Five months in Windhoek turned the city from a labyrinth of threats into a map of resources, Tangeni learning to navigate the streets not as a victim but as a part of the ecosystem.
Summer burned itself out, replaced by the dry, biting winds of winter that cut through the thin walls of their abandoned warehouse, forcing them to insulate their sleeping corner with layers of cardboard and scavenged plastic sheeting.
They had graduated from the alley behind the hardware store to a derelict textile factory in the Northern Industrial Area, a massive, hollowed-out shell that smelled of dust and old oil but offered a roof that only leaked in three places and a second-floor office that could be barricaded from the inside.
"Hold still," Lola said, her fingers nimble as she stitched the tear in his jacket, using a needle and thread she'd bartered for with a handful of copper wire. "If you keep moving, I'm going to stab you, and we don't have money for tetanus shots."
"I'm not moving."
"You're breathing too loud."
Tangeni sat on the milk crate that served as his chair, watching the dust motes dance in the shaft of light cutting through the boarded-up window.
This was their life now, a routine carved out of chaos.
Mornings began at 5 AM at the bakery on Independence Avenue, waiting for the back door to open, trading labor—sweeping the flour-dusted floors, hauling trash bags—for a bag of yesterday's rolls that were stale but filling.
Days were spent splitting up to maximize income.
Tangeni headed to the logistics depots, standing in the lineup of day laborers, waiting for a foreman to point at him.
He wasn't the biggest man in the line, but he was young, didn't drink, and didn't talk back, qualities that had earned him a semi-regular spot on the crews unloading supply trucks coming in from the coastal mines.
It was brutal work, hauling crates of raw mana stones and monster byproducts that hummed with residual energy, the radiation making his skin itch by the end of the shift, but it paid cash daily and didn't require an ID.
Lola worked the markets, not as a laborer but as a ghost.
She had an uncanny ability to find value where others saw trash—spotting a dropped coin in a muddy gutter, finding a discarded phone with a cracked screen that could still be sold for parts, knowing which vendors would pay a few dollars for someone to watch their stall while they took a bathroom break.
"Done," she said, biting the thread, smoothing the patch on his shoulder. "It's not pretty, but it'll hold."
"Thanks."
"Don't thank me, just don't rip it again." She stood up, moving to the corner where they kept their stash, a loose floorboard hidden under her mattress. "Count it."
Tangeni pulled the wad of small bills from his pocket, his day's pay, adding it to the pile she pulled from the floor.
They counted together, the paper whispering in the quiet room.
"Four hundred and twenty," Lola announced, sitting back on her heels. "We're close."
"Two weeks of rent at the boarding house is five hundred."
"Plus deposit." She tapped the floorboard. "We need six-fifty to move in safely."
"Three more weeks," Tangeni estimated, doing the math of labor shifts and food costs. "If the weather holds and the trucks keep coming."
Three weeks until a real room. A door that locked. A shower with hot water.
It felt like a fantasy, a finish line they were slowly, painfully crawling toward, but it was real enough to keep them going when the nights got cold and the hunger gnawed at their ribs.
That night, the wind picked up, rattling the corrugated iron sheets on the roof, turning the factory into a drum.
Tangeni slept lightly, a habit from the streets that hadn't faded even with the barricaded door, waking instantly when he heard Lola gasp in the dark.
It wasn't a sound of danger, not the sharp intake of breath that meant an intruder.
It was the low, keening sound of a nightmare.
Sitting up, checking the room with eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw her thrashing on her mattress, fighting invisible hands, her breathing coming in ragged, panicked chokes.
He moved to her side, careful not to touch her, knowing from experience that waking her suddenly could trigger a fight-or-flight response that usually ended with scratching and screaming.
"Lola," he said, keeping his voice low, steady, an anchor in the storm. "You're in the factory. It's safe. Just us."
She jerked, eyes flying open, blind with terror, chest heaving as she stared at the ceiling.
"He was here," she whispered, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. "He found me."
"He's not here. Nobody's here."
She turned her head, looking at him, the panic slowly receding as recognition set in, replaced by a crushing exhaustion.
"Sorry," she muttered, wiping her face. "Stupid."
"Not stupid."
He sat on the floor beside her mattress, leaning his back against the wall, settling in to wait.
"You don't have to stay up," she said, her voice thick.
"I'm not tired."
It was a lie, but it didn't matter.
She watched him for a moment, then shifted, sliding her hand across the gap between them until her fingers brushed his sleeve.
She didn't grab him, just maintained the contact, a physical verification that she wasn't alone in the dark.
"Tell me about the computer store," she said, asking for the story she always asked for when the bad dreams came, the fantasy he'd told her about during their first month.
