The district announced itself before it was even visible. A sharp smell of hot metal, mixed with something more organic — tanned leather, wood smoke, a pungent note that vaguely reminded Simon of glue — reached his nose as he followed Corin along a street that climbed gently, flanked by low buildings with makeshift chimneys puffing dark filaments against the morning sky.
The noise hit him right after the smell: rhythmic hammer blows on anvils, the hiss of something plunged into water, voices shouting orders or good-natured insults from one doorway to the next.
"Is this like the industrial district or something?" Simon asked, almost automatically, as if giving that chaos a familiar name might make it less absurd.
"The Hearth," Corin said, without slowing her pace or turning to look at him. "The craftsmen's quarter. Blacksmiths, leatherworkers, people who work with their hands for a living. We're going to see someone important, so try not to touch anything and not to ask too many stupid questions, if you can help it."
"No promises," Simon muttered, but followed her anyway, his eyes darting from shop to shop with a curiosity that, despite himself, was slowly working its way through the layer of exhaustion and wariness that had wrapped around him since he'd opened his eyes under that impossible sun.
They passed a building larger than the others, with a line of people winding out the door — a dozen at least, of different species, all with the patient look of people who know waiting will be worth it. Simon slowed instinctively.
"Is this the place?" he asked, tilting his chin toward the line.
Corin shook her head without stopping. "No. That's just a shop — it's basically a jewelry store, if you want a comparison you'll actually understand."
Simon didn't understand the comparison at all, but he glanced up at the sign above the door as they passed — thick letters, carved into the wood and reinforced with something that gleamed faintly like metal: Hollowtusk Forge.
He filed the name away without quite knowing why, in that same corner of his brain that by now simply recorded everything without asking too many questions, and kept following Corin down the street, passing one stall after another — tanned hides hung out to dry, metal tools in shapes he couldn't make sense of, someone selling what looked like little jars of ointment with labels written in handwriting too elaborate to read at a glance.
It was a smaller stall, wedged between two larger shops, that actually caught Simon's attention. Not so much for the merchandise itself — a modest assortment of jewelry laid out on a faded red cloth — but because, for the first time since he'd arrived in this world, he saw something that resembled something he could have found in a normal window display, in a normal shopping mall, in a normal life.
Two rings caught his eye first. They were almost identical in shape — a thin band with a small set stone — but one had cursive emerald-green engravings winding around the band like miniature vines, while the other had ruby-red ones, sharper, almost flame-like. Beside them, a necklace caught his attention: a thin chain of dark metal, with a pendant engraved with a small geometric rune, its grooves still as shiny as if they'd been carved the day before.
"Good eye, that one," said a voice, and Simon looked up to find the merchant — a man, human like him, with a smile too wide and eyes that quickly appraised how much Simon might be worth as a customer. "I see the young gentleman has good taste. Those rings are handmade by a craftsman from Crowsmouth, real stones, and that necklace — ah, that necklace is a rare piece, my friend, I could let you have it at a steal if you decide today, just for you two, just because you seem like nice folks—"
"Two Rings of Balance and a Rune Necklace of Warning," Corin said, without even slowing her pace, in a tone so flat and bored it bordered on offensive. "A tourist trap if I've ever seen one." She gave Simon a sharp nod, a gesture that clearly said just follow me, and kept walking past the stall without waiting for a reply.
The merchant's smile faltered for a fraction of a second — long enough for Simon to notice — before he turned to the next passerby with the exact same pitch, word for word.
Simon had to lengthen his stride to catch up with her. "Were they fake?" he asked, a little disappointed, a little curious. "They looked... I don't know, they had a real look to them."
"Not fake," Corin said, shrugging. "Just common. Stuff you'd find for pennies at a market in Cajin, sold here at ten times the price because it smells of 'island craftsmanship' and visitors don't know the difference. The ring helps you keep your balance on unstable ground, like a rocking boat — useful, if you live here, completely useless if you don't even know what a ship's deck is. The necklace vibrates if someone's watching you with hostile intent. Honest, functional stuff, but definitely not worth what he was asking."
Simon nodded, without asking what Cajin was. He imagined — rightly or wrongly, he had no way of knowing — that it was some kind of big wholesale warehouse, the sort of place where you buy ten packs of something at half price. It wasn't entirely the wrong mental image, though he vaguely suspected, in a corner of his mind still too tired to dig deeper, that the reality was probably far more complicated than that.
They kept walking, turning down a couple of narrower streets, the noise of the forges fading slightly as they moved away from the busiest heart of the district. Simon noticed that several people greeted Corin with a nod, or a "hey, Ashvale" tossed off in passing — but he also noticed, just as easily, other colder looks, a man who deliberately turned his back when they passed his shop.
"Seems like you're famous around here," Simon said. "For better or worse."
"I travel a lot, buy and sell in this district for years," Corin said, without putting too much weight on it. "It's normal to make friends and enemies, when you do business long enough. Some remember a good price you once gave them, others remember that time you refused to pay what they were asking. Part of the game."
"And me?" Simon asked. He'd noticed the looks aimed at himself too — several, more intense, a mix he couldn't quite decipher. "Why does everyone look at me like I'm about to steal their wallet, or like I'm the one with something to sell?"
Corin shot him a sideways glance, almost amused by the question. "Because you're human," she said, simply. "And humans, around the continent, have a reputation for being either a great business opportunity — born negotiators, always know how to close a better deal than anyone else — or the quickest way to get scammed, if you let your guard down around them. Here on the island, where humans aren't very common, people haven't decided yet which category to put you in. So they're giving you a bit of both."
Simon wasn't sure whether to feel flattered or insulted by that description, and decided, with the tiredness of someone who already had too many other things to think about, not to pick either.
They turned one last time, ducking into a narrow passage between two buildings, so tight Simon had to angle his shoulders slightly to avoid brushing both walls at once. At the end, a sturdy wooden door, with no sign, bore a small discreet carving near the handle depicting a little hammer crossed with what looked like a needle.
Corin knocked twice, in a rhythm that seemed almost like a code, and without waiting for a reply pushed the door open.
The inside was small but immaculately tidy — shelves full of tools arranged with an almost obsessive precision, display cases with small objects glinting under a warm light coming from lanterns hung from the ceiling. The air smelled of polished metal and something sweetish, maybe tobacco.
At a workbench, back turned, stood a figure that for a moment Simon mistook for a dwarf — the stocky build, broad shoulders, the solid posture of someone who spends their life bent over precision work — but something wasn't quite right: he was a bit taller than Simon would have expected from a dwarf, the proportions slightly off, as if someone had taken the right mold and stretched it just a couple of inches before finishing the job.
A short person who still wouldn't play basketball anyway, Simon thought, and almost surprised himself for finding the mental strength to make a joke, even just in his own head, in the middle of all that chaos.
At the sound of the door, the figure turned.
The face revealed had a round, bulbous nose, almost potato-shaped, topped by a single thick monocle wedged over one eye that seemed to assess everything with clinical attention. Between his teeth, a thin cigar smoldered lazily, and the man — if you could call him that, with that hybrid build that confused every point of reference — exhaled the smoke calmly before spreading his lips into a half smile.
"Welcome to the Stonekin shop," he said, in a voice deeper than his build would suggest, his accent rounding certain syllables in a way Simon hadn't heard yet. The monocle glinted faintly as his gaze moved from Corin to Simon and back, appraising them both with the same quick efficiency with which, probably, he appraised every piece of metal that passed through his hands.
"How can I help you, Corin?"