Dawn came slowly to District Seven, filtering through the narrow streets like ink spreading across paper. Shen Mo watched it from the window, his mind still turning over the night's revelations.
A debt. I'm a debt.
The thought should have been more disturbing. In the corporate world, he'd spent thirty years creating debts—leveraging them, collecting them, using them to destroy. Debt was a tool, nothing more. But to be debt? To exist only because someone else had been erased?
That was different. That was personal.
Behind him, Liu Yue stirred on the bed. She'd fallen asleep finally, her father's ledger still clutched to her chest, her face young and vulnerable in sleep. She looked like what she was: a girl who'd lost everything and didn't know if she'd survive the week.
Shen Mo felt something almost like sympathy. Then he filed it away and returned to planning.
The Shadow Auction. That was the next step. But he couldn't walk in blind—he needed information, resources, leverage. In the corporate world, you never entered a negotiation without knowing the other side's weaknesses. The same principle applied here.
He pulled on his robe and left Liu Yue to sleep.
---
The tannery was already active, workers hauling hides and stoking fires, the air thick with the smell of lime and labor. Shen Mo found Old Chen—the owner—supervising a vat of something foul-smelling and essential.
"Morning," Chen grunted. "Room comfortable?"
"Adequate. I need a favor."
Chen's expression shifted—wariness, calculation, the look of a man who'd learned that favors always cost something. "You already collected one when you handled that merchant. What more do you want?"
"Information. About the Shadow Auction."
The name landed like a stone in still water. Chen's face went blank, then carefully neutral. "Don't know what you're talking about."
"You're a terrible liar."
"I'm a terrible liar because I value my life." Chen glanced around, lowered his voice. "That place—you don't go there. You don't talk about it. You don't even think about it if you want to keep your name in one piece."
"I have to go there. People I care about are dying."
Chen studied him for a long moment. Then, slowly, he nodded. "There's a man. Operates out of the fish market, third stall from the east end. Sells dried squid, but that's not his real trade. Ask him about... about dried squid. He'll know what you mean."
"And if he doesn't want to talk?"
"Then you leave. Fast. And you never mention my name." Chen turned back to his vat. "That's all I can give you. Now go."
Shen Mo went.
---
The fish market was chaos.
Hundreds of stalls, thousands of people, the air thick with the smell of salt and scales and something less pleasant underneath. Shen Mo moved through the crowd, his senses extended, reading the threads that connected buyer to seller, merchant to customer, name to name. It was overwhelming—too many connections, too much weight pressing against his mind.
He found the third stall from the east end. A thin man with clever eyes and hands that moved too fast was arranging dried squid on a wooden table. He looked up as Shen Mo approached, smiled a smile that didn't reach his eyes.
"Squid?"
"Information," Shen Mo said quietly. "About the Auction."
The man's smile didn't change, but something behind his eyes went very still. "Don't know what you mean. Squid's all I sell."
"A mutual friend suggested I ask. Said you'd understand."
"Mutual friend. How mutual?"
"Mutual enough to send me here instead of somewhere else."
The man considered this. Then, with a movement too quick to follow, he grabbed Shen Mo's wrist and pressed something sharp against his palm. A sting, a flash of heat—then nothing.
Shen Mo looked down. His palm was unmarked, but he could feel something new there. A thread, thin and dark, connecting him to the squid seller.
"Now we're mutual," the man said. "That's a debt-thread. Small one. You owe me for the information I'm about to give. Pay it by not mentioning my name to anyone, ever. Understood?"
Shen Mo understood. He nodded.
The seller leaned close, his voice dropping to a whisper. "The Auction moves. Every night, different location. But there's always a marker—a lantern, painted red, hung where the entrance will be. Follow the lantern, you find the door. But once you're in, you're in. No leaving until the Auction's done. Understood?"
"Understood."
"And one more thing." The seller's eyes were very old, very tired. "Don't buy anything you can't afford to lose. Memories aren't like coin. Spend one, it's gone forever. You'll feel the absence for the rest of your life."
He released Shen Mo's wrist. The dark thread between them pulsed once, then faded—not gone, but waiting. A debt, recorded and acknowledged.
