The crowd is already standing on chairs when Colin lifts the helmet to the lamps. Light runs along its dents like water over river stones. The tavern has no room left. Orc shoulders crush against elf cloaks, dwarves wedge in at knee height, and a noble in silk is clinging to a support post like a sailor in a storm.
"Tonight," Colin says, voice bright as a bell, "we present a crown torn from the very jaws of the dungeon. The Helm of the Moss-King, survivor of the Sixth Floor's Swamp Run."
He turns the helmet slowly. Green fuzz rims the visor. Someone down front sniffs and recoils.
Lyria stands at the ledger table with ink on her fingers and a look that says she has already given up arguing. Milo bounces on his heels beside her, grinning at the moss as if it might wink.
Sir Bramble lifts a hand. "Is that real?" he calls, moustache twitching.
Colin smiles like he is pouring tea for a friend. "Sir Bramble, if sincerity could glow, this helm would light the street."
The room laughs. The laughter turns to a wave that carries bids with it.
"One silver," an orc bellows.
"Two," an elf answers, without looking at the orc.
"Three and a half," someone slurs at the back and immediately falls off a stool. The stool survives, but the man does not.
"Four," says a dwarf, then glares at the elf as if daring him to have opinions about metal.
Colin keeps his hands steady and his grin sharper than the knife on the carving board. He sees the way the moss threads with a faint shimmer, like airborne dust catching the sun. He files it away as a good line later and pretends it is nothing now.
"Do I hear five?" he says. "Imagine the conversation piece on your mantle. Imagine the envy. Imagine never losing a door again because you are wearing it on your head."
Milo chokes on a laugh. Lyria does not look up. Her pen scratches. A bead of ink swells and breaks.
"Five," the silk noble says, clinging to the post. The word is casual. The eyes are not.
The orc's jaw squares. "Six."
"Seven," from the elf, staring straight ahead as if bidding is a matter of faith.
The dwarf opens his mouth, and a boot flies in from somewhere else and hits him in the breastplate with a hollow gong. The room howls. Colin lifts the helm higher, and the howl becomes wind under a kite.
"Seven once," he calls. "Seven twice. Last chance to wear history on your head and moss on your conscience."
A pause, a held breath, a city's heartbeat in a single room.
"Nine," Sir Bramble declares, face bright with victory no one has given him yet.
Colin brings the wooden spoon down like a judge. "Sold!"
The room erupts. Tankards meet tabletops. Someone starts a song and forgets the words after three notes. The noble slides down the post and claps as if no one can hear. Bramble elbows through, beaming, coin pouch already open. Lyria tears a receipt from the ledger and hands it over with a smile too polite to be kind.
Colin lowers the helm and breathes in moss and metal and the warm stink of a hundred people who have decided to be happy at once. This is the part he does not say out loud. This is the part that feels like magic, even in a city that insists magic belongs to a few.
He bows to the room, flourishes the spoon, and then the memory folds in on itself like paper. A sweet memory of his humble and not-so-humble beginnings, as he arrives at this place he now calls home.
Morning heat slides down the stones of Grand Exchange. The city hums the way a market does before it begins shouting. Colin steps into it with a coat too light for the dust and a smile he puts on like armour.
The Ebon Spire rises at the centre, a black fang piercing into clouds. The streets closest to it already stink of oil, iron, and potion dregs. Adventurers spill out of alleys with fresh bandages and older stories. A troll naps under a canvas shade, snoring through tusks. A clerk chases a goat that has chewed an entire list of tariffs.
Colin watches it all like a man in a museum who has been permitted to touch.
He needs a room. He requires a platform, and he wants people. People who will believe he has something worth selling, even when it is a cracked pot and a good line. He angles toward Adventurer's Row, where the taverns keep their doors half open and their floors half swept.
The third one he tries smells of stew and wood polish. A sign hangs over the door with three painted lutes, one missing a string. A simple sign, for a simple inn, Three Lutes.
Inside, the air is cool and honest. Tables scarred from years of elbows. A wall of shields, none matching. A bar top that could stop a charge.
The innkeeper is a woman with biceps that could wring a boar and a braid thick as rope. She looks up, reads his coat, his empty hands, his grin.
"No tab," she says, before he can open his mouth.
"I'm selling something," Colin says. "Your room."
She snorts. "Try the landlord."
"I'm offering a spectacle," he says, and spreads his hands. "Free to host. Crowds guaranteed. They will drink twice as much as they would on a dull morning."
She leans on the bar and studies him like a puzzle with one piece missing. "Name?"
"Colin."
"Mine's Tamsin," she says. "What is the spectacle, Colin?"
"An auction," he says, and the word tastes good. "Not a whispering, damp, polite little exchange. A show. A spectacle. A reason to stand on chairs. People love a reason."
Tamsin's mouth curves, not quite a smile. "And what are you selling?"
"Legend," he says, then gestures to the shields on the wall. "And anything you have lying around that pretends to be legend for long enough. Maybe an old sword that has one too many nicks."
"You sound like a thief who likes receipts."
"I sound like a host who pays his own way, but we can disagree on that."
She goes still for a heartbeat, then nods toward a corner platform where musicians stand on festival nights. "Two nights from now. Noon bell. You fill the room. If they don't drink, I chase you out with a ladle."
