The Bazaars Tribunal Tango

The air in the Ebon Bazaar weighed on Lucien Blackmoore's lungs like soaked ash. It didn't smell like fire anymore, not really. Paper, sweat, old blood, and a worse thing nobody named but everyone smelled. 

A glyph flickered at the corner of his vision—sharp, deliberate.

LEDGER UPDATE:TASK: Intercept Vara Orin — informant, trust-sensitive.LOCATION: Verified.OBSTACLE: Veil proxies closing. Two known, four ghost-pings.COLLECTIONS: Cal Miret 1 cycle overdue.WARNING: Cassian sigils detected within 600 meters.

He muttered under his breath, "Of course they are."

The sky wasn't a sky, just a cracked glass pane stretched far above, fractured where gray light leaked in like tired breath fogging up the whole rotten place. This wasn't Valthara Prime anymore. This was the other side of the thread—a realm wedged between truths, a pocket of the immortal underworld known as the Ebon Bazaar.

But Lucien thought The Crawl fit better. Because that's exactly what it did—it crawled through time, through memory, through you if you let it. This realm didn't move forward. It spiraled.

The crossing always left a trace. His coat clung damp to his frame, seams chilled with realmshift residue. The stone under his boots pulsed faintly, like it recognized him. Or remembered what he'd traded.

A nearby vendor hawking parasite-inked relics glanced up, stared too long, then suddenly remembered his hands needed to stay busy. A pair of cloaked syndicate lookouts faded deeper into the crowd.

Lucien didn't slow.

He moved like a man too stubborn to bleed. Like the thugs on his trail weren't six steps behind, teeth bared beneath borrowed faces. He wasn't here to lose them. He was here to bait them.

The Ledger pulsed again, this time under the skin—its presence like a second spine stitched to his ribs.

DECOY ACTIVE: False trail cast at Undergleam Gate 3B.EST. CONFUSION WINDOW: 90 seconds.THREAT DISTANCE: Closing.SUGGESTED OPTIONS: Engage / Evade / Veil-step exit. Contracted souls in proximity: 2. Mark stability: 68%.

Lucien glanced sideways at a cracked mirror nailed to a brick post. His reflection flickered—twinned for a second with an older version of himself, eyes bloodshot, jaw tighter, Ledger scar etched deeper into the skin. He blinked. Gone.

He turned into an alley twisted between two rotting archways, ducked through the shadow of a collapsed altar to gods long starved of offerings, and slid behind the back curtain of a weaver's stall. The weaver—a hunched woman whose eyes had been replaced by thread—opened her mouth, but Lucien dropped a silver chit onto the floorboards. Her jaw clicked shut.

Another alley opened behind the shop, quieter, cut from stone that still hummed with half-spoken sigils. Vara would be close now.

He emerged into a half-collapsed atrium ringed by ash-burned columns and whispers that sounded almost like prayers if you weren't listening too hard. The structure overhead creaked, but didn't collapse. Like everything here, it held together by spite.

She stood at the center. Cloak wrapped tight. Shoulders squared. Her gaze met his immediately—flat, sharp, already disappointed.

"You're late," Vara said. Her voice didn't need volume. It carried like a blade left in the sun.

Lucien grinned, tired and unrepentant. "Only if you're still counting in mortal minutes."

"I count in trust," she replied. "And you're bankrupt."

He sighed, the grin staying but softening. "Well, good news. I'm in the business of buying time."

She didn't smile. Didn't move. Just kept watching him with that quiet, exhausted fury that had earned her both scars and survival.

"You bring it?" she asked.

Lucien reached inside his coat. Pulled out the glass jar—the soul he'd lifted earlier, still pulsing dimly like a breath that didn't belong in any body anymore.

Her hand hovered midair. Didn't take it yet.

"I tracked this thing for two nights across four city blocks," he said. "You wouldn't believe the parasite it was trapped inside. Had to cut a deal with a mural."

"A mural?" Her eyes narrowed.

Lucien shrugged. "Living graffiti. Screams when you touch it."

She finally took the jar, but her fingers trembled slightly. "You were followed."

"I know. Decoy's active. Veil-jammed their trace tags at the gate." He stepped closer. "But it won't hold. I need the name."

Vara's jaw twitched. "You don't get to ask favors when you're the reason my sister's missing."

His grin dropped. "That's not how it happened."

"You handed her the contract," she said. "You brought her into this."

Lucien's voice lowered, steel beneath velvet. "I gave her a way out. One she took of her own will."

"She trusted you."

A throb hit his ribs like a punch. The Ledger jolted.

