Chapter 2

Sancia reflects on her painful touch-based abilities—object insight, spatial sensing, and hearing scrivings—and prepares for a high-paying heist. She scales the old Fernezzi building to spot her guided carriage, assembles a black-market parachute and guidance rod, verifies the guidance with a test coin, and launches.

The parachute tears mid-flight, accelerating her dangerously. Sancia releases early and crashes onto cargo stacks inside the waterfront, losing the rig but avoiding detection. Using her sense through stone, she maps nearby guards and plants a linked incendiary device—one lead ball on the stacks, its twin in a flash-powder box—as a planned exit distraction.

She infiltrates the Waterwatch offices via a second-floor window and spots safes below. Before she can tranquilize the desk sergeant, Captain Dandolo arrives with her recovered rig and suspects a break-in. As Dandolo climbs to search, Sancia triggers the linked device, which ignites a distant blaze, drawing both officers outside.

Alone, Sancia works safe 23D. Despite mounting explosions and her searing head scar, she uses her touch-sense to set the tumblers and opens the safe. She retrieves a small, plain wooden box that feels oddly constructed to her overwhelmed senses, secures it, relocks the safe, and heads out.

She finds the cargo yard engulfed; the distraction has become a full inferno. With guards occupied, Sancia slips through an unguarded eastern exit and flees as black smoke curls over the moon, the stolen box in hand.