Antoine woke with the permit slip stuck to his cheek.
He peeled it off slowly, blinked grit out of his eyes, and held it close to his face as if the ink might change while he slept. The stamp was still crisp. The guard’s corner mark looked darker in the morning light, as if it had soaked deeper overnight.
He lay still and listened.
The tenement carried thin sounds through thinner walls, a kettle hiss, a cough that tried to stay quiet, the soft drag of someone’s shoes on the landing. Ordinary noises in a building that made ordinary feel like a form of camouflage.
His eyes shifted to the door.
His shoe sat balanced on the inside knob, heel perched on metal, toe braced against wood. He’d set it there when he went to sleep. A poor man’s alarm. Seeing it still in place loosened his chest by a fraction.
He sat up and reached for it.
The shoe came down carefully, the heel tapping wood once before he caught it. He set it beside the bed, then forced himself to breathe shallow and steady. The alarm hadn’t tripped. That meant almost nothing. It still felt like something.
He looked at the permit slip again.
A few hours left.
It was an ugly thought, because it made the day feel like it had teeth. He could almost hear the clock, quiet as a heartbeat. He’d let it run out, he’d decided that, not because it was wise, but because he needed the city to stop staring in his direction. The intake verification delay would stretch for three days anyway, and he wanted those days to take some of the heat off him.
He slid the permit into his jacket and sat for a moment, hands on his knees, staring at the wall until his eyes stopped darting.
Then he went to his supplies.
He did not pull everything out.
Most of his turned-wood jars and waxed cloth bundles were tucked away where a casual glance would slide past them. Under the bed, pushed back beyond easy reach. Packed deep in his bag under old cloth. The jar of lumen dust under a floorboard. It was weak hiding. It was what he had.
He left his reagents behind in favor of the simple tools he would need today.
He gathered his knife, the charcoal sack, and the water bag. He checked his belt by touch.
Ward-sink leather hugged his waist, warm from sleep. Beneath it, pressed flat against skin, the butcher cellar key waited where he’d wrapped it, mundane metal hidden by pressure. Behind the key, tucked deeper in the belt’s shadow, his coin pouch pressed against him like a second pulse.
He loosened it just enough to count.
Four gold, two silver, two copper.
He tightened it again and rewrapped the belt until the pouch disappeared.
The number felt smaller every time he said it, like the coins were sweating away inside the leather.
He dressed, smoothed his hair with damp fingers, and made his face blank. Calm was still his best armor. Calm was the only thing that let a man move through authority without looking like a target.
He stepped into the hall, locked the door, and let his hand hover on the latch for half a second too long before he forced himself to walk.
Outside, the streets were already thick with bodies. Carts rattled past with wheels that needed grease. Vendors called out prices like prayers. Antoine felt the familiar pressure behind his ribs, the sense that the air was running out even with the sky open above him.
He turned away and took a narrow lane along the backs of buildings, close to stone, close to shadow. Space returned by degrees. His breathing loosened a fraction.
He had one purchase to make.
A cooper’s stall sat tucked between a seamstress and a man selling nails by the handful. Turned-wood casks hung from hooks, small ones meant for carrying, larger ones meant for storing. Funnels sat in a bin, plain wood, rough-carved, serviceable.
Antoine kept his voice even.
“Small cask and a funnel,” he said.
The cooper looked him over, eyes lingering on the ward-sink belt like it was a question.
“A silver,” the man said.
Antoine paid without arguing. He didn’t have time to argue. Time was the thing he was bleeding.
He took the cask and funnel, stepped aside, and counted immediately, fingers working under leather where no one could see them.
Four gold, one silver, two copper.
He closed the pouch and felt the loss like a physical pinch. Coin evaporated. It always did. You could watch it happen and it still surprised you.
He tucked the purchases into his bag and headed toward the lane where Trent sometimes cut through on errands. He didn’t want to linger, he didn’t want a conversation in a crowd, he needed to say one thing.
Trent appeared the way he always did, slipping out of a side gap with a runner’s looseness and a watcher’s eyes.
Antoine kept his gaze on the wall behind Trent’s shoulder. Eye contact made everything feel closer than he wanted.
“I might’ve found a loophole,” Antoine said.
Trent’s expression didn’t change much, only his attention sharpened.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“What kind?” Trent asked.
“The ward didn’t flare where the licensed crafters work,” Antoine said, careful with the words. “Scrutiny still sits on me, but the area warning stayed quiet.”
Trent’s mouth tightened.
“Careful,” he said.
“I am,” Antoine replied. He shifted the bag strap on his shoulder. “I need you to buy things for me. Basic reagents, containers, glass flasks, even cloudy ones. They just need to hold liquid. If you can get them without attracting eyes, do it.”
Trent watched him for a beat, measuring.
“Normally, I demand coin up front,” Trent said.
“I know, I also don’t know the price for securing at a minimum, a mass of small bottles. ” Antoine replied. “At least get me the price, and if you can secure you know I am good for the money. Besides as you said, ‘we’re partners’ after all.
Trent sighed and nodded once, and slipped away, not leaving a word behind.
Antoine let himself exhale once, shallow and careful, then turned toward the butcher's cellar.
The walk felt longer than it should have, because he kept choosing routes that avoided the press of people. He hugged walls. He tracked cracks in cobbles when his nerves lit up like a bad circuit. He let the city flow around him without letting it swallow him.
