It had been raining since dusk, the sort of relentless downpour that seemed to peel the very skin from the streets of Kuching. The office windows wept with condensation, blurring the skyline into a hazy mural of distant lights and swaying palms. Somewhere far below, the horns of lorries barked through the night as puddles swallowed the last footsteps of the city's weary.
Up on the fifth floor of GlobalTrek Logistics, Lian Apu lingered long past the hour of departure, his desk a battlefield of paperwork, unopened mail, and the remnants of a congealed curry puff. His screen's pale glow was the only light that remained in the office's open floor, illuminating the sharp planes of his face and the tension in his jaw.
Another rejection. Another botched delivery schedule. Another week of polite corporate suffocation.
He leaned back in his creaking swivel chair, letting out a breath that misted faintly in the cold. Though his colleagues rarely spared him more than a passing nod, there was something in Lian—a quiet defiance, a scrapper's dignity honed in the humble markets of Kampung Tellian. There, amid the fish guts and beadwork, he'd learned the rhythm of trade before he could even count change.
He glanced at the time: 11:47 p.m.
"Well, if ambition won't kill me," he muttered, "this spreadsheet might."
Then the lights flickered. Once. Twice. Then stilled.
And that's when he saw it.
A **book**—no, a **ledger**—lay upon his desk. He hadn't seen it moments ago. It was as though the thing had *manifested*, born of some invisible hand or summoned from the very air. Bound in what appeared to be lacquered wood and fibres of rattan, its spine shimmered faintly with gold-etched symbols—ancient, yet unsettlingly familiar.
Lian stared at it, his breath catching in his throat. The hairs on his arms stood on end.
He reached out, fingers brushing the warm surface.
In that instant, **the world shifted**.
A chime, like a temple bell ringing in reverse, tolled through his skull.
**"System Activated: Merchant Class Awakened – Rank F."**
The voice was disembodied, mechanical yet oracular, and seemed to emerge from within him rather than without.
The ledger sprang open of its own accord, pages riffling through with supernatural intent until they settled on one—blank, save for words that burned into it like fire catching parchment:
> **Lian Apu. Market Designation: Initiate.**
> **Inner Trade detected. Commence orientation.**
He stumbled backwards, his chair clattering to the floor. A gust of wind—though from no open window—swept through the room, rattling papers, extinguishing the desk lamp. The computer screen went black. Only the ledger continued to glow, a sovereign light in the darkness.
Then: silence.
And then—
**Light.**
*Blinding*, *liquid*, *impossible* light.
When the world came into focus again, Lian was no longer in the office.
He stood in the heart of a vast and otherworldly **bazaar**, stretching far beyond the scope of vision. Lanterns drifted overhead like jellyfish in water, casting a soft amber hue on the cobbled ground. Market stalls twisted and rearranged themselves like puzzle pieces, rearranging according to some arcane whim. Banners fluttered mid-air, embroidered with contracts in dialects he half-recognised—Mandarin, Arabic, Iban, English—and others that felt older than time.
Lian blinked. The smells were overwhelming: incense, roasted chestnuts, burnt parchment, and something else—**ambition**, if ambition had a scent.
All around him bustled entities that defied taxonomy. A man with a crow's head peddled enchanted ink. A child with no eyes bartered memories for stone coins. In one corner, a woman in a razor-sharp suit argued heatedly with a creature made entirely of forgotten debts.
> **Welcome to the Market Realm**, a voice announced, once again in his head.
> **Tutorial engaged: Survive your first negotiation.**
A shadow loomed.
Turning, Lian found himself facing a figure cloaked in storm-grey robes. The man was tall, his batik-patterned sleeves billowing as if stirred by winds that did not exist. His face was sharp, expression unreadable—yet in his gaze was the depth of someone who had brokered deals with gods and demons alike.
"You're late," the stranger said in clipped, Queen's English. "Most awaken in their youth, full of dreams and fire. But perhaps… perhaps the slow-brewing tea proves the strongest."
Lian tried to steady himself. "Who are you?"
"A broker. A guide, if you wish to live past dawn. But we've no time for pleasantries."
He turned and gestured toward the square.
The crowd had grown still. From its centre came a rattling sound—soft at first, like coins in a beggar's bowl.
A creature slithered into view. It was hideous—composed of refund slips, rotted invoices, shredded customer reviews, and something like black ink that *bled backwards*. Its eyes glowed with complaint. Its maw twisted into a sneer.
"A *Rogue Customer*," the stranger said grimly. "An echo of failed deals and broken trust."
