Mina Ostrohaya

The lord

Mina turns away from the river and continues his journey. We're getting close now to Lord Stephenson's estate. I can see it from my elevated position—a sprawling complex of buildings behind high walls, guards at the gate, gardens maintained with obsessive precision. It's one of the newer noble houses, built on merchant wealth rather than ancient bloodlines. Lord Stephenson's grandfather was a trader who made smart investments and strategic marriages. Now the family pretends they've always been noble, that their lineage stretches back centuries rather than decades.

But I'm getting distracted. Focus on Mina.

He approaches a small park—just a square of green in the urban landscape, with a few trees and benches where nursemaids bring children to play. It's empty at this hour, too early for the wealthy families who use it. Mina cuts across the grass, taking a shortcut that saves him perhaps thirty seconds. Those thirty seconds matter to him, though he couldn't explain why. Everything in his life is measured, timed, controlled. He exists within strict parameters, following routes and schedules with mechanical precision.

A bird lands on the path ahead of him—a crow, black and glossy, its eyes bright with intelligence. It c***s its head, studying Mina with the intense focus that crows bring to everything they observe. Crows are smart. They remember faces, hold grudges, recognize patterns. This one has seen Mina before, seen him pass through this park every morning for months. But something about him confuses the bird. It hops forward, then back, unable to decide whether Mina is threat or opportunity or something else entirely.

Mina stops walking. He and the crow regard each other for a long moment, two creatures that don't quite fit into the categories the world has created for them. Then the crow makes a sound—not a caw, but something else, something that sounds almost like language, like it's trying to warn or question or communicate something important. It spreads its wings and flies away, disappearing into the morning sky.

Mina watches it go. For just a moment, his expression changes. The careful blankness he maintains slips, and I see something underneath—confusion, maybe. Or fear. Or a terrible, dawning suspicion that something is wrong, that something has been wrong for a very long time, but he can't quite grasp what it is.

Then the moment passes. The mask slides back into place. He continues walking.

From my desk above, I make a note in the ledgers I keep. Another day, another journey, another small crack in the facade of normalcy that Mina maintains. The cracks are getting wider. Eventually, something will break through, and he'll have to confront what he's become. But not today. Today, he'll reach Lord Stephenson's estate, receive his assignments, carry them out with the efficiency that makes him valuable, and return home to his small room in Johan Strabe, where he'll lie awake until exhaustion finally drags him into something approximating sleep.

He doesn't dream anymore. He hasn't dreamed since the change. But sometimes, in that space between waking and sleeping, he hears whispers. Voices telling him things he doesn't want to know, showing him truths he can't accept. And in the morning, he wakes up with his heart racing—except his heart doesn't race, not anymore, not in the way hearts are supposed to race. It moves, yes, but sluggishly, mechanically, pumping that not-quite-blood through those not-quite-veins.

The estate gate looms ahead now. Two guards stand at attention, recognizing Mina and waving him through without question. He's expected. He's part of the machinery. He's one of the small, forgettable pieces that keep Lord Stephenson's little empire functioning.

I watch him disappear through the gate, swallowed by the estate's shadows. And I lean back at my desk, considering what Malavie wanted me to show you. The jester system with its calculated cruelty, its industrialized suffering, its transformation of horror into art form. And Mina, the unconscious victim, the walking paradox, the man who stopped being fully human but hasn't realized it yet.

Both are products of the same world—this gray, diseased city where 300,000 people walk from work to home and home to work, their lives grinding away in the service of systems they don't understand and can't escape. The jesters at least know what they're doing. They've chosen their path, embraced the darkness, made it into something they can control and profit from.

But Mina? Mina has no choice. He doesn't even know there's a choice to be made. He exists in ignorance, and perhaps that's the cruelest fate of all.

Malavie thinks so. That's why he wanted me to show you this, to help you understand his philosophy before you travel to his islands. Life sickness, he calls it—this condition of thinking oneself divine, of believing one has control over existence when really we're all just passengers on a vehicle we didn't build and can't steer.

The sun rises higher. The city continues its rhythms. And I continue watching, because that's what I do. I watch, I record, I bear witness to the endless parade of human suffering and human cruelty and human resilience.

And sometimes, on mornings like this, when the light hits just right and I can see everything with perfect clarity, I wonder what the point of it all is. But then I remember: there doesn't need to be a point. This is simply what exists. And existence, regardless of its purpose or lack thereof, continues regardless of whether we understand it.

Mina is inside Lord Stephenson's estate now, out of my direct line of sight. But I can still track him if I choose, can still observe his every movement, every breath, every thought that passes through his changing mind.

But I don't. I give him privacy, at least for a few hours. Even immortals deserve that much courtesy, even if they don't know they're immortal.

Even if they're not sure they want to be.