Dawn filtered through the grime-caked window pane, casting a pale, cold bar of light across the table.
Kaelan was already dressed, sitting motionless with his hand hovering an inch above the brass crest. His boots were laced tight, his tunic pinned. He looked like he hadn't slept at all.
Aether rubbed his bloodshot eyes, sitting up. "You're up early."
"East Ward," Kaelan said simply, picking up the crest and sliding it into his inner pocket.
They didn't waste time on a sit-down meal. Buying two dry rolls from a street vendor downstairs, they plunged into the awakening city.
The morning air smelled of wet stone, baking dough, and woodsmoke. Porters were already shoving heavy handcarts through the narrow alleys, and the iron soles of patrol guards clattered against the stone.
Kaelan stopped the first guard they passed—a burly man leaning against a watchtower wall. "East Ward?"
The guard didn't even look at them, pointing a mailed finger down the avenue. "Stay on the high road east. Past the grain silos. You'll hit the low gates."
Following the direction, the city slowly transformed around them.
The grand stone facades and crowded taverns of the market district gave way to vast, soot-stained industrial blocks. Here, shops disappeared, replaced by massive, windowless stone warehouses lined up like silent fortresses. The streets were choked with heavy freight wagons loaded with iron bars, salted meat, timber, and sacks of grain. Men with leather aprons and calloused hands moved with a brutal, silent efficiency.
Aether dodged a cart loaded with stacked oak beams. "What is this place?"
"Storage," a passing laborer grunted, wiping soot from his eyes. "Half the food and iron in the realm sits behind these stones before it goes anywhere else."
They pushed further east, searching for a name. But Whitestone was a city of ghosts and strangers.
"Edwin?" a tool vendor scoffed when they stopped at his stall. He wiped a rusty saw with a greasy rag. "Which Edwin? There's twenty Edwins between here and the harbor. Old Ed the blacksmith, Edwin the butcher, One-Eyed Edwin down by the tannery..."
Kaelan’s jaw tightened. "Edwin from the East Ward. An old man."
The vendor snorted. "Tells me nothing, lad. Try the taverns down near the old mill."
For hours, they chased ghosts through narrowing streets. The grand scale of the city eroded into cramped, dirt-paved alleys where the buildings leaned so close together they blotted out the sun. Here, the rumors of the northern frontier were louder, raw with panic.
By the time the sun stood high, Aether had begun to understand how easily a person could disappear inside a city. In Gray Vale, asking for a man meant asking someone who knew his family, his field, or at least the shape of his roof. In Whitestone, a name could belong to a dozen strangers. One shopkeeper sent them east, another sent them back toward the market, and a third insisted the man they wanted had died years ago.
Kaelan accepted each wrong direction with the same tight expression and kept walking. Aether was less patient. Twice he asked whether they should return to the inn and try again the next day. Twice Kaelan answered by showing him Harold's crest beneath his coat. They had carried it too far to stop because the streets were confusing.
"They're calling up more militia," a teamster spat outside an alehouse. "Beasts took three outposts near the river."
"It's not beasts," a drunk growled from the shadow of an overhang. "It's the wild men.
They're coming down from the peaks."
Aether turned to Kaelan, his head spinning. "First it was giant wolves, then bears, now wild men... doesn't anyone actually know?"
"Doesn't matter," Kaelan said, his eyes scanning the alleyways. "Focus on finding Edwin."
Near noon, a tavern keeper cleaning a wooden keg finally gave them a nod of recognition.
"Old Edwin? Down past the ruined mill. Small stone cottage with a dead garden out front.
Used to be a soldier, or so he says. Don't know if he's the man you're looking for, but he's the only Edwin living down that ditch."
Leaving the noise of the commercial sector behind, they followed the winding path toward the eastern edge of the ward.
The street narrowed until it was barely wide enough for two men to walk abreast. The air grew quiet—a strange, heavy silence that felt out of place in the roaring city.
They stopped before a low, squat cottage built of rough-cut river stone. Its timber door was weathered grey, its iron hinges thick with rust. Two terracotta pots sat by the threshold, holding the withered, black stems of dead plants.
The contrast with the rest of Whitestone made Aether hesitate. All morning they had passed warehouses, workshops, crowded lanes, and buildings that seemed to press against one another for space. Edwin's cottage looked as though the city had simply grown around it and forgotten to carry it away.
Kaelan studied the door rather than the house. Whatever he was thinking, he kept one hand near the place inside his coat where Harold's crest rested. Aether noticed and stopped asking questions.
Aether looked at the miserable house. "This is it? We walked all this way for this?"
Kaelan stepped forward and knocked three times—hard, measured blows.
Footsteps echoed from within—uneven, dragging steps. The door creaked open a crack.
An old man stood in the shadow of the doorway. He was not tall, his hair a thin fringe of iron-grey, his face carved with deep, bitter lines. But his eyes—pale, sharp, and cold— locked onto the two boys with the careful precision of a hunter sizing up prey.
"What do you want?" the old man barked.
Kaelan didn't engage in small talk. He reached into his coat, pulled out the brass crest, and held it out in the palm of his hand.
"Harold sent us."
The old man’s face went completely still.
For a brief second, the ambient hum of the distant city seemed to die away entirely.
Edwin stared at the piece of metal, his pale eyes unblinking. Slowly, a hand covered in old scars extended from his sleeve. His thumb brushed over the carved grooves of the brass, tracing the faded insignia with a delicate, almost painful familiarity.
The change in him was small enough that Aether might have missed it if he had not been watching so closely. The suspicion remained in Edwin's eyes, but something older moved behind it - recognition first, then memory. His fingers closed around the crest without taking it from Kaelan, as though the weight of the metal belonged to another time.
Aether had heard Harold speak Edwin's name only as someone who might help them. Standing in the doorway, he understood for the first time that the name carried a history neither he nor Kaelan knew. He wanted to ask what had happened between the two men, but the question felt too large for the threshold.
He stood there for a long time, the wind tugging at his thin grey hair.
Finally, he looked up, his gaze fixing on Kaelan’s face with a sudden, suffocating intensity.
"Harold?" Edwin’s voice was barely a rasp.
"Aye," Kaelan said.
Edwin stared at them, a long, shaky breath leaving his lungs. He leaned his shoulder against the doorframe, his shoulders dropping as if a massive, invisible weight had just been dumped back onto his spine.
"So Harold is still alive," he muttered.