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Eyndralith never truly slept.
High above the cloud, towers pierced the sky like glass spears, their windows spilling pale light over streets crowded with flickering neon. Below, the Lows pulsed with motion and color: a glittering golden joy, a tantalizing crimson desire, and a swirling blue sorrow. Glass vials shimmered and glimmered on wrists and collars like private lanterns of someone’s inside thoughts.
The city smelled of fried food, wet asphalt, and the faint smell of another thunderstorm passing by. Here, no one asked how much money someone had, only what they felt, and whether its value was worth more than even the most priceless things.
Fohlie moved through the market like a shadow slipping between the neon glow. She wasn’t tall or flashy, and that was deliberate. While the wealthy flaunted their emotions like jewelry -glowing vials around their necks, wrists and whatever they could hand those little glass bottles on- she, however, wore none. With her clothes basic and hands empty, she looked poor and unremarkable, a perfect camouflage for a thief whose survival depended on being invisible.
Tonight’s warmup mission was simple: a merchant from the Upper Line had misjudged the crowd, lowering his guard. His bodyguards focused on the buyers in front of the store, ignoring the belt heavy with vials at the merchant’s side. Each vial gleamed molten gold. Bliss. Pure and uncut. Worth more than some families made in a year.
Fohlie waited, breathing with the ebb of the crowd, letting the rhythm of her movements sync with the city. A young boy -no older than 10- lunged for a vial, a guard’s attention diverted and the merchant shooed him away. That was the opening.
Step closer.
Brush past.
Unclip.
Slide.
Pocket.
By the time the merchant realized his missing emotion, she had already vanished into the side alley.
The vial glowed faintly in her palm. Bliss. One drop could erase fear, drown sorrow, or even make hunger bearable for a night. Dangerous. Beautiful. She never drank her own trade, though. She wasn’t foolish. She moved feelings, survived on calculation and skill.
Her apartment was three flights up from the market. Small but neat: a bed folded into the wall, a table doubling as a storage, a compact kitchen with a kettle that always whistled a little too early, and a bookshelf holding her three favorite novels and a few files from her older assignments. Every part of the space had been chosen carefully, comfortable enough to live in, but insignificant enough to escape from if ever the wrong type of person knocked at the door.
She set her satchel on the table, unfastened her gloves, and opened the narrow window. The city stretched beneath her like a machine not powered by gears or oil, but feelings. People walked carrying the of their emotions jingling in glass, some heavy with abundance, some rattling empty bottles hoping for a refill. She had learnt long ago that to survive here, you couldn’t let people see your glow. You couldn’t let them see what you carried. So she didn’t wear her vials. Not now. Not ever.
Her comms unit buzzed before she could even pour water for tea. A private code flickered across its cracked screen, one she recognized immediately.
She answered without hesitation. “What’s the job?”
The voice that came through was low, rough with static, but familiar. It was her fixer, Xadiel.
“You always cut straight to the chase, don’t you? No hello, no weather talk about you little nest of yours?”
Fohlie leaned against the window frame, eyes still on the city. “If i wanted small talk, I’d pay for it. What’s the job?”
A pause.
“Hope”
For a moment, the city seemed to hold its breath.
“Say that again.” She said, flat, thought her pukse jumped.
“Hope. Unregistered. In Helix’s east tower. Executive Sorren brought it back from a summit and locked it away, off the radar. Vault in the east wing. Own circuit, biometric locks, resonance barriers. Impossible for most. But not for you.”
Hope.
Not joy, not compassion, not grief.
Hope.
It was rarer than any jewel. Hope could spark wars, topple governments, ignite revolutions. People had killed for a drop of it. Others had spent their lives chasing the memoty.
Fohlie closed her eyes. Breathing slow and deliberate.
“And what do i get?”
“Fourty for you. Sixty for me. And a debt cleared.”
Debt. The word stung, she owed more than she liked to admit. She didn’t argue.
“Send me everything you’ve got.” She said
“You’ll take it?”
“I’ll consider it.”
The comms clicked dead.
She looked down at the golden vial of bliss on her table, then out the window again. Eyndralith thrummed beneath her. Every street alive with bottled hearts. And for the first time in years, Fohlie felt… nothing.
Her hands went to her vials at her side. Two. Only two.
The first was gray, dulled from childhood, an artifact of joy that had rotted into melancholy over years of neglect and loss. She never drank it, it reminded her of all the happiness she once held and lost.
The second was her constant companion, her survival vial: astuteness. It sharpened her mind, honed her reflexes, let her read patterns, predict movements, avoid traps. Astuteness kept her alive, but it could not make her feel warmth, or excitement, or the spark of possibility. Hope was a luxury she could not afford, even to imagine.
She took a deep breath and closed her fingers over the satchel strap. Tomorrow she would plan the heist of Sorren’s eat wing. She would map circuits, memorize patrol loops, and time every step to the second. But she would not let herself feel hope. She had no vials for it, she never had.
Outside, Eyndralith pulsed, then out the streets alive with clinking glass, with laughter and anger, with desire and despair. Fohlie felt the city beneath her fingers and through her eyes, but the stirrings in her chest remained carefully locked away. She had two vials, a satchel, and a plan. That should have to be enough.
Hope can wait for someone else.