Winter crept into Drosmere. The wind cut through the alleys like knives, and the slums grew hungrier than ever. Children huddled near gutter fires, and even the gangs grew desperate. To most, the season meant misery.
To Aiden, it meant opportunity.
He watched as bread prices climbed with the frost, each loaf more precious than gold to those with nothing. But he also noticed something no one else did: farmers beyond the city walls had overstocked on dried beans and turnips, shunned by townsfolk who craved wheat.
So Aiden bought what others ignored. Sack after sack of beans, cheap enough that even he could afford them. He stored them in abandoned cellars, hidden beneath broken planks where rats dared not go.
When the frost deepened and bread became scarce, he brought out the beans.
At first, people mocked him. "We want bread, ghost, not peasant feed!" But when bellies growled louder than pride, they bought. And they bought at his price.
By midwinter, Aiden's purse was heavier than ever.
He moved carefully, always cautious, never flaunting what he had. But whispers spread nonetheless. The ghost was clever. The ghost always had food when others starved. The ghost was not so ghostly anymore.
With coin came loyalty. The gang of boys he had once fed now worked for him willingly, carrying sacks, guarding stores, running errands. They didn't call him ghost anymore. They called him master.
But Aiden did not let praise soften him. Each night, beneath the broken arch where he still slept, he laid out coins in neat rows, studying them as if they were soldiers on a battlefield. He learned not only to trade, but to scheme. Which coins to risk, which to hold, when to wait, when to strike.
The pendant glowed faintly as he worked, its silent knowledge seeping into his thoughts. He was learning faster than any tutor could teach, yet it was his own discipline that shaped the lessons into power.
One evening, as the boys counted sacks of beans for him, one asked nervously, "Master Aiden… why not leave the slums now? With your coin, you could buy a room in the city, maybe even a shop."
Aiden stared at the boy, then at the glittering banners high above the hill.
"A shop?" he said softly. "No. I was not born to scrape and bow behind a counter. I was born for more."
The boys fell silent. Some thought him mad. Others, listening to the steel in his voice, began to believe.
And in that silence, Aiden swore an oath to himself.
He would climb, step by step, coin by coin, until no door could be barred against him. Until even the House of Veyra would open its gates.
The slums had birthed a ghost.
But the city was about to know him as something else entirely.