Seren disliked tea.

It wasn't the taste so much as the performance of it — the way people in this part of the city turned it into theater. Porcelain cups, delicate trays, the faint clink of glass spoons against crystal bowls. All that ceremony for boiled water and dried leaves. Still, he kept up the act. It was good for appearances.

He sat on the balcony of the Silver Finch Teahouse, elbows on the small iron table, the remains of a half-finished cup cooling beside his papers. The midday sun had already begun to turn the plaza below into a slow-moving tide of color and noise. Merchants barked from stalls. Messengers threaded through the crowd. Somewhere across the square, a pair of street performers had drawn a small circle of onlookers with fire tricks and shouted jokes.

Seren lowered the report in front of him and exhaled through his nose. "You're sure about this?" he asked without looking up.

The young agent standing beside the table — barely out of his twenties, uniform still too crisp to have seen real use — shifted his weight. "Yes, sir. The adventurer was quite… vocal about it. Claimed he bought a set of tablets from the store in question. Showed them off at the guildhall, even. Said they were called 'MUD.'"

Seren blinked, then gave the man a slow, flat stare. "MUD."

"Yes, sir."

"Do I even want to know what that stands for?"

The agent's mouth twitched. "He didn't seem to know either. Said they 'just work.'"

Seren leaned back in his chair and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Perfect. Another problem making the rounds, and somehow it ends up on my desk." He dropped his hand and gestured vaguely toward the report. "Read it again."

The agent hesitated, then did as told. "Rumors indicate the shop's owner has been supplying high-grade beast cores, Deep-tier materials, and several new alchemical brews — including the Spirit Wine that's become popular among the upper circles. All products appear genuine, quality tested by multiple buyers. No registration with the Alchemical or Trade Guilds on record." He swallowed. "There's also mention of an anonymous tip linking several of the shop's known visitors to the… ah, Western Prima incident."

Seren grunted. "Attack," he said. "You can call it what it was." He lifted his cup, took a sip, and grimaced when the tea had gone lukewarm. "And the temple's still pretending it didn't happen."

"Yes, sir."

He set the cup down with a click. "Figures."

The agent shifted again, clearly unsure if he was meant to continue. Seren glanced at him and sighed. "Go on."

"Officially, the order is to investigate for smuggling. Unlicensed goods, illicit materials, that sort of thing."

Seren barked a short laugh. "Smuggling. Right. Because the Council suddenly discovered a conscience." He leaned forward, voice low. "You and I both know what this is about. Someone important isn't making their usual cut, and now they want me to poke holes until the money starts flowing in the right direction again."

The agent's mouth pressed thin, but he didn't disagree.

Seren flipped the report closed and tapped it against the table, thinking. He'd seen enough "special cases" to recognize the pattern: a new player in the market, a product that couldn't be controlled, whispers of connections that reached too far, too fast. And somewhere behind it, one of the city's noble families or merchant lords quietly panicking over a dent in their monopoly.

He glanced over the balcony rail. Across the plaza, banners fluttered in the breeze, bright against the pale stone of the western district. Somewhere beneath those banners, that new shop was pulling in customers by the hour.

Seren sighed again and pushed his chair back. "All right," he said. "Tell the quartermaster I'll need a warrant draft by evening, and have records pull the trade logs for the last three weeks. Start with alchemical permits and shipping manifests from the southern checkpoints."

"Yes, sir. And the shop?"

"I'll pay them a visit tomorrow." He stood, tucking the folded report into his coat pocket. "Let's see what all the noise is about before the Council decides what story they want me to tell."

The agent nodded quickly and hurried off, leaving Seren alone on the balcony.

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He turned his chair slightly, angling for a clearer view over the balcony rail, and toward the reason he was even in this part of town to begin with.

From the balcony's height, the plaza spread out like a living tapestry of color and motion. The noon sun glared off the pale stone, the air thick with heat. Hawkers shouted from their stalls, wagons rattled over the cobbles, and somewhere by the fountain a musician plucked a bright, uneven tune that barely carried above the noise.

At first glance, it looked like any busy afternoon. But the longer Seren watched, the more the pattern shifted. Through the morning, a crowd had gathered around something near the plaza's center, a pocket of order amid the chaos. At a casual glance, it would have been easy to dismiss this gathering as some small festival, or maybe some special event. But if someone took the time to look, it was obvious that the people gathered were of a rougher sort than the typical market crowd.

Refugees wrapped in threadbare cloaks, thin-armed laborers still in their work rags, a few young adventurers wearing dented armor. The kind of faces you usually found waiting in temple lines or begging at the ward gates, not crowding a market square in broad daylight.

