I head into the center of Azure Prime with one debt in my pocket and another, more expensive, waiting to be born.

My goal isn’t in the capital. I need the Oathmark teleport, first to settle some old promises, then to place a new bet that’s probably going to cost me more than Scales.

Teleporting always runs pricier than a train, a carriage, or any ordinary transport, but if you have the right coordinates, it’s the safest way to travel there is.

The trouble is that "if" carries enough corpses to fill a trench. One wrong digit, an inverted coordinate, a forgotten decimal point, and you can end up in unexplored territory, at the bottom of a dead zone, or on some continent no human has been unlucky enough to map yet.

There are thousands of Oathmarks scattered across Thirstfall, all of them older than our presence here. They’ve stood since the first human arrived, survived, and found a way back to Earth.

Nobody says it out loud, but we all know it: we didn’t build the essential parts of this world. We just learned to press the buttons without losing our fingers to the strange magic that was already here.

When I reach the Oathmark, I go straight to the teleport log and select the only destination outside Azure Prime I’ve visited in person this timeline.

[Red Squid Slums]

[CORD: 319.957.905]

[Price: 56 Scales]

I pay without hesitating, even knowing a train might’ve cost me nothing. After Lost Ark, trusting the rail system became an exotic form of suicide. Oliver and that whole Farm Squad were swallowed by a bad route in this timeline, and I still don’t buy that Chaos Theory explains all of it on its own.

[Scales: 30,836 → 30,780]

I type the coordinates and check them twice. Then a third time, because dying out of impatience is a hard thing to justify in the afterlife. Only then do I step onto the platform of light.

The runes ignite beneath my feet in concentric circles, pale blue first, then a deep aquatic blue that climbs the lines carved into the stone like a tide filling its channels. The air thickens around me like a steam sauna. My weight shifts somewhere without my body having moved, and for an instant I feel every part of me being read, measured, and taken apart.

The light folds over me.

It feels like getting kicked out of a bar after two crates of beer and an insult to the owner. The human body wasn’t made to be converted into a coordinate, and no matter how many times you teleport, your dignity always lands a few seconds late.

When my feet find the ground again, I have to shake my head to drive off the nausea.

[Current Zone: Red Squid Slums]

[Zone Rank: E (Shallow)]

[Danger Level: Safe]

I hold my breath a moment and look around.

’So I’m here again.’

The slum streets are exactly as I remember, if "streets" and "city" are honest words for any of this. My steps sink into the dark mud coating the uneven stones, and the air arrives thick in my throat, a haze that tastes of rust, rotten algae, and badly burned OXI. There’s no sky above me. Just a low maze of coppery pipes leaking dirty steam and soot. The light comes from broken signs bolted to crooked storefronts, blinking in dull colors over makeshift stalls and tired merchants.

’I didn’t want to try the rats on a stick last time, and I won’t be starting now.’

Drowneds still drag themselves through the streets with hunched shoulders and hands pressed to their chests, some coughing up the smoke of burned OXI that hangs in the alleys like a second atmosphere.

In Azure Prime, the ducts are already bad. Here, they’re practically a collective death sentence with overdue maintenance.

’I need to deal with this, and soon.’

All of Thirstfall suffers from poor sanitation in its air ducts and from the filthy burning of OXI for energy, but poor places run on old tech, too few hands, and patches stacked on patches. The result is simple: whoever already has less also breathes worse, loses OXI faster, and dies with fewer witnesses.

’If hell ever had a steampunk phase, it’d probably charge rent in the Red Squid Slums.’

I walk toward the bar I visited last time. My target is a man in an apron, round in the belly, with the rare talent of pouring beer while listening more than he talks.

Before that, though, I spot a few fresh Divers raising hell in the middle of the street. Some Rank D, some Rank E. They drink, they whistle, they shout over each other with the cheap confidence of people who recently discovered they’re stronger than someone else.

As I get closer, I understand what the circle is about.

A woman lies in the center, her clothes torn enough to make the intended humiliation clear, her body curled on the ground while they pour drink on her and kick her like they’re testing their own superiority. The faintly bluish skin and the absence of a tattoo on her shoulder tell me everything I need to know.

She’s a Drowned.

’This is none of your business, Dryden.’

I say to myself as I keep walking.

Ninety feet, maybe. A little less. Enough to pretend the decision had already been made.

Then I feel a hand tug at my sleeve.

There’s no one there. Only my imagination.

Even so, I stop.

The sensation is false, but real enough to make me breathe deep. When I close my eyes for a second, I can picture Rhayne beside me, too small to be carrying this much of other people’s pain, looking at me with those eyes that almost beg. In my head, her hands touch my face gently before draining my OXI as punishment for trying to be too pragmatic.

"Please, help her," I murmur, giving voice to what she’d say.

I open my eyes.

The world still reeks of rust, now with a pinch of cowardice mixed in.

I turn and study the group for a few more seconds. I count bodies, postures, visible weapons, the distance to the side alleys, the likely reaction of the merchants, the risk from Ocean’s Law and Chaos Theory, the risk of a witness, the risk of turning a good deed into one more rope around my neck.

It all goes into the math.

Unfortunately, the math comes out the same either way.

I start walking back.

One of the Divers spots me first and lifts his cup, laughing as if I’m just another spectator late to the fun. The smile holds until he realizes I’m not looking at the woman on the ground.

I’m looking at him.

’Looks like I’ll have to settle this bill myself.’