Yao City's nights came in two layers: lamp-light above, fog below.
The fog rolled up from the riverport and clung to the cracks between streetstones, swallowing half the sound of hooves and footsteps. Only one place defied it—the Fog-Lamps Auction. Twelve whale-oil lamps stood in a crescent at the entrance, their glow trapped behind glass like a ring of gold that refused to fade, framing every hungry face that came to gamble.
Shen Jin stood behind the appraisal counter, turning a bronze box by its corners. A thin spiral of ring-etching ran across the lid like a snake biting its own tail. He didn't speak immediately. He let his thumb pause on one segment of the pattern—where a hairline fracture tried to hide.
"It was patched," he said at last, lifting his eyes to the sweating merchant opposite him. "You can sell it as 'old' to someone who wants to be fooled. Don't try it on my table."
The merchant froze, then forced a grin. "Master Shen, that's exactly why I came. Just… testing your skill."
"Tests cost money." Shen Jin slid the box back. His voice stayed flat. "Ten Ring Marks for appraisal. You owe me."
The man's smile twitched. He dropped a small pouch of silver discs onto the counter. Each disc carried a faint golden sheen along its edge, like a year-ring worn smooth by light.
Ring Marks—harder than luck, harder than life.
Shen Jin pocketed the pouch. Under his sleeve, the old ring on his finger warmed as if it disapproved of comfort. He pressed his thumb to the ring's inner edge, where a needle-thin burr still scratched the skin. A reminder: don't forget why you're here.
He shouldn't have come to the Fog-Lamps Auction.
A fixer on the Yao Court's blacklist had no business standing in the city's biggest black hall. It was like setting your head on a chopping block and asking the blade to wait. But he needed money—and he needed information about one person: Shen Xu, his father.
Six months ago, the last letter from Shen Xu had contained a single line:
Don't come looking for me unless you can enter the Nine-Ring Road.
The Road.
Nine gates. Nine trials. Nine segments of myth that could lift a mortal into legend—or strip a person down until even their name was gone.
Shen Jin had heard the stories. Someone wandered the first gate's sand for seven days and seven nights, only to discover they'd walked a perfect circle. Someone brought thirty wagons of cargo and returned with one Ring Mark, stamped with debt. Someone else stumbled back rich beyond reason—and went mad, unable to remember what "I" meant.
Legends weren't worth much.
A key was worth everything.
His gaze drifted to the red velvet curtain at the center of the hall. Behind it waited tonight's final lot—the one that had pulled half the city's predators into the same room.
A brass bell rang. The host's voice cut clean through the murmur. "Next lot—retrieved from the Old Ring Ruins: the Broken Ring Key."
The curtain snapped aside.
Under a glass dome sat a half-ring of black-gold metal—like a bone torn from something enormous. It wasn't complete, and that incompleteness hurt to look at. It made you want to fix it. It made you want to know what it opened.
Shen Jin's breathing stalled.
He'd repaired ring-gear, dismantled ring-gear, rebuilt ring-gear. But this didn't feel like "gear." It felt like a door.
And doors recognized only one thing.
Blood.
"Starting bid," the host said smoothly, "three thousand Ring Marks. Increments of one hundred."
Three thousand.
A lifetime for most. A warm-up sentence for the people seated in the front row.
"Golden Contract Guild—three thousand five."
"Yao Court—four thousand."
"Saltbay League—four thousand two."
Bids stacked like waves. Heat rose with the numbers. Shen Jin's eyes, however, slid past the crowd to the right-side pillar. A woman stood there in a gray shawl, her hood hiding most of her face—only the hard line of her jaw visible. She didn't raise a paddle. But the two attendants behind her wore identical silver chains. Each chain carried a feather-shaped charm.
Feather-Oath Legion.
Cold settled along Shen Jin's spine.
He'd heard the name whispered the way people whispered storms: oathbound warriors who didn't belong to the Court or the Guild. They belonged to the oath. And oaths didn't negotiate.
The host shouted bids. The number climbed past eight thousand.
Shen Jin looked down at his palm. A thin old scar crossed his lifeline—twelve years old, carved by a ring-etched blade on the day he learned the first rule of fixing: every tool demands a price.