Shen Mo turned and walked away, the weight of new knowledge pressing against his mind.
---
Liu Yue was awake when he returned, her face pale but composed. She'd washed, combed her hair, and was studying her father's ledger with an intensity that reminded Shen Mo of himself.
"Find anything?" he asked.
"Maybe." She pointed to an entry near the back. "This name—Wen. My father met with him regularly, always at night, always without recording the meetings in his official books. I think... I think Wen might be the witness. The one whose name is on the seal."
Shen Mo pulled out the jade seal, studied it. The name carved there was worn, barely legible—but now that Liu Yue mentioned it, he could see the characters: Wen Chang. A name that meant nothing to him, but might mean everything.
"Where did they meet?"
"Here." She pointed to a location on a rough map she'd drawn. "An old warehouse near the river. Abandoned, according to my father's notes."
Shen Mo considered. The warehouse. The Shadow Auction. Two paths, both leading toward the same goal: the truth about Shen Feng, about the conspiracy, about the debt that had brought him to this world.
"We split up," he decided. "You go to the warehouse. See if there's anything left—records, evidence, anything that might tell us who Wen Chang was. I'll find the Auction and see what I can learn there."
Liu Yue's face tightened. "Alone?"
"You have your father's ledger. You have the seal. You have more right to be there than I do." He met her eyes. "Can you do this?"
She hesitated. Then, slowly, she nodded.
"I can do this."
---
They parted at the tannery door, Liu Yue heading toward the river, Shen Mo toward the city center. He didn't look back. Looking back was a luxury he couldn't afford.
---
The red lantern appeared just after sunset.
Shen Mo had been walking for hours, circling through districts, following instinct more than reason. Then, suddenly, there it was: a small lantern hung from an iron bracket on a nondescript building, its glass painted crimson, its flame burning with an unnatural steadiness.
He approached. The door beneath the lantern was ordinary wood, slightly weathered, utterly unremarkable. He pushed it open.
Inside, a staircase led down.
He descended.
The basement was larger than the building above could possibly contain. A trick of space, or magic, or something Shen Mo didn't understand yet. It was filled with people—dozens of them, masked and robed, moving between stalls that lined the walls. Each stall displayed something strange: glowing shards, writhing threads of light, black cinders that pulsed with heat.
Memories. Name threads. Debt cinders. The raw currency of this world, bought and sold like stocks and bonds.
Shen Mo moved through the crowd, observing. A woman sold her first kiss—the shard glowed soft pink, and she wept as she handed it over. A man bought a warrior's death-memory, his hands trembling as he accepted the black cinder. A merchant traded a name thread for a bag of silver, then vanished into the crowd before anyone could follow.
This is the market, Shen Mo thought. The real market. Everything else is just preparation for this.
He found a stall that dealt in information—a wizened figure behind a table covered in scrolls and ledgers. The figure's mask was featureless white, but its eyes burned with an inner light.
"I need to know about a name," Shen Mo said. "Shen Feng. Registrar. Erased twenty years ago."
The figure's eyes flickered. "That name costs."
"How much?"
"A memory. Your strongest memory. The one that defines you most."
Shen Mo considered. His strongest memory—what was it? The boardroom victories? The faces of ruined rivals? His mother's voice, already fading from the tithes he'd paid?
He chose one: the moment he'd realized he could destroy people with information. Age twenty-eight, his first major campaign, watching a CEO's life collapse because of documents Shen Mo had leaked. The thrill of it. The power. The absolute certainty that he'd found his purpose.
He pulled the memory from his mind—it came easily now, like breathing—and held it out. The figure took it, examined it, nodded.
"Acceptable."
It opened a ledger, ran a finger down a page. Stopped.
"Shen Feng. Registrar, Third Class. Assigned to Hall 47. Investigated irregularities in the Shadow Auction's operations. Filed a report. Was transferred the next day. Officially, he retired to the eastern provinces. Unofficially..." The figure looked up. "Unofficially, he never arrived. His name was removed from the ledgers three days after his transfer. No death recorded. No debt settled. Just... gone."
"Removed by whom?"
