The Night Market smelled of burnt sugar, wet stone, and magic on the cusp of unraveling.

Lira set her display with practiced hands, arranging the sugar-glazed pears first — always the pears, their golden skins glistening under lantern light. Beside them, she laid out her crystallized violets, each petal dusted in silverroot dust to help lull even the noisiest mind into sleep. The caramels came next, wrapped in sun-pale paper and tied with red string. The final tray she uncovered carefully, like revealing a secret: honeylace candies, thin as glass, laced with the faintest shimmer of enchantment.

She didn’t enchant them the way other sweet-sellers did — no song, no flare of fingers. Just a thought, a memory, and sometimes… a whisper.

“Lira,” called Master Ven from the fruit stall across the lane, “your candies are glowing again.”

She didn’t look up. “Only the honeylace. It does that when the city feels tense.”

Ven snorted. “The city is always tense. Between the ghosts and the taxes, no wonder.”

Lira smiled politely but said nothing more. She liked Ven. She liked most of the sellers here. But she didn’t come to the Night Market to talk.

She came to work. And to forget.

It wasn’t a place for the faint-hearted — the Night Market shifted, reformed, behaved like something half-alive. Cobblestones whispered if you stepped wrong. Shopfronts vanished and reappeared, sometimes upside down. The brave, the foolish, and the desperate came to buy or trade. The truly unwelcome never made it back out.

Lira had been selling sweets here for three years.

She hadn’t made a single enemy.

Not until tonight.

It was near the tenth bell when she felt it — the change. The quiet.

Crowds didn’t hush in the Night Market. Even in danger, people whispered, shouted, bartered, swore. But this hush spread like oil on water.

Lira’s hand froze over a ribbon of toffee.

A figure stepped into the market.

He wore a black hood stitched with gold thread — not gaudy, not ceremonial. Something older. His steps made no sound, though the wet stone should’ve echoed. He passed through the crowd like smoke — no bumping, no brushing.

No one blocked his path.

When he stopped at her stall, the air felt… heavier.

Lira swallowed. Carefully. Then: “What would you like?”

The figure said nothing at first.

Then, in a voice like dry velvet: “What do you recommend?”

She blinked. The voice was warm, not cold. Soft, even. Not what she’d expected.

Lira motioned toward the honeylace. “This one… settles the mind. Opens it, too. It’s our best seller on nights with long moons.”

The figure reached out, hand gloved in worn leather. But as his fingers brushed the candy tray, the glove shifted — and Lira glimpsed what lay beneath.

Claws. Polished, black as ink. Non-human.

Her spine stiffened. But her face stayed calm.

“Two,” he said.

Lira wrapped them. “Five copper, or a memory worth tasting.”

His head tilted. “You barter memories?”

“Only if they’re sweet.”

A sound like a quiet chuckle. He dropped five copper coins into her palm — cold as frost.

She counted them, slowly. “Thank you, sir.”

He didn’t move. Didn’t leave.

“You’re not from here,” Lira said carefully. It wasn’t a question.

“No.”

“Are you dangerous?”

Another pause.

“I try not to be.”

Their eyes met — or she thought they did. Beneath the hood, something gold glinted. Not lanternlight. Not human.

Lira held his gaze for a moment longer than was wise.

Then she smiled, small and polite, and turned back to her sweets.

The figure took his honeylace candies and drifted away, soundless as shadow.

She didn’t see him again that night. But the hush in the market never quite lifted.

Nor did her hands stop shaking.

Later, as she packed up for the night, Ven approached her, face pale.

“You saw him too,” he said.

Lira didn’t respond.

Ven licked his lips. “The Cloaked Stranger. He’s come before — but never to the stalls. Never to us.”

“Do you know what he is?”

“No. But one of the rune-markers says he might be one of the Forgotten Gods. The old kind. The ones that don’t care if you believe in them.”

Lira tied off her caramel satchels. “He was polite.”

“That doesn’t make him safe.”

“No,” she said softly. “It doesn’t.”

That night, she found a faint glimmer of sugar dust on her sleeve — residue from the honeylace.

It shimmered in her lamplight like starlight.

She touched it to her lips out of habit.

And for a heartbeat, she tasted something not her own: stone warmed by sun, a wind that smelled of heat and old temples, a quiet longing like teeth pressing against a locked jaw.

She pulled her hand back, heart thudding.

It wasn’t just sweetness she’d sold tonight.

It was a thread.

Something had been exchanged.

And it wasn’t over.

End of Chapter 1

Rain washed the alleyways of Akria the next morning, softening the edges of the Night Market into something gentler. The city always felt like this after one of them passed through — gods, ghosts, or those in between. Lira called it a hush that seeped into brick.

She didn’t open her stall that morning.

Instead, she lit the old stove in her loft, tied back her hair with a faded blue ribbon, and began cooking sugar over flame the way her mother taught her — with silence, and reverence.

