The line at the gate moved with the easy rhythm of a place that had been doing this every morning for years.
Guards asked a question or two, sometimes glanced at what someone was carrying, and waved them through. It was the kind of checkpoint that existed more as a presence than a procedure.
When Haqi reached the front, the guard's face brightened.
"Haqi. Morning."
"Morning, Kai. How's it going?"
"Same as always." Kai's eyes drifted past him to the group behind, taking them in the way guards do, not hostile, just recording. "These your friends?"
"They're new here. I'm just showing them around."
Kai studied them a moment longer, then smiled, easy and genuine. "Haven't seen any of them before."
"You wouldn't have."
"Fair enough." He stepped back and waved them through, then called out as Yami passed on the donkey, "Guard them well, Yami."
"You don't need to tell me that," Yami called back, without turning.
Kai laughed, and they moved into the gate passage, a short covered corridor of stone, the sounds of the city pouring through from the far end like something alive and waiting.
The light at the end was warm and full, and the noise grew louder with every step. Voices overlapped with laughter, the clatter of dishes, and the distant sound of music drifting somewhere deeper inside.
Then they stepped through.
"Amazing," Ozair breathed.
Aryan's eyes widened as he looked around at the crowded streets and glowing lanterns hanging overhead. "This place is huge."
Mina turned slowly, taking everything in with a small smile of disbelief. "So this is what the inside of a kingdom's capital looks like," she said softly.
Elina stared at the rows of colorful shops and the people moving through them. Wonder flickered across her face. "I've never seen anything like this before."
Toviro said nothing at first. His sharp eyes scanned the city with quiet attention, studying the people, the guards, the rooftops. But even he could not completely hide the faint amazement in his expression.
It was enormous, not in the way of empty space, but of a place completely filled with life.
The market street opened directly from the gate and ran forward as far as the eye could follow, lined on both sides with shops and stalls built from wood and pale stone.
Their fronts stood wide open to the street, goods arranged with the practiced pride of vendors who knew exactly what caught a traveler's eye.
People moved in every direction, talking, carrying, haggling, greeting each other by name. Children darted between adult legs. Animals were tied to posts. Somewhere further in, something was cooking, and the smell of it reached all the way to the gate.
Mina turned slowly. "I didn't expect this."
"I thought it would be in bad shape," Aryan said quietly, "because of those villains. It's the opposite."
Haqi and Yami had moved ahead, and Yami glanced back at the group still rooted in the entrance with their mouths not quite closed. "Come on," he said, with the mild impatience of a local watching tourists. "You're blocking the gate."
"Right," Toviro said, and they moved.
They fell in beside the donkey and the handcart, and the city closed around them.
Aryan noticed it first.
His eyes drifted to a woman at a vegetable stall, examining a bunch of dark greens, and he registered the ears before he registered why they mattered.
They weren't human.
They rose from the sides of her head, shaped like a wolf's, pointed and tracking, tilting toward the vendor's voice. Behind her, moving as she turned, was a tai, thick and dark-furred, the same color as her hair. Everything else about her was entirely human.
Aryan stared for a moment, surprise flickering across his face, but he said nothing.
On the other side of the street, Ozair had found something else, two children chasing each other through the gap between two stalls with the focused energy of kids who have forgotten anything else exists.
Both had small white horns rising from the tops of their heads, smooth and bright, and between their shoulder blades, visible through their clothes, a pair of small wings caught the light when they moved. Short tails swung quickly behind them as they ran.
The rest of the group had gone still. The cart stopped, because Haqi had noticed them noticing.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"What are those?" Toviro managed.
Haqi followed his gaze, spotted the wolf-eared woman, then looked back at them with the expression of a man being asked to explain what water was.
"She's a gurg, from the Jawa clan." He paused after seeing their blank expressions, and some of the certainty slipped from his face. "Hmm. You don't know about them either, do you?"
"No idea," they all answered almost at the same time.
"Ah, should've known." Haqi rubbed the back of his neck. "The Jawa are one of the national clans here."
He studied them more carefully now, as if trying to figure out whether they were joking. "Are you serious right now?"
"Completely," Aryan said.
Haqi took a moment to process the fact that these people had somehow never encountered this before. Then he pointed after the children disappearing into the crowd. "And those are Ejdeha. The dragon clan. In total we have two national clans, the Jawa and the Ejdeha."
Ozair stared after the children long after they'd gone. His mouth was still slightly open, but his eyes were bright, the look of someone whose sense of wonder had just been handed something it wasn't prepared for, and was absolutely thrilled about it.
"That," he said slowly, still staring ahead, "is the most incredible thing I've ever seen. And I'm certain there's still so much more for us to discover here."
Haqi studied all of them carefully, at the genuine shock, the complete absence of recognition. He said, carefully, "I suspected you weren't from around here. Now I'm wondering if you're from this world at all."
Before he could say more, Yami leaned forward from the donkey and grabbed his father's shoulder, eyes enormous and shining.
"No way. Seriously? You're travelers from another world?" His eyes went even wider as he turned to his father in excitement. "Father, they crossed between worlds. They actually crossed between worlds!"
"Yeah, yeah, very exciting," Haqi said, clicking the donkey forward. "We're moving."
