Annie's words hung in the air a moment longer before she turned away for good.
Meeyn watched her retreating figure as she weaved back into the thinning crowds.
And sure enough, as he drifted through Trost over the next few hours, he heard the news trickling from the soldiers and civilians alike.
The top-ranking cadets had finally received their formal postings.
Annie Leonhart — Military Police Brigade.Assigned to Wall Sina, Stohess District.
Far away from the chaos of the front lines.
"Figures," Meeyn muttered under his breath, kicking a loose stone down an empty street. "She'd pick the cushy option."
Two Days Later
The journey was... annoying.
Even for someone like Meeyn, walking across districts wasn't exactly a walk in the park. The land between the walls — what little of it remained inhabited — was rough, mostly empty.
But he made it.
No horse. No supplies.
By the time he reached Stohess District, his boots were battered, his cloak torn from brambles.
The towering white stone walls of Stohess loomed above him, pristine compared to Trost's battered gates. The city inside bustled with life — merchants, nobles, soldiers in crisp uniforms — all wrapped in the cozy illusion of safety.
Meeyn slipped through the outer districts easily enough, blending in with the crowds of traders and drifters. Nobody here looked too closely. As long as you kept your head down, kept moving, you were invisible.
Exactly how he liked it.
He leaned against a shaded wall near one of the busier plazas, tugging the hood of his ragged cloak a little lower over his face, red eyes gleaming faintly beneath the shadow.
But there was a problem.
He wasn't actually inside Stohess yet.
The plaza he watched from now was still part of the outer settlement — a civilian zone outside the main wall.
The real city — the district proper, the home of the Military Police, the nobles, and the real game — lay hidden behind thick, gleaming white stone and heavily guarded gates.
Meeyn narrowed his eyes slightly, watching from the shade as checkpoint soldiers barked at merchants queued at the entrance.
Paperwork checks. Wagon searches. Formal seals. Inspections.
Ordinary civilians didn't just walk into Stohess District.
You needed a permit, clearance, or a good excuse — none of which Meeyn had, and none he was willing to fabricate.
"Tch," he clicked his tongue quietly, shoving his hands deeper into his pockets.
No point trying to bluff his way through. His ragged cloak and battered boots would give him away before he even opened his mouth.
He leaned his head back against the stone wall, thinking lazily.
"Guess I'll have to do it the fun way."
That Night
The moon hung low, a thin sliver behind drifting clouds.
Perfect.
Meeyn moved like a shadow through the outer district's sleeping streets, his footsteps silent against the cracked stone. The checkpoint gates were still guarded, torches flickering, soldiers half-dozing but still alert enough to spot anything stupid.
He didn't go for the gates.
He aimed higher.
Way higher.
Finding a deserted alleyway near the wall, Meeyn crouched low, flexing his fingers once.
The Living Abyss answered his call.
Thin, slick-black tendrils slithered out from his arms, pooling at his feet. They twined around his boots, up his legs, forming faint ridges along the stone wall like creeping vines.
Meeyn grinned slightly under his hood.
"Let's see if you've gotten any better."
Without hesitation, he launched upward, the abyss latching onto the wall like hundreds of sticky hands, dragging him higher, higher.
The stone was slick in places, the surface polished to a near-glass finish — but the abyss didn't care. It clung greedily, pulling him up like a spider scaling glass.
Within minutes, he reached the top.
He pulled himself over the edge smoothly, crouching low on the wall's ledge.
Down below, the city of Stohess stretched out — tidy, clean, orderly. Bright lanterns lit the streets. The occasional patrol wandered through the night.
Meeyn chuckled under his breath.
"This place is rotting under the shine," he muttered.
He turned, leaned back slightly — and fell.
The abyss caught him midair, softening the drop, lowering him gently into a shadowed alley far inside the district proper.
The night passed uneventfully.
Meeyn found an abandoned rooftop near the edge of the merchant quarter — a broken, forgotten place where no patrols bothered to look.
When dawn came, it came with noise.
Lots of it.
Meeyn stirred, blinking slowly as the muted orange light of early morning bled across the stone.
Below, the city was alive — more alive than it should've been this early. Footsteps hurried across cobblestones. Merchants shouted half-heartedly. Civilians gathered in tense clusters, whispering behind cupped hands.
He rolled over lazily, propping himself up on one elbow, listening.
"...another disaster, they said—"
"—barely any of them made it back, did you hear?"
"Scouts... wiped out again... can't believe it..."
"—heard from a courier this morning. The Scouts got torn to pieces outside the walls. Barely crawled back through Karanes..."
The words drifted up in broken pieces.
Meeyn sat still for a moment, breathing in the tense, metallic scent of the waking city.
"...heard from a courier this morning. The Scouts got torn to pieces outside the walls. Barely crawled back through Karanes..."
The words drifted up in broken pieces.
Meeyn sat still for a moment, breathing in the tense, metallic scent of the waking city.
He finally pushed himself to his feet, dusting off the ragged cloak that hung loose over his shoulders. His joints cracked quietly as he stretched, rolling his neck once.
"Enough lurking," he muttered, voice low and lazy. "Need a better view."
Without another glance at the street below, Meeyn backed up a few paces, crouched — and then jumped.
Abyssal tendrils lashed out from his boots, gripping the crumbling edges of the building, hurling him higher with a quiet whump of displaced air. He vaulted easily onto the next rooftop, landing with barely a sound.
Then another jump.
And another.
Each leap carried him higher, further, moving like a shadow across the slanted rooftops of Stohess.
Until he reached it — a forgotten, crumbling bell tower, half-hidden behind a row of warehouses.It leaned slightly to one side, abandoned after some long-ago accident, the upper levels open to the cold wind.