Chapter 1
Atlantis never slept. It just simmered.
Skylanes roared overhead, striplight ads flickered against chrome-tinted towers, and rain slicked the city’s lower tiers in a sheen of filth and neon. Down here in the Seam, it always smelled like wet stone, synth-oil, and smoke—like the bones of a city trying to burn itself clean.
Riven didn’t slow his pace.
He cut through a crowded crosswalk, head down, hood up, boots hammering asphalt. The weight in his jacket pocket swung against his ribs—a slim silver case, padded and rune-sealed. No bigger than a wallet, but valuable enough to earn him a bolt between the eyes if the wrong people caught him holding it.
He didn’t stick around to see if anyone had followed. He’d grabbed the thing from a transit drone outside a mid-tier syndicate’s courier hub, one of those shell Houses that wasn’t quite major enough to matter—until you messed with their money. He’d hacked the routing spell mid-flight, yanked the drone down behind a noodle shack, and disappeared into the backstreets before the ward alarms even fully tripped.
That was twenty minutes ago. Long enough for the sirens to go up. Not long enough for him to be safe.
A tram screamed past overhead, sparks jumping from its rail. Riven ducked under a broken streetlight and slid into a half-shuttered stairwell, jumping three steps at a time. He emerged into the top level of a parking deck, where a single hoverbike rested in a shadowed corner like a waiting beast.
“Please still be here,” he muttered.
It was. And it was his. Stolen six months ago, untraceable, and rewired so many times it didn’t even hum right.
He kicked the ignition rune and took off.
Fifteen minutes later, he was deep in the Drift: all sagging chainlink, flickering holo-ads, and buildings leaning like drunk uncles. A part of the city so chewed-up the Houses barely bothered patrolling it. Which made it perfect.
He parked behind a noodle stall that smelled more like rot than broth and knocked twice on the steel door beside it.
The slot peeled open. A pair of watery blue eyes peered through.
“Shit, Riven,” the man grunted. “You look like hell.”
“I bring gifts,” Riven said, pulling the case from his jacket.
The door opened. Riven stepped into a cramped, dimly-lit room stuffed with ancient monitors, rune-inscribed safes, and the sour musk of too many locked boxes. The fence—Fellik—waddled over to the nearest table, scratching at his wiry beard.
“You’re late,” he muttered. “And stupid. You know what people are saying out there?”
“I try not to listen when I’m running for my life.”
Fellik cracked open the case. The inside glowed faintly, a soft green shimmer from the containment glyphs. Inside, a series of thin crystalline vials sat cradled in spellfoam.
Fellik swore.
“You really did it. Pulled from a House shipment?”
“Not a real House,” Riven said. “One of the trade-shells.”
“Doesn’t matter. Still got a sigil. Still got teeth. You get caught with this, they’ll skin you before your sentence finishes loading.”
“That’s why I’m selling to you. Unless you’re growing a conscience.”
Fellik snorted and reached for a scanner. Riven let the man work. Light pinged off the vials, runes sparking faintly as their contents were verified.
While he waited, Riven leaned against a stack of old spell-drives and stared at nothing.
This was stupid.
Not the theft—he was good at those. But the risk. Every time, the stakes got higher. Every time, he let desperation push him further.
He thought of his sister. The debts that still chained her wrist. The healers that still hadn’t fixed their father. The slow, helpless fall of a family that had never had enough to begin with. He’d tried jobs, real ones—warehouse runs, courier work, even bounty lifting. It was never enough. So he’d picked a lock one day. Then a pocket. Then a vault.
