Agastya walks through the market. The air was thick with the noise of haggling vendors and the clatter of wooden carts, until he came to a halt in front of his shop.
Wedged into a continuous row of single-story brick storefronts, the bakery sat secured behind a heavy steel gate, blending perfectly into the monotonous, soot-stained architecture of the commercial ward.
Reaching into his dark coat, he retrieved the key and slid it smoothly into the cold metal padlock. He twisted his wrist, the mechanism disengaging with a sharp, heavy clack that cut through the street noise.
Sliding the iron grating aside, he pushed his weight against the heavy wooden door, stepping from the freezing morning air into the stagnant, yeast-scented gloom of the bakery.
To signal the start of the working day, he nudged a heavy, flour-dusted brick with the toe of his boot, wedging it firmly beneath the bottom corner of the door to prop it wide open to the street.
The sunlight bled through the thick industrial smog, cutting a hazy, dust-filled path through the open doorway. Agastya stepped behind the teakwood counter.
Almost immediately, a heavy silhouette eclipsed the light. Agastya’s mind reflexively sifted through Astragan’s residual memories, instantly matching the man's weathered face to a mental file. It was a regular customer from the nearby tenements.
The man stepped inside, his boots heavy on the floorboards. "Opened late today?" he asked, glancing at the empty display racks.
Agastya kept his newly shaved face perfectly neutral. He adjusted his posture, forcing his shoulders to drop slightly, and mirrored the baker’s weary cadence. "Just slept a little longer than usual."
"Ah," the man grunted in understanding. "Well, what can you do. Just the usual for me today. Six of the stale loaves."
Agastya offered a slow, measured nod. ‘Six loaves.’ His analytical mind snagged on a glaring, immediate problem: he hadn't baked a single piece of bread this morning.
He dug quickly into the fading warmth of the baker’s mind. A memory surfaced, providing a tactical lifeline. Astragan was fiercely efficient. To manage the crushing workload, he baked his hard breads the day before, preserving them in a sealed container using a specific, obscure herb that only he knew about.
"Wait a minute," Agastya murmured.
He turned and pushed open the heavy wooden door leading into the kitchen, tucked into the dark corner just behind the counter. The air inside was cool and heavy with the scent of raw flour. The massive stone chimney built into the wall was entirely cold and dormant.
Agastya scanned his new domain. The room was strictly utilitarian, filled with the heavy wooden and iron tools of the trade. And there, hanging from thick iron nails driven deep into the brickwork beneath the massive ventilation hood, were bundles of the dried, pungent herb.
Directly beneath them sat the heavy wooden preservation bins, exactly where the dead baker had left them.
Agastya stepped toward the heavy wooden bins. He lifted the lid, the sharp, medicinal scent of the preserving herb instantly cutting through the heavy smell of raw flour. Reaching inside, he removed the dried stalks resting over the baked goods, hauled the bin up, and carried it out into the storefront.
He set it heavily on the teakwood counter. Sliding open the lower drawer, he retrieved a large, coarse paper bag and methodically packed six rock-hard loaves inside.
Astragan’s residual memories quickly supplied the required arithmetic. One loaf, one Elartraum.
"Six Elartraum," Agastya stated, his voice perfectly flat.
The customer took the paper bag, but didn't immediately reach for his coin purse. Instead, he leaned against the counter, his eyes lingering on Agastya’s newly exposed jawline. "You look sharp today, Astragan. Shaved the beard off, didn't you? Finally looking for a wife?"
‘I see the tactic,’ Agastya thought, his assassin's brain instantly dissecting the man's angle. Spreading sweet cream over stale bread.
‘He is trying to butter me up for a discount.’
"I just felt like a shave," Agastya replied, deliberately maintaining the baker's weary, unbothered persona. "Nothing unusual."
The man chuckled, leaning in conspiratorially. "You're hitting thirty-one soon, friend. You should capitalise on it! Without that mess on your face, you look young. Handsome, even." The man rose on his toes, stretching over the counter with a grinning, theatrical whisper. "You could easily fool a pretty girl from the higher wards into thinking you're still in your twenties."
