The portal bloomed in the middle of my room like a wound in reality. Brass gears unfolded, turning against each other in opposite directions, their teeth gnashing as if they were hungry. Light poured from the ring, liquid and metallic, smelling of smoke and paper ash.
Kairos stood beside me, jaw tight.
"Remember what I told you," he said. "Price before promise."
The system cut him off with red text:
Condition violated (companion detected).
Penalty for persistence at portal opening: Maleficium Class II.
My choice was carved before me.
I looked at him.
"I have to go alone."
His fractured mark sparked like broken glass, but he only nodded. "Then survive. And don't let him tell the story. Make him pay for it."
I slid the brass token he had given me into my pocket. Heavy. Cold. A reminder.
Then I stepped through the light.
The air tore me out of myself. For an instant I was stretched into gears and smoke. Then the world snapped back.
I was standing in an impossible chamber.
Clocks hung in midair, spinning. Some ticked forward, others backward; some leapt seconds like skipping stones. The floor was a mirror of black water, reflecting a sky filled with more clocks, an infinity of them. Each tick, each tock echoed inside my ribs. My mark throbbed in sync with none of them.
At the center sat a desk of black wood, polished until it shone like obsidian.
And behind it, the Broker.
His mask was a gold clockface without hands. It gleamed under a sourceless light. His suit was immaculate, but his fingers were too long, too articulate, as if each was a quill. They tapped across the desk though no paper lay there.
When he lifted his head, I felt the air itself notice me.
"Luna Méndez."
His voice wasn't sound. It was ink poured into water—smooth, spreading, staining everything. I almost answered before I realized I hadn't decided to.
I swallowed. "You're the Broker?"
"Who else?" He leaned back in his chair, fingers folding into one another. "I am the notary of the Market. The whisper that becomes contract. The balance that wears a face."
I fought the tremor in my chest. "Why bring me here?"
His mask tilted, gold catching the light. "Because you interest me. The Market murmurs anomalies, and you sing louder than most. That seal on your forehead—" He gestured lazily. "—doesn't speak in my tongue. Who put it there?"
"No one," I said. "The system branded me when I made my first trade."
The Broker laughed. Low. Rich. Too human to be machinery, too inhuman to be a man.
"The system improvises nothing, child. If your seal writes new runes by itself, someone authored you long before you ever logged in. Perhaps a god. Perhaps a traitor of the Market. Perhaps—" He leaned forward, voice almost intimate. "—you."
The floor shuddered beneath me. My mark burned, the triangle inside it spinning, reaching. I averted my eyes.
"I didn't come for riddles. You threatened me."
"I reminded you of debt," the Broker corrected. "You entered the Market, therefore you signed. Whether you knew it or not. Your life is already a note payable."
My fists clenched. "Then tell me what you want."
He snapped his fingers. A new screen opened—not the white light I'd seen before, but black trimmed with letters of gold.
Administrative Proposal
Objective: Balance of debt
Offer: Early auction of destiny
Benefit: Erasure of Class I–II penalties
Cost: Transfer of future event
Suggested lot: Your first true love
The words hit like cold iron.
"My… what?"
"Your first love," he said, tone smooth. "You need not have met them yet. Futures are assets like any other. People auction children unborn, victories unwon, songs uncomposed. Why not love?"
"That's insane. That's a trap."
"All contracts are traps. You've learned that already." His mask angled, gleaming. "You give up one little thing you haven't even touched, and in exchange you cleanse the burdens gnawing at you today."
Kairos's warning pulsed in my mind: In the Market, clean deals kill.
This was spotless. Too spotless.
I shook my head. "I won't give up something I haven't even lived."
"Spoken like a child clutching coins she doesn't know the value of." He tapped the desk. "But the Market doesn't care what you understand. It only cares that everything has a price. And you, Luna, are overflowing with equity."
The clocks overhead spun faster. Some crashed into each other with sparks. Time itself leaned toward the black screen, pressing me.
I locked my knees and forced the words out. "If the Market wants me so badly, why not kill me and take it?"
"Because you amuse me," he said simply. "The Market devours either way, but I decide the order of the bites. And watching you choose what to surrender—that entertains me."
The mask tilted closer. "So choose. Be a piece on my board. Or be the crack that breaks it."
He waved a hand. "One courtesy, then. A question. One I will answer with truth."
My mark blazed. The triangle turned, its incomplete circle aching to close. I felt the weight of the moment.
I drew breath. "Who sold my destiny?"
The Broker stilled. For the first time, silence stretched long enough to hurt. Then the mask gleamed like sunrise.
"Someone close. Someone of your blood."
My stomach collapsed. My chest iced over.
"You're lying."
"I don't lie. I have no need. Lies are inefficient. Your anomaly, however… it can lie to the Market. And that is dangerous. For both of us."
The black screen dissolved. The portal behind me gaped open again, a drain waiting to pull me home.
The Broker leaned back, voice honey and venom.
"When you wish to know which blood betrayed you, return to me. Each visit, of course, costs a little more of you."
The floor gave way. I fell.
I slammed back into my apartment, Kairos catching me before my skull hit wood. His hands were steady, but his eyes were not.
"What did he say?"
My mouth was ash. I staggered toward the mirror. The mark on my forehead had changed again. The triangle was still there, but a circle had begun to form around it—half drawn, pulsing like an eye trying to open.
I touched the glass with trembling fingers.
"He said… someone in my blood sold me."
Kairos swore under his breath. His fractured seal sparked like dying coals.
"The Market doesn't lie. That means—"
I shook my head, too hard, as if that could break the sentence. "No. It's impossible."
But the mark burned hotter. The reflection stared back with gold runes alive on my skin. And the Broker's voice still dripped in my mind:
Someone with your blood.