The rain in District 9 did not feel like water. It felt like cold oil, sticking to Samar’s face and leaving a dark, greasy film on his worn coat. He walked with a slow, heavy limp, his old injury aching in the damp air. Above him, the sky was completely hidden by a massive canopy of iron pipes. These pipes belonged to the Aetheria grid. They snaked between the towering, crooked tenement buildings like the dirty veins of some giant metal monster. Every few seconds, a loud, metallic hiss echoed through the narrow alleyways. It was the sound of steam being released from the high-pressure valves. Along with the steam came the smell—a sickeningly sweet aroma of raw Aetheria mixed with the sharp, bitter stench of burning coal.
To the people of the Upper Districts, the blue liquid running through these pipes was just a resource. It was the fuel that lit their grand crystal chandeliers, warmed their marble floors, and powered their automated carriages. But here in the slums, which the locals called the Drips, the Aetheria was a constant, dangerous presence. It leaked from loose joints in the pipes, dripping into the muddy puddles on the cobblestones. The glowing blue droplets created a strange, ghostly light in the dark alleys. Children in dirty rags played near these puddles, their fingers stained with a faint, glowing blue residue. They called it god-spit. They did not know, or perhaps they simply did not care, that touching unrefined Aetheria was a slow death sentence.
Samar kept one hand deep inside his coat pocket, his fingers wrapped tightly around the cold handle of his silver pocket watch. He could feel its steady, mechanical tick-tick-tick against his palm. It was a comforting sensation, a small reminder of order in a world that felt increasingly chaotic. Under his other arm, he carried the heavy mahogany box containing the glass hand of the dead girl, Lady Evelyn. He had wrapped the box in a dirty canvas sack to keep it dry and to hide it from prying eyes. In a place like the Drips, a box made of polished mahogany was worth more than a man’s life.
He turned a sharp corner, avoiding a pile of rotting garbage and a rusted iron boiler that had been abandoned in the middle of the street. His destination was a low, squat building with a crooked wooden sign hanging over the door. The sign showed a rusted anchor, though the sea was miles away. This was the Rusty Anchor, a notorious tavern that served as a meeting place for coal miners, pipe-fitters, and the dark elements of the city's underbelly.
Samar pushed the heavy wooden door open. A wave of thick, hot air hit him in the face. The tavern was filled with the smell of cheap tobacco, spilled alcohol, and wet wool. A dozen men sat at low tables, their faces dark with coal dust and exhaustion. They spoke in low, quiet whispers, their eyes darting to the door every time the rusty hinges groaned. When Samar stepped inside, a sudden silence fell over the room. His tall figure, his long gray coat, and the unmistakable posture of a former lawman made him stand out like a wolf in a sheepfold.
He ignored the hostile stares and walked straight to the wooden bar. Behind the counter stood Barnaby, a large, broad-shouldered Westerner with a scarred cheek and a thick gray beard. Barnaby was wiping a dirty glass with a greasy rag, but his eyes were sharp. He watched Samar approach with a mixture of surprise and immediate caution.
"I heard a rumor you were still alive, Samar," Barnaby said, his voice low and gruff. He did not stop wiping the glass. "But I didn't think you'd be foolish enough to show your face in the Drips. Especially not tonight. The Ministry is active. The iron masks have been patrolling the borders since sunset."
"I need information, Barnaby," Samar said, resting his forearms on the sticky wooden counter. He did not raise his voice. "And I don't have time for small talk."
Barnaby let out a short, dry chuckle and set the glass down. "Nobody comes to the Drips for small talk. They come for cheap drinks, cheap women, or illegal Aether. Which one is it, Inspector? Or should I call you civilian now?"
"The illegal Aether," Samar replied. "Specifically, the kind that isn't blue. The kind that turns things black."
The smile instantly vanished from Barnaby's face. He leaned forward over the counter, his eyes scanning the room behind Samar before speaking in an even lower whisper. "You shouldn't speak those words out loud, Samar. Not here. Not tonight. People are scared. The miners are whispering about a curse in the deep shafts. They say the stones are starting to grow fingers."
