Outside, muffled voices and the occasional rattle of a streetcar punctuated the streetlamp-dimmed dusk that mingled with the scents of coal, smoke, and city grime. The sound of honking horns and distant music from the halls of entertainment only dimmed as Bellamy shut the door to the apartment, not bothering to turn the lock. His home was modest for a three-bedroom apartment. He split the rent with a young couple from the Atrean Islet, a grumpy older lawyer, and, of course, his brother. The wooden floors creaked in odd places, worsening in the chill of winter, but the insulation was good enough to keep the biting cold at bay.

  Bellamy gently massaged chilled, stiff hands, working ambient heat into his fingers before reaching into his bag. He carefully unwrapped one of the many butcher-paper bundles he had received from Kye. The soft crinkle of paper echoed as he peeled it back, revealing the fresh meat – deep red, marbled, and almost too perfect to be real. He set it on the counter quickly, almost willing its presence away before temporarily retreating to his room to grab his personal butcher's block and cast iron.

  Explaining why he kept separate cookware had been an ordeal. Looking back, his excuse had been flimsy at best – shellfish allergy, deathly allergic. But it worked. Kept his flatmates safe. Kept him from flipping up. He'd take the awkward conversations over the alternative. It also happened to make him their resident cook, which came with a little rent decrease, which was always nice.

  His knife bit into the flesh with satisfying resistance, the blade gliding through sinew and muscle. Each piece was roughly cut – just the right size to break down into tender shreds in a slow-simmering pot. The rhythm of chopping settled into something steady -- meditative -- the thud of the knife against the board a consistent backdrop to his thoughts.

  With practiced precision, he retrieved another butcher's block, a separate cutting board, and yet another knife before pulling more stew beef, this time from the icebox. A second round, uncontaminated. A second pot. One for himself, one for the rest.

  The vegetables came next. Carrots, potatoes, and onions. The carrots were still caked in earth and needed a quick rinse. Water splashed into the basin, the sound crisp against the background hum only shattered by an occasional boiler bubble messing with the pipes. He set about peeling and slicing each vegetable, appreciating the differences in texture – the snap of carrot skin, the satisfying give of an onion under the blade, the sudden lack of resistance once he broke through a potato's skin.

  Oil sizzled in two cast-iron skillets as they met the heat of the stove, fire crackling and popping softly beneath them. A dollop of lard melted into a thin shimmer of fat before he slid the meat into the pans. Each chunk landed with a hiss, the rich scent rising into the air and infiltrating every corner of the apartment almost immediately. He didn't need to smell it to know; the old lawyer's door creaking open and the familiar shuffle of worn slippers was a dead giveaway.

  The old man, Paul, sprawled onto the sofa with a weary sigh, a cheap booze bottle in one arm. "Mind bringing that bottle over here?" Bellamy asked, stirring each pot with their separate wooden spoons, turning each piece carefully so the edges caramelized in the rendered fat.

  "Sure, son." With the grace to sound only mildly disgruntled, the lawyer hauled himself up and hobbled over, sliding the bottle across the counter. Belllamy for his part had the grace to not drink the entire bottle as he unscrewed the cap and took a deep swig.

  "Hits the spot," he muttered, setting the bottle down before turning to the vegetables. The steady chop of his knife filled the room once more.

  "You look like shit," the older man finally observed, eyeing the bruising swell around Bellamy's eye.

  "I'm getting that a lot lately," Bellamy chuckled, not looking up.

  "Anything an old man like me would be worried about?"

  "No." Bellamy's voice left no room for doubt. "Got this from a job."

  The lawyer grunted in acknowledgment, motioning for the bottle again. Bellamy took one more quick swig before sliding it back across the counter. "And you? Bit strong tonight."

  "Damn judges again. They're stalling. Waiting me out, hoping no one else picks up the case once I'm mush and that I won't come back to get them. Or at least until The G-O ratifies another legally sanctioned extermination clause into law."

  Bellamy paused in his chopping, setting the knife down with a quiet clink. "Yes, because I am an educated enough man to understand those words," he said, voice dry. "Simply not educated enough to understand them in that order."

  The lawyer grumbled something under his breath before speaking louder. "Lousy people are still lousy, and the snow is making my old bones ache."

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Bellamy reached into the cabinet, pulling out a bay leaf which he slid into the broth, watching as it bobbed before settling beneath the surface. "Let's hope some stew can warm those old bones of yours, aye."

  "What I'm hoping for," the lawyer muttered, making his way back onto the couch.

  The conversation lapsed into comfortable quiet, the bubbling of the pot filling the space between them. Bellamy adjusted the seasoning based on the old man's feedback, adding a pinch more salt and a crack of pepper.

