Above

They called him many things: thief, stray, gutter cat, half-paw.

“If the shoe fits,” he’d always say.

But tonight, if he didn’t make it out of the city, the only thing they’d call him was dead.

The stolen boots, shoes that definitely didn’t fit, sloshed around his feline ankles as he dashed. They were made for tall humans with flat, graceless feet, not for a runt Kat’ari who could barely reach their chest even if you counted his ears.

The boots weren’t just the wrong size; they were fancy. Filigree stitching curled along their burgundy cuffs and traced the seams down to sharp, pointed toes. Ridiculous things for running.

Lamplight caught his white muzzle. The night rain had darkened his gray fur to charcoal, matching the worn patches on his oilskin jacket. Water beaded where the wax coating still held, but had seeped through the frayed seams, soaking the lining beneath.

Static, a bristle-furred spider the size of his hand, perched on his shoulder. Seven legs gripped tight, while the eighth tapped twice against his neck.

“I know, I know!” he snapped.

He widened his gait. Each hurried step clapped beneath him. Polite applause for a doomed performance.

The useless boots dragged at his stride. He just needed the right words and he’d lose every tail except the one that made shopping for pants a hassle.

“Fleet!” he barked. Nothing.

“Swift!” The boots wheezed, but no magic.

“Run, you bastards!”

A jolt spat from one sole. He lurched sideways, slammed into a wall, and ricocheted off with a growl bitter enough to curdle milk.

Leave it to him to nab the ones that needed instructions.

Behind him, armored footsteps fell, steady and disciplined. They grew louder over the rain’s ceaseless patter.

He clenched his teeth.

Fine. Back to the gutter.

He kicked the boots off mid-stride and let them tumble into the runoff.

Bare pads kissed the cold stone. Toes splayed. Claws clicked as a lifetime of muscle memory took over. Trusting other people’s tricks always got him into trouble. Trusting his own got him out.

The cobblestones blurred beneath him in streams of reflected light as he slipped from shadow to shadow.

Red-and-white banners stamped with RAIN’s golden seal fluttered from every arch above him. Their gaudy text shouted Restore Alyria’s Integrity Now, as if Vox himself were demanding it. Smaller posters crowded the storefront windows.

Neon streaks from the curfew warnings strobed past as he zigzagged through the glare. His breath puffed in faint bursts that vanished before they reached his whiskers.

“Hang on, Static,” he said to the spider on his shoulder, eyes scanning for the right exit. “We’re gonna have to improvise.”

He darted left through a narrow alley that smelled of aged cheese and spice, vaulted a covered merchant cart blocking his path, and burst into the open arteries of the city’s underbelly.

Above, the skyline radiated against the storm clouds. The Upper Terraces shimmered with luxury and light: gold and glass pinnacles, hanging gardens overflowing with food, and crystal aqueducts carrying clear, running water.

Down here, that same water leaked through corroded pipes and cracked concrete. It pooled in corners, staining the ground with rust. This was where everything unwanted was kept, too broken or ugly to be shown, yet never allowed to leave. Without it, nothing above would stand.

This was Skyhelm. The shining capital of Aurathia and the home of law and order for all of Alyria.

Paradise with a basement.

Beyond the rooftops, Vox’s towers encircled the city in a ring of shadowed spires. The signature deep violet glow of their crowns cut through the fog as they thrummed invisible frequencies that were soft enough to pass for stillness, yet strong enough to smother the world’s natural song.

People called it the Veil: a net of ghostly currents cast just beyond the senses. Those under Vox’s thumb dreamed of order and woke grateful for it. Those who opposed him called it what it was: control disguised as comfort. For most, it was simply there. A background presence they endured and ignored.

Bolt of Scraps was not most people.

Each pulse drummed in his skull like a migraine, a rhythm that never reached his ears but still rattled his bones. To him, the Veil wasn’t still or silent; it was pressure. It was a high whine that lived behind his eyes and crawled along his nerves. It tightened with every step toward the outskirts.

