He woke earlier than his mother. Got up, smelled home — and the crown in the sky, fractured as always.
"Can't this dusk ever be anything else?" Kade thought, easing the curtains at the window. He'd never seen anything but that low sun, struggling through the twilight. Always shadows.
Downstairs his mother still slept. "I'll be out for a bit. Back soon," he said without knowing if she heard. He felt the urge to straighten the blanket that hung loose over her, then didn't. Small gestures change nothing.
He shrugged into his coat — the Duskveil had pulsed all night, a faint, foreign heartbeat in the weave — and stepped onto the street. The sky above was as he expected: fissures of light, false promises.
He meant to use the time to learn more about the System, about Gluttony, and about the mantle. Thoughts of the organ trade drifted up, but he didn't feel like visiting today.
Instead he hunted a rat. He closed his eyes and listened. Between the few people on the lane and the children, there was a tiny, scuffling sound — almost nothing. His improved perception paid off. He scooped it up fast and carried it home. A handful of oats, a little water — that should do.
His mother was waking as he set the bowl down. "Good morning…," she murmured. He only nodded. The rat drank, trembling, then nibbled. Kade snorted. "You're a brave little thing, aren't you?" he said, patting its head.
When it finished he picked it up, almost affectionately for a second, then snapped its neck. The quiet breathing stopped. "Sorry, big guy. What needs doing, needs doing."
He dropped the body and crouched, hand hovering just above it. He tried Gluttony.
[SYSTEM MESSAGE]
Activation of {Gluttony} successful.
emotional resonance: low
efficiency: very low
reward pending
[SYSTEM MESSAGE]
Pending complete:
Residual Warmth acquired — a brief, hollow comfort that tastes like a mother's hand.
"Damn. Useless." The warmth is gone before he can even name it.
The test taught him one thing: Gluttony works on animals. Maybe monsters too—if monsters can feel anything like affection. It takes something. Every use leaves a hollow under his ribs, a cold pocket that makes his breath shallow for a heartbeat. Quiet. Persistent.
He pushes the door. It screams and slams. His mother lies on her back, tracing a pale crack in the plaster.
"You won't need to cook today," he says. "I'll go to the Maw stalls. I'll pick something up."
Her face softens. "You actually made money?" she asks, careful as someone handling a small miracle. "That invitation… I didn't expect—" Worry rides her voice for a second, then she folds it away. "I'm glad you came back safe."
"Not that invitation." He slides a few coins into the blanket where she can see them. "From the organ runs — the last job paid off."
Her smile tightens into something older. No lecture. No sermon. "Oh." One syllable full of things unspoken. "Be careful. Bring me something—anything. Even a scrap of fish."
She pinches his knuckle, the tiny, wordless benediction they've shared for years. He squeezes back. A small barter of comfort. He nods and goes. The touch lingers like another debt.
Outside, the lane smells of burnt oil and metal. Windows gape. A fight cracks in an alley. Someone hawks pills. Ten minutes later he pushes into the Maw.
The market hits him like a bruise: sound, smell, press. Sizzling fat, cold iron, smoke, the faint copper of old blood. Incense tries to paper over rot. Emotions stick to people like grime; trying to sort them makes his head spin. He keeps his face blank and moves deeper. This is where favors are traded and facts are bought. This is where the Maw bends the System.
A narrow passage funnels him to a stall. Cracked mirrors. Black spheres that drink light. Knives pretending to be relics. Bracelets threaded with odd filaments. The Duskveil at his ribs twitches like a finger on a pulse.
The stallkeeper looks stitched together from debts: small, bowed, a heavy scar across one eye, too many rings on his fingers. A stale iron note hangs around him—the smell of old bargains.
"What do you sell?" Kade asks, flat.
"General goods." The man's voice keeps secrets like a ledger.
"You don't get many customers," Kade says, blunt.
A dry sound that might be a laugh. One ring clicks—small, deliberate. The man asks, "What are you after?"
"Artifacts," Kade says. "From the Games. System artifacts."
The vendor's hand stills over a bowl of coins. Surprise flickers, sharpens into something hungry and precise—the look of a man who knows when a dangerous thing has spoken. "Not common," he says. "Rare. Expensive. Dangerous. The Maw moves them sometimes. How do you know about the Games?"
"Because I'm a player," Kade answers.
Surprise flickered across the stallkeeper's face, then smoothed into a smile — the slow, hungry kind a merchant wears when he smells potential.
"I'm here to sell," he adds, flat.
He slips the talisman free. A faintly glowing charm, threaded with silver, warm to the touch. Greta's protection. Small and quiet and impossible to ignore if you know what to look for.
The stallkeeper doesn't touch the braid. He holds the coin to the light instead, one practiced hand. The Duskveil pulses once at Kade's ribs and steadies, like something holding its breath.
"This is real," the man says at last, voice thin. He sets the coin against a black glass sphere. The surface drinks the light and, impossibly, a faint pattern crawls across it—like a fingerprint on the dark. "Protection-grade. Not a crude charm."
"How much?" Kade asks.
The vendor names a sum. Enough to keep them fed for months if he spends carefully. Cash is clean. Simple. The hollow under Kade's ribs tugs.
The old man's face shifts. The calculation folds into something else. He reaches beneath the stall and produces a wrapped bundle. He unrolls it with careful hands.
Inside is a sliver of glass no bigger than a thumb, threaded with hair-thin runes that hum faint. "Dusk-stabilizer," he says. "Calms a mantle's pulse. Not a cure—nothing fools the System—but two nights' steady sleep. Less bleed. Makes the weave hold a bit longer."
The shard sings at the edge of Kade's hearing. The Duskveil answers like a curious animal. He doesn't snatch at it. He does the thing the vendor watches for: he stays still, keeps his face a blank coin.
The man sets the shard in Kade's palm as a test. Kade closes his fingers and does nothing. No sniff. No fawn. The old man's mouth twitches—approval.
"You passed. Most kids show their teeth. I want someone that can work clean."
He lays out two choices. "One: the coins. Clean. No questions. Enough to keep you fed and tidy for months." He taps the pouch, punctuating the reality of hunger.
"Two: I take the talisman, and instead of all that coin I set you up. A room in a side-house I run—two months' rent paid. A ration of compounds: palliatives, salves, things to ease coughs and spasms. Won't cure what's eaten her, but it buys you time. I'll introduce you to a woman who trades in symptom relief. She's careful."
He speaks the offer like an item in a ledger. "There's a cost. A favor owed. A run. A swipe. Small jobs that keep the market breathing. Bring me what I ask, and the room and the med-run are yours. Take the coin, and you're on your own."
The Duskveil thrums between the choices. The hollow under Kade's ribs tugs like a second heartbeat. He looks at the talisman in the vendor's hand, then at the shard in his own.
"Name it," he says. Short. Direct.
The market noise swallows the words. Above it, the Duskveil pulses once—bright and small—like a stitch being set.