Chapter 4: The Cryptic Map

The parchment peels away from the dead fingers like old skin, damp and fragile.

Aldia takes a slow step back, unfolding it with care. Her pulse is steady, a measured drum beneath her ribs. She has seen maps before, many of them but mostly of Noxpor. Travelers mostly came to here in search of hidden treasures the city kept hidden in its ruins or were people exhiled from there realms. But this map was different.

It is not a map of Noxport.

The ink is faded but intricate, curling lines forming a place that does not exist within the city's known borders. The roads spiral inward, twisting into shapes that feel deliberate, unnatural, as though they were drawn by something that did not fully understand roads at all.

And at the very center, scrawled in jagged script

VYRHAN.

Aldia's fingers tighten on the parchment, as her brows raised in curiosity. "And what could this be?"

Nyxie hops down from the bench, peering at the map over her shoulder.

"Oh, that's an interesting word," Nyxie purred, but its tone was sharp.

Aldia does not respond.

The storm overhead rumbles.

A drop of rain lands on her wrist. It is thick. Warm.

She lifts her hand to her nose, not water.

The scent is sharp, cloying; burning sugar and ruin.

Aldia looks up.

And the shadows are moving. The storms of Noxport are cruel, non-forgiving. They claim whatever comes their way, and Kaelen is desperate to avoid them. Being stuck in one of these was a death sentence. 

"Come on, we gotta head back." Aldia folded the paper, putting it in her pocket. The shadows that has come along with the storm were different and more brutal. and one of these shadows could be a reason the traveler was dead. 

Nyxie disappears into thin air as the storm growls. Aldia sighs, getting faster in her movements, feet silent against the damp cobblestones, cutting through Noxport's winding paths with the ease of someone who knows the city's skeleton well. The storm can have the streets. It can take the ruined buildings, the yawning windows, the whispers curling from alleyways too dark to be empty.

But it will not take her home

------

Aldia reaches the forgotten entrance, an unassuming doorway nestled between two crumbling buildings, half-swallowed by creeping ivy and damp stone. It looks abandoned, forgotten—just another casualty of Noxport's slow decay.

But she knows better.

Her gloved fingers press against the weather-worn wood, rough and splintering beneath her touch. The door does not budge at first, resisting like a beast that does not yet recognize its master.

Then—the magic stirs.

It is subtle at first, a pulse of warmth beneath her palm, spreading outward in delicate veins of energy, seeping into the door's grain. It is old, this magic—woven into the bones of the place, layered over time like sediment. It knows her. It remembers.

A quiet click.

The door sighs open, revealing a narrow stairwell spiraling downward into the earth. Cold air coils from the depths, curling around her ankles, inviting her inside.

The descent is long and silent, the air growing colder with each step. The walls are lined with old brick, smoothed by time, damp from the breath of the city above. At the bottom of the staircase, a heavy metal door awaits.

She pushes the door and goes inside. The air inside is rich, layered with scents that do not belong to the rotting city above. It is a stolen dream, a place carved from the bones of the dying world and made into something entirely hers.

The room is large, its vaulted ceiling held up by thick, exposed beams that once belonged to a grander place. The walls, once bare stone, are now hidden beneath drapes of sapphire and ember-red velvet, catching the firelight in their folds. The flickering glow of lanterns reflects off gold-trimmed furniture, a mismatched collection of treasures plucked from ruins and forgotten estates.

Her coat slides from her shoulders, landing in a careless heap on the couch, in front of the fireplace carved from black stone, smoldering with slow-burning embers, casting warmth and flickering shadows across the walls. Aldia flops down.

A shape stirs from the shadows, stretching with lazy elegance before leaping onto the couch.

"You always bring back trouble." Nyxie said in its mischievous voice.

Aldia exhales, running a hand through her hair before moving toward the fireplace.

"Says the one who vanishes whenever I need backup."

Nyxie flickers, shifting between shadow and solid, curling its too-long tail over the armrest.

"Backup? Or plausible deniability?" It gives a smug.

Aldia snorts softly, shaking her head as she kneels before the fire, coaxing the embers into life. The warmth seeps into her fingers, chasing away the last remnants of the city's cold.

The map still sits in her coat pocket, heavy, waiting.

She does not reach for it.

Not yet.

Aldia feels the moment the city exhales.

A shift in the air. A presence, gone as soon as it came.

She straightens from the fire, eyes narrowing slightly.

"You were followed." Nyxie whispers eerily.

Kaelen does not answer.

Because she already knows.

-------

The storm howls through Noxport's veins.

Liora moves through its shifting alleys, her cloak gathering the city's damp air like a second skin. The streets bend, they always do, in the places where the Veil is weakest.

She has learned to navigate them anyway.

Tonight, she follows the echoes.

A ripple in the air. A whisper that is not a whisper, but something older, something waiting.

She has been tracking Aldia for days now.

Not hunting. Not yet.

Just watching.

She had seen the way the city seemed to breathe around her, the way the shadows followed just a little too closely. And now, the storm has her curious.

Because something has changed.

The girl has found something.

And Liora needs to know what.

She pauses near an old well, fingers tracing the worn stone lip, feeling the hum of something ancient beneath her fingertips.

Kaelen has vanished into her sanctuary below. Liora knows better than to follow.

Not tonight.

But soon.

She exhales, pulling her hood lower, and disappears into the storm.