Lucien didn't just walk into Undergleam—he seeped into it, moving like smoke pressed under a locked door, slipping past barriers no one noticed until it was too late. The air here was thick with the sour stench of burnt wiring and raw desperation left to fester like a wound no one wanted to touch. The kind of smell that clawed at your lungs and lingered, invading even the sharpest breath. Above, neon signs buzzed and sputtered, flickering in fits and starts like ghosts trapped between life and death. Their fractured light filtered through grime-coated advertisements peeling off walls—ads no one glanced at anymore, relics of better days. The cracked pavement beneath his boots glistened slick, stained with chemical runoff and soul-ash—the bitter, ashen dust left behind when too many deals turned rotten and spirits broke loose, scattering like dust in the dark.
Overhead, the slow spirals of AetherCorp's Watchers drifted like lethargic vultures. Their red lenses twitched with dull suspicion, uninterested but always watching. The skyscrapers loomed, hunched like men carrying the weight of their own failures, collapsing under the shame of neglect. This corner of Valthara Prime wasn't just fractured—it had been left to rot. That decay made it perfect for Lucien's purposes.
He eased back against a cracked billboard hawking Nyx Dynamics security units. The ad had caught in a stuttering loop of static, flickering out a jagged crimson light that slashed across his cheekbones like a fresh wound. Beneath his coat, the Silent Ledger gleamed faintly against his ribs, like a cold pulse in the dark. Its obsidian screen rippled with shifting crimson ink, displaying Valthamur's newest boon: predictive analytics, weighing five souls. The glyphs blinked sharp and clear:
Thom Merral. Debt ratio 3.8:1. Success chance: 91%.
Lucien tapped the edge of his watch, tap, tap, tap, the rhythm carving through the thick silence that pressed like wet cloth around him. It was a small tether to order in this chaos, something steady to hold onto.
The crowd was thinner than the week before. Vendors called out with voices worn raw from too many losses. A stim-hawker jittered through her pitch, nerves fraying at the edges. A man with a half-burnt servo-mask pushed relics long past their worth—forgotten junk rotting alongside the district itself. Then he saw Thom, slumped behind a warped stall, his shoulders hunched like the weight of his debts had bent him nearly double.
Lucien moved slow and deliberate, his coat brushing stale air with a tired elegance that barely hid the edge beneath. He didn't announce himself with words—his reputation drifted ahead, sharp as a scent in the cold. His voice finally sliced through the low hum, smooth and sure, like a blade sliding clean through cloth. "Thom. City's got teeth, but I bite back. Sell me a sliver of your soul and you'll leave warmer than you came. Maybe with enough credits to eat food that doesn't threaten you on the way down."
He slid the battered datapad across the cracked table. A soft red glow spilled from beneath it, painting the rough wood with the pulse of something alive. The text writhed across the screen—a living contract bound by the Lex Aeterna. Beneath his coat, the Ledger pulsed again, a quiet warning carried like a breath: Choose wisely. Souls weigh heavy.
Thom didn't answer right away. His hands twitched, caught in a silent argument between flight and surrender. Finally, he rasped, voice ragged and dry, "You. Crimson Broker. Thought you were just another pretty face with a pitch. Funny how your name shows up where bodies don't."
Lucien tilted his head, weighing the insult like a jagged stone. "Flattery? Or deflection? Either way, you're overdue. I know about your Veil debts. Sign here, I wipe them clean. Debt gone. You get to stop dodging shadows."
Thom's gaze flicked to the datapad. The text shifted, alive and watching, responding to his hesitation like a predator testing a wound.
"This isn't clean," Thom said, bitterness cracking his voice. "Never is. Nobody walks away whole."
Lucien stepped closer, close enough for Thom to catch the sharp tang of citrus on his breath, soured faintly by something infernal beneath the surface. "Not clean. But cleaner. Think of it like surgery. You lose a piece... but you live."
A Watcher drone drifted low overhead, its red eye narrowing as if it smelled the tension thickening between them.