"I don't care about miner superstitions," Samar said coldly. "I want to know who is bringing the modified strain up to the surface. Someone is selling it to the highborns in the Upper District. A girl died this morning, Barnaby. She didn't just turn to glass. She shattered."
Barnaby’s scarred cheek twitched. He looked down at the counter, his thick fingers tracing a deep groove in the old wood. "I don't deal in that stuff, Samar. You know me. I dilute the regular blue stuff to keep the lanterns burning and the heaters running. I don't touch the dark fluid. It's poison. It's worse than poison. It has a voice"
"A voice?" Samar frowned. "What do you mean?"
"I don't know," Barnaby muttered, shaking his head. "But if you want real answers, you’re talking to the wrong man. You need to talk to someone who actually handles the raw product. Someone who smuggles it straight from the deep harvesting lines."
He tilted his head slightly toward the far corner of the tavern. The area was shrouded in deep shadows, barely reached by the dim orange light of the oil lamps hanging from the ceiling. A single figure sat at a small corner table, hunched over a cup. The figure wore a large, heavy oilskin cloak with the hood pulled low, completely hiding their face.
"Who is that?" Samar asked.
"Her name is Ira," Barnaby whispered. "She’s young, but she’s the smartest smuggler in District 9. She can get past the Ministry checkpoints like she’s made of smoke. But more importantly, she’s different. She has a touch for the fluid. Some say she can hear things in the Aetheria that would drive a normal person mad. But be careful, Samar. She doesn't like the law, and she definitely doesn't like strangers."
Samar nodded once. "Thanks, Barnaby."
"Don't thank me yet," the tavern keeper grunted, picking up his rag again. "Just make sure whatever trouble you bring doesn't end up burning my roof down."
Samar walked away from the bar, his boots making a dull thudding sound against the sawdust-covered floorboards. As he approached the corner table, the figure in the cloak did not move. She sat perfectly still, but Samar noticed her hands. Her fingers were small and calloused, and they were spinning a tiny glass vial between her knuckles with incredible speed. Inside the vial, a thick, glowing blue liquid swirled. It was far brighter than the cheap, watered-down Aetheria in the tavern's lamps. It cast a sharp, dancing blue light across her fingers.
Samar pulled out the empty wooden chair opposite her and sat down. He did not ask for permission.
The spinning vial stopped instantly. The girl did not look up, but her voice was sharp and clear, cutting through the low murmur of the tavern. "You walk with a limp, but your steps are too heavy for a regular drunk. And you smell like lavender oil and expensive soap. You don't belong in the Drips, mister."
"My name is Samar Verma," he said, placing the wrapped mahogany box on the table between them. "And I used to belong here."
The girl slowly raised her head. The hood of her cloak fell back slightly, revealing her face. She was young, perhaps in her early twenties, with sharp, delicate features and a pale complexion. Her hair was dark and messy, cut short around her ears. But it was her eyes that made Samar freeze. They were a deep, striking amber color, but around the edges of her irises, there was a thin, glowing ring of electric blue light. It was the unmistakable mark of an Aether-syphoner—someone who had spent too much time exposing their body to the raw, unrefined energy of the gods.
"Samar Verma," she repeated, her voice dripping with a cold, cynical tone. "The Inspector who went mad when his wife walked out. The Ministry’s favorite dog, until they threw him a bone and told him to get lost. Why is a ghost sitting at my table?"
"I'm here because of this," Samar said. He reached down and pulled the dirty canvas sack off the mahogany box. He did not open the lid fully. He simply flipped the brass latch and cracked it open just an inch, allowing the dim light of the tavern to enter the velvet-lined interior.
Ira leaned forward, her amber eyes widening. As she looked into the narrow opening, the small blue rings in her eyes flared with a sudden, intense brightness. The vial of Aetheria in her hand began to vibrate, the liquid inside bubbling as if it had suddenly reached a boiling point.
