The harbor smelled like old rain and metal. Nairé Kôren knew it before she looked up—whenever the wind tasted like a bitten coin, the day always ended with someone running.
She tightened her hood and pressed the leather tube to her chest. It wasn't heavy, but it felt like carrying a locked door inside your ribs—awkward, insistent. The cord around her waist rubbed her side with every step, reminding her she couldn't let go. Not even for a breath.
—They gave it to you without a red seal? Mareh Ux had asked an hour ago, back in the alley behind the fish market.
Nairé had nodded.
Mareh whistled, amused and uneasy at the same time. Her grin always had an edge.
—Then it's not a job. It's a test.
—Or a trap, Nairé had said.
—Tests are traps. Just… cleaner ones.
Nairé didn't argue. She'd learned that arguments wasted air. And in Lýssar, air became expensive the moment important people started playing.
She climbed from the docks toward the upper district. The cobblestones were damp, the streetlamps spilling a sticky honey-light. On every corner, the same whisper: the palace was holding a private audience tonight. No one knew why. When no one knew why, it meant the truth didn't benefit anyone.
At the end of the avenue, the palace rose like an idea that never asked permission to exist—pale stone walls, sharp towers, windows so high they seemed to look over the city instead of through it.
Nairé slipped under the servants' arch, not the main gate. There was no carpet, no music, no expensive perfume—just a narrow door, sleepy guards, and the waxy smell they used to keep floors shining.
—Where to? a guard grunted, barely glancing at her. His spear rested on his shoulder like a habit, not a duty.
Nairé held out the tablet with the seal.
It wasn't red. It wasn't gold.
It was gray.
The ash of something that burned when it shouldn't have.
The guard saw it and didn't brighten the way men did for royal orders. He didn't sneer the way they did for merchants, either. He simply frowned—and for a heartbeat, his pupils tightened.
—No… he breathed. Then he cleared his throat, as if he'd said something forbidden. —Go on.
—Go on? Nairé repeated before she could stop herself.
The guard avoided her eyes.
—Go.
Nairé stepped through. And by reflex, she lied.
—Thank you, sir.
She wasn't thankful. She didn't want to be here.
The lie was tiny—almost nothing. She felt it anyway: a soft sting behind her ear, as if someone had tugged a thread inside her skull.
She froze.
Nothing changed outside. The guard still yawned. The corridor still smelled of wax.
But for one second, Nairé couldn't remember the exact color of Mareh's apron.
A foolish blank. A harmless little hole.
And that was what turned her cold. Because the first thing you lost never sounded important. That was how it began.
In Lýssar, everyone knew the rule even if no one recited it aloud: a lie took payment in memory.
Not all at once. Not always the same kind. But it always collected.
Be invisible, she told herself, tightening her grip on the tube. Be silent. And for the love of anything left inside you—be honest.
She moved through the servants' corridor, up narrow stairs where the stone sweated dampness. She passed workers carrying trays, and none of them looked twice. Couriers were pigeons: useful, annoying, best ignored.
The gray seal guided her toward the northern gallery, a wing she almost never entered. Here the hallways widened, the lamps looked cleaner, and the silence felt… expensive.
Then the bells rang.
Not the harbor bells—deep and messy. These were thin and precise, like someone measuring time with a needle.
Tin. Tin. Tin.
A servant rounded a corner and stopped dead when he saw her. His face was pale, his hands stained with ink.
—Not today, he whispered, more to himself than to her. —It wasn't supposed to be today…
Nairé felt the air chill. She stepped aside to let him pass. He didn't pass. He just stood there trembling, staring at the tube as if it were an animal.
—Where… where did you get that? he asked.
Nairé could tell the truth: I don't know. She could say: Someone gave it to me.
But the first sounded like a lie. The second sounded like a confession.
—I'm in a hurry, she said instead, and kept walking.
It wasn't a lie. It was an evasion. Still, she felt the thread tug—just a little.
Her jaw tightened.
Tin. Tin. Tin.
At the end of the corridor, a door stood slightly open. An open door in the palace wasn't carelessness. It was either invitation or warning. Nairé wasn't sure which frightened her more.
She leaned in just enough to see.
And the world split.
The hall was vast. Heavy curtains hung like motionless tides. On one side, counselors in dark robes; on the other, guards in polished armor. In the center stood the heir.