He shot across a bridge lined with bronze statues, each a human worker cast in a triumphant pose toward Vox’s gilded effigy at the center. Beneath them, the real workers, the forgotten races, slept under tarp and tin. The city’s light was lifted from hands that would never feel its warmth.

He hit the end of the bridge and cut hard right, sliding on the rain-soaked ground. Instincts held him up as his claws carved into the street. He blew past shuttered shops, splashing through puddles reflecting billboards of Vox’s smug grin.

Vox was everywhere. Especially here.

The Veil knifed deeper between Bolt’s eyes, and the rain suddenly felt heavier, as if the currents had weight.

He cut down a boarded-and-barred market lane, signs flickering a feverish green. Static skittered onto his head and clamped down, his trusty lookout, the ol’ spider toupee.

He slipped into the shadow of a condemned storefront and pinned himself to it, chest heaving. Static chittered between his ears.

“Yeah, yeah,” Bolt muttered. “Next time I take something, I’ll ask permission.”

He steadied himself and slipped a hand inside his jacket, finding the inner pocket and the object within. His fingers brushed its chilled glass. Still there.

A memory caught him as his grip closed around the vial.

“One of a kind. Once Vox has it, he’ll have everything he needs.”

Bolt swore under his breath. He knew what Vox wanted, what restoring Alyria’s “integrity” meant for people like him. He just never imagined he’d be the one holding the thing that could make it real.

For a moment, he thought about dropping it, letting it shatter on the stone.

His stomach clenched. Would it explode? Implode? Or worse?

Maybe he could hand it off.

He almost laughed.

No one asked him to take it. There were plenty of people plotting against Vox. People who thought things through. People who waited.

Stupid impulses.

His ankles ached. The boots were supposed to have gotten him out by now. Why couldn’t they have just worked?

Stupid boots.

An ear snapped toward a sound that didn’t belong to the storm.

Static double-tapped his brow.

Breathe. Listen.

Metal footfalls hit the cross street, too steady to be city guards, too clean to be drunks.

Enforcers.

Bolt pushed off the wall and ran. They wouldn’t stop coming for him. Not until he found a place they couldn’t follow. He was close now.

Ahead, the lane tapered into a tunnel of hanging ductwork and leaky valves. Steam vents hissed from the walls in tired exhales. Just beyond it, the city sank to its lowest point.

The Dripline.

He crossed the threshold and pressed deeper into the squalor, past makeshift housing and shady fronts. He hadn’t been here in years, but it still smelled like his adolescence: stale smoke and wet metal.

He slowed just enough to listen. Raindrops. Distant clank of a grate. The Veil’s high whine somewhere behind his eyes. Then, cutting through it was a kettle’s hiss and a mimic’s voice, juggling three accents at once.

Grix. Of course he’d be awake at this hour.

Bolt lifted a sagging strip of tarp and slipped inside a stall built from scrap, its bones a tangle of pipes, wires, and buzzing lanterns. The front half was a countertop welded to an old radiator with a box of tools shoved against its base. The back half was nothing but shadow.

“Close it,” a voice said.

The lantern light caught an obsidian beak. It was long, sharp, perpetually half-smiling, and mounted to a head of dark, slick feathers.

“Unless you’d like to invite your friends inside to redecorate.”

The voice shifted with the words, smoke one moment and gravel the next, as if someone were turning a dial between throats.

Bolt dragged the tarp down. The stale air met the chill outside, sealing the gap tight. As he turned back to the figure, he listened for the little tells.

To the other races, ravenfolk were mirrors of each other. They had identical faces, stolen voices, and humor that never reached their beaks. Their eyes saw everything and forgot nothing.

Grix often capitalized on that sameness, sending stand-ins to bargain or spy in his place. But the real Grix had a certain cadence to his speech. It was a way of almost matching whoever he spoke to.

“Out past curfew, I see,” Grix crooned, his voice sliding through borrowed tones. “Didn’t think you’d come crawling back down here, Scraps.”

