The air in the alley was thick with the taste of spent magic and decay. The rusted door to the Abyssal Auction didn't open—it ingested. One moment I stood before it, the next, a shimmer like a heat haze swallowed me, and I was through.
Inside was not a room, but a pocket dimension. The space was vast, impossibly so, a cavernous gloom held up by ribs of petrified dragon bone. Floating witch-light orbs cast a sickly amber glow over a scene of organized pandemonium. Stalls and pavilions made of shadow-stuff and nightmare silk lined the winding paths. The clientele was a bestiary of the forbidden: hooded figures with too many joints, scaled merchants clicking in draconic tongues, a being that was just a floating robe containing a swirl of angry stars.
Fault Sight went into overload. Everywhere I looked, critical flaws glowed—in the unstable dimensional stitching of a tent, in the cursed jewelry a hag was selling, in the twitching, grafted limbs of a bodyguard. This was a bazaar built on precariousness, where every transaction was a gamble against catastrophic failure.
"Try not to stare. It's rude, and some of the merchandise stares back."
Sylas materialized beside me, leaning against a cart selling bottled screams. He'd changed into darker, non-descript clothes, but his silver hair was a beacon. He'd glamoured it to look black, but to my senses, it still shone with that peculiar, otherworldly resonance.
"Your bolt-hole was adequate," I said, keeping my voice flat. My senses were cataloging exits, threats, power concentrations. There were at least three entities present that registered as [Boss-Level Threats] on my old internal scale. I was an aphid in a lion's den.
"Adequate. He says." Sylas snorted. "Come on. Our lead is in the 'Reliquary of Failed Ambitions.' Charming place. Sells bad luck, spent prophecies, and… faulty dungeon cores."
He led me through the throng. I saw things that would give Arion a stroke: a captured wisp of primordial chaos chittering in a crystal cage, a mirror that showed not your reflection but your most potent self-loathing, a sword that promised victory but required a memory of peace as payment.
"The seeds," I said as we walked. "The analysis I recovered suggests they are manufactured. Replicas. Who has that capability?"
"Short list," Sylas murmured, nodding politely to a towering figure made of molten glass. "High-tier Dungeon Lords, which are extinct. Certain branches of the Arcane College, which are too bureaucratic to be this efficient. Or…"
"Or someone with access to the core templates," I finished. "A thief. Or a cleaner. Someone who loots the corpses of dead dungeons."
"Now you're thinking like a player," Sylas said, a hint of approval in his voice. "The Reliquary is up ahead. Let me do the talking. You… just look like you belong. Which, ironically, means look bored and dangerous."
The Reliquary was a shabby tent that seemed to exist in a permanent state of collapse. Inside, the air was dust and regret. The proprietor was a shriveled creature in a moth-eaten armchair, its long fingers steepled. It had no eyes, just smooth skin where they should be.
"Sylas," it hissed, voice like pages tearing. "You bring a new curiosity. One that smells of… sealed vaults and dead kingdoms."
"This is Kael," Sylas said easily, picking up a desiccated fairy in a jar and shaking it lightly. "He's in the market for bad ideas. Specifically, the gardening variety."
The creature—I dubbed it the Curator—turned its blind face toward me. I felt a pressure, a scanning sensation. My Fault Sight flared, showing me the Curator's own flaw: a hairline crack in its psychic shell, a remnant of a broken oath.
"He is a void," the Curator whispered. "A silence where a class should scream. Interesting. The seeds you ask of… they are poor quality. Art, but flawed art. I sold three. Regret it. Bad for business when product dissolves buyers."
"Who sold them to you?" Sylas pressed, putting the jar down.
"A shadow with a merchant's smile. Called itself The Factor. Paid in memories of sunlight—high-grade currency. Wanted information in return, not coin. Wanted maps. Old maps. Maps of places that are no longer on any map."
My mind, the part that was Zarathos, made the connection instantly. The seeds were a means, not the end. The corruption destabilized ley lines. Destabilized ley lines could reveal… hidden things. Things buried by time, magic, or intent. Things a map might show.
"What kind of places?" I asked, my voice cutting through the dusty air.
The Curator's head swiveled to me. "Places of burial. For things too terrible to be destroyed. Tomb-cities. Silent sanctums. Vaults." It leaned forward. "You know of such places, silence-boy. I can hear the echo of great doors in your soul."
A chill that had nothing to do with the temperature went through me. My old domain had contained several such vaults. Prisons for concepts, for defeated rivals, for weapons that had no place in any world.
"Do you have a sample of the buyer's resonance? A scrying link?" Sylas asked, all business.
The Curator gestured to a corner where a large, tarnished silver bowl sat on a pedestal. "The Factor used the bowl to communicate. Its resonance lingers. For a price."
"What price?"
The Curator's lipless mouth stretched. "For him," it said, pointing a bony finger at me. "A story. A true one. Not of this life. Of the before. The echo of the great doors."