Inside the box, the severed hand of black glass lay perfectly still. But the moment Ira looked at it, the faint blue veins inside the dark crystal fingers began to pulse. They did not pulse randomly. They pulsed in a rapid, rhythmic pattern that perfectly matched the fast beating of Ira’s own heart.
With a sharp gasp, Ira pulled herself back, slamming her back against her chair. The small glass vial she was holding slipped from her fingers and rolled across the wooden table, stopping right against the side of the mahogany box.
"Close it," she whispered, her voice shaking for the first time. Her face had gone completely pale. "Close it now, Samar."
Samar snapped the lid shut and secured the brass latch. The rapid pulsing of the blue veins inside the box vanished, and the ambient light of the tavern returned to its normal, dim orange glow.
"You know what it is," Samar said, his voice steady but intense. "The Ministry calls it the Glass Rot. They think it's a disease that started in the deep mining shafts. They think it's spreading like a fever."
"They are fools," Ira hissed, her fingers trembling as she picked up her fallen vial and tucked it securely into the folds of her cloak. She looked around the tavern nervously, making sure no one was watching them. "The Ministry knows nothing. They think they can control the Aetheria because they built iron pipes and brass valves to channel it. They think they can measure it in gallons and credits. But they don't understand what they are digging up."
"Then make me understand, Ira," Samar said, leaning closer across the table. "I’m not the Ministry. I don't care about their credits or their politics. A young girl died today. She was eighteen years old. She was turned into a statue of solid black glass, and then her chest exploded outward. If this thing is spreading, it won't stop at the highborn estates. It will consume this entire city."
Ira looked at him, her amber eyes searching his tired, lined face. For a long moment, she did not speak. The silence between them was heavy, filled only with the distant hum of the Aether pipes outside and the steady drumming of the rain against the roof.
"It's not a disease, Samar," she said finally, her voice dropping so low that he had to strain his ears to hear her. "You cannot catch it like a cold. You cannot cure it with medicine or alchemical herbs. The Glass Rot is a transformation."
"A transformation into what?"
"A vessel," Ira said. She reached into her cloak and slowly pulled out her left hand. She held it out under the dim light of the oil lamp.
Samar’s breath caught in his throat.
The skin on the back of her hand was no longer soft and human. From her knuckles up to her wrist, her skin had turned into a hard, glossy surface of solid black glass. It looked exactly like the material of the severed hand in the box. Beneath the dark, transparent crystal surface of her skin, a network of tiny, microscopic blue lines pulsed with a faint, ghostly light. The transformation had already begun.
"How long have you had this?" Samar whispered, his hand instinctively reaching toward his revolver under his coat before he forced himself to relax.
"Three months," Ira replied, pulling her hand back and hiding it under her sleeve. "It started as a small, hard spot on my middle finger. I thought I had just burned myself on a hot pipe. But then it started to grow. It doesn't hurt. It doesn't bleed. But sometimes, when the city is quiet, and the Aether grid is running at full capacity... I can feel it. It vibrates. It talks to me."
"What does it say?"
"It doesn't use words," Ira said, shaking her head. Her eyes looked distant, as if she were listening to a sound that Samar could not hear. "It’s a feeling. A deep, cold ache. It’s like a voice calling from the bottom of a very dark, very deep well. The Old One... the god they are draining under the city... it isn't dead, Samar. The Ministry told us they were harvesting the calcified remains of ancient, dead beasts. But they lied. It is sleeping. And it is having a nightmare."
"A nightmare," Samar repeated, trying to process her words. His analytical detective mind wanted to reject her explanation, to find a logical, scientific cause for the crystallization. But as he looked at her pale face and the faint blue rings in her eyes, he knew she was telling the truth. "And the black glass?"
"The nightmare is rewriting us," Ira said. "The unrefined Aetheria we smuggle, the fluid we use to light our homes... it carries the dream. When the dream becomes too strong, the human body cannot support it. We turn to glass. We become silent statues, frozen in the middle of our lives. And when the nightmare reaches its peak... the vessel shatters. Because the god wants to wake up, Samar. And if it wakes up, Oakhaven will fall into the sea."
