YAN

“NAME AND AGE.”

“Yan...”

His own voice cracked the air like glass under pressure. Foreign, hollow, like it came from someone else's throat. It echoed off the sterile walls and hit him in the face, sharp and wrong.

He flinched. Tried to swallow. Failed.

His mouth was paper. His breath turned traitor.

Saliva caught sideways and suddenly he was choking, spasming like he’d swallowed smoke.

The man across the table didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Didn’t flinch.

He just watched. Silent. Patient. A white shape in a white room, like he was carved from the same ice as the walls.

Only when Yanick’s coughs faded into dry gasps did the man reach under the table. He placed an empty glass in front of him, slow and soundless.

“Name and age,” the man repeated.

“Yanick Erickson. Sixteen—no, seventeen.” He paused, blinked. “Since today.”

A heartbeat passed.

“Happy birthday.” No inflection. No curve to the voice. Just words placed in the air like weights.

Yanick half-smiled, then stopped.

“My god is—”

“I didn’t ask.”

The interruption sliced clean. The man adjusted his gloves, though they were already perfect. Tight, white, flawless. They clung like a second skin, like they’d grown there.

Yanick’s eyes narrowed.

“You don’t want to know who my god is?”

“We already possess that knowledge.”

He reached under the table again. This time, a pitcher. Half full. Water, catching the light like melted crystal. He placed it beside the glass without a word.

“The subject of this conversation is Rayla,” the man said, leaning forward just enough to shrink the distance between them. His eyes sharpened. “Or rather, what you’ve been doing for her in Valhafen.”

Yanick barked a laugh. A short, brittle sound. Empty.

“Rayla? That’s what this is about? Her?”

The man said nothing. Silence swelled.

Yanick looked down, and memories hit him like waves. Fast, hard, cold. He was drowning in them again.

“I was warned,” he whispered. “By my father.”

The man tapped his fingers on the desk. A rhythm. Deliberate. Measured.

The desk wasn’t wood, or stone, or metal. Something else. That same strange material like everything in here.

“According to our records, your father never served with Rayla,” the man said.

“That’s true,” Yanick replied. “He never met her.”

“And yet he warned you.”

The man poured the water. A quiet pour. A slow slide of glass across the desk.

Tap tap. Tap tap tap.

That rhythm again. Not random. Yanick realised it was familiar. Not a beat, but a code.

“My father told me,” Yanick said softly, “that if I gave her my service... the day would come when she’d ask for something that would make me hate myself.”

The man’s eyes locked onto him.

“Start at the beginning.”

Yanick’s throat closed.

His eyes burned. The dam inside cracked. Tears came. Hot and fast and quiet.

“I can’t...”

And then the man did something unexpected.

His voice softened. Did not became warm, not kind, but no longer sharp and cold.

“It’s all right. Take your time. Just breathe. Deep breaths. Look at me. Follow my lead.

Inhale—
Through the nose, slow, steady.
Hold.
Exhale—
Through the mouth. Controlled. Measured.”

Yanick mirrored him. Again. Then again.

With each breath, the weight in his chest loosened a little. The pressure uncoiled. The panic receded like a tide.
Still there. But quieter.

***

HE STUMBLED AS HE STEPPED onto the wooden pier, even though the ground was steady beneath him.

His body hadn’t caught up. It still swayed, brain still tuned to the rhythm of waves and creaking hulls. Phantom movement. Muscle memory. Sea legs on land.

He turned, blinking against the low sun knifing in from behind the ship. The sky bled amber.

There, on the deck, stood Big Mike. Still and silent, nodding once. The kind of nod that meant good luck.

Yanick nodded back. Then he turned and walked into the city, shadow stretching long behind him like a leash.

He kept his head down. Hood up. Eyes on the dust between his boots.

But still he felt them. The stares.

People made room for him without moving. Just... faded sideways. Slid into doorways. Vanished into shadows.

He told himself it was nothing. Just the light. Just his imagination. Just tired.

But the truth clung like a wet shirt. He stood out.

White hair like bone ash. Skin like frostbitten snow. Among the dusk-toned cityfolk, he looked like a ghost that forgot to stay dead.

They knew what Nordlings like Yanick used to do to people like them during Great War.

He pulled the hood tighter. Walked faster.

The deeper he went, the emptier the streets became. The stone buildings grew taller, pressing in, swallowing the last of the sun. Shadows grew teeth.

They didn’t speak. They didn’t whisper. They just left.

He found the tavern by accident. A battered sign creaked above a crooked door—metal and splintered wood, catching the sunset wrong. The glare made it hard to read, but the crude image was enough: a taloned bird gripping a beer mug.

This was the place where you can get all the information. Hear all the gossip.

He stared too long at the sign and walked straight into a wall.

Except it wasn’t a wall.

“Watch where you’re going,” a voice snapped at him. Low, mean, already half a threat.

Yanick reeled back, blinking.

Not a wall. A pack.

Four of them. Broad-shouldered. Dark-skinned. Cityborn boys. Maybe a year older. Maybe two. All muscle and attitude and shared hunger for someone to bleed.

One of them stepped forward. Close enough for Yanick to smell his breath—salted meat, cheap wine, and something worse.

Without breaking eye contact, the boy reached to his belt.

Pulled a long wooden club. Polished smooth. Dark with use.

His smile was all teeth.

“Let’s dance.”