I didn't sleep that night.
Or rather—sleep was torn from me piece by piece, as if someone had reached into my skull and stolen it before it could take root.
Every time my eyelids closed, fire seared across the dark. The words I had seen glowing in the café window replayed endlessly:
[Fate Score: -100]
Remaining Time: 24h 00m
A countdown.
Not just numbers. A guillotine slowly lowering.
When the alarm on my phone buzzed at six, I dragged myself to the bathroom like a marionette pulled on fraying strings.
The mirror returned a stranger.
My skin was pale, lips cracked and colorless. The hollows beneath my eyes looked bruised, shadows etched so deep they seemed carved into bone. I looked a decade older than the woman who had stumbled into that café the day before.
And yet… it wasn't only exhaustion. There was something wrong about my reflection. A dim emptiness, as if light slipped past me instead of clinging to my shape.
Then it happened.
A faint shimmer flickered on my forehead.
At first I thought it was just the bathroom bulb struggling, but no. The glow came from me. A symbol surfaced on my skin, traced in molten fire: a delicate gear, its teeth jagged, its core pulsing in rhythm with my heartbeat.
Each beat sent a hot needle deeper into my skull.
I pressed trembling fingers against my forehead—yet touched nothing. No scar. No burn. Only air. But the pain was real, raw, branding.
The glow flared.
And then the air itself fractured.
A screen unfolded before me, its borders humming with sterile light, as if reality had been split open to install a user interface.
─┤ Destiny Market System ├─
User: Luna Méndez
Fate Score: -100
Status: Active Debt
Remaining Time: 18h 42m
Options Available:
Make Transaction
Review Contracts
Transfer History
Contact Broker
My mouth went dry.
"No… this isn't real. It can't be real."
But the reflection betrayed me. The gear on my forehead pulsed in sync with every word glowing on the screen, as though my body itself fueled this machine.
Without speaking, I thought about the first option—Make Transaction.
The system obeyed instantly, as though it had always been inside my head, waiting for the command.
Initial Transactions Available:
+20 Fate Score → One personal memory
+50 Fate Score → One basic skill
+100 Fate Score → One year of your life
Warning: Payments are non-refundable.
The list hovered in the air. My pulse skipped.
A memory.
A skill.
A year of my life.
I crumpled onto the bathroom floor, knees cracking against the tiles. My breath came in ragged bursts.
"What would I even choose? What could anyone choose—when it all feels like it's already slipping away?"
The mark on my forehead burned hotter, as if demanding an answer.
"Select an option, user. Destiny is not gifted. It is bought."
The metallic voice reverberated inside me, not from the screen but from within bone and blood. Each syllable struck like a hammer against steel.
My chest heaved. "What are you?"
"I am the system that balances your world. I am the Destiny Market."
The bathroom seemed to shrink around me. The hum of the lightbulb warped into static. Even the faucet's slow drip echoed too loud, too heavy, as though gravity itself had thickened.
"No, no, no…" I clamped my hands over my ears. But the voice didn't stop. It seeped into the marrow, mocking me with laughter so flat it couldn't belong to anything human.
The countdown ticked again, cruel and calm.
18h 41m 59s
I stared at the menu. My hands shook so violently that the glass shards from the cup I had knocked over earlier rattled across the floor.
The "safest" option was the memory. Just one memory. What could it hurt?
The system answered before I could even breathe. New lines unspooled in light:
Select a memory for transaction:
First kiss
Seventeenth birthday
Name of your favorite teacher
Each word was a thread cut from the tapestry of my life.
"No… I can't…" My voice broke.
I squeezed my eyes shut. For a heartbeat, my mother's face bloomed in the dark behind my lids—her laughter, the candles glowing atop the number fifty-two.
Relief flooded me.
Then, just as quickly, the vision crumbled. Her face blurred. Her laugh thinned into static. The memory dissolved like ink bleeding into water until nothing remained.
A sob ripped from me, jagged and raw.
"Every second you hesitate…"
The voice faltered.
And then a new one rose. Lower. Colder. Not mechanical. Human.
"…someone else is trading your destiny."
The words slithered through me. Goosebumps clawed across my arms.
That wasn't the system. That was something—or someone—else.
My throat closed. "Who's there?"
No reply. Only silence. Only the feverish pounding of the gear branded on my skin.
Then the system's metallic voice returned, indifferent, clinical:
18h 39m 12s
I staggered upright, clutching the sink for balance. My reflection gaped back at me, wide-eyed, lips trembling, skin ghostly under the bathroom's buzzing light.
I wanted to scream. To smash the mirror. To erase the mark, the screen, the voices.
But the screen waited. Cold. Patient.
The list of sacrifices pulsed again.
A memory.
A skill.
A year.
And the burning in my forehead told me the truth: whether I chose or not, I would pay.
The countdown bled another second away.
18h 38m 57s
18h 38m 56s
The walls pressed in. The light above flickered in rhythm with my heartbeat. Somewhere in the apartment, the fridge hummed louder, its motor syncing perfectly with the pulse of the mark. Even the world itself seemed to demand I surrender.
I dug my nails into my palms until they drew blood.
But the truth pressed against me like iron: my life no longer belonged to me.
And soon, the Market would force me to prove it.