No crown on his head. He didn't need it. The silence arranged itself around him as if even the air knew where it belonged.
Nairé swallowed and began to back away.
Then a voice cut through the room like a blade.
—Who brings a gray seal to the heart of the throne?
It wasn't the heir. It came from a corner the light refused to fully reach, as if the lamp itself was afraid.
Nairé felt every gaze shift. Not toward that corner.
Toward the doorway.
Toward her.
The tube against her chest seemed to warm.
—I… she started, without meaning to.
And as if the palace had been waiting for that single sound to unleash itself—something happened.
A dry, small noise. Like a cord snapping.
The heir lifted a hand to his chest. Not dramatically. In surprise, as if he'd discovered a door opening inside him. He took one step, and the entire room seemed to tilt toward him.
No blood fell. No jewel.
A glow dropped—ancient, symbolic, something that should never separate from a living person.
The Crown Seal.
The empire's binding promise.
It fell… and before it could touch the floor, it changed direction, as if the air had chosen it. As if fate, for once, had fingers.
It flew toward Nairé.
It struck the leather tube with a gentle thud.
Nairé felt no pain in her skin.
She felt it in her memory.
For an instant she didn't know her name.
Didn't know her mother's face.
Didn't know the smell of the harbor.
The blankness was so clean it terrified her.
Then the world snapped back—noise, shouting, metal.
—Grab her! someone roared.
Nairé moved before she understood. In the streets, understanding came after survival.
She turned and ran down the corridor. Behind her, the hall exploded with orders. Boots on stone. Voices repeating: hood, courier, tube.
Tin. Tin. Tin.
The bells sped up.
Nairé dropped down a narrow stairwell, cut left, then right—into servants' passages, shortcuts she knew only because she'd delivered letters for people who didn't want to be seen.
A guard appeared ahead. Nairé skidded to a stop. He raised his spear.
—Halt!
Nairé inhaled.
Truth: I can't.
Lie: I didn't do anything.
And she didn't know how much memory she had left to pay for another lie.
—I don't know what's happening, she said, voice rough, —but if you stop me here… they'll kill us both.
Not fully true. Not fully false.
A wager.
The guard hesitated. In a palace, hesitation was a sin.
The tube pulsed against Nairé's chest.
And a чужая phrase—clear as an oath—drove itself into her mind:
"The crown is not gold. It is memory."
Nairé's stomach turned. She stepped back.
The guard swallowed.
—What are you carrying? he asked, and his voice no longer sounded like authority. It sounded like fear.
Nairé didn't answer. She turned and ran.
The palace felt like it was changing shape. Corridors that once led to kitchens opened into courtyards. Stairs that used to climb now sank. As if the building had a will.
Or as if someone was guiding it.
In a darker wing, she spotted an iron door stamped with a symbol: a spiral inside a diamond. Salt.
The Saltery. The memory archive.
She knew it only by rumor: salt crystals that stored memories, cold rooms that kept oaths, monks who spoke softly so they wouldn't spend words.
The door was ajar.
Nairé threw herself inside.
The air was colder, as if the world breathed slower here. Shelves, low candles, and—glass jars filled with salt crystals that glimmered faintly, like trapped stars.
Someone moved between the shadows.
—You shouldn't bring that in here, said a calm voice.
Nairé spun. A man in a simple robe stood in the dim light, hands clean, eyes tired. Not a guard. Not a noble. Someone who'd listened to secrets for too long.
—Help me, Nairé blurted. The desperation made it honest—raw. —I don't know what this is. It just… happened.
The man's gaze fell to the tube, and his eyes narrowed with a kind of understanding that frightened her.
—You do know, he said gently. —Your body knows, even if your mind is trying to protect itself.
Shouts thundered outside.
—Open that door!
Nairé backed away.
—Please, she repeated. —If they catch me—
The man lifted a hand for silence, as if silence were a tool.
—Your name, he said. —Tell me now. Before the seal starts collecting that, too.
Nairé opened her mouth.
And realized something horrifying:
For the first time, she wasn't sure which name was hers.
The iron door shuddered under the first удар.
—Now, the man insisted, locking eyes with her.
Nairé clutched the tube to her chest, feeling something ancient beating inside.
And in the archive's dark, the Crown seemed to whisper:
"Choose."
End of Chapter 1.