The air whistled past my ears for half a second, cold against my face.
Twenty feet of open air turned out to be nothing at all. I hit the gravel roof of the grain warehouse flat on both feet, knees bending to swallow the landing, with no more noise than a quiet rustle of loose stones.
I didn't pause. I ran across the roof, cleared a five-foot brick ledge, dropped onto the iron fire escape of the next block, and slid down the ladder into the shadows of an alley two streets from the market, the rails cold and slick under my palms.
Three levels of Spirit and a Primordial Core spinning in my belly changed how the world felt under your feet. Every breath fed a thread of refined Essence into my core, and my legs stayed tireless, my joints loose, every sound and smell in the alley arriving clean and separate.
It was a little before seven. The yellow fog was thinning under the pale morning light, and while the trucks and the crowds had all pushed toward the square, this end of 4th Street was still quiet.
As I turned the corner, I saw a dark plume of woodsmoke rising from the chimney pipe above Chen's stall.
I slowed, put my hands in my jacket pockets, and walked up to the counter.
Chen was kneeling beside his iron vat in his stained canvas apron and his everyday cloth cap, coaxing a stack of spirit-coal briquettes to life with a brass spark-lighter. The smell of bitter radish broth and woodsmoke already hung thick in the damp air. "You're up early," he grunted without turning around. "They've barely started reading the draft. You in a hurry to be first in line for a shovel?"
"I'm not going to the draft, Chen."
The spark-lighter stopped hissing. Chen blew out a long white cloud of breath, wiped his soot-stained thumbs on his apron, and stood up slowly, one hand on the edge of the vat. He turned, and his tired, watery eyes found me over the lip of the steaming pot.
He looked at my face. Then at my shoulders.
He'd known me since I was a scrawny six-year-old begging for vegetable scraps behind the shelter. He knew me as a kid who slouched, neck tucked low, eyes glued to the cobblestones to avoid the stares of merchants and guild guards. Now I was standing straight. My shoulders were square, my chin was level, and there was a steadiness in my eyes that hadn't been there yesterday.
"You look different, kid," Chen said slowly. His gaze dropped to my hands on the counter. "What happened to your arms?"
I glanced down. The blistered, boiled skin from two nights ago was gone, replaced by smooth, healthy skin that looked better than it ever had.
"The Blood-Root finally worked," I lied, with a small smirk. "Or I just got tired of boiling myself."
Chen didn't laugh. He set the spark-lighter down, picked up a damp rag, and wiped the counter with slow, deliberate strokes. "You're leaving." It wasn't a question. When I said yeah, he kept wiping. "Out through the drains. To the outer fields."
"It beats shoveling rift-ash three levels under the street for three coppers a day." I met his eyes. "I'm not built for a shovel, Chen."
He looked at me for three long seconds. Steam rolled up between us, smelling of salt and old marrow bones.
He didn't ask how I'd broken the terminal. He didn't ask why I was standing differently or how I'd healed overnight. He let out a long, heavy breath, turned, and disappeared into the dark alcove behind his stall.
I stood there listening to a drawer scrape open, and my heart did something complicated.
When he came back, he was carrying a bundle wrapped in dark, oiled cloth. He set it on the counter with a dull thud and pushed it toward me. "Open it."
Inside was a pair of old, thick leather boots with reinforced iron toes and brass eyelets, the leather oiled until it shone. He'd stuffed the toes with scraps of dry wool. Beside them sat a small leather pouch that clinked softly as it settled.
"You said you had old boots," I said. My voice didn't sound entirely like mine.
"I do. Oiled them last night after I got back from the square." He didn't look at me. "Size eight. Might be a bit big. Soles are double-stitched cowhide with an iron plate. They'll keep the acid-water out there from eating your feet through those canvas things."
I stared at the boots. He'd been up half the night oiling leather for a kid he'd just watched get laughed off a stage. He'd packed the wool himself.
"Chen, I can't—"
"And this." He reached under the counter and slapped two small copper coins onto the wood between us. "Found these under my chain at five this morning. You think I'm a charity case, boy? That you've got to leave me money like a tip at a funeral?"
My ears went hot. "It was all I had."
"I know it was all you had. That's why it's stupid." He shoved them back across the counter. "Keep them. You'll want something in your pocket when you're out there." I started to say his name, and he cut me off with a thick, calloused finger jabbed at the pouch. "Shut your mouth. Forty coppers. Three months of broth money from the dock porters. Don't argue. I'm seventy-two years old, Adrian. I'm not leaving District 9. I'm going to die behind this pot, and nobody's going to build me a monument or remember my name."
