Smoke curled from the vendor stalls, thick with the of charred meat and burned spices. The market pulsed with activity—flickering hands, quick bargains, laughter too sharp and sudden. Beneath it all, beat a different rhythm. It was the beat of watching eyes. Of footsteps that didn’t belong.

Kael crouched behind a stack of dried reeds, nimble fingers wrapping around the old man’s coin pouch. Nails bitten to the quick. Her short sleeves did nothing to hide the scars on her wrists. She almost had it—just a tug and—

Don’t look now. The guard watches your every move.

The whisper cut through the noise like a knife. Kael froze. Her stomach clenched, breath caught in her throat. She didn’t dare lift her eyes to look. The pouch slid through her fingers, dropping to the stone with a soft clink. She snatched her hand back.

Who said that?

No one around looked in her direction. The old man argued with the fishmonger, unaware of his missing purse. To her left, a group of kiddies argued over a dice game. No one’d said anything.

Yet, she’d heard it—clear as if someone’d whispered in her ear.

Eyes darting to the guards at the corner, their gilded helmets gleamed like silver suns. One—a tall, steely-eyed woman—tilted her head in Kael’s direction.

Kael melted into the crowd, sliding between robes and satchels, past baskets of dead eels and bolts of raw silk. Her hands shook. That voice, it sounded real. And familiar. Like someone she should know.

She didn’t stop moving until she reached the ally behind the Dust Wives’ apothecary, where the shadows deepened and the odor of rot and wet wool clung to the stones. Pressing her back into the wall, she forced herself to breathe.

“I’m losing it,” she muttered.

No, said the voice again. But if you don’t run, you’ll get caught.

She jerked her head around. Nothing. No one. Just shadows and the clatter of a dropped bucket in the distance.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

No answer.

A faint wind stirred the alley—strange for this part of the city. Wrapping around her like a caress, it tugged her east, toward the Tangle.

One didn’t walk into the Tangle lightly. Built on top of ruins older than time, its paths shifted, buildings leaning together like drunkards. Its alleys led nowhere—or worse.

But Kael’d grown up there. She knew how to avoid the doors with no hinges and puddles that whispered. She followed the wind.

Halfway down Slit Alley, the odor changed. No longer rot and dust, but something pungent and wild. She hesitated at the mouth of a dead-end street choked with brambles. Those hadn’t been there yesterday.

Here, said the voice, softer now. Come closer.

She moved without meaning to.

The vines flinched from her as if offended by her life. At the end of the street stood a weathered wooden door embedded in an old stone wall. No building, just a wall with a door that should’ve led nowhere. Curving, fluid symbols carved into the wood shimmered faintly. Her fingers brushed the door handle. It was warm under her icy fingers.

She pushed the door open. The world shifted.

Kael staggered forward, shading her eyes against a brilliant golden light. The sky above, a canvas of moving stars. Below her feet, cobbles glowed with veins of silver. Trees covered in pale blue leaves whispered in a language older than breath.

“You’re here,” said the voice behind her.

She spun. A boy stood beneath the branches of one such tree. He looked to be her age, early twenties. He had pale hair, his eyes were too bright, too wise. His cloak reflected the night sky, its edges trailing stardust.

“Who—what are you?” she asked.

“I’m a memory,” he said, “left behind for you.”

“That’s not helpful.”

“I suppose it isn’t.” His laugh sounded like chimes.

“So,” she said, crossing her arms. “What is this then? A dream?”

“No. It’s what was stolen from you.” He stepped closer. “Do you remember the fire?”

Her heart clenched.

Of course, she remembered the fire. She’d been six. Her mother’s screams haunted her dreams—Kael! Kael, run!—and shove her out the window before the beams collapsed. After that, she’d bolted through the city for days before the street urchins found her.

“There was no fire,” said the boy.

“What?” She blinked.

“There was a door, a gate. You opened it when you shouldn’t have. They erased your memories to keep the rest of us safe. It’s opening again, you’re hearing the voices.”

“No,” she said. “No, I remember the fire—”

“You remember what they told you to remember.” He touched her temple.

Her vision fractured. Flashes of memory—her mother, not screaming, but chanting. Her own tiny fingers tracing glowing sigils in the air. A figure wrapped in a cloak of stars—no, many figures—surrounding a stone ring.

And the voice. That same voice, even then whispering: “Don’t look now…”

Kael stumbled back, gasping.

“You’re not just a street thief,” said the boy. “You’re a key.”

“Wh…” Her voice cracked. “What does that even mean?”

“You can open the paths between worlds. You always could. That’s why they hid you. Why they made you forget.”

The door behind her creaked.

“The guards…” she whispered.

“They’re not guards. Not really. Those are Wardens. They protect the city from what lies beyond the gates. They’ve watched you for years, waiting to see if you’d awaken.”

“And I just did.”

“Just so,” he nodded. “Now you have to choose. Walk away. Live your life in the alleys. Or come with me, and remember everything.”

Kael stared at her hands. The same hands that’d stolen bread, patched wounds, clutched cold stone at night. Could those hands shape magic?

“Why me?”

“Because you survived,” he said. “You always survive.”

She nodded.

The world broke around her.

~~~

Kael woke in her nest of blankets under the ruined archway of Needle Street, heart pounding in her chest, breath ragged. Morning sunlight filtered through the holes in the roof. No stars. No boy.

But something had shifted.

She could hear it—in the stones, in the wind that ruffled her hair. The city spoke to her now, softly, like a mother singing a lullaby.

The guards still watched. Now, though, she watched back.

That afternoon, she stood in front of the same market stall, fingers inching toward a merchant’s belt.

Don’t look now, said the voice, clearer this time. But the Warden is three paces behind you.

She smiled and walked away.

Not out of fear. Out of patience.

Because Kael remembered now. She was a key.

And the gate was opening.