Agastya let out a dry, phantom laugh inside his own mind. The irony was entirely lost on the customer; the stolen body he was currently inhabiting was actually thirty-one, while Agastya himself—the soul of the dead assassin residing inside it—was the one truly in his twenties.
Agastya waited for the man to settle back onto his heels before responding.
"I am not going to do that," Agastya said smoothly, his blue eyes locking onto the customer's. "And secondly, no matter how much you flatter me, I am not reducing the price of the bread."
The customer let out a booming, entirely unoffended laugh. "Oh, yeah, yeah, I know! You are as stubborn as always. Can't blame a man for trying." He slapped six dull coins onto the wooden counter, scooped up his paper bag, and gave a cheerful wave. "All the best to you!"
Agastya watched in silence as the man stepped back out into the freezing, sulfurous morning. As the heavy boots faded down the smog-choked street, Agastya stared down at the six coins left on the counter. A slow, bemused smirk touched the corner of his mouth.
"Marriage, huh?" he murmured to the empty room.
To a man whose entire existence had been defined by shadows, bloodshed, and an untimely execution. The very concept of a domestic life felt far more absurd than waking up in a dead man's body.
Pushing the thought aside, Agastya turned his attention to the day's labour. He worked with the same cold, methodical precision he once used to dismantle heavily guarded compounds. He put the coins in his drawer. Then, reaching into the lower drawer, he pulled out a spool of coarse twine and a stack of large, square parchment paper.
One by one, he wrapped the hard loaves. He tied them off with sharp, perfectly uniform knots before setting them onto the wooden display shelves behind him.
Just as his hand left the final loaf, the heavy rumble of wooden wheels and iron-shod hooves cut through the ambient noise of the street.
A polished black carriage pulled to a halt right in front of his open door, its dark, imposing silhouette stark against the jaundiced smog. A man stepped out of the cabin and walked straight into the shop. He was dressed far above the station of the lower commercial ward, a sharply tailored dark coat and trousers, a crisp white-collared shirt visible beneath his vest, and a low-brimmed hat casting shadows over his eyes.
He stopped just short of the teakwood counter, offering Agastya a polite, almost predatory smile.
Agastya didn't flinch. He slowly turned around, resting his hands casually on the counter. "Done watching from the street, then?" he asked, his voice dangerously flat.
The man’s smile widened a fraction, a spark of genuine amusement in his eyes. "Oh? So you noticed me."
"What is it?" Agastya asked, ignoring the bait.
The man reached slowly into his breast pocket. He didn't draw a weapon, but instead pulled out a heavy, brass-stamped card. The raised insignia of the city police gleamed in the dim light.
"You are under arrest, Astragan," the officer stated, all trace of the smile vanishing from his face.
Agastya’s blue eyes narrowed. In a fraction of a second, the assassin’s mind mapped the entire room, breaking the situation down into lethal geometry. The serrated bread knife in the drawer. The heavy iron weight of the flour scale. The officer's exposed throat.
Agastya could crush the man's windpipe before he could even blink, or drop him with a single strike to the temple and vanish out the back alley into the morning smog.
But his cold, analytical logic instantly overrode his combat instincts. Assaulting an officer of the law would bring the full, unrelenting weight of the city's enforcement apparatus down on his newly stolen life. He would lose his cover, his safe house, and his anonymity all at once. It was a massive tactical error.
Suppressing the killer inside him, Agastya surrendered. He calmly raised his hands, presenting his empty wrists in a gesture of total, unbothered compliance.
"Okay," Agastya said, his tone perfectly steady. "What is the charge?"
The officer hesitated. The easy, authoritative confidence faltered for just a second as he looked into Agastya's cold, unblinking eyes—eyes that did not belong to a terrified baker.
"You will find out when we arrive at the precinct," the officer replied evasively.
He reached for his belt, drawing a pair of heavy iron cuffs. Stepping forward, he snapped the cold, heavy metal around Agastya's voluntarily extended wrists.
The harsh, metallic clicks of the ratchets echoed loudly in the quiet bakery, sealing the arrest.
With a final, cautious glance at the unnervingly calm baker, the officer gripped Agastya by the arm and motioned toward the waiting black carriage.