Chapter 1: The Forgotten Child

The city of Halthor breathed like a living thing—a beast made of cobblestone streets, crooked alleyways, and the endless murmur of the desperate. It was a place of grinding poverty and gilded wealth, a place where the rich grew fat in their mansions atop the cliffs, and the poor clung to life in the muck below. This was where Nyra was born—among the dirt and dust, in the very belly of the city.

A storm rolled over Halthor's crooked rooftops the night Saris found the infant girl abandoned in the gutter, no more than a squalling bundle wrapped in rags. Rain fell in torrents, turning the streets to rivers of filth and muddy runoff. Saris, an old thief with quick fingers but a slower step these days, cursed the weather as she ducked into the shadows of a crumbling alleyway.

That's when she heard it. The baby's cry, a thin wail almost lost in the downpour.

Saris nearly kept walking. After all, the streets of Halthor were littered with the lost—orphans, beggars, and the dead. What difference would one more make?

But something in the sound caught her. Maybe it was a reminder of a life she had long buried, or maybe it was simply curiosity that made her turn back and look.

The child lay on a pile of discarded crates, half-drowned in rainwater. Pale, skinny, and barely clinging to life, the baby's dark eyes blinked up at her as though it were already familiar with the cruelty of the world. Saris crouched over the infant, shielding it from the rain, muttering curses under her breath.

"Who left you here, eh? Who'd be fool enough to throw away a life?"

The infant didn't answer, of course, but its cry softened. Saris hesitated. She was no saint. She had her own troubles, her own life scraping by in the city's underbelly. But she could still feel the warmth of the child's small body as she gingerly picked it up, tucking it under her ragged cloak. The rain drummed against her back as she glanced around, half-expecting some desperate mother to come rushing out of the darkness.

No one came.

"Well," Saris said to the baby, her voice a grumble, "looks like you're mine now."