"Fair," Colin says. He takes Tamsin's hand, shakes it, and feels the future in the grip.
Back on the street, he needs paper. He finds a stall at the edge of Merchant's Mile where an elf sells parchment that smells faintly of crushed leaves. He buys sheets, ink, and a brush that sheds hair the way a dog does in summer. He writes with careful block letters that look more confident than he feels, making sure to copy the words he has seen in the upper streets.
AUCTION. TWO DAYS. NOON. THREE LUTES.
He sketches a little helm for luck and decides the curve looks like a smile.
He plasters the signs along the lane, on a post outside the Crescent Bazaar, near the dungeon gates where people come back with eyes too wide for day.
"Is this real?" a boy asks, tugging his sleeve at the dungeon quarter poster.
"As real as a headache," Colin says.
"What's for sale?"
"Depends on what you bring me."
"Can I sell my dad's boots?"
"Are they legendary?"
"They smell like they hate me."
"Bring them," Colin says. "We will call them historic, and I'll give you a bit of coin for however much they sell."
By the time the sun tips to the side of the spire, he has a handful of small promises in his pocket. A farmer with his best chicken. A miner with a rock that glows when it is angry, which is apparently often. A woman with a box of copper rings that turn your finger green, but look like you got invited somewhere nice.
He turns a corner and almost collides with a young man carrying a sack that clinks like an argument. The lad is thin and bright-eyed, hair stuck up as if every thought lifts it.
"Sorry," the lad says, then sees the poster under Colin's arm. "Are you the auction man?"
"I might be," Colin says. "Are you the walking accident, or is that a dead body on your shoulders? I might have to spin a good story for that one."
The sack lurches. A cracked goblet rolls out and bumps Colin's boot. It wears a thin crust of dried red that might be wine or optimism.
"Or maybe not."
"Milo," the lad says, offering a hand and then thinking better of it because his hands are covered in a powder that looks suspiciously like floor scrapings. "I heard a rumour. You buying?"
"I'm convincing other people to buy," Colin says. "What have you got?"
Milo opens the sack like a birthday he cannot wait for. Goblet. Bent knife. A glass bottle with a lump of something inside that might have been a slug before it reconsidered. A small helm obviously sized for a goblin who looked better in hats. A ring that flashes blue once and then refuses to do it again.
"Treasure. From the dungeon. I could only get to the first floor before coming back. BUT! They should be worth something," Milo says, delighted.
Colin feels the old rhythm click into place. He touches the bottle. The lump inside glistens faintly, a tide-line shimmer that only happens in his eyes. He looks away before he can speak it into being.
"I can work with this," he says.
"You reckon?" Milo breathes. "I knew it. I knew it the moment that slug looked me in the eye."
"Do slugs have eyes?" Colin says, already knowing this is not a conversation that cares.
"Had at least one," Milo says. "Before it became art."
"I like that. Two days," Colin says. "Noon. Three Lutes. Bring the sack and bring friends who shout."
"Oh! Guess I have to make friends now!"
Milo salutes with the bottle, realises saluting with a bottle is a bad idea, almost drops it, catches it with a sound like fate changing its mind, and pelts off toward Adventurer's Row.
Colin watches him go and laughs under his breath.
By late afternoon, the posters sit like flags. People pause, read, and point. A pair of dwarves argue about whether auctions are just gambling with chairs. An orc smirks and says he will bid on anything if someone tells him he should not. A demon trader with a travelling case of tiny locked drawers glides past, eyes like polished coal, and smiles at Colin as if they have already met somewhere that didn't exist.
He spends his last coins on ribbon for a rope to mark the front of the platform, then goes back to Tamsin's and measures with his hands. Lyria finds him there by accident or fate, bringing ledger paper to the tavern because their usual supplier has fallen off a cart.
"You're in my spot," she says.
"It's our spot now," he says, then hears himself and grimaces. "Sorry. Colin."
"Lyria," she says. She looks him up and down, sees the ribbon, the posters rolled and frayed, the way he keeps glancing to the door as if a crowd might appear if he wants it enough. "You did this."
"With a brush that moulted and a smile," he says.
She considers the platform, then the room, then him. "You'll need someone to take names and coin. Tamsin can keep a bat behind the bar. I can count faster than most people can breathe."
"You're hired," he says on instinct.
"I didn't say yes."
"You will," he says, not unkindly.
Tamsin sticks her head out of the kitchen. "If you two are going to plan an empire, do it with a broom. Floor's not going to sweep itself."
They sweep. It is not glamorous. It is a practice of patience.
Night falls softly over Grand Exchange. Lanterns blink alive along Merchant's Mile, and the Crescent Bazaar lowers its noise to a constant purr. The spire stands black against a sky crowded with stars. Colin steps outside and reads the posters again, each one like a promise he wrote to himself and stapled to a wall.
He closes his eyes and lets the city's noise fold around him. Somewhere, a singer loses a verse and laughs. Somewhere, a mule refuses to move. Somewhere, coins clink in a pouch, and someone believes they will always clink that way.
He opens his eyes, and the posters say the same thing they did an hour ago.
Two days. Noon. Three Lutes.
He smiles, quiet this time.
"Going once," he says to the street. "Going twice and… sold."
The street does not answer. That is fine. It will.