He leaned forward, elbows on the iron rail. A canvas awning had been raised at the crowd's heart, its edges fluttering in the breeze. Beneath it, a dozen figures moved in practiced rhythm — white coats, clean bandages, a steady glow of healing light that cut through the dust. Every so often, one of them would call for water or supplies, and someone from the gathering would hurry to fetch it. The line of patients stretched back into the street.

He ran his thumb along the edge of the dossier, feeling the rough grain of the parchment before flipping it open. Inside lay a dozen portraits — the refined, lifelike kind only Spirit Artists could capture. Not for the first time that morning, he compared those painted faces to the figures moving under the white tent below. Each one was an identical match. Every one of them was there — the Pavilion's missing staff, alive and smiling as if they'd simply stepped out for air.

The City Guard had called them lucky, staff who'd been away when the killing began. But after several days with no sightings, the case had drifted up the chain until it landed on Seren's desk — the kind of unsolved puzzle nobody else wanted to touch.

The tea at his elbow had gone stone cold. He pushed the cup aside, the clink of porcelain against metal sharp in the quiet, and leaned closer to the railing. The iron bit into his forearms as he peered down at the scene.

All the Pavilion's ghosts were gathered here, working under the sun. Yet one other person had caught his eye. Another person who shouldn't have been there.

He turned another page. The next image showed an older woman, silver hair bound in a neat coil, eyes wise and kind — Dr. Maria Corvane, founder of the Silver Path Pavilion. According to every report, she had died months ago, swallowed by some failed expedition into the Deep. A tragedy, they'd said. Her staff had mourned, the Pavilion had limped on, and life had resumed its slow decay.

And yet, there she was — very much alive. Kneeling in the dust beside a boy with a bloodied knee, her hands aglow with soft healing light. The crowd around her swelled with reverence, faces turned toward her as though watching a saint returned from the grave.

Seren exhaled through his nose and rubbed at the bridge of it with ink-stained fingers. "Perfect," he muttered. "As if this case wasn't tangled enough, now I've got the dead walking too."

He snapped the dossier shut and fixed his gaze back on the crowd, jaw tightening as the noise of the plaza rose to meet him.

The patients' faces told their own story — reverence, awe, and something close to worship. Every healed wound brought more whispers. Each recovery drew fresh bodies from the street edges. And above it all hung a newly painted sign, nailed crooked to a cart beside the tent:

"Free Care Provided by the Silver Path Initiative — Sponsored by the Nexus Hub."

That last line made him pause. He read it twice, lips moving soundlessly.

There it was. The connection that had all his superiors in a tizzy.

The same shop that was causing him such a headache today.

"What exactly are you playing at?" he murmured.

A breeze rolled through the square, carrying with it the scents of sweat and incense, the faint iron tang of coin and blood that clung to every Halirosan street. Seren's fingers drummed once on the table. The rhythm of the crowd below shifted — laughter, clapping, voices rising as another patient limped away from the tent, healed.

And then, like a ripple in still water, something changed.

He couldn't have said what caught her attention — maybe instinct, maybe something subtler — but Dr. Maria's hand froze midway through tying a bandage. Her head turned.

Even across the distance, Seren felt the shift.

Her gaze swept the crowd once, then lifted — precise, deliberate — to the balcony where he sat.

Their eyes met.

Seren's breath hitched. The space between them seemed to thin, the noise of the plaza fading to a muffled hum. Her expression didn't waver. No alarm. No surprise. Just calm recognition… and the faintest, knowing smile.

Seren's chair scraped back hard enough to jolt the table. He swore under his breath, swept his hand over the mess of papers. Ink-stained sheets vanished into his storage ring with a flicker of light. The teacup clattered once and rolled, spilling what was left of its contents onto the iron tabletop.

He was already on his feet.

Down below, the crowd pressed closer to the tent, blocking his line of sight. But he could still feel her eyes on him, steady as a pin through cloth.

"Damn it," he muttered, and strode for the stairs.

The teahouse owner barely looked up as he passed, too busy shouting orders at a serving girl. Seren pushed through the front door into the sunlight, the sudden brightness making his eyes water. He cut across the street, coat flaring behind him, ignoring the startled looks from passersby.

He slipped into the stream of foot traffic, heading back toward the Guard's quarter.

High above, a faint metallic click broke the hum of city noise.

Clinging to the vine-choked wall of the teahouse, a single, large wasp adjusted its stance. Its crimson eyes followed Seren's retreat until he vanished into the press of bodies. Then its wings flicked once, a whisper of motion lost in the wind.

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