The creature shrieked, and the banners overhead snapped violently.
The mentor's hand landed on Lian's shoulder.
"Let us see, *Salesman of Borneo*, whether you've the silver tongue to survive."
---
The creature moved with unsettling grace, dragging a trail of ink that hissed upon contact with the ground. Its limbs were ever-changing—now tendrils of paper, now clawed appendages shaped like styluses dripping with venomous reviews. When it opened its mouth, Lian heard no roar, but a cacophony of **complaints**.
> "Delayed shipment."
> "Unanswered emails."
> "Overpriced. One star."
> "Never again. Would not recommend."
Each phrase stabbed into his ears like splinters of shame, dredging up every failure, every moment of self-doubt he'd buried beneath spreadsheets and forced smiles. His knees buckled.
"What is it doing to me?" he gasped.
"It speaks your shame," said the robed figure, watching coolly. "Rogue Customers feed on unresolved transactions and repressed truths. The Market Realm does not suffer liars, even the lies you tell yourself."
The beast lunged.
Lian rolled instinctively, heart pounding as it slammed into the cobblestones where he had stood. Dust and shredded parchment billowed into the air. Around them, the other merchants merely watched—impassive, judging—as though this were a common entertainment.
"You said… survive with negotiation," Lian said, scrambling behind an overturned crate glowing with price tags. "I've no contract. No power. How am I meant to fight that?"
"You've *plenty*," the man said, stepping beside him. "You've memory. You've pain. You've the will to rise. But above all—*you've leverage.*"
He extended a hand, and from his robe emerged a long, silver quill—glowing with a light that pulsed to the rhythm of some unseen heartbeat. He handed it to Lian.
"Your first tool. Not sword, nor gun. A pen. Ink it with your truth, and strike your first deal."
The moment Lian grasped the quill, the air shifted. A glowing interface, half-formed and translucent, bloomed before him.
> **Draft Negotiation Initiated**
> **Opponent: Rogue Customer – Type: Feedback Wraith**
> **Stability: Fragile. Language: Critical. Memory Tokens available: 3**
"Write?" Lian murmured, bewildered. "But I don't know what—"
And then it came to him.
The image of his father's weathered hands, calloused and brown, clasping a basket of fish on a rainy morning. The echo of his mother's voice haggling over beads in the kampung pasar. The shame of standing in a boardroom, ignored as another man in a tailored blazer stole his pitch.
His fingers moved.
The quill dipped not into ink, but into **memory**. The parchment formed mid-air, and words etched themselves in Sarawakian Malay and English, braided together with raw sincerity:
> **"This trade began in rain. My hands may be empty, but I've sold without script, eaten without coin. I honour every debt, every hand that taught me worth. You demand closure—I offer truth."**
The air crackled.
The Rogue Customer screeched, reeling as if struck by light.
The parchment folded itself into a glowing contract sigil, slicing through the beast's form. Where it struck, the dark ink evaporated into motes of light, and for a fleeting second, the wraith looked almost… human. A weary man in a delivery uniform, blinking as though waking from a long nightmare.
The contract sealed with a chime.
> **Negotiation Complete. Partial Resolution Achieved. Tokens Converted: 2. Rank F—Stabilised.**
Lian collapsed to his knees, the quill trembling in his grip. The world seemed to still, as if the Market Realm had taken a collective breath and, for now, approved.
The robed man approached and placed a hand on his shoulder—not as a mentor this time, but as an equal.
"Well done," he said quietly. "Not many pass their first trial without retreating. You remembered that business, at its heart, is not about product… but *promise*."
Lian exhaled, head swimming. "What… happens now?"
The man smiled, eyes reflecting a thousand unread contracts.
"Now? Now you begin to climb. You've awakened, Lian Apu. Your Inner Trade has opened. The gates are watching. And the Market Realm… never forgets its merchants."
Far above them, a bell rang.
Somewhere, unseen, another gate creaked open.
---
The bell's toll rippled through the skies—one note, low and sonorous, as though rung from the bones of a mountain.
The Market Realm shuddered.
A hush fell upon the bazaar. Lanterns dimmed, and even the floating contract-scrolls paused mid-flight. Merchants halted their haggling. Beasts—both tethered and free—stilled. And somewhere beyond the edge of Lian's sight, an enormous, obsidian gate bloomed open in silence.
The robed mentor's gaze darkened.
"That," he murmured, almost reverently, "is not for us."
He turned, his steps swift and exacting. "Come. There are eyes upon you now, and none of them kind. You've drawn attention. Such is the price of surviving."
