The "City of Pillars" was not a place for living; it was a place for hiding while the world forgot your name. Built upon oak stilts that rotted slowly in the brackish water, the city breathed a thick vapor of fried fish, peat smoke, and despair. Varig felt the weight of the Titanoboa scales on his back, wrapped in a canvas that still exhaled the metallic scent of reptile blood.

  They stopped at a low-roofed tent in the Shadow Market. The dealer, a man with milky eyes and fingers yellowed by smoke, unrolled the canvas with a hiss of surprise. The scales shimmered under the lantern light like raw gemstones.

  "The rat got lucky. The serpent did not," Lira replied to the man's questioning look, leaning against the counter with a dangerous nonchalance. "Do you want the skin or the story? Because the story costs double."

  The man snorted and pushed three heavy bags of coins across the counter. The sound of metal hitting wood made Varig's left arm throb. He took the money, but he didn't feel the weight of the silver; he felt only the rhythmic pulsing of his own mutation, which seemed hungry for something gold could not buy.

  As they walked along the boardwalks toward the center, Varig stopped. A group of stevedores was unloading crates from a ferry, their bare chests glistening with sweat under the moonlight. To Varig's senses, the scene was different. He didn't just see men; he saw pulsing circulatory systems. The heat emanating from their bodies was like flames in an eternal winter.

  "So close, hatchling..." the voice Varig felt in his very bones purred, a vibration rising up his spine. "Feel how they overflow with life while you wither in the cold."

  Varig clenched his gray fist so hard that the fabric covering it tore. "Varig?" Lira's voice brought him back. She was staring at him with an arched eyebrow, but there was a glint of apprehension deep in her eyes. "Control yourself. Save that hunger for someone who deserves it."

  They reached the "Golden Hook." The sound of out-of-tune bagpipes leaked through the cracks in the walls. "Stay here," Lira ordered, pointing to the dark gap between two salt warehouses. "And don't step out of the shadows."

  Varig watched through the grimy window. Lira entered the hall with a drastic change in posture. Her cynicism gave way to a slow swagger, a smile that seemed to promise secrets. She sat down next to Kael, the Hunter's brother, who occupied the center of the table with the arrogance of one who lives off crumbs. She laughed at his jokes, touched his arm, and Varig felt a cold rage grow.

  Kael, inflated by alcohol and attention, led her to the isolated shack on the lower pillars. As soon as the door closed and Varig stepped out of the shadows, the theater ended.

  "Where's the wine, you..." Kael began, but Varig pinned him against the wall. The impact knocked the air out of the man's lungs.

  "How do I get into your brother's house without the arrows finding me?" Varig growled. "He has a secret. I want the name of it."

  Kael tried to laugh, a choke of terror. Varig didn't answer with words. Slowly, he unrolled the rags from his left arm. The gray skin, rigid as granite, emerged under the candlelight. Varig dug his Vorin claw into the oak table beside him; the solid wood was reduced to splinters under the pressure of his fingers.

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  "Lying requires breath, Kael," Varig murmured, and the black veins in his neck pulsed. "And my arm is in a very great hurry."

  The terror broke through the alcohol. "The Third Pillar!" Kael blurted out, tears carving furrows through the dirt on his face. "At the Old Lighthouse... there's a lever submerged under the barnacles. It opens the sludge gates. There's a trail... the Spider's Path. It sits two palms beneath the surface. That's how he enters and leaves without being seen! Please... my brother will kill me if he knows..."

  Varig stared at the man. The name was finally in his hands: the Spider's Path. The hatred he felt now had a destination.

  "He is the remains of that betrayal, hatchling," the voice echoed, hungry. "Drink what he stole from us."

  Varig's arm acted on its own. The gray fingers opened like the petals of a carnivorous flower. "Varig, stop!" Lira stepped forward. "You got the information! Leave him be!"

  Varig didn't hear her. He closed his Vorin hand over Kael's face.

  The horror began with a suction sound, as if the air was being ripped from Kael's lungs by an absolute vacuum. But it wasn't air. Kael's skin, once lush and sweaty from the alcohol, began to ripple grotesquely. Under Varig's touch, the man's fat and muscle seemed to liquefy, turning into a glowing yellow essence that was sucked through the pores of the gray hand.

  Kael tried to scream, but his lips withered before the sound could escape. His eyes, wide in unspeakable dread, rolled back as the sockets dried out, sinking deep into his skull. Varig felt the heat flowing into him, an electric current of someone else's life that made his own bone plates crackle and grow, tearing through human skin to settle in.

  It was an accelerated decomposition in seconds. Kael's body lost its volume; his clothes became baggy, hanging off a frame that was now only bone and dry leather. The final sound was that of crumpled parchment. When Varig let go, what hit the floor was no longer a man, but a grayed mummy, light as straw.

  Varig breathed heavily, a toxic euphoria burning in his veins. He felt as though he could tear down the walls of the shack with a single punch.

  Lira recoiled toward the door, her face pale and her breath short. Her eyes were fixed on Kael's desiccated carcass. There was no disgust—she had already seen the cruelty of the Elves—but there was a dread she had never felt before. It was the dread of something that did not belong to this world.

  "Varig..." she whispered, her voice trembling but loaded with a piercing lucidity. "He deserved death. For my people and for yours, he deserved every second of agony."

  She took a step forward but stopped before the candlelight reached his gray arm. Her eyes drifted up to Varig's face, searching for the boy who had shared bread with her.

  "But what you did... that wasn't an execution. It was a feast. I've seen Elves kill for pleasure, but I've never seen anything devour a man's life like that."

  She hugged her own body, feeling a cold that came from within, while the smell of ozone and death impregnated the shack. She looked at the mummy on the floor and then back at Varig, with a mixture of terror and grim acceptance.

  "I'm not leaving," she affirmed, her voice regaining its firmness. "Traitors must be erased from the earth, and now we have the name of the trail. The Spider's Path is our map. But listen well..."

  She pointed to his arm, her finger trembling slightly.

  "If this... this monster living inside you decides it's hungry again, make sure it knows the difference between the enemy and the one standing by your side. Because if you come near me with that hand, Varig... I swear I'll kill you before you manage to touch me."

  She opened the door, stepping out onto the boardwalk without waiting for an answer. Varig was left alone in the dark, the silence of the shack only broken by the sound of the necklace vibrating against his chest, a satisfied purr that seemed to laugh at Lira's promise.