Seros wouldn't hear otherwise: Spending the night at the inn wasn't an option and they must all leave immediately.

“Every guard in the city will be looking for us,” he said. “A reputable inn like this won’t get in trouble with the monks. The fucking Blood Monks! What the hell was that, Fran?”

“I just felt a warm bliss overpower me. What was supposed to happen?”

“Nothing, mostly,” said the necromancer. “Or an incapacitating pain for one in a hundred, followed by a visit to the Unholy Cathedral. I can't believe you’re this ignorant, kid.”

Fran vaguely remembered the guard at the city gates mentioning a box. Unfortunately for him, Ofgdal had skipped the most important aspect of Azgadali life for visitors. Seros explained it hurriedly: Everyone called it the Dragon's Eye. Every night, a group of monks assisted by the city guard combed the city's establishments interrupting the parties and the festive mood. A single monk in the whole city carried that mysterious relic of theirs, the Dragon's Eye. Nobody knew what it sought or measured, but the outcomes were public knowledge: Every once in a while, the participant would feel an excruciating pain spread all over their body until they lost consciousness. Nobody had really described the full experience because no one had returned to tell the tale. The pain left the victim unconscious and the monks took him away. Any friends of the victim that intervened found death on the spot. But no one ever intervened.

The monks then took the victim away, probably to perform obscene blood rituals on him. The same practices that had gotten them expelled from the ziggurat city-states of the Aisherete plains.

The monks, usually uncommunicative and impervious to other people's questions, were open on one point only: Azgal chose, not them. It was the dragon's price, the compensation that Azgal received in exchange for the protection that made the city possible.

“It felt like heaven,” Fran said. Seros didn't have an answer for that.

The group rushed to pick up their belongings and followed the lion through dark alleys. Seros wore a big hood he reserved for delicate situations.

“I’m screwed. There's no more lions in this city, damn my luck.”

“Are we heading toward the gates?”

Seros shook his head.

“That's the riskiest spot. I'm thinking a boat across the lake, or perhaps a large trading convoy at the busiest time of the day. We need somewhere safe to plan our exit.”

The streets became narrower and steeper. Fran looked up and saw the fickle lights of the Inner Quarter, where the city's true inhabitants lived.

“Are we going in?”

“This way,” said Seros turning left. “No Dhenn, the Inner Quarter is protected. But West of it lies the poorest and most dangerous neighborhood of Azgadal. Traders visit for years without learning of its existence. The guards won't show up unless something truly awful happens. It's an isolated corner of the city, constrained by the mountain, the Inner Quarter and the lake. It's in too deep for the traders and adventurers and useless for the locals, who already have the Inner Quarter and the Unholy Cathedral area to themselves. Over time, it developed into a shelter for the foulest scum of a dozen kingdoms. A gathering spot for the cursed, the hopeless and the lost. I’m talking literal curses, my friends. Azgal's presence and the monks' rituals block the power of most other gods. So every day, a handful of new heretics and iconoclasts arrive. They enter Azgadal hoping to leave their curses behind.”

“Does it work?” asked Fran.

“Like I said, there's someone I want you to meet. The New Alliance is on her track and I think she's desperate enough to hide here.”

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They rented a gloomy room cheaper than a meal in Azdagal's main square. The innkeeper didn't ask their names.

Seros insisted they took turns holding guard and wouldn't let Fran and the necromancer take off their boots to sleep in case they needed to wake up and run out. “Steer clear of fantasybrain. The elves and the dragons are too irrational for your Terran brain, so it resists. It convinces itself that Mela cannot be completely real. Fun-and-exploration-real, sure. But not death-real. You need to fight that flaw in your mind. Repeat this in your head: Death is just a step behind until we escape this city. Especially for you, Dhenn.”

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They remained indoors all day. The Sun fell, and Seros sent Fran to buy clothes at a store that catered to nocturnal races. The only one in the city. Fran entered the small shop with apprehension, but it was empty except for the human shopkeeper. “A client this early?” he asked. “It's going to be a good night, thank the Lords of the Underworld.”

The new clothes hid the necromancer's energy, Seros's leonine features and Fran's face, which the monk, ‘His Holiness,’ had surely memorized. They spent the night moving from inn to inn and tavern to tavern, all inside this strange neighborhood whose denizens either avoided your eyes or desperately tried to meet them with a demented gaze.

