The Solokhian quarter had changed in the month since Shale first stepped into its streets. Where once there had been silence and rationed despair, now the clatter of tools and the murmur of trade filled the air. Cottage industries sprouted like weeds—makeshift mills, forges cobbled together from scavenged iron, markets hawking rough bread and bitter greens. The food was poor, but it flowed. No one starved.

  Shale worked alongside the White Lion, learning to mediate disputes, overseeing the laborers, practicing his speeches in the evenings. His words, though blunt, found shape and rhythm with time, bolstered by the urgency in his heart.

  Ariana had found her place, too. Her clinic in the human quarter thrived, curing fevers and sickness with maenad alchemy that still amazed the Solokhians. She moved through her patients with the cool detachment of someone who’d long stopped hoping for thanks.

  “You’re going to burn yourself out,” Shale muttered one evening, watching her pack away tinctures and salves.

  “I’ll stop when they stop dying,” she answered, barely looking up.

  He chuckled, dry as dust. “There’s no fixing you.”

  She offered a faint smirk. “And yet you keep trying. Don't you think you should take a break?"

  "Sure, you can talk to me while I sort these herbs," she said as she dumped out a sack of various dried plants onto a bloody operating table.

  “I’ve been working on a speech,” he said as she worked. “Planning to deliver it to the millers tonight.”

  Ariana looked up, unimpressed. “The millers? They’ve heard enough speeches. They know where they stand.”

  Shale frowned. “Then who?”

  “The new faces,” she said. “The ones you haven’t seen yet.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Who?”

  Ariana dusted her hands off on her tunic. “There’s a pocket of maenads down in the red light district.”

  Shale blinked. “Maenads? There?”

  She nodded grimly. “I didn’t know either. Bumped into one last week while delivering salves to a Glaive safehouse.”

  He leaned closer, brow furrowed. “Why would they be there?”

  Ariana’s tail flicked, her voice tinged with bitterness. “They can’t leave. The empire forced them into the city—ripped from the treetops. And when they realized the world here runs on karmata, well… they found the only work that paid.”

  Shale’s face darkened. “The sex trade?”

  Ariana nodded. “We're exotic, beautiful. We don’t bear signs of pregnancy after... well, not with other races. That makes us desirable to the worst kinds of people.”

  Shale swore under his breath.

  “The Glaives help them when they can,” Ariana added. “Some of them are in the trade too. They look after their own.”

  Shale rubbed his jaw, the firelight painting harsh lines across his face. “Then that’s where I go tonight.”

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  The dance hall in the red light district smelled of sweat, stale beer, and the faint, sweet tang of burning incense. Smoke curled from sconces at the corners, mingling with the low, pulsing rhythm of drums and a scratchy lute, weaving a haze through the dim space. Its floorboards creaked beneath the shifting crowd—maenads with their sleek fur and sharp eyes, dressed in short dresses and fur stoles that glinted unnaturally under the lantern light, their movements fluid but detached, arms draped around psyad clients who lounged on velvet couches.

  The laborers and factory workers stood on the outskirts, faces twisted in offense or unease, watching the spectacle unfold. The maenads looked unnatural but undeniably alluring, their sharp teeth flashing when they smiled, their eyes slitted like predators, scanning the crowd. Some of the humans looked curious, shifting from foot to foot—they’d been promised a show tonight, though none knew what it would be. Only the Glaives, cloaked in their defiance, exchanged knowing glances, having helped organize the gathering.

  Shale climbed onto a table, clearing his throat as the room quieted.

  “You don’t know me,” he began, voice rough, “but I’ve bled under the emperor’s banner. Fought for the eagle.”

  He saw the sneers, the wary eyes. He pressed on.

  “And I’ve watched that eagle tear its own people apart. Watched it hang my brothers, beat your sisters, drive you into these streets.”

  The room shifted, murmurs rising.

  “I’m not here to tell you how to feel. I’m here to tell you we can break it.”

  The crowd stirred, Glaive banners rippling at the back.

  “We build our own. Feed our own. And not just survive—thrive. The Solokhians, if given tools and land, can feed and clothe everyone. No more begging for scraps.”

  A voice called out from the crowd. “And how, dryad? We’ve heard promises before.”

  Shale’s jaw tightened. “By doing what the empire won’t. Mining—not just Axebane trees, but the sacred soil itself. Stone, iron, whatever we can dig.”

  Gasps rippled through the crowd, nadic faces paling.

  “If the gods gave us the land, they gave us the means to use it,” Shale pressed. “Balance isn’t stagnation. It’s growth.”

  A few voices hissed from the back, religious nadics muttering prayers or curses, decrying blasphemy. One voice rose loud enough to cut through the murmur: “Desecration! The soil is sacred!”

  But the crowd surged louder, fists pumping, the chant “Down with the eagle!” swallowing the dissent, rolling like thunder through the hall.

  Until the Black Cloaks stormed in.

  The doors burst open, smoke bombs trailing mageia-charged sparks flooding the air. Clubs rose and fell, cracking skulls, splitting brows. Psyad flames flared beneath the rafters, setting the dance hall alight with bursts of sickly green fire. Maenads hissed and sprang at the attackers with clawed hands, their short dresses tangling as they moved, but they were no match for trained enforcers. Tables splintered, drinks spilled, bodies hit the floor.

  Shale dropped low as a baton swung past his head, catching another man in the jaw with a wet crunch. He staggered, vision spinning, the smoke blinding him.

  Some of the Glaives fought back, knives flashing, but the factory workers scattered, panic overtaking their resolve. The hall turned into a battleground of shadows and blood.

  A rough hand yanked him back from the melee, dragging him toward a broken window at the rear.

  Shale fought to stand, vision spinning, until a rough hand yanked him back. A grizzled human with a weathered face and scarred hands smashed a Cloak’s head into the wall, dragging Shale toward the back.

  “Come on, dryad. Move before they gut you.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Sempir,” the man grunted. “You have good plan. I follow you.”

  Shale nodded, but Sempir’s eyes narrowed.

  “But I never forget how your kind drove my cattle away.”

  Sempir didn’t give him a chance to respond. He shoved Shale ahead, leading him through the smoke-choked alley behind the hall. Psyad fireballs burst overhead, searing the brick walls as maenads leapt at soldiers, clawed hands tearing at armor. Glaives fought tooth and nail with Black Cloaks, knives flashing, blood slicking the dance hall floor.

  Sempir ducked low, weaving between crumbling barrels and broken crates. “Keep moving!” he barked, yanking Shale behind a stack of rubble as another mageia blast scorched the alleyway, shattering stone and sending dust raining down.

  They slipped through a side passage, dodging a pair of Black Cloaks dragging a bleeding Glaive out by her hair, and bolted down a narrow corridor that opened into the streets beyond, gasping for breath as the fight raged behind them.

  "What have I done?" said Shale, his breath ragged.

  "I not know, but it sure look fun!"

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