"It's small," Tangeni said, staring into the shadows. "Corner unit, near the university. Clean glass front. Inside, it smells like ozone and new plastic."
"And you fix things."
"I fix everything. Phones, tablets, hunter tech. No questions asked, just fair prices. There's a back room for custom builds."
"And I run the books."
"You run the books. You yell at suppliers when they're late."
"I'm good at yelling."
"You are."
She let out a breath that was almost a laugh, her eyes drooping. "We'll get there."
"Yeah. We will."
She fell asleep with her fingers still touching his jacket, and Tangeni stayed awake until dawn, watching the door, protecting the only thing in the world that mattered to him.
Two days later, the routine broke.
A siren wailed across the city, the distinctive, rising-falling tone of a Dungeon Warning, echoing off the buildings and sending pigeons scattering into the sky.
"Gate," Lola said, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk, checking the app on the cracked phone she'd salvaged. "Rank 12. Green. Opening in the Eros district."
"Small," Tangeni noted. "Training run."
"Let's watch."
They shouldn't have; time was money, and watching hunters do their job didn't put food in their stomachs, but there was a magnetism to it, a pull they both felt but never discussed.
They climbed the fire escape of a parking garage overlooking the cordon zone, joining a few other onlookers watching the spectacle below.
The police had blocked off the street, creating a perimeter around the shimmering distortion in the air where the gate was stabilizing.
A Guild van pulled up, sleek and armored, and four hunters stepped out.
They looked like gods compared to the gray, dusty reality of the street—wearing fitted armor that gleamed in the sun, carrying weapons that hummed with mana, moving with the casual arrogance of people who knew they were the apex predators.
"Look at the leader," Lola pointed. "That's a Fire-affinity sword. Probably cost more than this entire building."
Tangeni watched the hunter draw the weapon, the blade erupting in controlled flames, the heat visible even from their vantage point.
The gate fully opened, and a swarm of goblins poured out—small, green, vicious things carrying crude clubs.
It was a slaughter.
The hunters moved through the monsters like a scythe through wheat, efficient and brutal, fire arcs carving through the horde while a barrier mage deflected the few rocks thrown in return.
It wasn't a fight; it was landscaping.
"Must be nice," Lola murmured, resting her chin on the railing. "To just... handle things. To never be afraid of something grabbing you."
Tangeni looked at his own hands, calloused from lifting crates, scarred from the streets, empty of power.
"They're afraid of bigger things," he said. "Rank 50s. Boss monsters."
"But they have a chance. They can fight back." She looked at him. "We just run."
"We survive."
"Is that enough?"
Tangeni looked back at the street below, where the hunters were high-fiving, the crowd cheering, the clean-up crew already moving in to harvest the cores.
"It has to be," he said. "It's what we have."
They walked back to the industrial district in silence, the disparity between the world of the awakened and their own grinding existence feeling heavier than usual.
To shake the mood, Lola pulled him into a side alley near the market.
"Practice time," she said, her eyes losing the distant look, sharpening into focus. "You're getting lazy."
"I'm hauling two tons of cargo a day, I'm not lazy."
"Your hands are lazy. Your feet are loud." She spun him around. "Target is the back left pocket. Wallet. Go."
Pickpocketing was a survival skill she insisted on teaching him, though Tangeni hated it and refused to use it on anyone who looked like they needed the money.
He tried to brush past her, reaching for the pocket, trying to be smooth.
She caught his wrist before he even made contact, twisting it behind his back and shoving him into the wall.
"Dead," she said cheerfully. "You telegraphed the move. You looked at the pocket before you moved your hand."
"I'm not a thief, Lola."
"You're homeless in Windhoek. You're a thief waiting for a desperate day." She released him. "Again. Don't look. Feel the space. Use the collision to mask the touch."
They practiced for twenty minutes, Tangeni failing repeatedly until he finally managed to snag the folded piece of cardboard she used as a prop without her catching him instantly.
"Better," she admitted, taking the cardboard back. "Still clumsy, but maybe you won't get arrested immediately."
"High praise."
"I'm a realist." She smiled, a rare, genuine expression that transformed her face, making her look her age instead of ten years older. "Come on. If we hurry, we can catch the late shift at the recycling center. Extra ten dollars."
They ran toward the setting sun, two specks in the city's vast machinery, laughing as they dodged pedestrians, feeling invincible because they had a plan, they had a stash under the floorboards, and they had each other.
They were close to the finish line.
Tangeni could feel it. Just a few more weeks of grinding, and they would cross the threshold into stability.
He didn't know that the finish line was a cliff edge.
He didn't know that the static building in the air wasn't a storm coming in, but the fabric of reality wearing thin directly over his path home.
He just knew that for the first time in years, he wasn't looking over his shoulder.
That was his mistake.