The Whispering Emporium hummed like a living thing, the faint coppery tang of dried blood clinging to the air where the glow of the first transaction had faded.
Kaelen pushed himself away from the cracked mirror, his breath ragged.
His fingers brushed his temple, where the phantom ache of a lost memory still throbbed—a hollow space where his mother's lullaby had once lived.
He'd traded more than he'd realized: not just a fragment of his past, but something deeper.
The Voice's words echoed in his skull, colder than the rain outside.
*Pure pain. Soul anchor.*
He stared at his hands, now free of the cursed blackened nails, their skin flushed with a false vitality.
The shop had healed him, yes—but at what cost?
His jaw tightened as he turned to the ledger, its pages still fluttering from the Voice's intervention.
A new entry glowed faintly: *Unlock Second Item: Sacrifice One "Emotional Obsession."*
"Emotional obsession," he muttered, his voice low and rough.
His gaze flickered to the shadowed corners of the shop, where the shelves waited, their contents still veiled in mist.
What did he have left to give?
Family—gone.
Love—burned out in the ashes of his old life.
Hate?
A dull ember at best, stoked only by the Inquisition's hunts.
Then it hit him, a chill snaking up his spine: the one thing he'd clung to, the fragile thread keeping him from the abyss.
The fear of going mad.
As an Infected Dreamer, he'd walked the edge of the void too many times.
He'd seen what happened to those who slipped—eyes rolling back, tongues spitting gibberish, bodies twitching like marionettes.
He'd sworn never to become that: a hollow vessel for the things that lurked beyond the stars.
That fear was his last anchor, the only reason he still bothered to cling to sanity.
And the shop wanted it.
"Clever," he said aloud, a bitter laugh escaping him.
"Take the lock to sell the key." He stepped away from the ledger, his boots clicking against the uneven floorboards.
The walls, he'd noticed, seemed to pulse faintly when he focused—like a heartbeat, slow and deliberate.
He pressed a palm to the nearest wall, expecting stone or wood.
Instead, it felt… alive.
Warm, almost gelatinous, with a faint hum vibrating through his bones.
"The walls are consciousness," he murmured, recalling the Voice's earlier cryptic remarks.
"Not structure. A prison built from thought." His fingers trailed along a blood-red vein snaking up the plaster, and the wall responded, the vein darkening as if savoring his touch.
He jerked his hand back, his pulse quickening.
The shop wasn't just a place—it was a creature, feeding on his desperation.
A sudden thud against the window drew his attention.
Outside, the rain still fell, but Old Man Hemlock hadn't left.
The blind seer stood hunched in the mud, his staff carving frantic runes into the earth.
Kaelen watched as a dim, sickly light flared beneath Hemlock's feet, forming a wobbly circle.
The old man's voice carried through the glass, strained and hoarse: "*Nox abyssi, claudere os!* This isn't a door—it's a wound! The world's scab's been picked clean!"
Hemlock coughed, and a spatter of red stained his beard.
The circle flickered, then collapsed, leaving charred earth in its wake.
He staggered backward, his milky eyes somehow locking onto Kaelen's through the glass.
"You think it's saving you?" he croaked, spitting blood.
"It's starving. Every scrap it gives, it takes twice as much. Your soul's meat on a hook, boy—" Another cough cut him off, and he clutched his chest, gasping.
Kaelen's expression didn't soften.
He'd heard warnings before—from priests, from fellow Dreamers, from the voices in his own head.
But Hemlock was different.
The old man *knew*.
Knew the shop's hunger, knew the cost of dealing with things beyond mortal understanding.
Yet… Kaelen's fingers brushed the faint scar on his neck, a relic of the night the curse had nearly killed him.
Without the shop, he'd be a corpse by now, his body left in a ditch for crows.
"Go home, Hemlock," he said, his voice quiet but firm, though he knew the old man couldn't hear him.
Hemlock stared a moment longer, then turned, shuffling into the rain with the slow, defeated gait of a man who'd just watched a friend walk into a noose.
The shop's silence settled over Kaelen as he turned back.
The ledger's page still glowed, the demand for an "emotional obsession" taunting him.
He approached it, his boots silent now, and traced a finger over the words.
The fear of madness… could he really give that up?
What would he become without it?
A monster?
A slave to the shop's whims?
Or a survivor?
He thought of the Inquisition's hounds, their silver swords and holy water, hunting him for what he was.
Of the things in the dark, drawn by the shop's aura, slithering closer with every transaction.
Survival meant power—and power meant paying the price.
Kaelen's lips curled into a thin, cold smile.
The emporium's walls exhaled, a sound like wind through cracked bone, as Kaelen turned from the door.
Rain lashed the shop's windows—panes that had no right to exist, for he'd never seen glass so thick, so faintly iridescent, as if spun from crushed starlight.
The shelves around him creaked, their contents shifting: a vial of liquid that shimmered with stolen screams, a taxidermied raven with eyes of smoldering coal, a book bound in human skin that muttered psalms backward.