“Missed you, too,” Bolt said, minding the rules of the Dripline by keeping his hands visible.

The voice shifted, now a perfect mimic of an alley brat Bolt used to dodge, but unmistakably Grix beneath it. “Sure ya did, big guy. Thought you were busy cleaning the filth off the streets for the pretty folks.”

Outside, an Enforcer stomped past the stall and paused. Static’s grip tightened. Bolt held his breath and scanned the space for another exit, but the footsteps continued. He exhaled as they faded into the rain.

“I need a way below.”

Grix snorted short and sharp. “Below’s infested.”

Bolt pulled a chain from beneath his shirt and tore it free. A coin dangled from it. On its face, a gear and a raven’s head were stamped into the metal: a favor token. Before he could offer it, a black-feathered hand with glinting silver rings plucked it away.

Grix clicked it against his beak in recognition.

“Ah. Ancient currency. Before you went clean.” The last word came in a prim Aurathian soprano, clipped and bright. “And before you started delivering presents to Vox’s friends.”

“I didn’t know.”

Grix leaned closer. His eyes were polished stone, glossy and unreadable. “You misunderstood who you were working for. Common mistake. Expensive lesson. I could have told you the Concord was Vox. Just had to ask.”

“Grix…”

“Scraps,” Grix said in Bolt’s own voice. It almost made him flinch.

They let the rain talk for a beat. A rattling helm and the muffled jingle of a tightly clutched coin purse passed by. Likely a city guard hunting for a gutter girl to trade one shame for another. Some things never changed.

Bolt felt like his head was buckling under the Veil’s pressure.

“Please,” he said, surprising himself.

Static crawled down to his shoulder and lifted his front legs, touching their tips together in a tiny gesture of prayer.

Grix stared a moment longer, then sighed. “Everyone comes back to the Dripline.” His chosen voice at last. “Stand there.”

He grabbed a crowbar from the box of tools and kicked aside a crust of scrap, revealing a sheet of plywood set into the floor. He hooked the edge and pried it loose. An industrial hatch gleamed beneath.

Setting the crowbar aside, he straightened and tapped three points on a wired panel. The lanterns dimmed as the panel flashed green, and a relay clicked somewhere below.

“You’re not the first to come running from Vox’s dogs,” Grix said, stooping to lift the hatch. “And you won’t be the last.”

Bolt slipped a hand inside his jacket on instinct, checking the inner pocket. Still there: his reason for running.

Grix paused just long enough to notice, then gave the hatch an exaggerated heave. It didn’t budge.

“Always sticking,” he grumbled, rising. As he lifted a hand to scratch his head, he tapped one more point on the panel. The motion was just a little too smooth.

Static ticked twice.

Bolt froze.

Grix’s posture hadn’t changed. His beak angled toward the floor, deliberately turned from the panel, feigning interest in the hatch’s lip.

Dammit, Grix.

Disappointment cut through the panic, but Bolt understood.

“Still got debts to pay, huh, Grix?” he said quietly.

The beak didn’t move, but his eyes glistened. “Everybody does, Scraps. Nothing personal.”

A brittle silence filled the space between them. Neither moved.

Then Static bounded from Bolt’s shoulder onto the active panel. His legs splayed wide while his palps tapped in a sharp, urgent rhythm. The panel strobed once, then erupted in sparks. The lanterns flared white, crackled, and snapped to black.

Bolt dove, snatched the crowbar from the floor, and wrenched the hatch open. Cold air exhaled as steam curled along the edges and kissed his face. He swung his legs through, catching the ladder just as Static leapt back to his shoulder. Together they dropped into darkness.

Bolt hauled the hatch shut from underneath, jamming it with the crowbar just as footsteps reached the stall. He gripped the sides of the ladder loosely and let gravity pull him into the inky void.

Above, the Veil’s whine clung to him like an overtuned guitar string that was being stretched tighter, its pitch rising the deeper he went. Then, as his feet finally met the cold, damp concrete below, it snapped.

Silence.

Something new to fear.