  Ladling stew into two bowls, he switched to the uncontaminated ladle for the old man's portion. He carried his brother's bowl to their shared room before setting his and the lawyers at the table. They ate in silence, the warmth of the food settling between them like an unspoken understanding.

  The old man left first and Bellamy set about stacking dishes, dropping the contaminated cookware on Callum's desk. He might enjoy cooking, but he'd be damned if he was going to clean up. Bellamy passed the time un-bruising his body and black eye, channeling essence through him to mend the wounds. The sensations of using essence were different for everyone -- some felt it burn like a fire inside their chest, others like a rush of something sharper than adrenaline or any drug through their veins. For Bellamy, it was nothing so visceral. Instead, it was as if he were a scaffold, and the essence was countless workers swarming over him, straining the supports until they creaked. The sensation set his nerves on edge.

  Suddenly, his brother recorporealized inside the apartment by the door. Another casual display of his Harbinger manfiestation. Bellamy's eye twitched.

  "Seriously?"

  Callum grinned. "No one saw." He and his brother looked quite alike, they both had the distinctive tanner skin of Coutama, with deep coffee brown eyes and short curly hair. They both wore simple clothes, but Callum always had a better mind for fitted cloth and accessories to make him appear better off than he was.

  Bellmay exhaled through his nose. It didn't matter if his brother thought he wasn't seen. All it took was one set of prying eyes, one rumor, one overeager bastard with a holy book, and they were done.

  People weren't supposed to survive natural essence exposure, not without consequences. Some turned into twisted husks, some got burned out, and a rare few came back … wrong. Those ones? They were hunted.

  "Accident when I was a kid," Callum always said when he revealed his essence. Some bought it or didn't care, too busy figuring out what to eat or when their next job would be.

  Bellamy turned away, shaking his head. "How were classes?"

  Callum ignored the question, sniffing the air. "Stew?"

  "Aye." Only a small note of jealousy managed to worm its way into the single word.

  "Bet it tastes great." he hung up his coat and doffed his hat, hanging both by the door. He proceeded to step through the wall to their shared room, grabbed the bowl of stew, and then pulled himself and the soup through once more. His grin only seemed to widen as he greedily took in the scents of the stew, savoring every moment.

  "Classes were fine," Callum started, still leaning over the stew but not yet eating it. "Second semester, and they're still doing the intro work from grade school. He almost reluctantly brought the bowl to his lips before pouring its entire contents into his mouth and swallowing in one go.

  "Do you do that around your friends?" Bellamy scowled, seeing his hard work disappear.

  "Oh yeah. Party trick. The girls love it."

  "I'm no longer interested." Bellamy grabbed his coat, heading for the door. "Keep your ability on for a while. Low attention. The zealots are in town."

  Callum froze, his hands now clammy, face tight, tension spreading through his in its entirety. "... You're sure?"

  "Yeah. Keep going to school. They'll be watching for anyone suspiciously absent after news gets around."

  "We could just leave," Callum hesitated, "Say we're visiting family."

  Bellamy shook his head, "Sniffers at every station. You could get by, but I'm not stealing a car."

  Callum stood there, face scrunched in an approximation of pain before the hat he had just hung up smacked him in the face.

  "Don't be a baby about it," Bellamy muttered, a poor excuse for comfort. "If one of them tries something, just punch them in the throat while they pray – they never finish their chants after that." He gave a side glance at his brother, realizing he had done nothing to put his mind at ease.

  With a sigh, he continued, "Come on. I'm heading to The Last Dance and then Penny's. I need someone to proxy bet on me. I have a job down there. They won’t allow me to bet on myself"

  Callum groaned. "Fuck, dude. I'm tired."

  "And I like paying your tuition, so let's go."

  With a halfhearted grumble, Callum slouched after him. Bellamy gave him a small kick on the way out, guiding them into frostbitten streets. The city was never silent– the wind howled through alleyways, rails screeched, machinery hummed. But Bellamy never felt the weight of all that noise more than when he was with Callum.

  Brotherhood meant trust. It meant knowing when to put everything on the table and when to hedge your bets and trusting whatever decision the other made had been done with the intent for both of them to succeed, but it also meant that he couldn't just tell his brother to shut the fuck up and not talk when he was sharing.

  "And then," he continued his mini-rant, "she had the audacity to look me in the eyes and start talking about a lack of studies on brain matter density."

  Bellamy grunted, barely listening.

  "That was her entire argument, a lack of a direct comparison to brain matter. By her logic a fucking whale or dolphin is more sentient than Verdan."

  "Oh wow"

  "That's insane Bellamy. It's not even a lack of knowledge, I swear."

  "Crazy"

  They're fucking with me. They have to be. They're trying to piss me off. The looks on everyone else's faces though. They were horrified! They couldn't believe she said that out loud."

  "Yep"

  It continued. All the way to The Last Dance. Every second until they walked in the doors.