"Hungry, merchant?" The Voice hummed, its tone a chorus of overlapping whispers, some sweet as honey, others ragged as rusted nails.
It seeped from the wood, the stone, the very air—nowhere and everywhere at once.
Kaelen's fingers brushed the counter, carved from a single slab of obsidian veined with silver.
"What's on the menu tonight?" he asked, his voice steady, though his pulse quickened.
The shop's hunger was his hunger now; he could feel it gnawing at the edges of his mind, a dull ache that sharpened whenever he denied it.
"Not menu," the Voice corrected, almost chiding.
"Bargain."
A sudden slam rattled the door.
Kaelen's head snapped up.
Outside, a figure hunched beneath a tattered cloak, shoulders heaving.
Rain plastered the fabric to her frame—too slight, too young, for the Dregs' cruel winters.
She fumbled with the latch, her fingers blue and trembling, and staggered inside.
The emporium drank in the cold she brought, swallowing it like a starved beast.
The air warmed instantly, cloying and thick, as if the shop itself exhaled relief.
The girl gasped, her breath misting.
She clutched her arms, eyes wide as she took in the shelves.
"W-what… is this place?"
"Whispering Emporium," Kaelen said, stepping forward.
His voice was smooth, almost gentle—the voice of a man who'd once advised nobles on the art of dreams, before the curse, before the shop.
"We trade in… solutions."
Her teeth chattered.
"I n-need warmth. J-just warmth. I'll pay—please."
"Everyone pays," the Voice murmured.
Kaelen ignored it, leaning forward.
"What do you have to offer, miss…?"
"Lira," she said.
"Lira of the Flats." Her gaze darted to the raven, the screaming vial, and she paled.
"I-I have nothing. No coin, no jewelry—"
"Not coin," Kaelen said.
His smile was thin, but not unkind.
"Something priceless. A memory. A talent. A piece of your soul."
Lira froze. "M-my soul?"
"Too vague," the Voice interjected, sounding bored.
"Specifics. What burns brightest in you, little moth? What would you hate to lose?"
Lira's lower lip quivered.
She stared at her hands—work-roughened, chapped from washing laundry in the icy river.
"I… I can sing. My da said my voice could make the stars weep. He… he's gone now. But… but I still sing to the children in the Flats. It… it makes them forget the cold."
Kaelen's eyes flickered.
A singer's voice.
Precious.
Fragile.
Perfect.
"Trade your voice," he said, "and the emporium will keep you warm. Forever."
"Forever?" Lira whispered.
"Until the end of your days," Kaelen clarified.
"No more shivers. No more frostbite. But when you open your mouth to sing… nothing will come out. Not a note. Not a word, if the price demands it."
She hesitated, then nodded.
Desperation sharpened her features—she was little more than a child, really.
"Do it. Please."
The Voice giggled, a sound like shards of glass clinking.
Kaelen reached across the counter.
His fingers brushed hers—cold, so cold—and he closed his eyes.
A surge of power rolled through him, dark and sweet, as the emporium siphoned the essence of her voice.
When he opened his eyes, her lips were moving, but no sound escaped.
Her face crumpled, but she didn't cry—she was too busy gasping, her body flooding with heat, as if she'd stepped into a summer noon.
"Thank you," she mouthed, tears streaming.
She turned and fled, the door slamming behind her.
Kaelen exhaled.
His palm glowed faintly, a swirl of inky light—the "madness echoes" the Voice craved.
He let it sink into the counter, and the emporium sighed, shelves creaking as a new item materialized: a vial of liquid sunlight, labeled *Ember's Breath: Warms the body, chills the soul*.
"Good," the Voice purred.
"But you hesitated."
Kaelen's jaw tightened.
"She was a child."
"All customers are something," the Voice said, its tone shifting, growing colder.
"Survival is not kind, merchant. You know this. You lived it, before I saved you."
Kaelen's fingers dug into the counter.
The memory flashed: his own hands, blackened and rotting, the curse eating him alive, the shop materializing in his last moments, a door labeled *Whispering Emporium* creaking open.
*I'll take the deal,* he'd croaked, and it had swallowed him whole.
A knock at the door.
Not a slam this time.
A slow, deliberate rap.
Kaelen tensed.
Through the window, he saw a figure cloaked in white, a symbol stitched into the fabric—a sunburst, its rays sharp as blades.
The Inquisition.
The Voice chuckled.
"Hungry, merchant? Or are you afraid?"
Kaelen's smile returned, sharp and hungry.
He smoothed his sleeve, adjusted the collar of his coat—once fine, now threadbare, but the emporium kept it immaculate—and moved to open the door.
"Afraid?" he said, his voice steady.
"No. Just… prepared."
Outside, the Inquisitor's face was shadowed, but Kaelen could feel their gaze—cold, judging, hungry—as they stepped into the emporium.
The walls breathed.
Somewhere, a bell tolled again.
And in the silence, the Voice whispered, "*Now* we trade in fear."