Twisted columns like coral cwed at a night sky. Wide nes all covered in red dust followed curved tracks amid those basalt structures. Kitunes marched down the streets, and Peter followed in their wake. He was a child, not quite five, and he followed in the wake of a cluster of other children, all orphans. The other children were older than him, and their leader, a boy who wore his hair long and tied behind his back, who dressed in thick wool despite the oppressive heat, carved a path through the city by side streets, looking over his shoulder now and again to see that no one was left behind.

  The other children were of varying age, and none of them older than a dozen years. Most wore ragged linens, the st uniforms of their kind, what their parents had left them when they died, or abandoned them to this fate.

  His belly ached, a sour sensation which had been days building inside him, which he had almost learned to forget. They marched along, and the locals watched them with suspicion and contempt, but they were not here for them. Who they robbed, for this was their purpose, would be foreigners. People of substance who were not so wealthy they could afford a dedicated guard, who were not poor either.

  Their leader, Roach, knelt in the shadow of a building at the mouth of a narrow passage. A ramp and framing staircases connected this street to one lower in the bowl. A volcanic glow emanating from the city’s borders and its heights robbed the sky of starlight. Night was a bck waste above them to match the hole in his soul where his family had been. Darkness never fell on the city, yet it lived in the hearts of its residents.

  “Quiet.” Roach warned them.

  “You be quiet.” The halfling bastard of a prostitute grumbled. His father was merenern, from the ke city of Morgrotten down slope from the volcanic peak Ash Isnd occupied. His heritage from that fish-like people was made pne in light gray skin and dark, sinuous lines running down the sides of his neck, a ripple pattern across every exposed inch of him which reminded of scales.

  He had seen the halfling exposed to water once, had seen the panic stealing over his face as his skin bubbled, rigid scales sheathing him in organic armor as the gills now closed against his neck fanned open, exposing ribbed, pink flesh in preparation for a descent into the ke. His mother had abandoned him because he he was ugly to her eyes, a monster she had birthed when she could not find a proper healer to get rid of this unwanted life growing within her. He was the sweetest boy among them, and, so close in age to Peter, had quickly become his closest friend among this ragged group of vagabonds.

  Roach gave the signal as a pair of human visitors passed the alley mouth, and they bolted into the street.

  Peter and Night were to distract them while the older children stole what they could get their hands on, the coin purse dangling, so tempting, from the man’s waist. The cmshell purse from the woman, and the bags of fresh produce they carried between them.

  He centered himself in front of them, putting on his most pitiful expression, clutched his stomach and colpsed at their feet. The unsuspecting woman leaned down to help him to his feet, and at that moment, Night appeared, dunked himself in a bucket of water situated outside the nearest home and unched out of it screaming.

  A gloss yer covered his eyes, and his skin bubbled.

  The man cried out as Roach snatched his coin purse and another boy cut the woman’s purse from her shoulder. The others swooped in on the bags of food and pelted away with them. Peter righted himself, darted out of the couple’s reach and sprinted. He smmed into a bulky figure and fell hard onto his rump. Filling his gaze as he looked up at the obstruction was the figure and the form of a monster. A legend.

  The monster was cd in bck wool robes from his neck to his feet, and his skin was the same blood red as a kitune, but tiny horns crept out of his forehead, and fangs peeked out from behind thin lips, thrust up from a blunt jaw.

  He scrambled to get away from him.

  The monster’s finger twitched, and a blind mage came forward, fire already pooling against his fist, and he knew he was dead before the light left the mage’s palm.

  But the fire crashed against an invisible obstruction. Sparks showered the street in the intervening space. A woman pced herself between the monster and him. Gray hair framed her face, and her ears poked out through holes in a wide hood which shadowed her features. He saw that her eyes were milky white and unfocused, and knew what she was. That she had made a grievous mistake pcing herself in the monster’s path.

  Pyre Magus.

  His mind raced. He was frozen in pce by fear.

  “Run, boy. Fight another day.” She croaked.

  “You are prepared to pay the price for your betrayal.” The monster growled.

  “What betrayal?” she asked. “I see no criminal here. Only a starving child.”

  He nodded.

  “I said run. No need ta waste time now. Get outta here.”

  He scrambled back on hands and knees, flipped onto his belly, started running before he was fully upright. He bolted past the awestruck couple and past, and the face of that woman was burned into his mind. A pyre magus standing up to the Shadow of Lies, for a child. A thief. A boy who no one wanted.