Lian followed, legs still half-numb. The market changed around them as they moved—stalls folding themselves away, alleys stretching and bending like shadows at dusk. This place was alive, in the way a storm is alive, or a debt long unpaid. Every corner murmured secrets, and the air bore the coppery scent of unseen bargains.
They arrived at a stairway carved into air—no railing, no visible support, just steps of gold-threaded paper leading upwards into a hovering pavilion. The structure resembled a longhouse, its eaves etched with contract runes and oil lamps that burned without flame.
As they ascended, Lian dared a question.
"You said I've awakened a class. Merchant, was it? What does that mean—truly?"
The mentor glanced back, pausing on the final step.
"In this realm, trade is not mere transaction. It is will, shaped into form. Each awakened possesses an *Inner Trade*—a faculty drawn from memory, temperament, even loss. Yours, I suspect, runs deep. Unpolished, but rooted in something ancient."
"And the classes?"
"They are… paths. Archetypes." He pushed open the door, revealing a chamber lined with ledgers suspended in liquid stasis. "Some are Accountants, whose memory tallies the truth so finely they can reveal frauds with a glance. Others are Negotiators, who bend terms mid-conflict. There are Brokers who stitch deals between dimensions. And then—there are the *Whisper-Bidders*. But we do not speak of them."
He did not elaborate.
Instead, he gestured to a parchment resting upon a pedestal at the centre of the room. It pulsed faintly, as though breathing.
"Touch it. It shall name your sub-class. Your first tier."
Lian hesitated, then placed his palm upon the parchment.
Pain seared his spine, not physical, but ancestral—like the wrenching of memory long sealed. He saw flashes: a jungle path winding past a hidden longhouse, his father bartering for salt with a stranger bearing gold-ink tattoos, a river that whispered in a tongue he'd never understood—until now.
The parchment flared.
> **Subclass Ascended: Path of the Parleywright**
> **Domain: Ethos & Equivalence**
> **Ability Unlocked: Echo Ledger (I)**
> *"What is given must echo; what is taken must be traced."*
The mentor's brow lifted.
"Ah. Rare. A ledger-binder." He folded his arms, approving. "Your kind deals not in coin, but in *weight*—the unseen equilibrium of promises. Dangerous. Intricate. And most effective against liars."
The chamber's walls shifted, revealing windows that had not existed before. Through them, Lian could see vast floating islands—some resembling cities, others entire trading fleets drifting in gravity-less space. Across one distant archipelago, a duel unfolded between two merchants mid-air, hurling binding oaths shaped like glowing chains.
"What… is this place, really?" Lian asked, awed.
The mentor's eyes drifted toward the horizon.
"This is the Market Realm, yes. But deeper still lies the Grand Exchange—nexus of all awakened commerce. Spirit Gates lead there, but none open freely. One must rise by merit. By trade. By wit. Or by ruin."
A pause.
"And if you reach the Summit Table… you may rewrite terms even the gods must obey."
Lian's mouth felt dry.
"Why me?"
The mentor studied him a long moment. When he spoke again, his tone was not unkind, but edged with formality.
"Because, Lian Apu… your name is marked. Not merely on ledgers, but on the *Vaulted Scrolls*—those that record forgotten lineages and broken pacts. You are heir to a bargain made long ago, in blood and coin and silence. Someone, somewhere, wagered something unspeakably valuable on your birth."
Thunder rolled in the distance—not from clouds, but from the Market Realm itself, as if reality had overheard its own secret.
The mentor turned to the shelves. He withdrew a simple case, opening it to reveal a small badge—silver, engraved with Lian's name and a glyph that seemed to move when he blinked.
"Take it," the man said. "Your *Trader's Sigil*. Proof of your station. Do not lose it. Without it, the realm will no longer recognise you."
Lian took the badge. It was heavier than it looked.
A voice—his voice—whispered in the back of his mind:
**Begin the ascent. Or vanish in the footnotes.**
And outside, far above the skyline of floating markets and shifting aisles, a storm of letters was forming. Contracts rained like snow. And from the open Spirit Gate in the dark sky, a shape—colossal, elegant, draped in coins the size of car tyres—watched with unblinking, luminous eyes.
The market had chosen its new player.
Now, it waited to see if he would survive.
The badge hummed in Lian's hand, as though resonating with a distant frequency. Not just a tool, he now realised, but a *beacon*—a signature of presence in a realm where anonymity was death and every glance could be a contract waiting to ensnare.
