The tavern smelled like someone had tried to drown a corpse in citrus gin.
Marlen leaned on the sticky edge of the bar, tapping a vial of violet tincture against the rim of his tin cup. Across from him, three dockhands—already halfway to liver rot—argued over whether it was even real alchemy if it came in a glass bottle.
"That's not a cure," the tallest one slurred, pointing at the vial with a callused finger. "That's bathwater and perfume."
Marlen smiled with his teeth, not his eyes. "Then drink it."
The dockhand blinked at him. His companion laughed—a wet, wheezing thing—while the third man snatched the vial and uncorked it with a pop. A whiff of licorice, bloodroot, and crushed copper leaf spiraled into the air. The big one hesitated.
"Go on," Marlen said, watching him. "One sip. If you don't feel the burn behind your eyes and the ache in your knees vanish, I'll give you two more. Free."
The big man sniffed it, paused, then downed the tincture in one grimace. His jaw clenched. His eyes went wide. He let out a surprised grunt—half pain, half pleasure—and then flexed his knuckles like someone testing a new glove.
"Hellfire," he muttered. "It actually—"
"Five crescents," Marlen cut in, holding out his hand. "I like the way you drink, but not enough to be your charity."
Coins clinked into his palm. He pocketed them before the men could change their minds, gave a sharp nod to the barkeep, and stepped into the crowd.
Lowrest's Brazen Minnow was a wretched place—one of those seaside bars where sailors went to forget how many fingers they'd lost. Iron beams rusted in the ceiling like rotting ribs, and the lanterns burned low to hide the color of the liquor. Most people here knew better than to ask names or sell miracles.
But Marlen had just enough sleight and venom left to keep his place.
He pushed through the reek of sweat, salt, and spilled tincture residue, aiming for the stairs to his rented attic. A flash of brass caught his eye.
At a corner table, a hooded figure sat unmoving, the light from the hearth flickering off something in their gloved hand. It looked like a letter.
Marlen ignored them.
He made it halfway up the stairs before the floor creaked behind him. He stopped. Waited.
A hand slid past his shoulder—thin, gloved in brown leather—and dropped a parchment envelope into his coat pocket.
The figure leaned in. The hood whispered, "He named you, Marlen Veil. Executor."
Then they were gone, back into the crowd like mist into fog.
Marlen stood frozen for a long moment, the warmth of the fire below casting a bloody glow over the floorboards. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the envelope.
The wax seal bore a symbol he hadn't seen in ten years—a sun eclipsed by a crucible.
The Goldwright's mark.
His hand trembled.
He didn't open it.
Instead, he climbed the rest of the stairs, kicked open the crooked door to his attic room, and hurled the letter across the floor like it had bitten him.
It landed by the hearth, just short of the embers.
The letter sat there, pale and perfect against the soot-stained floorboards, daring him.
Marlen poured what was left of his pocket gin into a cracked mug, slumped into the crooked armchair near the hearth, and glared at the envelope like it had insulted his mother.
Outside, Lowrest wheezed with foghorns and salt wind. Rain tapped the thin windowpanes like impatient fingers. His room was as miserable as ever—one crooked desk, one bed too short for a full-grown man, and an entire wall of peeling paper that smelled like mildew and bad memory.
He took a long swallow of gin. Then another.
Still the letter remained. Whole. Silent. Waiting.
"You old bastard," he muttered. "You're dead, and you still manage to knock."
He set the mug down and picked up the envelope with the kind of gentleness he usually reserved for unstable compounds. The wax seal cracked under his thumb with a dry snap.
Inside, the parchment was thick, expensive, lined with copper filigree—real Guild stock. The handwriting was familiar. Ornate, immaculate, deliberate.
---
To Marlen Veil,
Former Apprentice of the Ninth Crucible,
Expelled Under Clause 27b: Reckless Transmutation
Let it be known that Eligor Sorrell, the Goldwright, Master of Living Crucibles, has passed from the realm of base matter.
By sovereign writ of the Alchemic Guild of Viremont, you are hereby named as Executor and Inheritor of all Personal Properties, Unfinished Work, and Experimental Subjects registered under his Seal.
Attendance at the Reading of Will is Mandatory. Refusal will result in seizure of all relevant properties under Inquest Protocol.