"That information costs more than you have."
Shen Mo reached into his robe, pulled out the blood-stained page. "What about this? A name erased, another written in its place. Who has that power?"
The figure's eyes widened—just slightly, but enough. "Where did you get that?"
"A dying registrar gave it to me. Just before he was killed."
The figure was silent for a long moment. Then it leaned forward, its voice dropping to a whisper.
"There are rumors. Of a faction within the Registrarate. People who believe that names aren't fixed—that they can be rewritten, reassigned, traded. They call themselves the Rewriters. And they have allies in places you wouldn't believe."
"The Archive?"
"The Archive is not an ally to anyone. The Archive is... the Archive." The figure sat back. "But the Rewriters have learned to use it. To hide their work in its vastness. To make their alterations look like natural decay."
Shen Mo's mind raced. A faction of Rewriters, operating within the Registrarate. Killing registrars who got too close. Erasing names. Writing new ones.
Writing him.
"The man I replaced—Shen Feng. Was he a Rewriter?"
"Unknown. But he was investigating them. That's why he died." The figure closed the ledger. "I've told you enough. More than enough. Leave now, and forget you saw me."
Shen Mo didn't move. "One more thing. The Shadow Auction—who runs it?"
A pause. Then: "Three. The Scribe, who writes the contracts. The Scale, who weighs the payments. The Knife, who enforces the deals. They are old, Shen Mo. Older than the Registrarate. Older than the empire, maybe. And they are very, very interested in names that appear from nowhere."
Shen Mo felt the weight of that. Interested in him. Watching him.
Observed, the Archive whispered in his memory. Always observed.
He turned and walked away, the figure's eyes burning into his back.
---
The night air was cold when he emerged, but Shen Mo barely noticed. His mind was full of Rewriters and Archives and names that could be traded like currency. He'd come to the Auction looking for answers, and he'd found them—but each answer only raised more questions.
He was halfway back to the tannery when the debt-thread pulsed.
The one the squid seller had created. It was warm now, urgent—a signal. Shen Mo followed it without thinking, his feet carrying him through streets he didn't recognize, toward a destination he couldn't name.
It led to an alley. Dark, narrow, stinking of refuse and something worse. At its end, a figure waited—the squid seller, his clever eyes now wild with fear.
"You came," he breathed. "Good. Good. I didn't think—but the thread held, and you came—"
"What happened?"
"Someone knows I talked to you. Someone important. They came to my stall, asked questions, left threats." He grabbed Shen Mo's arm. "You have to tell me—what did you find? What did you learn? I need to know how much danger I'm in."
Shen Mo hesitated. The man was scared, desperate—and desperate people were unpredictable. But he'd helped, and debts had to be paid.
"I learned about the Rewriters," he said quietly. "A faction inside the Registrarate. They're the ones killing registrars. They're the ones altering ledgers."
The seller's face went white. "Rewriters. I've heard rumors, but I thought—" He stopped. Looked past Shen Mo. His expression shifted from fear to something worse: recognition.
"Run," he whispered.
Shen Mo spun.
Three figures stood at the alley's entrance. Grey uniforms. Registrarate agents. And at their head, a woman he didn't recognize—cold-eyed, sharp-featured, her name blazing with golden threads that stretched up into the night.
"Probationary Scribe Shen Mo," she said. Her voice was calm, administrative, utterly without mercy. "You're under arrest for conspiracy to murder Registrar Holt. Come quietly, or don't. Either way, you're coming."
Behind him, the squid seller made a small sound and collapsed. Shen Mo didn't look—he could feel the death, the name flickering out, the debt-thread between them snapping like cut wire.
The woman smiled. It was not a pleasant expression.
"The Knife sends her regards," she said. "She's very interested in meeting you."
Shen Mo stood very still, his mind racing through options. Fight? Impossible—three agents, unknown capabilities, and this woman radiated power like heat from a forge. Run? Possible, but they'd find him again. The Archive's mark made sure of that.
That left only one option: go with them, learn what he could, and wait for an opportunity.
He raised his hands slowly. "I'll come quietly."
The woman's smile widened. "I know."
And everything went black.