The revelation hung in the air, a colder dampness than Ozeroth’s perpetual rain. Rytis’s words, grounded in absolute certainty, snuffed out the last stray echoes of the gala’s distant music. “The plague,” he repeated, his gaze fixed on the innocent-looking puddle on the carpet, “it isn’t an infection. It’s heavy metal poisoning from the city’s ancient pipes.”
Before Tihana could fully process the implication, a chillingly familiar voice cut through the stunned silence. “Oh, Rytis, darling, you finally found your voice! Such a shame it’s to spout nonsense.”
Danica Vukoja, shimmering in emerald silk, stood at the lounge entrance, flanked by two burly men with the distinctive scarifications of House Vukoja’s less reputable enforcers. Her eyes, often sparkling with malice, were narrowed to icy slits, fixed on Tihana. Behind her, Ignas Ruzena, pale and disheveled, nervously tugged at his collar. The alchemist, Volkov, still cradling his swollen wrist, quickly scuttled away, vanishing into the throng.
“My husband speaks only truth, sister,” Tihana said, her voice lilting with artificial cheer, a practiced lightness that belied the tremor in her hands. She stepped forward, placing a hand on Rytis’s arm, a gesture of ownership and defiance. “Perhaps you should listen. Or perhaps you’re too busy celebrating your own *imminent* cure to bother with mere facts?” Her smile stretched, saccharine and sharp.
Danica’s lip curled. “Your desperate theatrics won’t save you, Tihana. Your little performance tonight was… inconvenient.” Her gaze flicked to Ignas, a silent, withering reproach. “Ignas is cracking under your manufactured pressure. And I don’t tolerate incompetence. What exactly do you think you’re doing, peddling these ludicrous engineering fantasies when *my* doctor is on the verge of a true breakthrough?”
“A true breakthrough, indeed,” Tihana chirped, patting Rytis’s arm. “Such an inspiring thought. But Rytis’s work is far more concrete, you see. He builds. He fixes. He doesn’t merely… hypothesize.” She let the word hang, heavy with insinuation.
Danica’s eyes flashed with pure fury. “Enough of your games. You think I don’t know what you’re up to? You’re trying to undermine me. To steal back what you think is yours. Well, you won’t. I’ll make sure you have nothing. Not even a roof over your head.” She snapped her fingers at her enforcers. “To their shack. Find whatever she’s hiding. And bring it to me.”
The abrupt command struck Tihana like a blow. She had assumed Danica’s paranoia would lead her to dig, not to outright raid. Rytis’s aqueduct schematics, the culmination of years of his secret genius, were in their flimsy dwelling. They couldn’t let Danica get her hands on them. A cold dread seeped into her bones, but her smile remained fixed, unwavering.
“Such an attentive sister!” Tihana exclaimed, feigning delight. “But there’s truly nothing of interest. Just old sketches. And perhaps some of Lovre’s childish drawings. Do be gentle, won’t you? My little brother’s artistic endeavors are very precious to him.” She clung to her fool’s mask, hoping to buy them time. Danica, however, merely sneered and swept away, Ignas trailing miserably behind her.
The next morning, the air in Ozeroth was thick and grey, smelling of damp earth and the city’s ubiquitous metallic tang. Tihana’s shack, typically a haven of quiet despair, now felt like a battleground. Danica’s thugs had arrived just an hour after the gala, their heavy boots scuffing the worn floorboards. Tihana, ever the cheerful fool, had offered them tea. “Freshly brewed from the rainwater, boiled twice, of course!” she’d insisted, presenting them with steaming mugs of what was undeniably muddy water, garnished with bits of floating grit.
The men, clearly expecting resistance or hysterics, were thrown off balance by her relentless, guileless hospitality. While one reluctantly sipped the grim beverage, making a face that could curdle milk, the others began their clumsy search. Rytis, soundless as a shadow, had been quicker. As Tihana prattled on about the medicinal properties of various muds, he had calmly and methodically lifted the loose floorboard beneath his cot, sliding his precious, rolled blueprints into the narrow cavity. He then replaced the board, seamlessly covering it with a threadbare rug, his movements economical and precise, almost invisible. The thugs, searching with the bluster of men who expected to find gold, not an architect’s life’s work, found nothing but dust, a few tarnished coins, and Lovre’s carefully drawn maps of imaginary kingdoms.
They left in a frustrated huff, leaving the shack in minor disarray, but the rolls were safe. Tihana let out a long exhale once they were gone, her mask finally dropping. The adrenaline of the confrontation slowly ebbed, leaving her bone-tired.