“Curses and demonic possession are an epidemic in the plains. Imagine how crazy they must have been before they got here,” said Seros.

All the back and forth was for nothing. The group returned to their beds deep into the night, frazzled and disappointed.

“We'll find her tomorrow,” said Fran.

Seros nodded.

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It took two more days, but they eventually found an old man who nodded when Seros described the woman. “I remember her sad eyes,” he said. “People in this quarter always carry something in their eyes. It was sadness for her.”

They found her at noon, resting by a bed made of hay in a small square where hungry dogs bickered. The walls were dilapidated, covered in the graffiti ramblings of a demented soul.

The woman wore a white and blue dress that must have been beautiful when it was new. Nine tattooed red stars adorned her face, all under her left eye. She was emaciated and had a look of desperation about her.

Seros approached slowly, flanked by Dhenn. The necromancer sat across the square, keeping an eye on the deserted streets.

The lion knelt and joined his hands in prayer. “Let this be a good day for your heart, Amira of Pluh, lover of Clidatendes. My name is Seros.”

She eyed him suspiciously. Then, she laughed with rancor.

“Clidatendes has forgotten me, lion man. Perhaps that was her intention when she sent me here. The lost souls that surround me never consider that possibility, that they were cursed so that they’d flee and their gods could forget about them.”

“I met you a long time ago, in a sweeter land.”

“That must have been in Arcabria. I'm sorry I can’t remember. My head does its best not to remember.”

“It was in Arcabria. You were an itinerant priestess, and every poet sang of your gift. My lover and I planned to marry in the land of love, but she died shortly after.”

“Arcabria is the land of yearning passion and yearning. The love of marriage has nothing to do with it or with the goddess.”

“I've learned that,” he said. “We asked you to officiate our marriage nevertheless. You had a smile on your face, but it vanished when you held our hands.”

The priestess looked at him with suspicion. She recognized him now. She turned to look at Fran.

“Who’s your friend?”

“A quest brought us together.”

“Dhenn is my name. It's a pleasure to meet you.”

Amira eyed him thoughtfully.

“You have the same awkward manners that your friend here used to have. You belong to different races and come from different lands, but you share something deep. An unspoken disbelief in the reality around you. I've seen it a few times. Some of the worst troubadours in Arcabria had that same look. It was imprinted into their souls.” She nodded into the distance. “That necromancer is with you, right? I see it in his dead eyes too.”

Fran sat next to her, making sure that his head was below hers.

“Nothing escapes your sharp eyes, Amira. The necromancer is with us.”

“He's dead. Everything that touches the unnatural should be buried.”

“He remains our friend,” said Seros.

“There's something off about all of you. It's like people are just actors to you and Mela is a stageplay. The New Alliance was the name of the group for such people. You make me remember too much, Seros.”

“Nothing painful, I hope.”

“Not yet. The New Alliance, yes. I never learned what it really was, but I did meet some members over the last decade.”

“We're not members of the New Alliance, blessed Amira,” said Seros. “But we do seek your assistance. We came to visit you for two reasons. The second one is to offer a warning, but the first one is more urgent. Please answer this: Why did you reject my request for marriage that day in the green fields of Arcabria? Love was in the air and you were a priestess of love, so why reject the wish of two lovers?”

“The blessings of Clidatendes are for those she can see, and she cannot see the dead or the sons of chaos.”

“I'm neither.”

The priestess was stern now.

“You’re dead because you're not Melan,” she said. “You're something that doesn't belong here. I don't care to know what twisted sorcery brought you to us, but I know that love is destiny, and your destiny isn't in these lands. That's the reason you look at everything from afar when the truth is before your eyes. Can you draw a map of Mela where its borders clash into something else?”

“Nobody's seen the borders of Mela,” said Seros. “I never thought they existed, truth be told. Isn't this planet round?”

“What are you, a child?” the priestess asked. “You're wasting my time. Unfortunately, the downward spiral of my destiny has brought me so low that nobody bothers wasting my time anymore, so I'll tell you what I know: Members of the New Alliance aren't the only creatures from outside the lands of the living. Bring me food and wine and I’ll tell you more. I'm not in a hurry.”