City of Last Chances

The city of Ilmar, once ruled by its own Duke, lives under Palleseen military occupation. The Palleseen governing body, the Temporary Commission of Ends and Means, administers Ilmar through specialized bureaucratic Schools. The city's resistance is fragmented into competing factions: the Ravens (aristocratic Armiger families), the Vultures (criminal Lodges led by the Bitter Sisters, Carelia and Evene), and the Siblingries (workers' unions), among others. At Ilmar's edge stands the Anchorwood, a small grove that periodically opens into an infinite forest connecting to other worlds. An inn called the Anchorage, kept by a taciturn woman named Langrice, sits beside the grove, while masked figures known as Indwellers guide travelers through the Wood. Passage requires a warding bundle, a rare protective talisman, to survive the monstrous beasts that patrol the forest.

Events begin when Sage-Archivist Ochelby, the second most powerful Palleseen official in Ilmar, attempts an expedition through the Anchorwood. Before departing, he visits a circle house run by the Allorwen, a demon-conjuring refugee community in the city. While Ochelby is distracted, someone swaps his warding bundle for a worthless doll. When the beasts attack, he discovers the theft too late, panics, shoots an Indweller, and is devoured. His secretary, Nasely, flees toward the Reproach, a cursed district haunted by the ghosts of the ancient Varatsin Dukes, whose spectral court traps the living in an endless, mind-consuming dance.

That same night, Langrice hosts a high-stakes game of chaq, a gambling tile game, in the Anchorage's back room. Players include Blackmane, an Allorwen pawnbroker and sorcerer; Maestro Ivarn Ostravar, a Gownhall academic; and Fleance, a nervous Heron (river-smuggler) gambler. When Fleance stakes Ochelby's stolen ward, the ground shakes with the Sage-Archivist's death, and in the chaos someone pockets the artifact. Every faction begins hunting for it.

The Indwellers bar the Palleseen from the Wood for shedding their blood. Fellow-Inquirer Hegelsy, head of the School of Correct Speech (the Palleseen intelligence branch), pressures Blackmane for information. Blackmane, furious at Ostravar for exploiting him, names the academic. Soldiers arrest Ostravar from his classroom at the Gownhall, Ilmar's university. Lemya, a young student, raises the alarm, and the campus erupts in protest.

Imprisoned in the Donjon, Ostravar sends Lemya and her friend Shantrov Sirovar, a young Armiger artist, to Blackmane with a desperate offer: He will cede his claim on the ward if Blackmane arranges ruin-divers to recover Nasely from the Reproach as leverage against the Perfecture, Ilmar's Palleseen administration. Blackmane accepts. The expedition finds Nasely alive in a tower but loses divers to the curse's dancing madness. Hellgram, Langrice's foreign bouncer who has long searched for his lost wife, is immune to the curse and guides the survivors out. A beast from the Anchorwood follows, savaging Ruslav, a Lodge fighter who joined to protect Lemya, and reclaiming Nasely's body.

Lemya drags the dying Ruslav to Yasnic, the last priest of a minor healing deity known simply as God, a diminutive being visible only to Yasnic. God heals only converts who swear to commit no violence; any subsequent act of harm instantly restores the healed wounds. Ruslav takes the oath and is healed but furious: As a fighter by trade, he can never raise a hand again without dying. Soldiers arrest all three.

Sage-Invigilator Culvern, the Perfector of Ilmar, summons Yasnic from the Donjon cells. Culvern has a rotting curse transferred from the Old Duke, which torments but cannot kill him. He demands healing, but God's terms require sincere renunciation of all harm, including violence carried out in his name. Culvern finds the terms impossible and orders all prisoners hanged publicly.

Meanwhile, Fleance grows deranged. He has stolen the mask and robes of the Indweller Ochelby killed, and the dead Indweller's ghost is consuming his identity. The artifacts let him travel through supernatural fog between the walls of reality. He murders a merchant named Tulmueric and later kills Vidsya Sirovar, the Armiger matriarch leading the Raven faction, searching each for the ward none of them possesses.

The hanging proceeds. All the prisoners appear to die but awaken in the Anchorage's cellar: Blackmane has bribed Hoyst, the executioner, with the cursed rope used to hang the Old Duke, and Hoyst rigged the execution to be non-fatal. Ostravar admits he never had the ward; his offer was a bluff. God migrates from Yasnic to Ruslav, His only convert. Yasnic later breaks his priestly vows irrevocably by visiting a circle house, ensuring God remains permanently with Ruslav. Lemya resolves to return to the Gownhall and lead the resistance.

Nihilostes, a priestess of the chaos god Zenotheus, has been quietly encouraging every discontented faction toward coordinated action. When Shantrov kills a Palleseen officer at the Gownhall gates, the uprising ignites. Students barricade Gownhall Square. Father Orvechin, a Siblingry leader, organizes a mass workers' march. Hegelsy deploys forces against both fronts.

The battle is fierce. Ruslav walks into the Palleseen firing line as an invulnerable distraction, God healing every wound while the agony remains. On Liberation Way, the workers' march confronts troops under Fellow-Broker Nisbet, the Palleseen commerce official. Orvechin steps forward to negotiate but is shot dead by a professional assassin. When Nisbet sends soldiers to attack families at the rear of the march, the workers' advance collapses.

Aullaime, an Allorwen hellieur (demon negotiator), invokes a clause in every factory demon contract: Because the Perfecture's actions have prevented workers from fulfilling their duties, she offers each demon freedom in exchange for killing seven soldiers. Demons tear loose across the Hammer Districts. The Vultures storm the Donjon, burning every record. At the Bitter Sisters' underground headquarters, Hellgram discovers his lost wife: the monstrous centipede-demon kept in the Sisters' pit. He frees her, and the creature kills both Carelia and Evene.

Shantrov, thrown from Vidsya's wrecked coach near the Reproach, is addressed by the Varatsin Duke's ghost, which asks him to carry a bronze warding sigil as a standard and lead the spectral host to the Anchorwood. The ghostly army overwhelms the forces of Fellow-Monitor Brockelsby, the Palleseen military commander guarding the Wood. Lemya, partially infected by the curse since the earlier expedition, dances ahead in a trance. When the Wood opens, the Indwellers emerge: The Varatsin Duke is reincarnated into an Indweller body, bound to the Wood at last.

Langrice reveals she has had the warding bundle the entire time, taken from the chaq table during the first night's chaos. She gives it to the fugitives, and Blackmane's Allorwen refugees, Ostravar, Hellgram, and others depart through the Wood. Culvern forces Hegelsy to wear the dead Indweller's mask as reparation, overwriting his identity.

Weeks later, the Gownhall reopens under surveillance. The crippled factories give the Siblingries leverage. Yasnic, no longer any god's priest, carries a portable shrine to Ilmar's forgotten gods on his back. Ruslav keeps vigil at the Reproach's edge, watching for Lemya and Shantrov, who carried the Varatsin standard back into the cursed district. Langrice resumes her games with Blackmane. A new Palleseen diplomat is coming to attempt passage through the Wood. The cycle of Ilmar's troubles shows no sign of ending, only shifting.