"I will."
It was out before I'd thought about it. Chen stopped, finger still raised.
"I'll remember it," I said quietly. "Chen. Ling's Soup Stall, on 4th Street. Best broth in four sectors. I'll tell everyone."
For a long moment, the old man said nothing. His jaw worked. Then he turned abruptly, picked up the rag again, and began scrubbing a patch of counter that was already spotless. "Don't be ridiculous," he told the wood, gruffly.
His hand was shaking.
I let him have the silence. Forty coppers. Three months of porters' coins, counted out one at a time into a pouch for me. Then I picked up the boots, unlaced my frayed canvas shoes right there at the counter, and pulled the leather over my feet. They were loose around the toes, but with the wool packed in they fit like they'd been waiting for me. The iron-plated soles sat solid as stone under my heels, and the leather still smelled of the oil.
I laced them tight and took the pouch.
"Chen," I said. "Lin. On the fourth floor. Her mother's got a cough that—"
"I send that girl a bun twice a week," Chen snapped. "Do you think I'm an idiot? I've got eyes." When I told him no, he grunted and kept going, still glaring. "I'll look in on her mother. Told the woman last month she ought to see an apothecary. She won't. They never do."
I'll fix that, I thought. I've got a name on a list.
I nodded.
"Listen to me," Chen said, and his voice had gone rough and low. He leaned over the counter, his dark eyes surprisingly sharp behind the steam. "You survived a Void rift as a baby and walked away. You've lived fifteen years in a district that treated you like a broken tool. Out past that wall, don't let the vermin drag you into the mud. Eat real meat when you can afford it. Keep your boots dry." I told him I would, and he jabbed the finger again. "And don't come back until you can look anyone on this planet in the eye and not blink."
Something in my throat seized. "And then?"
Chen straightened, and for the first time in my life I saw something like a smile cross his face, a thin, crooked thing that looked badly out of practice.
"And then there's a crate waiting. Same crate. Don't make me guard it forever."
I laughed, and it came out cracked. "I'll pay you back, Chen. With interest."
"I don't want your interest." He spat into the gutter and turned back to his vat, grumbling, keeping his back to me so I couldn't see his face. "Just stay alive, boy. Now get out of here before the morning patrols come down the street with their clipboards."
I wanted to say something enormous, something that would make all of it fit into the space between us. All I had was two words. "Thank you."
"Go."
I gave him a deep, formal bow, the kind I'd seen the old porters give their foremen when they were at their most grateful and least able to say it. He didn't turn around. But the hand holding the rag stopped moving.
I tucked the pouch and the two coppers into my trousers and walked up the alley toward the east.
No tunnels this time, and no climbing the wall. With Chen's boots on my feet and a Primordial Core in my gut, I headed straight for the eastern edge of the district, where District 9 gave way to the wasteland.
Behind me, the smell of woodsmoke and broth followed me down the street until it thinned into rust and fog. I didn't look back. If I had, I'd have turned around.
I slipped past the ruined guard tower near Drainage Canal 4 and stepped through a collapsed breach in the fence where old spatial earthquakes had buckled the concrete.
The moment my boots touched the mud outside, the air changed, the same way it had at four this morning.
The familiar smell of burnt coal and cheap grease vanished, replaced by a biting chill and the heavy metallic tang of uncontained spatial energy. Ahead of me, miles of jagged black rock, mountains of crushed scrap, rusted crane frames, and fields of purple Void-moss stretched into the grey fog. On the horizon, the three massive tears hung above the scrap fields, bruised and open, bleeding Void and raw Aether into the air.
Last time, I'd stayed within twenty minutes of the fence, picking off strays in a ruined incinerator. This time I wasn't stopping at the edge. Out there was the wild rift border, unmonitored, where feral Qi beasts and twisted creatures roamed free of any municipal control.
I stood on a rocky ridge of slag overlooking the valley of scrap. The wind whipped my tunic against my ribs, but my body stayed warm, my core turning slow and steady in my belly. The new boots sank half an inch into the cinders and held.
I reached into my pocket and touched the pouch of coppers, and the two coins that had gone under Chen's chain and come back to me. I touched the thread on my wrist.
Come back, Chen had said. Not don't. Come back when you're strong enough. When you can look anyone in the eye.
"Okay," I whispered to the wind. "Time to grind."