"Do not draw it unless asked," the mentor said, voice low. "The sigil commands authority, but it also invites challenge. There are those who prey upon the newly initiated—Rank F is a whisper above raw."
A whisper, Lian thought grimly. That felt about right.
The mentor strode to a far wall, pressing his palm to a circle of shifting light. The space opened like an eye, revealing an elevator without cables—only floating glyphs circling in rhythmic patterns. Lian stepped in beside him.
"Where are we going?"
"The Bourse of Breach," the man replied. "A minor node, but sufficient for your first commission. You've passed the trial; now the realm requires your offering. A deal, struck in truth. Something of value for something desired."
The elevator moved—not down or up, but *away*, gliding sideways through a dimension Lian could neither measure nor map. Images flickered through the glass: an auction held in silence, bidders raising nothing but eyebrows; a market where shadows haggled independently of their owners; a colossal tortoise bearing a shopfront on its shell, moving eternally through the cloudscape.
Lian's thoughts reeled.
"I don't even know what I can offer," he murmured.
"You misunderstand," said the mentor. "It is not for you to *invent* value. You *are* value. Your story. Your wounds. The truths you've hoarded. Every life is cluttered with unloved fragments—the Market only asks that you catalogue them."
The elevator shuddered and slowed. A soft bell rang—more like the clink of coins dropped into a sacred bowl.
Then the doors opened.
The **Bourse of Breach** was nothing like the floating bazaar below. It was quiet. Grave, almost.
A circular courtyard stretched before them, bound by obsidian pillars carved with clause-script and bound by golden chain. No stallholders cried wares here. No bartering, no noise—only stone altars spaced evenly in a ring, each tended by a figure in archivist's robes, faces masked behind folded contracts.
A single platform sat at the centre, surrounded by a still pool of ink-dark water. Upon it, a robed woman stood, her voice echoing through the space—not loud, but resonant.
"**I offer the scent of my mother's cooking, lost to plague and time. In return, I ask for the flavour, to taste one more time what memory has stolen.**"
The pool rippled. From it rose a dish—humming softly, steaming gently, held aloft by invisible hands.
The woman wept as she tasted. Then vanished, her badge dissolving into quiet ash.
Lian's breath caught.
His mentor nodded toward the nearest altar.
"You are up."
Lian stepped forward. His badge pulsed. A quiet hiss, and his name appeared in ghostly ink above the altar.
> **Initiate: Lian Apu – Rank F, Parleywright**
> **Offering required: Memory or Truth.**
> **Desire: Optional, but preferred.**
> **Penalty for silence: Nullification.**
He swallowed. The archivist behind the altar said nothing. Simply waited.
So he reached within himself—past the professional mask, past the endless spreadsheets and polite subservience—and found what still smouldered.
He spoke.
**"I offer the sound of my father's voice, the exact way he called my name in the dark when I returned home late from the market."**
His voice faltered.
**"I've tried to remember it, truly. But it fades. And I—I no longer know if I've forgotten it, or if I've simply lost the right to remember."**
The ink-water quivered.
**"In return,"** he said, his voice steadier now, **"I ask for this: a true ledger. One that cannot lie. One that remembers for me, when I no longer can."**
Silence.
Then the altar lit with a gentle fire. Words appeared on the parchment suspended above it:
> **Request Accepted. Transaction Balanced.**
> **You have sacrificed: Vocal Memory (Paternal – Tier 1)**
> **You have received: Echo Ledger – Bound Tome, Non-Erasable, Class-Tethered.**
A tome unfurled itself in mid-air, descending slowly, reverently, into his hands.
It was warm. Its cover bore the mark of his class, but beneath it… a faint audio-glow.
His father's voice. A single echo. Just once:
> **"Lian… kau dah pulang?"**
> *(Lian… you've come home?)*
Then it was gone.
Forever.
Lian clenched the tome to his chest.
The Market had honoured its side.
"Come," said the mentor, softer than before. "It is done. Your path begins here. From this point onward, every word you wield may weigh more than steel."
But behind them, at a distant altar, a figure in black was watching. Not robed like the others—unmarked, unclaimed. A *free bidder*. Their badge bore no name, only the numeral **0**. Their eyes—where their face should have been—gleamed with uncontracted hunger.
The elevator closed.
And somewhere in the realms between realms, a contract that had never been signed cracked… just slightly.
The elevator ascended now, its passage more languid, deliberate—as though the very realm had taken notice, and now adjusted its rhythm to Lian's pace.