He understood then: the Broken Ring Key wasn't meant for the wealthy.
It was meant for the people who could pay the cost.
"Nine thousand." The Guild's bidder smiled when he spoke, as if ordering a drink.
The Court went quiet for a beat.
The host's eyes brightened. The hall wanted a fight.
A lamp above them popped—one flame dying.
Then another. Then another.
The darkness came down from the ceiling like a hand, squeezing breath out of the room. Panic surged. Some people lunged for the exits. Others drew knives. A few bolted straight for the display, because in a black hall, rules were only barely sturdier than fists.
Shen Jin didn't move.
He slid his sleeve lower, hiding the ring, and reached into a compartment beneath the counter—where his real tools waited: a fine copper pin, a pouch of powder, and a film so thin it was almost nothing.
He didn't plan to steal the Key.
He planned to steal proof.
If the Key "vanished" tonight, someone would wake up tomorrow wearing the blame. The hall needed a scapegoat. The Guild needed a scapegoat. The Court needed one most of all.
And the people who saw truth clearly were always convenient.
Glass cracked near the display.
Someone grunted and hit the floor.
Then a low voice hissed in the dark, "Feather—"
"Don't move." A woman's voice, close and cold as a blade. "Move, and you die."
They were already here.
Shen Jin's pulse steadied instead of spiking. He pressed the film to his palm; it spread like water across skin. He raised his hand and drew a shallow arc through the air.
The film caught the faintest leftover glow and threw it back for a heartbeat—one stolen frame in the dark.
He saw it.
A thin chain-hook snagging the Key's base.
A Guild man on the left pushing the crowd into chaos.
And the host—not panicking at all.
The host was smiling.
It was a setup.
A legal disappearance. A clean theft the system could bless.
Shen Jin plucked the copper pin and moved along the wall, slipping through collisions, cutting behind the display platform.
The glass dome was already shattered. The base was half-empty.
The chain was pulling the black-gold shard away.
Shen Jin drove the pin through a knot in the chain, then dusted it with powder. The powder clung like snow and began to glow a soft, accusing blue.
The chain was exposed.
"Who—?" someone growled.
Shen Jin didn't answer. He reached out and grabbed the Broken Ring Key.
It was cold. Heavy.
Like holding a piece of history that didn't belong in human hands.
The moment it touched his palm, the skin under the film prickled—as if something bit him, gentle and precise. Heat threaded into his scar and ran upward through his blood.
He heard a tiny sound.
Click.
Like a lock turning half a notch.
At that exact moment, every lamp flared back to life.
The hall flooded with harsh light, freezing the chaos into a tableau of faces and weapons.
The host stood at the front, hands raised, smiling like a man offering peace. "Everyone, stay calm. Yao Court enforcement is on the way—"
The doors exploded inward.
A squad in black Court armor surged in, long halberds striking stone with a metallic finality.
"In the name of the Yao Court," the leader read from a scroll, voice like iron, "Shen Jin—suspected theft of ring-relic 'Broken Ring Key.' You are under arrest."
Every gaze snapped to the appraisal counter.
To Shen Jin.
Shen Jin stared at the scroll, not surprised—only amused in the bleakest way. The charge had been written before he touched the relic. The stamp was ready. The script was already printed.
He glanced down at his hand.
Black-gold ring-etching was creeping along his scar, spreading inward like a silent snake.
This wasn't something you could hand back.
"Take him!" the leader barked.
Shen Jin lifted his eyes, meeting the Guild bidder's grin across the room. Then he met the hooded woman's stare.
She didn't smile.
Her lips formed a word without sound:
Key.
Shen Jin smiled once—small, sharp—and slid the Broken Ring Key into his sleeve. Then he turned and vaulted through the narrow window behind the counter.
Outside waited Yao City's fog.
Lamps swayed within it like jaws with light for teeth.
He hit the street, rolled, and came up running as boots thundered behind him.
In his sleeve, the Broken Ring Key burned—hot as a lamp someone had decided to light inside his life.
He'd been pushed onto the Road.
Now he had two options:
die on it—
or walk straight through.