Molasses went first. Then crushed coriander pods. Then a sliver of lemon peel dried three days under moonlight. She stirred, not watching the mixture, but watching the steam.

She always did, when her thoughts grew too loud.

The first time she came to the Night Market, she was seventeen and broke. The city hadn’t wanted her — an orphan girl with sunburnt cheeks and too little magic to offer. She’d arrived with a bag of cracked caramels and a promise from her mother’s journal: “Sweetness endures what sharpness cannot.”

She’d almost been laughed off the cobbles.

But she’d made one stranger cry with her ginger-cider drops. Another had traded her bread for a handful of salt toffee. And someone — she never saw who — left a pouch of copper for her pear-laced sugarglass and a note that said only:

Make more.

So she had.

Year after year. Bite after bite.

Until she carved out her little place here — barely enough for safety, but enough for stillness.

And still, last night… something had shifted. The hooded man, the others whispered — had not felt like a customer.

He’d felt like a door opening where there had been only walls.

The market returned to life that evening. Lanterns lit. Cries of vendors filled the air. The taffy-slingers across from her were already arm-wrestling customers for bets again.

Lira set her trays in place. Her hands moved with habit. Caramel first. Then the sugared violets. Then the—

She froze.

The honeylace tray was empty.

She always had at least a handful left over. But now… not even a shimmer of sugar dust remained.

Had he taken them?

Had she given them?

She shook her head and went to work.

The first hour passed as usual — customers laughed, paid, flirted, chewed. Children begged for fire-apple bites. One man asked if her licorice curls were laced with truth serum. (They weren’t. But she didn’t correct him.)

She didn’t expect him to return.

But he did.

At second bell.

Silent. Again.

The hush returned with him — quieter than before, but still noticeable. Like a tension in the throat before a word too dangerous to speak.

He stepped up to her stall without preamble.

Lira didn’t flinch this time.

“You’re early,” she said.

He tilted his head. “You remember me.”

“You don’t forget someone who walks like the ground moves for them.”

The smallest pause.

“Do you want more honeylace?”

“I want to ask you something.”

That made her look up.

His hood was drawn low, but not enough to hide the shimmer beneath it. Gold eyes — not metallic, not glowing — living. Like molten amber given breath.

Lira wiped her hands on her apron. “Ask, then.”

“Why did you not flinch?”

She blinked. “Last night?”

“Yes.”

“You bought candy. Not my soul.”

“Still.”

She shrugged. “Sugar doesn’t ask who eats it. Why should I?”

Something in his throat moved. A suppressed sound. A flicker of teeth — too many, too white, barely seen.

“I thought humans feared us,” he murmured.

“I thought gods didn’t care.”

He went very still.

Then — “You think me a god?”

“I think you’re not pretending to be anything else.”

Another long pause. Then, quietly: “May I sit?”

She blinked again. Her stall didn’t have seating. It was a narrow cart, just wide enough for her and her trays.

“I don’t—”

Before she could finish, he crouched on the stone just beside her counter, folding long limbs with serpentine grace. A man kneeling beside a street stall. Dignified. Terrifying.

Ridiculous.

But somehow… natural.

Like this wasn’t the first time.

“You're odd,” she said, before she could stop herself.

“Am I?” His tone was amused.

“Most people try to make themselves less frightening.”

“Most people aren’t frightening for long.”

She didn’t know what that meant. But it didn’t feel like a threat. More like a truth spoken by someone who’d watched centuries blink by.

They sat in companionable silence for several minutes — her serving sweets, him observing. Never staring. Just present.

After a while, she asked: “Do you have a name?”

“Would you use it if I gave it?”

“I might whisper it to your candy, if that counts.”

He huffed something that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Names carry weight.”

“So does sugar. And I don’t withhold either.”

He turned toward her, and for the first time, she felt something change in the air between them. Not magic. Not menace.

Recognition.

“My name is Kael.”

She repeated it softly, letting the syllables melt on her tongue.

Kael.

It felt too gentle for something that might once have been worshipped.

“It suits you,” she said.

“You don’t know what it means.”

“No,” she said. “But I’ll find out. Eventually.”

He stood then, smooth and fluid as poured oil.

She looked up, suddenly aware of how much taller he was — not just in body, but in presence. The way the light bent around him. The way shadows didn’t quite cling.

He placed a coin on her counter. Gold — real, glinting, unfamiliar.

“Tonight’s sweet,” he said.

“I didn’t give you anything.”

“You gave me your name. That counts.”

And then he left.

Not vanishing. Not dissolving.

Just walking away into the crowd, like any other customer.

Except he wasn’t.

And Lira knew — without knowing how — that nothing about her quiet little life would be untouched from this moment on.