He cradled the Echo Ledger in his hands, feeling its heartbeat through the binding. It pulsed faintly with every step he took, recording the cadence of his breath, the thoughts behind his eyes. Not merely a book, he realised—it was witness, judge, and companion.
His mentor—whose name Lian still did not know—remained silent as they moved. At last, when the doors opened again, they emerged not into a market, nor a hall, but a chamber carved into what looked like the ribcage of a giant beast. Curved walls arched high above them, etched with inscriptions in languages Lian could almost understand—**almost**, as if the syllables had once been his and had been bartered away in someone else's bargain.
Torches of glimmering ink-fire flickered along the walls. At the centre stood a circular platform ringed with twelve thrones, only five of which were occupied.
The seated figures turned as one.
The air pressed inward, heavy as a closing vault.
"This," the mentor said calmly, "is the **Council of Middle Terms**. Minor regulators. Bureaucrats of the Gate. They monitor early awakenings and assign the first sanctioned quests."
One of the seated figures—an elderly woman with skin like dried teak and eyes of obsidian opals—leaned forward.
"So this is the Parleywright."
Her voice echoed, despite its quiet.
Another, a corpulent man with a necklace of calculators and quills, chuckled. "Bold offering for one so low-ranked. Most F-tiers barter memories of taste or schoolyard bruises. This one sacrificed his bloodline's echo. Curious."
"Dangerous," murmured a third. "Those who trade with their roots tend to grow upward… or rot entirely."
Lian did not respond. Not out of fear—but restraint. A strange clarity had settled in him since the altar. Something about surrendering the sound of his father's voice had hollowed a space within—painful, yes, but clean. Ready to be filled.
The woman stood. She carried a staff topped with a broken scale.
"You will be given one Gate Trial," she intoned. "Spirit Gate E-27, under watch of the Contract Beast: **Malash of the Thousand Mouths**. There, you will broker terms with a Lost Trader—one who entered the gate, struck no deal, and refused to return."
The corpulent man leaned forward. "You are not to rescue. You are not to slay. You are to negotiate. We do not care for outcome—only *engagement*. Every test leaves a ledger."
The mentor nodded to Lian. "Speak."
Lian stepped forward. The Echo Ledger hummed.
"I accept the commission," he said. His voice felt firmer now. Measured. "On condition I am allowed to seal terms in my own ink."
A pause.
The woman's opal eyes gleamed.
"Clever," she said. "Already learning the dance."
She struck her staff against the stone.
> **Commission Granted. Gate E-27: Open. Contract Limit: Three Clauses. Time Dilation: Local. Companions: Denied.**
The world shifted.
The ribcage hall peeled away like a turning page.
Wind roared.
Lian stood now on the precipice of a cliff—a colossal gateway behind him, spiralling with runes. Before him, a vast desert lay cracked and gold, the horizon pulsing with heatwaves. Black towers jutted from the sand at uneven angles, as though fallen from a higher sky.
A voice echoed through his bones.
> **"Welcome, Trader. This is the Gate of Unfinished Deals."**
> **"Your target: Eyal Dorren, Class: Pactmonger. Lost seven cycles ago. Non-responsive. Rogue-adjacent."**
> **"Beware the Contract Beast. It hungers for promises made and not kept."**
Then the wind died.
Silence.
Lian walked.
The sand did not shift beneath his feet; it recoiled. Each step seemed to *remind* the world he was present. He moved toward a fractured spire on the horizon, the Echo Ledger open in his hand, recording the moment as if the act of walking itself were a transaction.
After what felt like hours—but the sun never moved—he reached the broken tower.
There, sitting cross-legged on a shard of marble, was a man.
Thin. Dressed in once-elegant robes now stained with contract-mould. His face bore the cracked gleam of someone who had bartered too much and too often.
He looked up.
"You're late," he said. "I've already died once waiting."
Lian stopped.
"You're Eyal Dorren?"
The man gestured at the ruins.
"I was. Now I'm a question the Market won't stop asking."
Lian narrowed his eyes. "Why didn't you return?"
Eyal smiled faintly. "Because I saw what lay beyond the next Gate."
"And?"
"I wrote my own clause. The Market… did not approve."
A low rumble tore through the sands. The sky dimmed.
Lian turned slowly.
From beneath the dunes, a great maw rose—a mouth, then another, and another, each rimmed with coin-like teeth and quill-tongues.
The **Contract Beast** had arrived.
Eyal did not flinch.
"You've brought it with you," he said, voice quiet.
"It was already listening," Lian replied, his own voice barely more than breath.
Then he opened the Ledger.
**And the first negotiation began.**
-----To Be Continue.