Summer noon is the cruelest hour in Dalahaman’s cave-city; the sun hangs like a white blade, pouring no light into stacked blocks, only driving heat into a sealed hive. Heat whips the filth in roadside channels to ferment, and the stench rolls like a rotten tide through every breath.

For anyone from Balad, this air is tar through the nose; even a mouthful makes you gag like a fish on dry sand. For Dalahaman’s own, it’s just another day, the sky a lid and life a pot left to boil.

A sallow beggar sinks his arm into a storm drain, praying a drowned rat drifts in like a soggy blessing. Shirtless smiths shove and shout beside a cold, ash-choked forge, its mouth a dead volcano. A rag-clad kid bumps an old man and fumbles a pocket; the stolen trinkets scatter like dry leaves in wind. The street roars and stutters; damp fluff clings to the ground like mold, nobody bothers to scrape it clean.

Ask anyone here and they’ll tell you: decay is Dalahaman’s constant, rot like moss on stone, stubborn and evergreen.

What jars the eye is a pair of figures, one tall and one short, one broad and one lean, moving like mismatched notes in a sour song.

They walk heads down through the crowd, their hooded cloaks hiding their hair, the furred fabric still powdered with the dust of a long road. By Balad’s standards they aren’t polished, but here their cloaks look too fine, too clean—like river-water in a gutter—so skinny alley kids peek out to stare, and the boldest flicks a stone with the impish glee of a stray cat.

The big tall one snatches the stone midair, finds it smeared with something vile, and his eyes flare like a struck match. He’s ready to curse when his companion tugs his sleeve; a soft shake of the head douses the spark. He tosses the stone back, gives the kid a wolfish glare, then lowers his face and keeps moving.

They are Skela and Neprah.

Half a month ago, they met in a forest under the nudge of a nameless guide, the trees rising like a green cathedral around them. At first neither knew the other’s aim; steel almost sang from misunderstanding. Skela’s steadiness came like clear water, and Neprah’s doubts about the Council cut through his bluster; walls fell, and they traded the truths in their hands.

When Skela learned someone had given Neprah a set of coordinates and a secret organization’s name, she knew the mysterious voice had called him “the contact.”

She invited him along, and the big man—mind like a boulder, heart like a drum—stared at her, thought long, then nodded.

“Say you and that sneaky no-show aren’t lying. This big guy will go with you— but if there’s no proof at the end, I’ll haul you to court myself. No objections, Skela.”

“Of course!”

Being believed felt like dawn in winter; Skela spoke an oath that ran like a river for five minutes, then burned with purpose, day and night, for half a month of road.

But when they reached the area marked on the slip, her fire met rain and hissed. Two reasons doused it; the first stood right before her, woven from ruin.

Skela grew up in the far north, where wind is a knife and hunger a neighbor. She has seen infants fade like candles from poor food, seen drunk, broken men strike wives over a straw of anger. Even so, Dalahaman’s sights stretched past her map.

Looking at these bone-thin faces, she prayed like a faint bell, yet worry crawled in her chest like ants; the malice in their eyes pricked like thorns. She knew that edge isn’t born of nature but forged by need; this place leaves no room for gentle or fair, so people armor hard or get culled like weak grain.

She understood, but some knots don’t loosen just because you name them.

It’s not pleasant to feel watched by a thousand spider eyes—worse when your teammate is less reliable than your own shadow.

Yes, her companion—His Highness the famed Second Prince Neprah—was the second weight on her mood.

At first, Skela thought the mysterious benefactor was kind to send someone so crucial to help search for the truth. Now, she’d rather have come alone, a single candle in dark wind.

Because the man is painfully headlong. Shiny things snag his mind like hooks. A fistfight sparks? He wades in, thrashes both sides, then forces a handshake like a priest of peace. He does first, thinks later, and doesn’t care to hear a second voice.

Leaving Balad, it was manageable, but the more they drifted into unfamiliar outskirts, the more Neprah’s recklessness showed like mud on white cloth.

Skela tried to nudge him now and then; his motives weren’t cruel, just blunt as a cudgel.

In Dalahaman, that bluntness turned into a wall.

Yesterday, their supplies from the capital finally ran dry. Water, Skela could draw with magic like a spring from stone; bread couldn’t be conjured from air.

They ran hungry half the day and found a naan stall that looked almost clean, a little island in the sludge. Skela’s belly grumbled like a caged beast; stares pricked her skin like nettles. Neprah thumped his chest—big drum, big promise—said he’d handle the talk.

Skela felt a pit open, but Neprah wore a grin like a bright flag.

“I’m the president of the Red Orchid Society, the so-called Light of the common folk. Buying a couple flatbreads? Easy-peasy.”

He strode to the stall and asked for two meat-stuffed naans; the old seller stared like he’d seen a lunatic drip from the sky.

“Two? Eating that rich—did your old man or your wife die?”

“Huh?”

“Santar family, right? Told you that old coot was done for.”

“I bet he’s buried under the Toka tree to the west; his head’s as bald as that trunk.”

“Heh heh… meat in the pot tonight…”

Laughter scraped around Neprah; vagrants showed wilted teeth like yellowed corn. A hunched little man tugged Neprah’s robe and rasped like sand in a throat.

“Big guy, anyway that bread gets dug from the grave tonight. Be kind, split it here.”

Even Neprah wasn’t the only one lost; Skela, too, couldn’t stitch sense from their words. But “old coot” hit him wrong—he knew they didn’t mean the king, yet heat rose like steam.

His palm slammed the table; the makeshift leg, slapped together with scrap, popped apart like a brittle twig.

“I said two meat naans. Where’s all this useless chatter from?”

The old man puffed up to bark, then choked on air— because when Neprah lifted his hand, a Heka gold coin sat there, gleaming like a sun in mud.

For one breath, this corner of Dalahaman fell silent, hush like snow.

Skela moved first. She scooped the coin back, laid a Heka silver coin for the busted leg like a small apology, then dragged Neprah away like a shepherd yanking a ram.

Neprah looked baffled, his frown a fog. When Skela explained the whole stall wasn’t worth a single Heka gold coin, he just shrugged like stone.

“I didn’t ask him for change. Let it be charity.”

Skela watched that stubborn jaw and spoke plain, voice a steady thread.

“Leave that coin, and he gets robbed tonight. Do you call that good?”

She wasn’t born to slums, yet before Holywell Academy she’d seen only a few Heka gold coins in her life; even in proper towns, such coin pulls eyes like magnets. In a slum with no police, it draws knives.

Even then, Neprah stared half convinced, half clouded. It tracked; to him, Red Orchid members are the face of the common folk. He doesn’t know most ‘commoners’ admitted to Holywell are merchant stock, a world away from people here.

Still, after a half-day tug-of-war, Skela bent the ram’s path. Neprah agreed to follow her lead awhile and stop sprouting extra trouble.

The price was a dry mouth and no dinner; hunger gnawed, and her mood sank like dusk.

The one comfort was his word. He meant it. If she told him down, his temper held like a leashed dog—like when that kid lobbed the stone.

She told him to cloak up tight, keep low, move like smoke; he did, heavy steps and all.

But Skela’s sense was only relatively sharp; compared to Neprah, she knew a rule from the nuns: don’t flaunt wealth. She didn’t know that clean cloaks and dodging eyes gleam like lanterns in a slum.

So even with care, that night they were, unsurprisingly, cornered.