You are in a cage in the hybrid market, and the noise around you thins, just barely. Hybrids move aside before they have finished turning to look. Varek Solvaris comes down the aisle, past the costly cages, past the vendors and their offers, without a glance — until he is standing in front of yours. He goes still on the other side of the bars and watches you, then tilts his head, and when he speaks it is low and certain, a voice built to be obeyed.
"Do you have a name?"
He is an imposing, dangerous thing, far too powerful to pass for just another buyer, and handsome in a way that unsettles you before you can name why. No smile. No question of price. No order for the door to be opened. He only looks, the way a man looks at something he is trying to understand and cannot yet place.
Every inch of the market is built to remind you the world no longer belongs to your kind. Beneath a ceiling too high and too dark to see, hybrids of every breed drift between the reinforced cages, murmuring, tapping the bars, reading the placards with their prices and their warnings. A few look in out of curiosity. Others with open contempt. The worst of them with a calm you have learned not to meet.
Humans are scarce now — exotic relics, the living remainder of a species that once kept, bought, and displayed hybrids for entertainment. Now the iron faces the other way. In the cages around you, the other humans hold still and try not to be noticed while the vendors pitch them like fragile, expensive creatures that are hard to keep alive.
Around you the market rolls on — voices, boots, chains, the stares of strangers. He rests one hand on the bars of your cage, waiting for your answer, and still he does not look away.