuckles were streaked with dried blood. He looked no older than thirty, but his eyes were dead. Not hateful. Just cold.
"Got ourselves a runner," he said flatly.
The second guard twisted Rounan's arm behind his back. "Foreign coin, I bet. They always carry coin. Even after the purge."
"I wasn't fighting," Rounan gasped, breath ragged. "I wasn't part of it. I was just— I was just drinking tea. I'm leaving, I swear. I have no stall. No goods. Nothing!"
The first guard leaned closer, breath hot with sour spice. "Then why run?"
"Because you were—" Rounan stopped himself. He didn't know the right answer. There wasn't one. He felt the panic rising, bubbling in his throat like vomit.
"I have coin," he said quickly. "I'll give it. All of it. Just—just let me go."
The guard raised an eyebrow, then stepped back. "Show it."
Rounan reached slowly into his coat pocket, wincing as the other guard yanked his arm higher, keeping him half-bent.
He pulled out the obsidian coin — heavy, dark, stamped with the sunwheel and his own foreign name etched along the rim.
The first guard took it, turned it in his hand, smirked.
"Obsidian," he said. "That's the only thing left with me. It's yours, please let me go."
The second guard released him. Rounan dropped to his knees.
The first one leaned in again and whispered, "That's the problem with you traders. You think coin still means something out here."
Then he slammed his fist into Rounan's gut.
Pain bloomed in his belly like fire. Rounan coughed, folding forward, gasping like a fish out of water.
"You're lucky," the guard said, standing tall. "That's what a bribe buys you now — one punch instead of two."
They turned and walked off, their armor clinking as they melted back into the chaos.
Rounan stayed on his knees.
His stomach spasmed. He retched, but nothing came up — he hadn't eaten enough. He spat dirt and bile onto the ground, then slowly pushed himself upright.
His coin was gone.
His breath burned.
His arms ached.