Before Samar could ask another question, a sudden, sharp sound cut through the noise of the tavern.
It was the high-pitched, metallic scream of an emergency steam siren.
The sound came from the street outside, loud and deafening, echoing off the stone walls of the alleyways. Instantly, the dim orange oil lamps hanging from the ceiling of the Rusty Anchor flickered and died. A second later, they flared back to life, but the light was no longer orange. It was a harsh, flashing crimson red. This was the Ministry’s emergency override signal, powered by the central grid.
The tavern patrons erupted into panic. Men knocked over chairs and spilled their drinks as they scrambled toward the exit.
"They're here," Barnaby shouted from behind the bar, his hand reaching under the counter for a heavy iron club. "Samar, get out! The iron masks are on the street!"
"Don't move," Samar said to Ira, his voice calm but firm. He stood up, keeping his body low, and pulled his heavy revolver from beneath the yellowed newspapers in his coat pocket. He checked the cylinder. Six rounds.
The heavy front door of the Rusty Anchor did not open. It was blown off its iron hinges with a loud, explosive boom.
Splinters of thick oak wood and rusted metal rained down over the front tables. Through the thick cloud of gray smoke and dust, a line of heavily armed men stepped into the tavern. They wore long, dark gray coats and heavy brass breastplates that caught the flashing red light of the emergency lamps. Their faces were completely hidden behind bulky, terrifying gas masks made of dark leather and polished brass. In their gloved hands, they held black wooden stocks of steam-pressurized rifles, the copper pressure gauges on the sides glowing with a cold green light.
Leading the squad was a tall, lean man with a polished silver breastplate and a dark blue officer's cap. He did not wear a gas mask, revealing a harsh, angular face with a thin scar running from his left eye down to his jawline. This was Sergeant Miller, Commander Vane's most loyal and ruthless lieutenant.
"By order of the High Ministry!" Miller’s voice boomed through the smoky room, amplified by a small brass speaker attached to his collar. "This block is under immediate, Class-Four quarantine. No one is permitted to leave this building. Anyone who attempts to flee will be treated as an active biohazard and terminated on sight."
The tavern patrons froze, their hands raised in the air, their faces pale with terror. They knew what a Ministry quarantine meant. It did not mean medical care or isolation. It meant a slow death in a locked room, or a quick death by fire.
Sergeant Miller’s cold, gray eyes scanned the quiet tavern. They passed over the terrified coal miners, the trembling pipe-fitters, and the silent barman. Finally, his eyes landed on the corner table.
"Well, well," Miller said, a cruel, mocking smile spreading across his scarred face. He stepped over the ruins of the broken door, his polished leather boots making a loud crunching sound on the splinters. "Look what we have here. The great Inspector Samar Verma, hiding in the dirt with a known smuggler. Commander Vane said you would lead us straight to the source, Samar. He was right."
Samar did not lower his gun. He pointed the heavy iron barrel straight at Miller’s chest. "I’m on official Ministry business, Miller. I have a silver pass from the Commander himself. Tell your men to step back."
"The silver pass doesn't protect you from a quarantine, Inspector," Miller replied coldly, gesturing with his hand to the enforcers behind him. "The rules are very simple. We seal the block, we clean the infection, and we ensure the safety of the empire. Raise your hands, Samar. Both of you."
Beside Samar, Ira slowly stood up. Her hand was hidden beneath the sleeve of her cloak, but Samar could see the faint blue light of her glass knuckles starting to glow through the dark fabric. The air around her began to vibrate, and the high-pitched hum of the steam-rifles in the room seemed to slow down, their mechanical ticking becoming sluggish and heavy.
"We need to go," Ira whispered to Samar, her voice barely a breath. "Now."
"On my signal," Samar muttered back, his eyes locked on Miller’s trigger finger.
The storm outside howled through the broken doorway, driving the cold rain into the red-lit room. The standoff was complete, the tension stretched so tight that a single breath could shatter it.