Nia’s feet were cold.

They were always cold. But something about now, something about tonight — the still obsidian of her chosen alleyway stoop, the haunting silence of the late hour. The absence of even a single sliver of moon…

An insidious sense of…something…needled the skin behind her ears. She tried to brush the sensation away with her unfeeling fingers, but it lingered, unfazed. Like the fog always shrouding the city above.

The night had a bite to it. Penetrating. As though it were gnawing on her bones. It felt like it was taking something from her. Nibbles on her constitution. Bit by little bit.

The oppressiveness wasn’t abnormal for a port city adjoining the Firnik sea. Black, brackish, and never-ending. Any body of land that hugged its tides felt that hyperborean influence, regardless of the season.

But, this night felt different. Nia didn’t quite have the vocabulary to effectively describe it. But she knew it. Deep in her core. Call it a sixth sense.

With little choice but to carry on anyway, she settled into her dark little corner of frozen refuse, and began to unlace her boots. They were new. New to her, anyway. Two sizes too big and scuffed to hell, but devoid of holes in the soles. She’d stuffed the extra toe space with other trash she’d found in that fortuitous dumpster. Bits of crumpled newspaper. The silvery wrapping of a long-gone bar of chocolate. She’d licked it clean first, of course.

That had been a spectacular day. Rare a find in Nia’s world.

And, until today’s inexplicable otherness, she hadn’t had a singular issue. Her miracle boots had managed their job well.

She’d noticed it the very second she’d opened her eyes earlier that evening. She’d awakened like normal — sudden and cruelly from a dark, dreamless slumber. But it hadn’t been by the usual mournful chorus of gulls returning to their street-side nests for the day.

It’d been chatter that had awoken her. Inside her head. And outside it.

An energy had followed. A quality. A sense.

The whole Market had been rife with irregularities. Her usual rounds had come across a host of fights at the fist — patrons and vendors alike brawling like starving schoolchildren. A veritable bloodbath, all over feculent fish carcass and stale tea leaves. Such fights were commonplace in the city’s darkest hours, when Guilders weren’t prowling about, barbed bats slung over their hulking, well-fed shoulders.

But the Guilders had been notably absent. And without any sort of enforcing body, chaos had erupted, as it was wont to do amongst the downtrodden and hungry.

Lights in the Middling Tiers above had flickered on and off and on and off again, like a ciphered plea. A code. Cryptic and impossible for someone as unlettered as Nia. But she saw it. And noted it all the same.

Fire barrels lining the Market stalls had gone dark without reason. Strange vibrations had emanated from the sewer grates. The crickets had been silent.

They still were.

The wind off the water carried less of its usual brine and more of something — rotten. Pungent and sharp.

Yes, the night had been chock full of spooky things that bore no explanation.

Even Old Jove had been especially unpleasant. Growlier than usual. Panicked. Hadn’t even tried to feel her up when she’d inquired about her usual ounce of chum. He’d just thrown it at her with a begrudging warning to get the hell inside.

She’d snorted. Inside where? As if that were really an option. She hadn’t the money for booze, let alone lodgings.

Any true Groundling learned at an early age that any place with anything other than the sky for a ceiling would remain indefinitely out-of-reach.

No, such luxury was reserved only for the city’s Proper Highborns. Indebted Middlings. Anyone with an enough aether to spare. For a stack of velos. Four walls and a roof.

Nia refused to stoop so low.

She’d been born down here. She would die down here. Happily and without complaint. This is where she belonged. What she didn’t have, well, that wasn’t her doing, was it?

Propers never gave people like her a chance.

They took it all. Took everything. That was how they worked. Sucked every resource off the ground like a mosquito on a fat, stinking pig. Without a second thought.

It didn’t matter how many toes she lost in the process, she’d never prostrate to them.

Never. Not ever.

Such a little liar, you are.

Nia flinched. Stared at the ancient, crumbling cobblestones that made up her stoop. Prayed her silence would be enough to send the voice away.

I know you hear me, Little Liar.

She massaged her numb toes. “No, I don’t.”

Liar, liar, liar.

A stand out hiss. Different from the other chatter. Familiar somehow. Cold and cruel and callous.

