The market did not welcome her. That much was clear within the first few steps.
The air thickened, the candles' flames bending toward her as if scrutinizing her worth. Every stall she passed seemed alive—not in a literal sense, but in the way a room remembers who has entered it before. Shadows stretched unnaturally, flickering along walls with intent, like fingers brushing over objects meant to remain hidden.
She followed the Collector without asking. Not because she trusted him—she didn't—but because she had no other choice. The path behind them seemed to fold and twist impossibly. Where she had entered from the street, the city above should have continued in straight lines, lampposts ticking down their intervals. Instead, she now saw only stalls, candles, and shadowed figures moving silently, each absorbed in transactions she could neither hear nor understand.
"Where are we going?" she asked, keeping her voice low.
"Somewhere you won't be in danger," he replied, though his tone carried a quiet edge, the kind that suggested danger followed them anyway.
"Then why do I feel like I'm already in it?" she muttered, tugging her coat closer around herself.
The Collector didn't answer. His eyes, steady and unreadable, surveyed every movement, every flicker of light. She had noticed it the moment she first met him: he didn't just see the market; he belonged to it. There was no tension in the way he walked—no hesitation—but there was weight, a gravity that pulled the air toward him.
As they moved, she began to notice the details she had missed before: jars filled with coins stamped in years that hadn't existed yet; shelves of folded papers labeled with names she didn't recognize; candles carved into shapes of animals she had never seen in any book or museum. Each stall seemed to pulse in rhythm with her heartbeat, drawing her closer to secrets she wasn't ready to bear.
They came to a stall that seemed ordinary at first glance—wooden table, faded cloth—but the glow of the candles around it was different. Here, the air smelled of roses and smoke, familiar and foreign all at once.
A woman sat behind the table, her face partially obscured by a veil of silk. She looked up as they approached, and the woman's breath hitched. There was something ancient in those eyes, something that made the hairs on the back of her neck rise.
"Ah," the woman behind the stall said, her voice like wind rustling through autumn leaves. "You've arrived."
The Collector stopped a step away from her. "She's new."
The stall woman inclined her head slightly. "I can see that. And yet… she has been waiting."
The words were not a question, and yet the woman felt their weight pressing against her chest. Waiting? She had not come here expecting anything. And yet, somehow, the notion that she had been waiting felt uncomfortably true.
The Collector stepped closer to her side, a silent shield. "She doesn't belong," he said softly.
"That remains to be seen," the stall woman replied, eyes glinting in the candlelight. She gestured toward the table. Candles, small boxes, folded papers. "Take a step closer if you dare."
The woman hesitated. Every instinct screamed at her to turn and run, to leave this impossible, breathing world behind. And yet, she stepped forward. Something about the market called to her ache, to the emptiness she carried like a secret weight.
The stall woman held out a candle. It was simple—short, golden wax with a flame that burned brighter than any she had seen in the aisle. "This belongs to you," she said.
The woman's hand hovered over it. "Mine? I don't understand."
The Collector's jaw tightened. "She doesn't need to," he said.
The woman looked at him, startled. "Doesn't need to what?"
"Understand. Just take it."
The candle's flame wavered and then steadied as if acknowledging her hesitation. She touched it, and the moment her fingers brushed the wax, the world shivered.
Visions flashed behind her eyelids—snippets of memory that weren't entirely hers. A laugh in a sunlit kitchen, a scream in a dark alley, hands holding hers that she didn't recognize. The images were brief, fragmented, impossible, yet they clawed at her chest with an undeniable pull.
She gasped and stepped back.
"Control it," the Collector said quietly, though his eyes were gentle now, watching her struggle. "It doesn't belong to you entirely. But it can speak to what you need most."
"What I need most?" she echoed. Her throat was dry, tight.
The stall woman nodded slowly. "Loss, desire, fear—they all leave marks. This candle… it can show you one of those marks. A door that was never closed properly, a memory that needs tending. It can guide you if you let it."
The woman shook her head, trying to clear the swirling images. "I don't… I don't want it."
The stall woman's eyes softened. "Few ever come willingly. Most arrive because something inside them has already been taken. The market simply answers."
The Collector's hand brushed hers as if to steady her. "You're stronger than you think. It will not harm you if you choose to see."
Against her better judgment, she lifted the candle. And the world changed again.
The aisle behind them dissolved. Stalls merged into walls, candles elongated into pillars of light that arched overhead, forming a tunnel that seemed to stretch endlessly. The smell of roses grew stronger, mingled with the faint tang of iron. Every breath she took carried weight. Every step felt measured, deliberate, as if the floor itself decided whether she could move.
"You feel that?" the Collector asked softly.
"I… I feel everything," she admitted.
"That is the market speaking," he said. "It tests. It listens. It remembers. And it always—always—asks a price."
She swallowed hard. "A price? For what?"
"For the truth you came seeking, whether you know it or not," he said.
Her mind swirled. The ache in her chest, the sense of loss, the nagging absence of her mother's voice, her father's silence—all of it pressed forward in a way that was no longer bearable. She wanted answers. She wanted relief. And somewhere deep inside, a part of her knew that the market's promises were not a choice but a path she had already begun to follow.
The tunnel of light ended at a doorway she had never seen before—a simple, unremarkable door, wooden, slightly warped, with a brass handle that gleamed like liquid gold. Nothing about it suggested magic, or danger, or the impossible. And yet, the air around it hummed.
"This door wasn't here yesterday," she whispered, more to herself than anyone else.
"It wasn't," the Collector confirmed. "Doors only appear when the market decides it is time. And it has decided for you."
Her hand trembled as she reached for the handle. She could feel the hum radiating through her fingers, through her wrist, into her chest. Her pulse raced, faster and faster, the ache flaring to something intolerable, something that demanded attention.
"Wait," she said, glancing at him. "I don't even know what's behind it."
"You will," he said. "Once you open it, there is no turning back."
The weight of the choice settled over her. She could step back, walk away, and return to a city that pretended nothing extraordinary existed on its streets. Or she could move forward, into the unknown, and confront whatever the market wanted her to face.
Her fingers closed on the handle.
The door opened silently.
The world beyond was dark at first. Then shapes began to emerge—twisting corridors of candlelight, figures moving through shadows, whispers curling around corners, faint and insistent. She felt the pull of it like a tide, drawing her forward.
The Collector stepped beside her, his presence a solid anchor in the shifting space. "Whatever you find," he said, "remember this: the market reveals, it does not forgive. It shows what you most fear or most desire, and it asks if you are willing to pay for it."
Her stomach tightened. "I… I don't know if I am."
"You will," he said. "Soon enough."
With a trembling breath, she stepped forward. The door closed behind them with the softest click, leaving only the hum of the market and the faint smell of roses and wax. She did not look back.
Every instinct screamed to run. But every ache inside her whispered to stay.
Because the market had already chosen her.