Kindred Suffering

Mara Vex moved like water through the Night Market’s outer corridors, her dark eyes scanning every shadow. Twelve years of survival in Elarion had taught her that danger announced itself through absence—the suddenly quiet conversation, the merchant who looked away too quickly, the path that seemed too convenient.

Tonight, something was wrong.

She’d felt watched for three days now. Not the casual attention of market vendors or the professional assessment of rival operatives. This was something else. Something patient.

She’s looking for me, a whisper suggested from nowhere.

Mara’s hand drifted toward Silk, one of her twin crystalline daggers. She’d learned to trust her instincts in this city. Instincts kept you alive when logic got you killed.

The whisper came again, and this time Mara realized it wasn’t in her head. It was an actual voice—soft, exhausted, speaking from an alley she was about to pass.

“I know you can hear me. I’m not here to fight.”

Mara’s blade cleared its sheath before the sentence finished. She spun into the alley, finding a thin woman pressed against the wall, hands raised in surrender. Purple scars glowed faintly at her temples. Veilwalker colors. And those hollow, distant eyes—Mara had seen that look before. People who’d seen too much and couldn’t stop seeing.

“You’ve been following me,” Mara said flatly.

“For three days.” The woman—barely more than a girl, really, though she looked decades older in her exhaustion—didn’t lower her hands. “You’re Mara. You protect the one called Iri Vale.”

Something cold settled in Mara’s chest. “Who are you?”

“Neriah. I hear echoes of the dead.” The Veilwalker’s voice cracked slightly. “But three days ago, I heard something impossible. An echo from someone still alive.”

---

Mara kept her blade at Neriah’s throat as the Veilwalker explained. The story was insane—death-whispers from the living, Aether consciousness bleeding through frequencies meant for the departed. But Mara had lived in Elarion long enough to know that insane didn’t mean untrue.

“She’s suffering,” Neriah said quietly. “The Aether crystallization—it’s pushing her consciousness across frequencies no living person should reach. She talks about you. Says you tell her it will be over soon.”

Mara’s grip on her dagger tightened. Those were Iri’s words. Private words, spoken only in the safety of her quarters when the pain became too much.

“You’ve been listening to her thoughts.”

“Not by choice.” Neriah’s eyes met hers, and Mara saw something painfully familiar in them. Resignation. The bone-deep weariness of carrying a burden you never asked for. “I hear everyone who dies violently in this city. Thousands of them. Screaming their final moments forever. I can’t stop it. I can only… tune it. And Iri’s voice came through like nothing I’ve ever heard.”

Mara slowly lowered her blade. “What do you want?”

“To help her.” The words were simple. Desperate. “I’ve spent my whole life hearing the dead. Unable to help any of them. But she’s alive. She’s still alive, and she’s suffering, and maybe—” Neriah’s voice broke. “Maybe I can actually do something for once.”

The confession hung in the air between them. Mara studied the Veilwalker’s face, reading the micro-expressions that told her more than words ever could. Grief. Guilt. A loneliness that went deeper than isolation.

Mara knew those feelings intimately.

“Even if I believed you,” Mara said slowly, “Iri is under Nocturne’s protection. Kade Moros doesn’t allow unauthorized contact with valuable assets.”

“I know. That’s why I came to you first.” Neriah reached slowly into her coat and withdrew a notebook, offering it to Mara. “Everything I’ve heard. Everything she’s thinking when the pain pushes her consciousness through.”

Mara took the notebook. Iri’s words stared back at her, written in a stranger’s hand.

Mara says she’ll get towels.

I used to dream about dancing. Before.

The crystals are pushing through my arms again.

Maybe it would be easier if I just stopped fighting.

That last line hit Mara like a blade to the chest. She hadn’t known. Iri smiled when Mara visited. Iri said she was managing. Iri lied, because that’s what people did when they loved someone and didn’t want to burden them.

“There’s something else,” Neriah said quietly.

Mara looked up from the notebook.

“Someone else has been near her. Close enough to leave an impression on her consciousness.” The Veilwalker’s face was grim. “Someone with crystal eyes who sees her as a subject. Who recommends… increased extraction schedules.”

The cold in Mara’s chest turned to ice. “Scalpel.”

“You know her?”

“Know of her. Fleshbound’s chief surgeon.” Mara’s mind raced through implications, each worse than the last. “She’s been studying Iri? How is that possible? Nocturne would never allow—”

Unless someone in Nocturne had made a deal. Unless Iri’s value as an asset had attracted the kind of attention that didn’t ask permission.

“I don’t know how,” Neriah admitted. “But the echo was clear. Scalpel has been close to Iri. Close enough to examine her. And based on what I heard, she wants more access.”

---

They met the next night at a neutral point on the border between Veilwalker and Nocturne territory—a crumbling church that had once served the faithful and now served no one at all.

Neriah arrived first, her exhaustion somehow deeper than before. She’d been listening again, Mara guessed. Straining to hear more of Iri’s bleeding consciousness.

“Anything new?” Mara asked.

“She slept better last night. You brought her something—flowers, I think. She was thinking about how beautiful they were.” Neriah’s lips curved in the ghost of a smile. “She loves you, you know. Not romantically, but… you’re her anchor. The one person who sees her as human.”

Mara didn’t know what to say to that. She’d thought she was protecting Iri. Now she wondered if she’d been helping imprison her instead.

“I need to warn her,” Mara said finally. “About Scalpel. About whatever’s happening.”

“You’ll need to do it carefully. If Nocturne finds out you know…” Neriah left the threat unfinished.

“I know.” Mara had been with Nocturne for eleven years. She understood how they operated. Valuable assets stayed protected—but protection could quickly become disposal if the asset became a liability. “Can you keep listening? Tell me if anything changes?”

Neriah hesitated. “The more I listen, the more I lose myself. Her thoughts blend with mine. Sometimes I forget which pain is hers and which is mine.”

“Then why offer?”

“Because I’ve heard thousands of deaths.” Neriah’s eyes met Mara’s, and in that moment they understood each other perfectly. “And never once been able to stop one.”

Mara extended her hand. Neriah took it.

“We help her together,” Mara said. “And we figure out what Scalpel is planning.”

“Together,” Neriah agreed.

Somewhere in Nocturne territory, Iri Vale slept fitfully, her Aether-saturated consciousness bleeding whispers into frequencies no living person should reach. And in her dreams, for the first time in years, she wasn’t entirely alone.