I don't ask what the job is.

  Not because I'm brave. Not because I trust him. Because I’m starving, and starving things don't get to be careful.

  He hands me a slip of paper, creased and stained with something brown. I don’t ask what. There’s a name scribbled in jagged ink and a place I’ve never heard of.

  “Find him,” the man says. “He owes me. You bring me the message. Nothing else. You don’t talk to him. You don’t take anything. You just watch, wait, and bring me back what he says.”

  I nod. My legs shake when I stand. I don’t have boots anymore—someone took them while I slept days ago. My feet leave blood behind as I walk.

  It takes most of the day just to figure out where Bonewalk is. Most people ignore me. One man spits. Eventually, a girl with half her teeth and a long scar across her scalp takes pity—or thinks it’s funny—and points me toward a sagging alleyway framed by rusted beams and silence.

  “That’s Bonewalk,” she says. “If you’re not dead already, you will be.”

  The place is worse than I imagined. The air stinks like piss and burned meat. Every doorway feels like a mouth, waiting to swallow the wrong footstep.

  I ask around, careful, quiet, always ready to run. I drop the name once. A man with no eyebrows and a butcher’s apron glances toward a tower missing half its face. “Top floor,” he says. “If he’s not dead yet, he’s there.”

  The guy’s a local power—one of the ones who rules this dump. Nobody says that, but the fear in their eyes is loud enough.

  I crouch. I study.

  Eventually, he steps out. Thin. Hollow-eyed. Dangerous. I trail him through the alleys, pretending to scavenge, hiding every time he stops.

  When he leans over to light a cig from a barrel fire, I get close. Close enough to bump him.

  His hand slams into my chest and throws me back.

  “You touch me again, rat, I skin you.”

  He kicks me in the ribs—hard. I choke down a cry. But the mark’s there. It worked.

  I crawl away, bruised, dizzy—but I can hear him.

  I wait. Listen. Track every word, every insult, every deal. I don’t know what half of it means, but I remember it all.

  That night, the man from the gate finds me before I find him.

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  “Well?” he says.

  I give him everything I heard. Word for word. Nothing left out.

  His smile is sharper this time.

  “Not bad,” he says. “You think fast for something half-dead.”

  He crouches down, eye level.

  “Call me Hooks,” he says. “That’s the name that matters. For now.”

  But that night, all I know is the man in front of me feeds me, uses me, and maybe—just maybe—needs me.

  He drops a crust of bread in my lap.

  “Eat. Then rest. Tomorrow you’ll breathe for me again.”

  ***

  I sleep against the wall where he left me. If you can call it sleep. Every sound jolts me half-awake. Every cough feels like it could crack a rib.

  By morning, I’m stiff, freezing, and starving all over again.

  But there’s something new.

  Another note.

  "Watch the butcher near Razor Bend. Get close. I want what he says after the sun sets."

  No instructions on how. No food. Just a command.

  I drag myself through the alleys. Razor Bend’s worse than Bonewalk. The buildings lean like they want to fall on you. Most of the doors are barricaded from the inside. The smell of iron and something rotting coats the air.

  The butcher’s easy to find. He’s loud. Red apron. A laugh that sounds like someone choking on gravel. People treat him like he’s royalty out here. His shop’s just an open counter bolted to the frame of a collapsed warehouse. No one steals from him. I can see why—he’s built like a wall and keeps a cleaver in one hand even when he’s counting coin.

  Getting close isn’t going to be easy.

  I stop. My eyes flicker around the street, watching every movement, listening to every sound. My ribs hurt with every shallow breath, but I push through, waiting for my moment.

  Then I find my moment—he’s arguing with a vendor, distracted. I walk past like I’m just another hungry stray, too broken to matter.

  When I brush against his elbow, he barely glances down.

  But he snarls, “Watch it, filth.”

  I don’t stop. I don’t run. I just keep limping.

  The mark sinks in.

  By the time I make it around the corner, I can already hear him. Loud, clear, like he’s speaking beside me.

  “Tell her the crates stay until I see coin. I’m not losing fingers over some cursed junk she smuggled in.”

  “If she wants Bishop’s blessing, she can come ask for it herself.”

  Bishop.

  That name again. I’ve heard it a few times now—whispers in alleys, muttered curses, fear-soaked threats. The King of Deadreach, they say. Not a man. A shadow with eyes everywhere.

  And the strangest thing?

  They say he’s Blessed. Everyone in Zenith dreams of becoming one—called by something higher, gifted with power that bends the world. Almost no one ever does. The Blessed are kings, heroes, nightmares.

  But what’s a Blessed doing in Deadreach?

  I crouch behind a rusted pipe, shivering and bleeding into my sleeve, and listen. I remember everything.

  Because Hooks will ask for all of it. And maybe, if I’m lucky, feed me.

  I wait until night deepens, then head back the way I came—slow, quiet, hobbling.

  Hooks is already there, standing in the same spot like he never moved. Maybe he didn’t.

  I repeat the butcher’s words, each one like gravel in my throat. I give him everything.

  He nods once. No praise. Just acknowledgment.

  “Bishop will be happy to hear this,” he mutters—more to himself, maybe, but loud enough for me to catch.

  Then he looks at me. Just for a second.

  “Good.”

  He tosses me a scrap of meat and bread wrapped in cloth. Not much, but more than yesterday.

  And without another word, he vanishes into the dark.

  I sit in the alley and eat with fingers that barely work.

  It’s not safety. It’s not warmth.

  But it’s enough to keep breathing.

  And that means tomorrow, I crawl again.

  And maybe next time, I bite.