Yami sat back with the expression of someone who'd just confirmed something wonderful and could not stop smiling about it.
Haqi's shop sat about twenty minutes into the market, tucked between a fabric stall and a spice seller whose goods filled the air with a sharp, pleasant scent.
The shop itself was small but neatly organized, with shelves lining both walls and an open front facing the busy street.
Haqi carefully backed the donkey inside, and he and Yami began unloading with the effortless coordination of a routine they had repeated countless times before.
Ozair was supposed to be watching. He was not.
Instead, he stood at the front of the shop, picking things up, turning them over in his hands, examining everything with open fascination as if trying to understand this new world piece by piece.
"I know that apple," he said, pointing. "And that banana. That fig too. I recognize those." His finger moved farther along the shelf. "But what's that?"
He was pointing at a fruit shaped vaguely like an egg, smooth-skinned and bright yellow.
Yami passed by carrying a crate, barely slowing as he glanced over. "That's shkar," he said. "It's sweet fruit."
Ozair picked one up before Yami had even fully finished speaking and took a bite.
His expression shifted through several stages in rapid succession before settling somewhere close to reverence.
The flesh inside was pale, and the taste was everything a sweet fruit should have been, rich without being heavy, clean without losing its fullness.
"You were right," he said, already reaching for the next thing, a round fruit the size of a fist with deep green, matte-colored skin. "And what about this one?"
"That's ghora," Yami said. "It's sour."
Ozair spat out the shkar seed, tossed the whole ghora into his mouth, and instantly regretted it.
His face folded into the helpless expression of someone completely unprepared for what had just happened. He endured it for three painful seconds, eyes watering furiously, before finally swallowing.
"Also good," he croaked, already reaching for something else.
The next fruit was long and green, thicker than a carrot.
"That one's ambeer," Yami said, stopping now to watch him properly.
Ozair bit straight into it.
Yami's hands shot out. "Wait, not like that."
Ozair froze mid-bite.
"You have to peel it first," Yami said, trying not to laugh. "Like a banana."
Ozair looked down at the bite mark he had already taken, then peeled the rest anyway.
The flesh inside was a deep jade green, and the moment he bit into it properly, he stopped moving altogether.
The flavor unfolded in layers, sweet at first, then something cooler and richer beneath it. He stood silently in the middle of the shop for several long seconds, staring at the fruit like it had changed his life.
"This one," he said at last, turning and holding it up toward the group, "all of you need to try this immediately."
He walked over to Elina and offered it to her.
She lifted a hand politely. "I'll try it later."
Before he could reach anyone else, something connected with the back of his head.
He turned.
Toviro stood there with one hand still extended from the hit.
A second smack came from the other side. Haqi had done it without even turning around, still busy reorganizing items on a shelf.
"Are you planning to eat through my stock before I sell a single thing?" Haqi asked dryly.
"I was just—"
"You were eating my inventory."
"You complete fool," Toviro said. "Did you forget why we came here? We're looking for Mayo, not conducting a survey of the local fruits."
Ozair opened his mouth to defend himself.
"Not one word," Toviro said immediately.
Elina leaned toward Mina and said, very quietly, "I've never seen Toviro like this."
"Neither have I," Mina murmured back.
Ozair looked down at the half-eaten ambeer and set it on the shelf with exaggerated care.
Toviro turned to the others.
"We split up. Ozair and Elina, take the eastern side of the market. Aryan and I will take the western side. We ask every vendor, every stall keeper, anyone who looks like they've been here long enough to notice people."
Then he looked at Mina.
"You stay here with Haqi and Yami."
Mina opened her mouth to protest.
"We'll cover more ground this way," Toviro said, his tone softer now. "And if someone comes back with information, we need somebody reliable here at the center."
Mina held his gaze for a moment, then slowly closed her mouth and gave a single sharp nod, the kind that carried all the worry and frustration she refused to let spill out any other way.
Aryan was already standing at the front of the shop, watching the flow of people moving through the street outside.
"People here probably haven't seen many faces like ours before," he said. "Someone's bound to remember him."
Toviro gave a short nod. "He's right. We move now."
Behind the counter, Haqi listened while arranging part of his display.
"You really think you can find him in a city this big?" he asked.
"Yes," Toviro answered without hesitation.
Haqi was quiet for a moment before nodding slowly. "Then start here, in Shahr. Everyone in Kabul passes through this market sooner or later. If someone saw your friend, there's a good chance it happened here."
He hesitated briefly, choosing his next words more carefully.
"And if soldiers took him, and from what you've told me, it sounds like they did, someone here would've noticed. Soldiers don't move quietly."
The word soldiers settled over the group with uncomfortable weight, confirming what the hoofprints had already implied. Whoever had taken Mayo had done it with authority behind them.
Mina said nothing.
She stared out at the crowded street, her expression no longer just worried, but quieter now, steadier, with something harder beneath it.
Toviro looked between all of them.
"We go," he said. "Ask everyone. Don't stop until somebody gives us something."
Then they stepped out into the market, and the city swallowed them into its endless motion and noise.
And somewhere ahead, hidden within the vastness of Kabul, Mayo waited without knowing they were coming for him.