That night, a soft knock echoed at their door, hesitant and low. Tihana peered through the cracked wood, her hand instinctively reaching for the heavy iron poker by the hearth. It was Ignas Ruzena, his tailored coat rumpled, his face a roadmap of exhaustion and fear. Rain plastered his dark hair to his forehead, and his eyes, usually calculating, were wide and desperate.
“Tihana,” he whispered, his voice hoarse, “please, I need your help. Just a moment of your time.”
Tihana opened the door just enough to see him clearly, her expression carefully blank. The air was cold, carrying the scent of damp wool and Ignas’s faint, familiar cologne.
“Ignas,” she said, her voice flat, devoid of its usual forced cheer. “What brings you to our humble abode at such an hour? Shouldn’t you be busy curing the gray rot?”
He flinched. “It’s… it’s not going well. Danica… she’s impossible. She demands results *now*. She interferes with my reagents, my processes. She’s convinced my methodical approach is a weakness. She says I’m wasting time, that my research is too slow. She’s destroying everything, Tihana. My career, my reputation… it’s all crumbling.” He wrung his hands, a pathetic figure in the flickering lamplight.
“I need my old notes,” he continued, his voice rising in urgency. “The ones from before… before the change. You always kept such meticulous records of my early work. My theories on the sickness's origins, before I was pressured into focusing on the symptoms. I know they’re here somewhere. Please, Tihana, just let me look. I can fix this. I know I can.” His gaze pleaded, reflecting the raw terror of a man losing every scrap of standing.
Tihana looked at him, truly looked at him, for the first time in years. The promising young doctor she had once admired was gone, replaced by a hollow shell of anxiety and self-pity. She saw Danica’s impatience, a destructive force, tearing at the foundations of his brilliance, just as it had once torn at her own life. But the well of her pity was dry, scoured clean by Lovre’s illness and Rytis’s quiet suffering.
“Your old notes?” Tihana’s voice was a low, dangerous murmur, her smile completely absent. “The ones you abandoned, Ignas? The ones you deemed irrelevant once Danica offered you a faster path to glory? No. They’re gone. Lost. Just like the man who wrote them.”
Ignas gasped, reeling back as if struck. Before he could formulate a response, Rytis stepped forward from the shadows within the shack, his presence suddenly formidable, filling the doorway. He looked at Ignas with an expression of cold, unwavering disdain, his one visible hand resting on the head of his weighted cane.
“Get out,” Rytis’s voice was a low growl, devoid of his usual apathy. “My wife is done fixing your mistakes.”
Ignas stammered, his face blanching, but Rytis merely moved, a silent, menacing step forward. Ignas stumbled backward, turning and fleeing into the rain-swept darkness, his footsteps splashing frantically as he vanished.
Tihana watched him go, then turned to Rytis, a complicated swirl of emotions churning within her. The shared moment of understanding, the raw ferocity of his protection, settled a new, unfamiliar warmth in her chest. His revelation about the heavy metal poisoning, his swift action with Lovre, his meticulous hiding of the blueprints, and now his unwavering defense against Ignas – she was seeing a side of Rytis she hadn’t dared to hope existed.
“He was right, though,” Tihana said, her voice softer than she intended. “About the plague. It is the pipes.” She looked at the wooden model of Ozeroth, half-hidden by a canvas in the corner, imagining the intricate network of Rytis’s purified aqueducts beneath its surface. “We need to build it. Before winter. Before Lovre… before anyone else.”
Rytis nodded slowly, his gaze distant, lost in the city’s complex infrastructure. “The master drafts are ready. The designs are flawless. But we need material. Iron. Lots of it. For pipes, for pressure systems, for the purification filters.” He turned to her, his slate-grey eyes holding a flicker of something akin to purpose. “The abandoned city ironworks. They still have functioning forges, untouched by the war. And a vast stock of raw ore.”
Tihana’s mind raced, connecting the dots. The ironworks. The sheer scale of what they needed. “But the city council sealed it years ago. No one has been allowed near it.”
Rytis’s lips thinned. “It goes up for auction. At dawn.”
Her breath caught. At dawn. That barely gave them hours. Hours to find the exorbitant sum needed, hours to outbid the city’s greedy elite, hours to secure the very foundation of their desperate hope. The rain outside seemed to intensify, a drumming crescendo against the roof, mirroring the frantic beat of Tihana’s heart. She knew, with chilling certainty, that the ironworks were their only chance. And she had nothing. Nothing but a broken husband, a stolen dream, and a terrifyingly short deadline.
“How much?” she whispered, her voice barely audible above the storm.
Rytis looked at her, his expression grim. “Everything we don’t have.”