“Shut it.”

If only you could make me.

It always did this. Taunted her. Mocked her. Pried into her innermost thoughts and picked them apart. Poked its metaphorical nose in whenever she let her guard down. She made it easy. She had no defenses.

No. You don’t, do you?

“I said, shut it.“

You sold your defenses, Little Liar. Don’t you remember? Vial after vial.

“Stop.”

Not so different from those shameful Middlings.

“Yes, I am. I am different.”

You might be worse, Little Liar. Not a drop of aether to your name. You gave it all away.

The voice clicked an invisible tongue.

That naughty sweet tooth of yours, wasn’t it?

“Fuck you.”

But Little Liar is all out of Candy now, isn’t she?

“Stop.”

Such a shame. Such a shame. At least Middlings know how to play the game Properly.

“STOP!”

The voice was silent for only a moment.

But, we’re having such fun.

Nia squeezed her toes until they hurt. “Please,” she rasped.

Little Liar knows better than to beg.

“Leave me alone.”

Such a feat is not possible.

“Why?” Nia demanded. It wasn’t the first time. And she knew what it was going to say.

But the voice went quiet again for several strained heartbeats.

Little Liar needs to hide.

Nia blinked. “What?”

Hide, the voice sibilated, its tone suddenly frantic. A shift she’d never heard from it before. Not once. Not in all the years it had been crawling around in her head.

Nia poked her head into the alley, scanning the darkness for any signs of danger. But she couldn’t make out anything. She squinted her eyes and angled her head.

Nothing.

She told the voice as much.

Hide, hide, hide, hide, it repeated in reply, insistent.

“There’s nothing there!”

HIDE! HIDE! HIDE!

Then she smelled it. The rot. The decay. A stench like nothing else on this earth. As though a demon belched it from the deepest pit of hell and left it to bake in the sun.

Too late! Too late! Liar must flee! Liar must run!

Panic seized control of Nia’s limbs. She leapt to her feet, not caring that she had only one booted foot. She threw herself into the street at full tilt, sprinting as quickly as her legs could carry her. Which, was to say, not quick enough.

Run! Run! Run!

Nia ran. But she was weak. Food-starved. Aether-dry. Sapped of energy. She was certain she would make a horrible meal for whatever manner of beast chased her. But, then again, she thought glumly, chum was a terrible meal too.

Her limbs burned, though she could hardly feel them. Couldn’t spare the effort. She could only hurl herself onward, alongside the city’s ancient sewage system. Thousands of years old. At least. One of many old labyrinths of waste left to rot. Open pipes carved right into the streets. This side of town, they carried mere trickles of dirty, fetid water. But she followed them, for they would lead her back to the Market. Every channel dumped into the Firnik.

The only safe place her fear addled mind could conjure.

Brilliant, she thought. Maybe the creature couldn’t swim. Maybe Jove would still be out. Maybe the gulls would swarm — they didn’t take well to new beasties in their territory.

But this bright idea would become Nia’s downfall.

She was too far from the sea. Jove was asleep in his bed. The gulls were in their nests. And she was alone.

Little Liar!

She passed by a service grate. The city’s first attempt at sanitary sewage. Something shifted in the dark. Gruesome. Swift. Reticent.

Talons and teeth and shadow. A vestige of violence.

Something had been waiting. Lurking underground.

Nia had been herded. Herded and then — eviscerated.

Her head was ripped free of her shoulders before she could scream. Her heart was plundered from her chest and devoured in its entirety.

Her remnants were left strewn about the alley. Discarded with little care or effort. Ribbons of skin and bone and sinew. Unrecognizable as the person they once were. Unrecognizable as a person at all.

The streets shivered, but remained silent. As though sound itself were taking a break.

But the stench abated. Slowly and deliberately. Clawing its way back into the city’s underbelly. Into the deepest pits of gloom beneath those ancient, cracked cobblestones.

It curled up in the dark, resting its mephitic head. Ready to wait, patiently, for the next ill-fated Groundling to inadvertently stumble across its path.

Oh, Little Liar. Oh, no, oh no, oh no, no, no.