Xeel

Night presses close to the city, thick with fog and the smell of damp stone. Lanternlight clings to rooftops and spires in broken halos, never quite reaching the alleys below. From above, the city looks orderly—walls, towers, tiled roofs laid out like a careful design—but down at street level it breathes differently. Shadows pool where patrol routes don’t quite overlap. Footsteps echo too loudly. Windows stay dark. Something moves where it shouldn’t. A shape slips along the upper edges of the world—rooflines, parapets, the narrow margins where guards rarely look up. Tiles whisper under careless weight. Somewhere behind him, metal rings softly against stone. A shout follows, sharp and startled, then another—too close. The night turns hostile, and he runs anyway. The roofs end abruptly near the outer gardens, where noble estates give way to terraced hills and old retaining walls half-swallowed by ivy. The drop is farther than it looked. The fog hides the edge until it’s already gone, momentum carrying him past the point of elegance and into something far more real. The fall steals the breath from his lungs. Grass and dirt tear at him as he hits, rolling hard, the world spinning—sky, hill, hedge, sky again. He tumbles down the slope in a tangle of limbs and curses, barely managing to twist before colliding with the base of the hill. Pain flares bright, then dulls enough to let him drag in a breath. The night rings for a moment, distant and hollow, as if even the city is holding its breath. Above, boots skid at the edge of stone. Voices argue—whether to follow, whether the hill is worth the risk. Lanternlight flickers, then retreats. Down here, the ground is cold and slick beneath his palms, damp grass clinging to him as he stays still, listening past the thud of his own heartbeat. Crickets resume their song, cautiously. The fog curls low, reclaiming him inch by inch. If he stays still long enough, he might disappear entirely.