The dawn light, weak and grimy through the perpetually weeping Ozeroth sky, did little to warm the cavernous auction hall. Stone walls, slick with condensed moisture, amplified every cough and rustle of expensive fabrics. Tihana, cloaked and shrouded in a heavy, charcoal-grey traveling shawl that obscured her face and frame, felt the frost seep into her marrow. Her mother’s wedding ring, a delicate platinum band with a single, dull garnet, had traded hands in the night for a heavy pouch of coin. It was a paltry sum for such a legacy, but it was *theirs*. Every last glint of copper and silver she had received for the band was now nestled in her palm, leaden and cold. This was it. Everything she had left.
Elder Zoya, the auctioneer, a woman with a voice like grinding gravel and eyes that missed nothing, began the proceedings. The city’s elite, a collection of gaunt-faced nobles and portly merchants, sat on padded benches, their whispers like a nest of disturbed vipers. They spoke of the abandoned blast-forge with disdain, seeing it only as a forgotten blight on the city’s edge, fit for scavengers or a tax write-off. They didn't see the promise of clean water, the lifeline it could become.
“Lot Six-Four-One,” Elder Zoya boomed, her gaze sweeping the room, “The Vyrn Foundry. Sealed for seven cycles. Derelict. Unsafe. Starting bid: five hundred crowns.”
Silence. No one wanted to be the first to touch such a cursed property. The general consensus held that even a few hundred bits were too much. Tihana’s fingers tightened around the coin pouch. She waited, letting the silence stretch, letting the indifference of the rich fester.
“Four hundred and fifty,” a voice eventually drawled from the back, belonging to a plump-faced man with a greasy cravat. A ripple of suppressed laughter went through the room. Elder Zoya’s lips barely twitched. “Four hundred and fifty… going once…”
Tihana raised her hand, her voice a low, rough murmur she barely recognized as her own. “Two thousand silver.”
The entire room fell silent. Heads swiveled. Eyes, once dismissive, now narrowed on her shrouded figure. Who was this fool? Such coin for the Vyrn complex? It was unheard of. The plump man spluttered, his cheeks turning a mottled red. “Preposterous! Two grand? For that scrap heap?”
Elder Zoya’s gaze fixed on Tihana. “Two thousand silver. A substantial bid.” She seemed to weigh the muffled stranger, seeking any tell. Tihana met her gaze, unblinking, despite the tremor in her heart.
“Twenty-five hundred!” a new voice called out, a younger man, eager to prove his family’s wealth. He smirked, expecting the shrouded bidder to back down.
Tihana took a deep, almost soundless breath. “Four thousand pieces.” The coins in her pouch rattled, a desperate, final symphony.
A collective intake of air stirred the room. An outright fortune. The young man's smirk vanished, replaced by a scowl. He looked at his father, who shook his head minutely. This was beyond a joke. This was foolishness, pure and simple, and no sane person would go higher.
“Four thousand pieces!” Elder Zoya announced, her voice sharp. “Going once… going twice… Sold! To the draped bidder in the row!”
The gavel struck the block with a resounding crack that echoed through the silence. Tihana felt a strange mix of triumph and stark terror. She had done it. The furnace site was theirs. But the cost had stripped her bare.
She moved through the stunned crowd, a ghost in her heavy shawl, her steps quick and purposeful, eager to escape the suffocating glares. As she hurried down a narrow, rain-slicked alleyway beside the hall, a figure stepped out from the shadows, blocking her path.
Danica. Her sister’s elegant gown, usually pristine, was already spotted with rain, but her smile was as sharp and unblemished as ever. “Well, well. If it isn’t my dearest sister, slumming it with the common folk.” Her eyes, sharp with malice, flickered over Tihana’s disguised form, lingering on the heavy shawl. “Did you really think a bit of cloth would fool me, Tihana? I recognize your desperation anywhere.”
“What do you want, Danica?” Tihana’s voice was flat, devoid of its usual forced cheer.
Danica chuckled, a cold, brittle sound. “Oh, nothing much. Just came to observe the show. And to remind you of your place. You think buying some derelict foundry will change anything? Adorable.” She stepped closer, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, though her eyes remained hard. “You know, Tihana, in another life, a very different life, Ignas… he was the one who saved the city. With his brilliant medicinal potion. Made us all billionaires. He was the hero. And you… you faded away, a forgotten footnote.”
Tihana felt a cold, impossible dread unfurl in her gut. *Another life? Ignas saved the city?* The words echoed, twisting in her mind. Ignas. A medicinal potion. Billionaires. Danica’s impatience, her demands for instant glory, her constant badgering of Ignas. *He took credit.* He took credit for something else.
Suddenly, the pieces snapped into place with a horrifying, crystalline clarity. It wasn’t a potion. It was the aqueducts. The clean water. Rytis’s design. Ignas must have stolen the blueprints, claimed them as his own, and in that ‘other life,’ Rytis… Rytis must have died. Died, and the city, saved by his uncredited genius, had showered wealth upon the wrong man. Upon Ignas and, by extension, upon Danica.
A bitter frost settled deep in Tihana's ribs, but not from fear for herself. It was for Rytis. He was the true savior. He was the one who had died, unacknowledged, in Danica’s twisted vision of the future. The reality settled over her like damp burial linen. She had to keep him alive. At all costs. She had to protect him, not just from the plague, but from the world’s insidious cruelty, from the very forces that had erased him once before.
“You really are a fool,” Danica sneered, misinterpreting the sudden stillness in Tihana. “Clutching at straws, buying junk. While Ignas and I prepare to save this city from the plague, once and for all.” She turned, her laughter echoing mockingly as she disappeared back into the driving rain.
Tihana stood there for a long moment, the downpour plastering her shawl to her body, the wind biting at her exposed skin. The smelting plant. Rytis. A future that had almost been stolen, one she intended to wrench back. She found her feet again, a new, fierce determination burning in her chest, a fire that pushed back against the melancholic ache.
She ran through the narrow, twisting streets of Ozeroth, the rain-soaked cobblestones slick beneath her worn boots. The chill wind howled, whipping her sodden shawl around her. The site belonged to them. A colossal, brutal first step. She pictured Rytis, hunched over his models, his mind a labyrinth of genius, a man who had already saved the city once, unknowingly, only to be erased. Not this time. Not while she still breathed.
Reaching the shack, she burst through the door, the small, cramped space smelling of damp earth and woodsmoke. “Rytis! We did it! We have the iron-”
The words died in her throat. Rytis was on the floor, sprawled beside his workbench, his face ashen. A dark, viscous liquid seeped from the corner of his mouth, staining the rough floorboards. He was shivering, his one hand pressed against his chest, gasping for air. His eyes, when they finally found hers, were clouded with pain and a terrible, dawning despair.
“The plague mutated,” he rasped, a wet, guttural sound, his breath catching. “We don’t have until the solstice.”