Upstairs in the tavern, a girl who does not sleep dreams of stairs.
She wakes every night to find her feet muddy.
No one dares ask where she walks.
No one dares wake her.
Because they tried.
Only once.
Three weeks ago.
A new tavern worker, a boy who knew nothing of the lower city nor the stair dreams.
He thought she was sleeping too deeply, and the barkeep told him to leave her be.
But he joked:
"What use is a girl who occupies a bed and steals the air?"
He went up, knocked on the door, then entered.
And never came out.
And no one opened the door afterward. But on the following night, the sound of footsteps climbing the stairs was heard, then others descending. Not with the lightness of a girl, but with a strange heaviness, as if carrying more than one body. No one dared to ascend, neither at night nor during the day.
But the girl, every morning, would sit near the window, her face pale, her eyes wide open, not blinking. She would look at nothing, and every hour she would move only to change the angle of sitting, as if tracking a sun that never visits this land.
The girl does not eat. She does not drink. But someone would come up every dawn to find a small table in front of her door, with a clean plate and an empty cup. No one saw them placed. No one saw her leave to take them. But they were always there, and always empty.
On a waning moon night, a stranger came to the tavern, his skin closer to ash, and a split chin as if an axe had passed through it one day and then forgotten. He asked for a drink no one sold, and did not mention its name, only said to the barkeeper:
"Pour me what she drinks."
The sentence fell heavy, even the dice stopped rolling in the corner, and the laughter trembled. The barkeeper did not answer, only looked upward, exactly to the ceiling above him, where her room was.
The stranger did not wait, but headed to the stairs, and began ascending without being stopped.
The steps were silent, but the floor itself groaned at each step.
At the last step, he stopped, did not knock on the door, did not touch it.
He said in a voice that did not come from his mouth:
"I am... not the one looking for you, but the one who expelled you."
Then he fell silent.
The door opened by itself. The darkness that came out of it was not like usual shadows, it was not absence of light, but the presence of something else.
From the door's opening, cold breaths came out that melted the candles downstairs all at once. The walls shivered, and the floor trembled as if the entire tavern had vomited a memory.
Then... a sound. Not a scream. Just a whisper. But it stabbed the hearing, directly into memory.
The stranger fell. His eyes burned silently, his mouth vomited blue smoke. And when he tried to flee, the door had closed.
After an hour, the window opened from the inside. The stranger's body was thrown out, as wet firewood is thrown. He was not dead. But he no longer breathed. He neither died, nor lived.
And from that night, the upper floor began making sounds. Light footsteps, incomprehensible words, faint crying. Then laughter. A child's laughter. Then the sound of scratching on wood.
One night, someone wrote on the tavern's outer wall, in blood:
"She is not asleep... she is ascending."
But no one knows where to. And no one dares ask her when she descends.
Because she... began to descend.
At every dawn, she descends one step.
Just one step.
But the whole ground knows...
When she reaches its end, nothing will remain in this tavern except the echo.
And the eyes... waiting for the unawaited, began to turn without moving. In those dark corners of the tavern, where candles light only to hide more than they show, there are those who hear, record, smile smiles unknown to humans. The guilds of secrecy neither sleep, nor drink, nor trust. But they always attend, behind a mask or at the heart of a wine glass, or even in the whisper of a half-drunk man who utters a word no one understands, except those whose names are sealed in the Book of Deferred Death.
---
In the last week, the number of strangers increased. Not only strangers in appearance, but spectrum strangers, who have no door knocked for them, nor permission asked to speak. They entered the city like smoke, settled in the lower alleys, paying cold gold that does not shine, in exchange for old maps or forgotten legends.
And nothing is more dangerous in this continent than a legend that begins to repeat.
It was said that a land at the western edge of the Belt of Bones — the land from which compasses do not return — began showing cracks. Smoke emerged from the soil, threads of blue fire appeared at night, and the echo of bells was heard at dawn, with no temple in sight.
The first to pick up the signals were the "Watchers" guild, faceless spies who read shadows more than books. They sent their boys to the taverns, eavesdropping on drunks, buying silence for the lowest coins.
But silence is not bought, it is stolen.
After them came the "House of Tongues," traders of black magic and information, spreading small rumors in the markets, mere whispers about "the treasure that awakens what is beneath the bone," turning their backs waiting for the fire to ignite on its own.
And on a dark dawn, five guilds met, without agreement, in the same alley. Each sent an envoy, and every envoy thought he was the only one. They did not speak, did not fight, did not draw swords, but the air between them grew heavier, as if blood had been spilled beforehand. They all knew the truth:
Something is there.
No one knows what it is. No treasure, no weapon, no temple. All information is contradictory, and all symbols point to different things.
Some say it is the heart of an ancient creature buried alive since eternity, not because it was dangerous… but because it knew.
Others believe it is a temple without a door, whose doors do not open from outside but only from inside, and it is said that whoever awakens in it is never himself again, but comes back inhabited by something else.
And there are those who believe it is the land where the "First Message" fell, written in a language unknown to humans or jinn, born before time.
But the eyes… the darkest eyes… know that all that was said is lies, or half lies, and that is worse.
The guilds began the war, not with swords nor poisons, but with disappearance. Suddenly, names began vanishing from the market, voices disappeared from alleys, warehouses burned silently, and encrypted messages were stolen in broad daylight from invisible pockets.
Someone drowned in a bottomless well. Another was crucified in the air, not on wood, but on the void, leaving his body hanging, read by those who understand the language of corpses.
The city now does not sleep.
Everyone waits for the first to speak the truth, or the first to die near it.
And the eyes… still watching.
Some from above the tavern.
Some from beneath the earth.
And some… unnamable.
A thing without shape, casting no shadow, slipping between walls, listening without ears, smiling without lips. No one knows who sent it, or if anyone sent it at all. But since the whispers began about the land breathing beneath the ash, it appeared… or rather, it was felt. A sudden silence in the cellars, a deadly quiet in sunless corners, a slight shiver at the edges of the black sorcerers, though they do not tremble.
---
In the upper floor of the guild, "Silaz the Ruler," master of the Ash Guild, sat on a wide leather chair. Around him four messengers, one a one-eyed boy, another a body without a mouth, the third a female jinn holding a sword of air, and the fourth a shadow that does not stay in place.
Silaz said, in a calm voice as if telling a bedtime story:
"Gather tonight in the Bones' Den. All of them. The land has brought us a curse, and this does not differentiate between shadows."
The one-eyed boy nodded, saying:
"I saw them. One from the Pulse Guild took a witch's heart and hid it in a glass jar, said it beats when we approach the truth."
Silaz laughed. Not because it was funny, but because he had grown used to the unbearable.
---
On the opposite side of the city, in a basement under the market where human flesh is sold as medicine, a man trembled while his name was registered in a ledger. His hand did not obey him. The pen bled black ink like