The world shifted like a breath caught in a dying throat.
Lucien Blackmoore stepped across the threshold, out of Valthara Prime's jagged neon decay and into the darker geometry of the Veilshade Plains. One blink, one thought, and the walls of smoke and glass fell away behind him. The transition wasn't clean—it never was. The air thickened, pressure twisted his temples, and his boot soles sank just slightly into the ground, as if it resented being walked on by anything still carrying hope.
The Ledger in his coat flared briefly, reacting to the crossing. Glyphs along its spine shimmered faintly beneath the fabric, recalibrating their orientation as the laws of this place asserted themselves.
"Entering: Veilshade – Tier 3 Field.Current Target: Vara Nhill.Objective: Extract location of Cassian proxy through staged decoy.Informant status: compliant.Secondary threads: 3 flagged Cassian ciphers active.Collections overdue: Gav (17h), Jace (3h), Halvor (pending contract breach)."
Lucien exhaled once, steadying his stride as the Ebon Bazaar unfolded before him like a wound stitched shut with bad faith. It sprawled across the broken stone and fungus-veined soil beneath a sky that didn't hold stars—just bruised clouds churned by things no one named. Lanterns hung like failing hearts along the tattered tents, casting a copper-colored light that barely pushed the dark aside. It wasn't absence of light here; it was active. Like the shadows were chewing on it slow.
Every sound felt like it happened three seconds late. And every step landed softer than it should.
Lucien's boots clicked over uneven obsidian flagstones, wet from mist and streaked with residue he didn't want to identify. His coat, dyed black and long enough to drag behind him like a dying thought, gathered the dusk into its folds. He pulled it tighter around him—not for warmth, but because here, anything exposed could be read.
The Bazaar didn't hum like a market; it murmured like a thing in mourning. Haggling happened in hand signs, not voices. Vendors wore masks that didn't match their body language. Everything was sideways, indirect, like eye contact could sign your death warrant.
He caught the scent of bloodroot incense and synthetic bile, layered over by rot and rust. Old magic. New money. Worse regrets.
And tucked into the coils of it all, like a blade half-buried in ash, stood Vara Nhill.
She leaned against a curved iron strut beside a warped canvas stall. The canvas looked like it had been stitched from animal hide and tax records. Vara's coat clung to her like it didn't want to let her go, and her gloved fingers toyed with a glass vial filled with thick violet mist that seemed to press against its own walls like it wanted out.
Lucien approached at an angle—never straight in. Never in the Bazaar.
"Still hunting ghosts, Vara?" he said, voice pitched to slide under the whispers.
She didn't turn. "Still playing shadow broker, Lucien? Or just slumming for scraps tonight?"
"Little of both," he murmured. "I need a sparkplug for a trap, and your sister's name just so happens to bait the right crowd."
The vial in her hand didn't drop. But her knuckles went white around the glass. A single strand of hair clung to her cheek, wet from the mist. She didn't brush it away.
"Don't use her," she said. It wasn't a plea. It was the warning kind of quiet.
Lucien's eyes tracked the market slowly. "I'm using a name," he said, flat. "Not the girl herself."
Vara's breath came sharp and shallow. Still, she didn't throw the vial. "She's not dead," she said finally. "Just off-grid. You put her name in your game and you drag her back in."
"There's a traitor watching this market," Lucien continued. "Cassian's threading spies through these stalls. We pull this right, and I catch one mid-move."
"You sure it's not your own people bleeding you?"
Lucien didn't answer. The Ledger stirred again—coiled beneath his ribs like a serpent curling in sleep that wasn't quite sleep.
"Decoy operation: initializing.Risk forecast: moderate.Attention spike from three unknowns within 30m.Nearest hostile potential: 12 paces to your left, under canopy."
He glanced without turning. A shadow twitched under a blue tarp, then stilled. Not yet. Not the one.
"I'm not hunting your sister," he said. "But someone's whispering her name into the wrong ears. I don't ignore that."
Vara finally looked at him. Her eyes had the tired shine of people who didn't have time to fall apart. "Then what? Add another name to your damned book?"
"If they sign themselves into it, sure."
The Ledger thumped hard once—like approval. Or hunger.
Lucien stepped forward, letting the shadows fold in behind them. Vara followed, coat dragging behind her like a ghost too stubborn to vanish. They didn't speak again as they slipped between stalls, past a butcher with a bleeding book for a face, a tent made entirely of stitched veils, and a rune-vendor who wore all her customers' names in chains around her wrists.
Then they reached it—the kill spot.
A corner of the market that bent inward, away from the rest. Tents leaned too close, like they were whispering gossip about people they intended to eat. The ground here was glassy black, slick with condensation that smelled like burnt teeth. Breathing got harder. Silence paid attention.
Lucien crouched beside a crate wrapped in false ritual bindings and pulled out a forged token. Its glyphs glimmered like they wanted to be real, and that was enough for bait.
Vara kept her blade low and loose in her grip.
Footsteps. Too confident. A man stepped from the gloom. Hood pulled low. Smile too wide. And there it was—the mistake.
Lucien didn't even look at him when he said, "You're early."
The traitor hesitated.
Then he reached.
Lucien moved faster.
He shoved Vara back with his left hand and flung the forged token down with his right. Glyphs on the ground exploded into light—sharp, brutal, functional. A soul trap, designed not to question, only to bind.
The man froze. His arms jerked up like a puppet. Light rippled up his legs and spine, locking joints mid-motion. His mouth opened.
Too slow.
The Ledger throbbed white-hot beneath Lucien's coat, glyphs searing along its edge like a smoldering confession.
"Soul tether initiated. Binding complete.Proxy ID: Orun Raithe. Cassian-mark confirmed.Authorization: Blackmoore tier.New collection logged: 1 soul."
The man screamed once before the sound folded in on itself. Then he collapsed like a tent torn from its ropes.
Vara was crouched beside Lucien now, knife drawn, face blank.
"What the hell was that?" she asked, not startled—just wanting to name the shape of the fire.
Lucien lifted the Ledger with both hands, letting her see the faint glow along its leather casing. The sigils along the spine shimmered and receded like breath. "A soul-binding. He walked right into it."
The corpse twitched once. Then went still.
The Bazaar didn't pause. It never did.
Vara wiped her blade on the edge of her coat. Jaw tight. "Cassian sent him?"
Lucien nodded. "A proxy. And not a subtle one."
She hesitated, eyes scanning the empty alleys. "My sister's name was on his lips before he moved."
Lucien's face didn't change. But inside, something turned sharp.
"Then we're getting close," he said.
The Ledger whispered, voice low as memory:
"Betrayal breeds betrayal.Informant trust level: unstable.Vara Nhill - flagged for potential divergence."
Lucien closed the book and tucked it under his coat again. It was warm now. Not comforting. Just alive.
He muttered low, "Her loyalty was my shield. Her trust stung."
Vara looked at him, frowning. "What?"
He shook his head. "Nothing."
And stepped over the body like it was a broken chess piece.
Behind them, the mist thickened. Not by accident.
The Veilshade moved like it noticed something shift. The Bazaar watched with closed eyes.
Vara followed him into the dark. Not questioning. Not yet.
But something inside her burned hotter than before.
Lucien felt the edges of the next play already stirring. Cassian's chaos was leaking through cracks in the walls of the world. But Lucien would match him move for move. Out-trap the trapper. Outbid the devil.
Still, the Ledger whispered as they passed under another broken arch of bone and faded spell-thread:
"Cassian's chaos persists. So does yours.Cost pending."
Lucien didn't answer.
But he heard it.
And somewhere deep in the folds of his coat, the Ledger kept its own score.