Ivan could not sleep. This was a common occurence when a lot weighed on his mind, and the events of the last few days did. He had returned from Brunnhold with his permit, but it took all the money he could muster to put down the deposit on the property. It was a very modest place, similar to his practice in Vienda, but the price...on top of which, owning two properties qualified Ivan for a harsher tax group, designed specifically to stop honest humans becoming too successful.
Ivan was only honest when the situation permitted however, and something had to be done for his plans to come to fruition. He gazed out of his bedroom window, which was on a small balcony area, overlooking the valley of the southern portion of the Dives. His train of thought was interrupted when he spotted a familiar character. It was Mue Saraka, the messenger he'd met in the Stacks. He wondered what she was doing in Vienda - perhaps delivering a message? As she came close enough to his house for Ivan to call out, he noticed she was holding a letter - his letter.

What?

Mue was walking at a steady pace, with none of the haste he had seen in her on their first meeting. From the high angle he could not see her face well, but she was now close enough for him to see the letter in more detail. It was just as red as it was when he had handed it to her, but it was now dripping, leaving a pitter-patter trail of red behind her. Was she hurt? Had she come for medical help?

Ivan rushed downstairs, going from bedclothes to casual dress in a flash. He burst out his door to meet Mue, but she had passed his practice and was walking off in the direction of the Painted Ladies. Still, he could use the crude blood trail to track her down, and at this rate she would collapse from blood loss anyway. He started in her direction, and then noticed how cold it was this night. Somehow he hadn't noticed the snow beginning to fall, but it was falling and settling as if it had been snowing for the better part of an hour.
Something about the scene, the way the precipitation settled and crunched underfoot didn't feel quite right, but he had no time to think about it. Mue disappeared around the next corner, and Ivan tried hard to catch up. Something more than the snow slowed his strides, as if the very air were congealing, or that gravity was waning as he ran. Ivan turned the corner and fully expected to see Mue finally having collapsed from weakness and cold, but instead he was presented with a scene that was quite different.

Infront of him knelt the seamstress, Fion Smith. The blood trail had utterly disappeared, and the road led to a cul-de-sac which Ivan was not familiar with. Ivan looked at the seamstress, and his entire mind formed the shape of a question mark.

She was weeping uncontrollably, and with the arm that was not covering her eyes, she pointed towards the end of the road. There a shape stood, though Ivan could not make it out from this distance through the snow. He looked back to Fion. Her sobs were not loud, but they were relentless and energetic; it was as if she knelt further from him than she did, and was wailing. Then, she spoke.

"Qts... Qpb'v eqisp bjnm xxam jkqzoy qxszz, pd utm?"

Ivan blinked.

"Qts... Qpb'v eqisp bjnm xxam jkqzoy qxszz, pd utm?" she repeated.

"Qts... Qpb'v eqisp bjnm xxam jkqzoy qxszz, pd utm?"

Ivan was taken aback. It was unintelligible. What was she saying? Was she...speaking in code?
He could make neither head not tail of what she meant, and instead decided to follow her direction and seek out the form in the dark. He began to walk towards it, and Fion curled into her lap, completely racked with sorrow.

As Ivan approached, he felt something in the bottom of his stomach. He was entering a field, and a powerful one at that. It was nauesating, every step that brought him closer filled him with increasing dread. The form began to reveal itself. The shape of a boy. The shape of Piran. The field was throbbing now, not just in his stomach but now in his head, resonating at the temples. Now he saw that the boy did not move, was transfixed. Closer still, and Ivan saw that the boy was a statue, a sculpture, made from the falling snow. It stood, tongue sticking out far, and eyes rolled into the back of his head.

Ivan stood now infront of the figure, his energy almost entirely drained in the effort to resist the field's effect. He reached out to the sculpture, and touched his hand to it's forehead. Looking at his fingers and the substance that had been transferred to them, Ivan was struck by a mortifying realisation; this was not snow. It was opium.

As if waiting for this moment, the boy's form disintegrated in an instant, the wind picking up the dust and swirling it away. Within the small remaining mound there was a document, a corner poking out. Ivan could see that it was his business permit, and reached down to fish it out of the pile of dust. The instant that his fingertip touched the paper, the mound exploded.

The force of the explosion threw Ivan back, and he fell to the floor. Ivan picked himself up and looked to the point of detonation.

There stood terror. There stood a Seventen.

Ivan scrambled to his feet, but found that he could not stand upright, and was limited to a sort of desperate crawl. He tried to scream, but all he could muster was a breathy whimper.
The air began to vibrate around him, and Ivan froze. He knew that signature, and he knew what would come next.

All was white, pure, bottomless fear.

Ivan jerked awake. He was drenched with a cold sweat, and the beating of his heart was actually visible between two of his ribs, as if it were trying to escape too. It took a full two minutes for his breathing to slow and steady, then he collapsed back into the bed, sighing enormously. After a pause, Ivan got out of bed entirely, and grabbed his pipe from the bedside drawer. He poured a one-and-a-half dose of tar into it, and opened his balcony window. The smoke flowed out in a billowing spiral, caught by the night breeze. The wind picked the sweat off his bare torso, and while this chilled him, the feeling was gripping, solid and real, reassuring Ivan that he was indeed awake. Ivan watched the smoke trails thoughtfully.

He considered his options, weighing them carefully. He had no real choice in the matter though, and it was clear, if he wanted to acquire the property at the Stacks, Ivan would have to make a return to Old Rose Harbour. He'd have to return, acquire a shipment of poppy from a trustworthy contact, and sell it off in time for the payments on the property. And he'd have to do all this without Silas Hawke's knowledge.