End of Chapter 2

The third night after he gave her his name, Kael did not come.

Lira told herself she didn’t notice.

But she laid out the honeylace tray with too much care. She tied the caramel ribbons slower than usual. And she caught herself glancing toward the lane corner between every sale.

Ridiculous, she told herself.

She wasn’t waiting for him.

Not really.

The Night Market was always shifting — but that evening, it felt off. The kind of strange that stuck beneath fingernails and made milk curdle too fast. The city’s heartbeat had a hitch to it. Lira could feel it beneath her stall, like a drum muffled by wet cloth.

She sold two ginger snaps to a polite couple. A coin purse of starfruit taffy to a young girl with storm-colored hair.

Then, for the first time in months, a man came to the stall and didn’t look at the sweets.

He looked at her.

He was thin in that knotted, dangerous way — all elbows and teeth, and eyes that hadn’t slept in days. His cloak was too fine for a thief, but his boots were cracked, and something in the way he leaned screamed: cornered animal.

“You’re Lira,” he said.

She didn’t confirm. Didn’t deny. Just brushed stray sugar dust from her tray.

“They say your candies carry dreams.”

“They say a lot of things,” she replied.

His hand darted out.

Fast.

She reached for the dagger she kept beneath the counter — small, sharp, sugar-stained from years of slicing toffee in a hurry.

But she was too slow.

His fingers curled around her wrist.

“I want the syrup cubes,” he said, voice low and shaking. “The real ones. The kind that make you forget.”

“I don’t sell those.”

“Don’t lie.”

His grip tightened.

The market around her blurred. Voices faded. People passed, unaware or uncaring — the Night Market didn’t intervene unless blood hit the stones.

Lira met his eyes.

“I don’t make forgetfulness,” she said evenly. “Only sweetness.”

“Then give me something sweet enough to kill.”

She stilled.

Not with fear — but anger.

And then the man’s breath hitched.

Because a shadow fell across the stall.

Not a large shadow. Not loud. But it hummed — like something vast had exhaled nearby.

“Let go,” came a voice like silk catching on glass.

The man turned.

And crumpled.

Not from a blow. Not from fire. Just… collapsed. As if gravity had remembered him too suddenly.

Kael stood beside him, one foot pressing lightly into the thief’s back. He looked calm. Almost bored.

But his eyes burned gold.

He said again, “Let. Go.”

The man’s hand released Lira’s wrist. Shaking. Sweating.

Kael leaned in, too close, and whispered something that made the thief sob. Lira didn’t hear the words. She didn’t want to.

Then Kael stepped back.

The thief scrambled to his feet and ran, tripping over cobblestones, disappearing into the alleys like a rat sensing fire.

Kael said nothing for a long moment.

Then: “You need better protection.”

“I had a knife,” Lira muttered, rubbing her wrist.

He turned his head slowly. “You didn’t use it.”

“I didn’t get the chance.”

“You hesitated,” Kael said simply. “Mortals do, even when they believe they won’t.”

She narrowed her eyes. “And I suppose you never hesitate?”

He looked at her then — really looked.

“I did once,” he said. “It cost a city its sky.”

Lira blinked. “That sounds like something poetic or horrifying.”

“Both,” Kael replied. “They’re often the same.”

She was still trying to process what had happened when he stepped forward again.

“Hold out your hand.”

“What?”

“Your left.”

She hesitated — then extended it, palm up, fingers open.

Kael reached beneath his collar, where fabric shimmered like shadows on water, and drew something out.

A single scale.

No larger than her thumbnail, but brilliant. Iridescent. Like opal kissed by starlight. It pulsed faintly in his palm, almost alive.

“This will answer for me,” he said.

“...what does that mean?”

“If you’re in danger again. It will answer. Once.”

Lira stared at it.

“That’s—very specific.”

Kael quirked a corner of his mouth. “I don’t give second favors lightly.”

He dropped the scale into her hand.

It was warm.

Not hot. Not glowing. But like sun-heated stone — familiar, grounding, steady.

It throbbed once, like a heartbeat.

Lira closed her fingers around it.

Kael turned, already beginning to leave.

“Wait,” she said.

He paused.

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know.”

“But you did.”

“I told you,” he said over his shoulder, “I try not to be dangerous.”

“That was very dangerous.”

Kael smiled without showing his teeth. “I said try.”

And then he was gone — not in a puff of smoke or flash of light. Just walked into the market and vanished, as if the air swallowed him like a secret.

That night, Lira didn’t sleep.

She sat on her loft bed, the scale resting on her table, glowing faintly in the dark.

She stared at it until dawn.

And though she wouldn’t admit it aloud — not yet — she didn’t want to let it go.

Not because it could save her.

But because it meant something.

Not a promise. Not a curse.

A thread.

And threads, she’d learned, had a way of pulling when you least expected.

End of Chapter 3