Lucien's voice stayed steady, a calm edged with steel. "Clock's ticking, Thom. Sign, and you walk away with your life intact. Don't, and I can't promise the Veil won't send someone without bedside manners."
The silence stretched and stretched, dragging the air thin. Then Thom snapped the stylus against the pad and scribbled his name fast—desperate and jagged.
The datapad flared crimson and dimmed. The deal was sealed.
Lucien slid the pad into his coat pocket. The Ledger thumped beneath his ribs, slow and satisfied like a hunter savoring the kill.
"Pleasure," Lucien said, voice taut as steel wire. "Avoid the Veil dens for a while. You're marked clean now. Mostly."
He didn't wait for thanks or curses. He slipped back into the crowd, folding through back alleys until the neon and noise bled away behind him.
The streets of Undergleam folded around him like a bruised wound, walls pressing close, soaked with shadows and lost chances. When he reached the shrine, the last Watcher drone faded into the night sky. The stone was cracked, stained by years of smoke and neglect, a monument to forgotten prayers.
Lucien knelt and traced the ancient sigil carved deep into the weathered concrete. The ground throbbed beneath his palm, alive with dark power. Soul received. Marked for Valthamur.
Then something caught his fingers—a fresh scrawl just beneath the shrine's sigil, sharp and jagged. The etching was cruel, precise, and wrong.
Pain shot up his hand, sudden and hot, like a warning flare. The magic was familiar but twisted, foreign. Not his.
Cassian's.
The Ledger flickered violently, glowing cold red with a new glyph: Forged token. Market crash in East Veilshade.
Lucien exhaled slow, the weight of the cipher pressing down like iron chains. "Cassian's ciphers are child's play," he muttered, voice low and grim. "But that was a message."
He rose, brushing dust from his coat, the fabric crackling faintly in the cold night air. "You want a war," he said quietly, voice like stone grinding on stone, "you'll get a stage."
Beneath his jacket, the Ledger shimmered, a whispered caution curling through the silence: Beware his chaos.
Lucien's lips twitched into a grim smirk, not quite a smile—more like armor forged to keep the coming storm at bay.
Then he melted back into the city that had never forgiven him. The shadows wrapped around him like an old scar, tight and unyielding.
The damp concrete underfoot still felt slick, but Lucien's boots found grip in the sticky residue of so many broken souls. Each step echoed a little too loud in the cold, the sound swallowed quickly by the labyrinth of back alleys. The hum of dying neon trailed after him like a lament for what the district had been.
His mind spun with the ledger's readings—the predictive calculus Valthamur had woven deep into the contract's fine print. Five souls, analyzed, weighted, and banked. Thom was just the start—a calculated move on a board thick with danger and desperation.
The Ledger pulsed again, a steady beat beneath his ribs. It whispered things only Lucien could hear, warnings and cold logic tangled together: His fear was my leverage... but his desperation stung.
Lucien's eyes flicked to the shadows, catching movement—a ragged figure hunched near a flickering streetlamp, eyes darting like a cornered rat. The city's breath was uneven, ragged, alive with a pulse all its own. Undergleam was a wound in Valthara Prime's skin, and tonight, that wound throbbed with unrest.
Above, the Watchers' red eyes glowed like dying embers, unblinking sentinels scanning the living. Their cold gaze wasn't judgment. It was certainty—this place was a slow death trap, and Lucien was just trying to stay a step ahead.
Every whispered deal, every cracked contract, was a thread in a spiderweb. The Ledger was both hunter and trapsetter, calculating odds, setting snares. Thom's soul was already caught—his fear turned into currency. But beneath the surface, Lucien hesitated—hesitated at the sharp sting of human pain the Ledger tried to mute.
As he walked on, the city twisted and turned around him, a maze of light and dark, a living entity breathing chaos and greed. Cassian's mark beneath the shrine wasn't just sabotage—it was a challenge, an invitation to a game that would burn brighter and colder than any Lucien had played before.
The Ledger's warning echoed once more: Beware his chaos.
Lucien folded his coat tighter against the night, a shadow among shadows, ready for the war to come.