You are summoned to Viremont within seven days.
Do not delay.
—High Transmuter Cael Dorrin, Acting Secretary of the Crucible Council
---
Marlen read it twice, slower the second time. His fingers clenched tighter with every line.
"Executor," he spat. "Of what, the man's arrogance?"
He stood too fast. The letter fluttered to the floor. He kicked it aside, stormed to the window, shoved it open, and let in a blast of rain and sea-stink.
From five stories up, the cobbled alley below looked like a slick, black tongue. Marlen didn't hesitate. He crumpled the summons, leaned out, and hurled it down into the dark.
It spun, caught a glint of lanternlight midair—and vanished into the gutter with a wet smack.
He slammed the window shut.
The room felt colder now. Smaller.
Somewhere downstairs, a bottle shattered. Someone cursed. The sound brought him no comfort.
Marlen turned toward the hearth and poured the last of the gin into his mouth like it might burn away the ache beginning behind his eyes.
He didn't know yet that someone was already watching that alley. That someone had looked into the letter within minutes. That word had already begun to spread—He's been summoned. The apprentice returns.
But for now, Marlen just sat alone with his bitterness, the taste of copperleaf tincture on his breath, and the ghost of a name he'd tried so hard to forget.
------
The fog rolled in thick around midnight, swallowing the last of Lowrest's dockside color and replacing it with shadows and smoke.
Marlen's boots scraped through puddles slick with oil and fish guts. His coat, damp and too thin for the season, clung to him like a curse. He hadn't meant to wander this far. Hadn't meant to finish that last bottle, either. But the way the Goldwright's name had slithered into his head and nested there—it demanded drowning.
A broken sign creaked above him as he passed under it. The Dockman's Mercy. He snorted. The only mercy here came in bottles, and even that tasted like vinegar and regret.
He ducked into a side alley to piss, hand braced against a crumbling stone wall. Rain ran down his nose. The air was thick with soot.
Behind him, footsteps.
Too soft for dockhands. Too certain for drunks.
He zipped up slowly and turned. "You lost?"
The alley mouth was empty.
He stepped out, boots squelching, and looked both ways. No one. Just a lamplighter cart creaking down the far street, throwing lazy pools of orange light into the fog.
Then—a glint.
Movement. To his right.
He turned just in time to catch a blow to the gut.
He staggered back, breath gone, vision warping. A figure stepped from the shadows—tall, masked in a soot-streaked veil. Another emerged behind, slighter, but holding something sharp and glinting.
The tall one stepped closer. "Where is she?"
Marlen wheezed, holding his ribs. "Excuse me?"
"The girl. The Goldwright's final design. You've seen her. Where is she?"
He squinted at them. "You've got the wrong alchemist."
The slighter one stepped forward, blade twitching like it itched for blood. "We know who you are, Marlen Veil. We know what he left you. Tell us, and we won't melt your tongue."
Marlen blinked, more from alcohol than fear. "That's... incredibly specific."
The tall one raised a gloved hand—and something in it sparked. A thumb-sized vial, its contents swirling in bruised gold and cobalt. Alchemical. Dangerous.
Marlen's mind sobered instantly.
He fumbled inside his coat, fast—his fingers brushed a round object. A glass bulb. His last defense.
Perfect.
He yanked it out, thumbed the glyph on its side, and threw.
A crack of light and noise exploded between them—brighter than lightning, louder than gunfire. The alley shrieked with white and heat. One of the attackers screamed. The other cursed in some foreign dialect, staggering.
Marlen bolted.
He ran, breath tearing from his throat, vaulting trash bins, ducking under laundry lines, weaving through gutters that hadn't been cleaned in a decade. Smoke followed him, mixed with the stench of burned ozone and alchemical discharge.
Behind him, the clatter of pursuit—then silence.
They weren't chasing.
They weren't amateurs, either. And that scared him more.
He didn't stop running until he reached the crooked stairwell that led to his room. Even then, he took the steps two at a time, slammed the door behind him, and shoved a chair under the knob for good measure.
He pressed his back to the wall, panting.
The girl. The last design.
His mind whirred, tripping over possibilities. The Guild? Hired thieves? Loyalists?
He looked toward the window,remembering where he had tossed the letter.
And cursed.