Rain lashed against the grimy windows of "The Drunken Burrick", turning the gaslit streets of The City into a smear of greys and muddy yellows. Inside, the air hung thick with the reek of cheap ale, unwashed bodies, and despair masquerading as revelry. Some patrons roared with drunken laughter while others hunched over their drinks, drowning sorrows in murky tankards.

In a shadowed corner booth sat Garrett. Across from him, nursing a cloudy cherry cordial, slumped Basso, his face etched with weariness. "Look at you, Garrett," Basso mumbled. "Makes my lot seem almost blessed. Wife just dropped another squaller. Tryin' to help, but... well, it ain't sewmin'."

Garrett didn't look up, his gaze fixed on the untouched rotgut whiskey before him. His mind traced the cold calculus of a vault heist. Outside, figures shuffled through the downpour, grey ghosts in a grey city, trudging towards grey lives. The great, grinding wheel, Garrett thought. Turns us all to grist eventually.

"You got that apprentice though, eh?" Basso continued. "Poor sod's stuck with you what... years now? Tell old Basso somethin'. Tired of hearin' my own woes."

Garrett's sigh was a slow release of breath, colder than the draft seeping under the door. "Bragging holds no currency. And my apprentice..." He paused, a rare fissure in his composure. His brow furrowed beneath the cowl's shadow. The realization struck with the dull weight of a lead pipe: he knew nothing about this person he'd trained for years - not a name, not a face, just a shadow he shaped.

Garrett shoved his glass away and rose in one fluid motion, melting into the throng and out into the deluge. He moved through the downpour like a blade parting water, rain plastering his dark hair to his skull. How had he allowed this? Years of blindness to the person who watched his back.

The walk to his bolt-hole took the better part of an hour through districts where hope went to die. His "home" was a third-floor room above a shop that reeked permanently of rancid tallow. Cheap, anonymous, and suitably wretched.

"You here?" Garrett's voice cut through the stillness, low and edged with unusual tension. "Got questions." He moved deeper into the cramped space, senses straining. The door to the apprentice's adjoining room stood ajar.

Inside, on a narrow cot, lay the familiar hooded form. But the posture was wrong, curled tight and rigid. Garrett crossed the threshold in two strides, instantly cataloguing the signs: too-shallow breathing, minute tremors suppressed beneath the rough blanket, unnatural stillness that screamed pain.

Despite years of cultivated detachment, Garrett moved with urgency, rummaging through drawers until he found what he sought - a single remaining Healing Potion, its faint green glow pulsing like a captured ember.

He returned to the cot, extending the vial. "Take it. Should help." His voice was lower, stripped of its usual icy edge. "Now. Who are you?"