WARNING: Emotional leverage compromising asset reliability.SECONDARY OUTCOME: Consider soul-binding or extraction.SUGGESTION: Exploit known trust bond for route info.DANGER: Cassian influence confirmed in market vault.INFORMANT VARA ORIN: Loyalty degrading. Confidence rating: 54% and falling.

Lucien gritted his teeth. "You're right. She did trust me. And I failed her. But I'm still trying to get her back. I need that route, Vara. Or we both vanish into smoke."

Silence. Then: "I don't trust you."

"Good," Lucien said. "Only fools trust brokers."

Her eyes searched his. Then, from her sleeve, she drew a thin scroll bound in thread so black it swallowed the light. She passed it to him.

The instant the parchment hit his palm, it burned. Not heat. Memory. Familiar, wrong.

Cassian's cipher.

Written in thread, barely visible—but present.

Lucien didn't curse. Not aloud.

The Ledger flashed it's own analysis.

ENCRYPTED CIPHER DETECTED: CASSIAN DRAYCE.TRANSLATION: I break what binds.EFFECT: Corruption. Trace sigil left on Ledger shell.PURGING ATTEMPT: Failed.BOND DAMAGE: VARA ORIN. TRUST INDEX: CRITICAL.

Lucien's throat tightened. A sour panic crawled up his spine. Cassian hadn't just found them—he'd primed the meeting.

Footsteps scraped stone behind them. Low. Deliberate. Measured like a clock counting down.

"Too late," Lucien muttered.

The Veil thugs had arrived.

Six. Two with Obsidian Gate markings. The other four wore no colors, just glamor-glass masks and debt-oaths stitched into their skin. Their movements were smooth—too smooth. Not mercenaries. Puppets.

Lucien turned to Vara, shoulder tense.

"When I tell you to run, you run. Don't look back."

"Don't you dare—"

But he was already moving.

Left hand snapped to his belt, scattering a pouch of illusion dust in an arc wide as a grin. Light fractured—then reformed.

Three copies of Lucien bolted in different directions, each mimicking his stride, his coat, even the faint hum of the Ledger.

The thugs hesitated. Split.

Lucien didn't waste the beat. He grabbed Vara's wrist, yanked her behind the pillar.

"I hate you," she hissed.

"Later," he grunted.

One of the thugs lunged through the veil-dust, blade crackling red. Lucien ducked low, twisted up under the swing, and drove his elbow into the attacker's throat. The man dropped, choking.

Another thug came from behind. Lucien spun, drew the Ledger with one hand and slammed its spine into the side of the mask.

Ink hissed.

SOUL MARK INITIATED.NAME: Corvan Jett.STATUS: Deceased.BOND FRAGMENT: Collected.TRIBUTE ROUTE: Direct transfer. Veil Registry updated.

Vara stared, stunned for just a moment—then ducked as a bolt of fire cracked the wall above her head.

Lucien grabbed her hand again, dragging her toward the atrium's cracked stairwell. The entire structure groaned beneath them, but it held.

"I said don't look back!" he snapped.

She looked anyway.

They burst through a twisted archway, light bleeding in at the seams—the shimmer of a veil-rip. A portal. Barely stabilized.

Lucien shoved her through.

He followed.

The transition burned. Not pain. Just wrongness. Like your soul tried to step through too late and snapped back before catching up.

They landed hard. Both of them hit the ground in Valthara Prime. The stink of real rain. Drone buzz. Gunmetal neon.

Lucien stood first, helped Vara up.

She slapped his hand away.

"You used me," she spat.

His grin didn't return. "I needed you alive."

"You don't even see it, do you?" Her voice cracked. "You're chasing him through fire, and the only thing you're burning is what's left of us."

The Ledger pulsed. Not a system alert.

An echo.

INFORMANT BOND RUPTURED.VARA ORIN — STATUS: UNSTABLE.LEDGER NOTE: "Her hope stung."

Lucien looked away. "I'll find your sister," he said. "That's not a lie."

She walked.

Didn't say goodbye.

Didn't say anything.

Lucien stood in the alley for a long breath, letting the burn of the veilshift settle in his bones. Letting the guilt soak into his coat.

A glyph blinked on the Ledger's edge.

SYSTEM UPDATE:MARKET NODE DESTABILIZED — District 12 Vault Breach.CAUSE: Cassian proxy infection.COLLATERAL: 31 corrupted contracts.LOCAL BROKER STATUS: Fragmented. Safehouses collapsing.

He rubbed a hand over his jaw.

"Cassian's chaos is my mess," he said.

The Ledger responded.

SYSTEM MESSAGE: "You're complicit. Fix your flaws."

Lucien Blackmoore stepped from the alley into the gutterlight. His coat was soaked. His eyes were sharp.

He still held the Ledger.

And the board wasn't finished being played.