Delmuth moved through the city streets with practiced precision, his spider legs clicking softly against the cobblestones despite his best efforts to move silently. The stares always found him. They started at his face, lingered on the sharp angles of his jaw and the dark curtain of his hair, and inevitably dropped to the massive spider body beneath. He could feel the weight of those glances even when people tried to hide them.

He stayed to the edges of the streets, his lower body folding slightly to make himself smaller—though there was no real way to conceal what he was. Eight legs, thick and jointed, carried him swiftly, the glistening black sheen of chitin making him impossible to miss. A child’s startled gasp reached his ears as he turned into a narrower side street, but he ignored it. He didn’t have time to waste worrying about the reactions of strangers.

Keep moving. Don’t stop. Don’t draw attention.

The alley was quieter, the walls close and comforting in a way only the darkened spaces of the world could be. Delmuth let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, his legs relaxing slightly as he moved further into the shadows. Here, the noise of the city dulled, and he felt less exposed.

That’s when he saw them.

Slumped against a wall, their presence was almost easy to miss in the dim light. His black eyes, sharper than most, quickly picked out the gaunt lines of their body, the way their limbs sprawled like a broken puppet. For a moment, he hesitated, his legs flexing in agitation. He shouldn’t get involved—he had no business stopping, no reason to care.

But his legs shifted again, a faint clicking betraying his frustration as he crouched low, his bulk folding into the shadows. One clawed hand reached into his satchel, pulling free a small vial of shimmering amber liquid. The glass caught the faintest glint of light as he held it carefully between two fingers.

“Here,” he muttered, his voice a low rumble, thick with the accent he’d never quite lost. “Take this. It’ll help.”