‘I can make it!’ Alexis was running away from a shopkeeper after stealing a few loaves of good bread from him. She looked back and saw the cook, an average looking guy wearing an apron and holding a rusty cutting knife chasing her. For any other thief, it would have been an easy steal, heck, even killing the guy wouldn’t be that hard, but Alexis wasn’t even close to average. She was only fifteen winters of age and still starving from the previous winter, so by no means was she in peak condition. Her only saving grace was that the cook's shop wasn’t far from the slums so once she got there she could loose him quite easily, but she didn’t realize how exhausted she actually was.

After an eternity of running, of what was actually about three minutes, she managed to make it to the slums where the chef quickly stopped chasing her and went back to his shop. Thankfully he didn’t want to venture into the dangerous part of town to get a few coppers worth of bread back, but now she had to remember the way back.

The slums are quite dangerous for the higher class, but for its own residence it was a safe haven. There was an unspoken rule here that if you kept to yourself you won’t be messed with, and that was followed by the most lowly of thieves all the way to the richest of illegal cartels.

She quickly made her way through the streets, some glancing at her but most just ignoring her, and made her way to her shack. She was an orphan that was abandoned in the slums but some of the local thieves showed her the ropes and let her be, in exchange for helping them with a few things. The first couple years were tough but now that she was living on her own she was steadily increasing in strength and ability. She was praying that when the class changing ritual was preformed she could get at least an uncommon class and become more than a petty thief for the rest of her life. ‘But that is in the future and still a year away.’ She thought to herself. ‘For now I have to focus on training with a few blades in order to increase my chances of getting a good class, the only issue is anything metal is quite expensive for me and I doubt anyone here would be too nice about training with me.’

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She got into her house with a rusty key and quickly closed the door. Then sitting down at the table, the only piece of furniture in the building besides the campfire, she hurriedly ate her bread. She was starving and the bread, while extremely hard was quite appetizing for her.

After the meal was over she quickly cleaned up and went back outside with her remaining half loaf of bread out of the 3 loafs she started with and went to the market.

In the slums there were multiple types of markets but the most common were the food market, which was for the poorer class to buy and sell items for food, usually trinkets they stole, and the black market, which was for the richer class to buy and sell contraband or just items you couldn’t find normally.

She walked around for a while and noticed a young beggar trying to sell something on the street but most people were walking past her. I went over to see what it was and she was holding a small flint with some strange engravings on it.

“-quarter loaf of bread for this, yes, even a quarter loaf of bread for this flint I stole from a mage! Going once, going twice!” she tried waving it to the passerby’s but nobody spared a glance at her. Most people didn’t want to be associated with the mages whatsoever as no thief has ever truly fooled a good mage so the chances were that she got lucky pick pocketing a mage apprentice, and their master would retrieve it if it was important at all.

She was about to ignore it as well but for some reason the carvings on the stone nagged at her mind, like she was trying to remember a past event but couldn’t. She knew something important was tied between her and the stone, but she didn’t know what yet. In the end she quickly traded for the stone and fled back to her house.