The drizzle had not stopped since afternoon, falling in a steady rhythm that softened the city's edges and painted every lantern glow with a halo. Draemhold was a city that never truly slept—its lamps glowed even through the fog, and its streets echoed with laughter, shouting, and the clatter of carts over cobblestones. The rain only seemed to deepen the life within it, turning every sound sharper, every shadow longer.
Nelly and Nathan moved together through the crowd, not as brothers but as two boys bound by circumstance, their steps finding the same pace though their spirits often moved differently. Nathan's brightness drew people in like a flame in the dark; Nelly's silence pushed them away, though he never meant for it to. Where Nathan smiled and joked with market sellers, trading jests as though he had known them all his life, Nelly stayed a step behind, eyes fixed on the gutters, watching shadows bend strangely beneath every flame as though the world were quietly reshaping itself when no one else was looking.
The night turned when they reached the South Bridge.
A small group had gathered at its edge, murmuring in anxious tones. A wagon had collapsed, its axle shattered clean through. Two children were trapped beneath the broken boards, their frightened cries muffled by wood and rain. The crowd hesitated, no one daring to move through the slick mud or risk the unstable planks of the half-broken bridge. Fear hung in the air, thicker than the fog, and no one wanted to be the first to act.
Then someone did.
A boy no older than them—broad-shouldered, hair matted by rain—was already dragging beams aside with raw, desperate strength. His hands bled where splinters tore them open, but his jaw was set firm as iron. "Move back," he told the crowd without looking up, his voice steady even as the wagon groaned. "If it falls again, I'll hold it."
Nathan rushed forward instinctively, heart leaping before thought. "You'll be crushed if you try alone—"
The boy met his eyes with a stare unshakable as stone. "Then help, or stand aside."
It was the first time they heard the name Courage spoken. Not his birth name, but the one people whispered after he pulled both children free, standing tall even as the wagon collapsed fully behind him. Nelly watched him closely—the way his will seemed heavier than muscle, the way no fear touched his face. He wondered if such resolve was something a person was born with, or something carved into them by hardship.
Nathan clasped Courage's shoulder, smiling despite the rain. "Then I'll stand with you."
Courage said nothing, but he did not move away.
That same night, as they lingered on the bridge, another figure emerged from the fog. A boy carrying a soaked leather journal, ink smudging his fingertips, his lips moving as though speaking to the storm itself. He seemed distracted, murmuring notes under his breath, as though the rain and thunder were puzzles to be solved.
He stopped when he noticed the others, eyes flicking over each of them with quiet calculation.
"What are you writing?" Nathan asked, ever curious.
"Not writing," the boy replied softly. "Recording."
Nelly tilted his head. "Recording what?"
"The present," he said. "And what lies beneath it."
The boy's name was Divine. No title, no bravado—just certainty, the kind that made silence feel heavier. He glanced once at Courage, then Nathan, then Nelly. And in that instant, something passed unspoken, as if he recognized the same threads binding them that none of them could yet name.
The rain slowed, the crowd dispersed, and the four of them remained—strangers, not quite strangers anymore.
Nathan broke the quiet with a grin. "Strange night to be meeting new friends."
Courage looked back at the river, arms folded. "Not strange. Fated."
Divine closed his journal, lips tightening faintly. "Or cursed."
And Nelly, standing in the middle of them, felt the weight of both words sink into him, heavier than the drizzle, heavier than the night itself.