When he reached the cellar door, he paused with his hand on the latch and listened. The building above held the quiet of early business, a scrape of a chair, a distant voice, nothing that sounded like attention.
He went down.
The cellar greeted him with damp and wood and old wine. Blento casks sat in shadow, their rounded sides dark with age and use. The smell carried sweetness under the bite, a high bright edge that had made him suspicious the first time he opened one.
He set his bag on the packed earth and unpacked with deliberate care.
The freeze-concentrated Blento waited in its old container, a turned-wood vessel that had been made to hold wine, not ice. The outside had frosted once, then sweated, then frozen again. Inside, the wine had locked up from the outside inward, water crystallizing first, alcohol and everything it carried driven into the darker unfrozen heart.
Antoine knelt, drew his knife, and leaned in.
He pressed the blade into the top of the ice and shaved away a thin layer, working with small controlled cuts. The knife whispered through ice, the sound sharp enough to make him pause and listen to the floor above.
No reaction.
He kept going.
Chips fell away and scattered across the earth like glass. His fingers ached from cold. He ignored it. He carved deeper, widening the opening as he went, chasing the darker center he could see beneath the clear layers.
When he finally reached it, the liquid looked like amber trapped in a fist.
He didn’t try to pour yet. He did something simpler.
He grabbed the thickest chunks of ice and tossed them into the far corner, one after another, letting them thud into the dark where they could melt and disappear. The old container lightened with each throw. The air got colder for a moment, then settled.
He kept going until the container held what he wanted and none of what he didn’t.
A pool of concentrated Blento at the bottom, the core cut he could work with.
Now he had a cask to carry clean product, and a source vessel he could tilt without fighting a shell of ice.
He set the funnel on top of the small turned-wood cask he’d bought, checked that it seated snug, then reached for the charcoal sack.
Clean charcoal looked innocent, just black chunks that wanted to stain everything they touched. Antoine poured a portion into cloth and tied it into a crude pouch, then took the water bag and poured a careful amount over it. The first rinse ran gray. He rinsed again. Then again, until the water ran clearer.
He set the charcoal pouch into the funnel and pressed it down until it sat tight. Then he lifted the old Blento container and began to pour the concentrated liquor through.
The liquid soaked into the charcoal and vanished for a heartbeat. Antoine watched the funnel like he could will it to behave. He thought about tails, about methanol and blindness, about how thin the line could be between warm confidence and ruined eyes.
Charcoal did not make magic. Charcoal made separation easier if you were already close.
He had to believe he was close.
The first drops that emerged were darker, then they steadied into a cleaner amber. The smell changed too, a little less harsh, a little less raw, as if the liquid had lost an edge it hadn’t needed.
He poured slowly, letting time do its job.
When the filtered distillate was collected in the turned-wood cask, he capped it and sat back on his heels, breathing shallow, listening for footsteps above.
Nothing.
The cellar kept its damp hush.
He stared at the cask for a long moment, then let himself name it again, quietly, like a thought you didn’t want overheard.
He would call it Knolle Vodka.
Still a hypothesis. A thought wearing a label.
He wiped his hands on cloth and pulled the Character Ledger from his jacket. The book felt heavier down here. Everything felt heavier in a cellar.
He opened to his status.
Strength: 7
Dexterity: 8
Endurance: 9
Perception: 8
Charisma: 4
Intelligence: 17
Four.
He stared at Charisma for a beat too long, then forced himself to breathe.
He set the Ledger beside him, open and ready, and lifted the cask.
The smell was still wine, still sweet, but the bite was cleaner now. He held it close, hesitated, then brought it to his mouth.
A mouthful.
It hit warm and sharp, sliding down like a small fire that claimed space without pain. His throat tightened instinctively, then loosened. The warmth spread through his chest, and the world’s hard edges softened by a fraction.
Normal impairment came with it, the slight float, the warmth that suggested courage, the faint blur that wanted to be confidence. Antoine recognized the shape from his old life and hated how easily he welcomed it.
He sat still and let his body speak.
Then he looked down at the open Ledger.
Charisma: 4 +3
The plus was green.
Antoine stared at it until his eyes began to sting.
Three points.
He could feel it too. Words that had been stuck behind his teeth felt closer to his tongue, like they wanted to come out and charm their way free. The cellar felt less like a trap and more like a place he could work. His shoulders dropped without him telling them to.
He set the cask down carefully.
Methanol tail, he reminded himself. Blindness. He had rinsed the charcoal. He had filtered. He had kept the cut clean. It had to be delineated by the filter, he told himself, because he needed that to be true.
He did not drink again.
He closed the Ledger gently and tucked it away, then began packing with careful hands, equipment first, then charcoal, then water bag, then funnel. He wiped down anything that might leave a trail. He covered the cask and set it with the Blento, just another container in a room full of wine, if anyone ever looked.
He did not believe anyone would stop looking for long.
When he finished, he sat on the packed earth and listened to the building above.
His permit clock ticked in his head, quiet as a heartbeat, and he could feel how close it was to the end. A few hours, then the paper would be worthless. He would let it happen. He would let the city think he had gone still, while he measured what the green plus meant.
Upstairs, the world moved. Down here, in damp and wood and old wine, Antoine held a small turned-wood cask and thought about confidence.
He could make it.
And that meant someone else would want to own it.
How do you like Antoine using basic chemistry to get around triggering the wards with a skill?