It was a direct assault on my core secret. Sylas shot me a wary look. This was a risk no persona could mitigate.
I looked at the silver bowl, then at the blind Curator. I had no power here. My value was my knowledge. My past was my currency.
"A story," I said, stepping forward. "A short one. About a vault that should never be opened."
I closed my eyes, not to remember, but to access. I didn't give it a memory from Zarathos's life. I gave it a system log. A dry, administrative entry.
"Log: Cycle 7,412. Containment Protocol Omega-7 initiated. Subject: The Weeping Star. A sentient fragment of a dead galaxy, expressing grief as a memetic reality-warping field. Proposed destruction deemed too risky. Entombed in a pocket dimension layered with seventeen seals of existential negation. Coordinates purged from all registers. Access command: A sequence of seven silences, sung in reverse."
I opened my eyes. The tent was utterly still. The dust motes hung frozen in the amber light.
The Curator was trembling. A single, black tear traced a path down its smooth cheek. "You… you speak in the tongue of the Makers. The world-architects." Its voice was full of awe and terror. "The price is paid. The bowl is yours. Take it and go. Please."
Sylas didn't need telling twice. He scooped up the heavy silver bowl, and we backed out of the tent.
Outside, in the chaotic thoroughfare, he let out a low whistle. "'A sequence of seven silences?' What the hells was that?"
"A receipt," I said, my mind already on the bowl. "We need to activate this. Find where the resonance leads."
"Not here," Sylas said, glancing around nervously. "We've drawn enough attention."
But it was too late. As we turned, the crowd seemed to part, making way for a new presence.
He was tall, dressed in immaculate, outdated noble's finery, the fabric somehow both black and deep purple. His hair was long and white, his face handsome and ageless, but his eyes… his eyes were pools of liquid shadow, speckled with distant, cold stars. He moved with an unconscious grace that spoke of absolute authority.
And he was looking directly at me.
Fault Sight screamed. This being had no physical flaws. His metaphysical structure was… perfect. And horrifically familiar.
<< ANALYSIS: CRITICAL MATCH DETECTED >>
Power Signature: 99.8% match to [Zarathos's Inner Circle – Lieutenant Grade].
Identity: Valerius, the Dusk Chancellor.
Status in Previous Cycle: Loyal. Chief Administrator of the Abyssal Sovereign's Northern Reaches.
Current Status: ???
He stopped before us. The ambient noise of the auction seemed to dampen. He looked me up and down, his starry eyes unreadable.
"An echo," he said, his voice a smooth baritone that vibrated in the bones. "A faint, impossible echo. I have scoured the realms for any remnant of the old glory. And I find it… here. In a mortal shell, smelling of fear and cheap leather."
Sylas subtly shifted his stance, a spell-form gathering at his fingertips.
Valerius didn't even glance at him. His gaze was locked on me. "You have the shape of a ghost. The resonance of a closed throne. Who are you, little echo?"
Every instinct told me to run, to hide, to deny. But I saw it in his perfect face—a hunger, a desperate, lonely hope. He was a relic, like me. But unlike me, he had kept his power. And he was searching for his king.
I straightened my shoulders. I let the frantic energy of Kael the adventurer fall away. I didn't have Zarathos's power, but I had his posture, his unblinking stare, the way he held absolute stillness.
I met those star-filled eyes. "Valerius," I said, the name leaving my lips with the weight of epochs. "Your ledgers were always impeccable. Your obsession with symmetrical doom was, however, a frivolity."
For the first time, the perfect being flinched. The shadow in his eyes swirled violently. He took half a step back, as if struck.
"It… cannot be." His whisper was the sound of a world ending. "The Sovereign was unmade. The phylactery shattered. I felt it die."
"Death," I said, repeating the line I'd used in the sewer, "is often just a loading screen."
Recognition, agonizing and hopeful, dawned on his face. Then, it crumpled into rage. "You are a piece! A fragment! A memory given flesh! You dare wear that face? You dare speak with that tone?" He raised a hand, and the very fabric of the pocket dimension wavered. Stall-keepers cried out, diving for cover.
This was it. The lieutenant of a Final Boss, about to annihilate me for the crime of being a pale imitation.
But a Final Boss does not cower. Even a weak one.
I did not raise my hands. I did not summon power I did not have. I took a step forward, into the space of his gathering wrath.
"You will stand down, Chancellor," I commanded, putting every ounce of forgotten authority into my voice. "Your sovereign is inconvenienced, not deceased. And he requires a report. Now. What do you know of the dungeon seeds spreading in the mortal cities?"
The contradiction froze him. The impossible recognition versus the palpable weakness. The familiar command versus the fragile vessel. His hand trembled, the catastrophic power held in check by millennia of conditioned obedience and soul-deep confusion.
He was broken. I was a broken mirror reflecting a king. Together, we might make a whole picture. Or we might shatter each other completely.
Sylas, forgotten beside me, breathed a single, stunned word: "What?"