Every Pawn’s Just Another Bullet

The Undergleam clung to the city like a scab that refused to heal. Its alleys writhed with steam vents and feral data ghosts, the kind that hissed static when you passed too close. Lucien slipped through it without hurry, his boots silent against the grim-slick stone. This part of the undercity didn't blink unless paid, and even then, only sideways.

His coat hung open at the collar, and the sigils along his forearm pulsed soft and mean under the fabric, glowing faint like teeth beneath skin. The Ledger stirred, hot and cold flickers crawling through his nerves in a pattern he'd learned to trust more than instinct.

Contract load: seven active. Soul-boons unlocked: four. Patron: Valthamur. Mission: Secure Obsidian Veil trade-route codex. Interference probability: Cassian proxy—confirmed. Trap index: high. Loyalty index: seventy-two percent.

Lucien exhaled through his nose, slow and even. "This deal's a lock, darlin'," he murmured, a smile dragging up the corner of his mouth like a scar that learned to grin. "Just gotta find the ledger, dance past the blades, and vanish before the applause."

The Ledger fed him pulse maps, guard rotations, perimeter weaknesses like it was slipping a knife into his hand. Patrol routes appeared in his vision like burn marks—six guards, two elevated, one shifting trigger pattern that suggested someone smarter than the usual muscle.

He tucked into a side route where the shadows pooled thicker than blood, moving like he belonged to the dark and it owed him something. A flash of violet flickered through the grime-choked glass ahead. The sigils flared in response.

Tag tracked: Smuggler, rank two. Syndicate designation: "Thorne." Active soul-bind. Trajectory: Obsidian Veil vault perimeter.

"That's our rat," Lucien muttered, touching two fingers to his wrist. The sigils blinked once in reply.

The Obsidian Veil hideout had been a bank, once. Maybe a weapons depot. Now it was just a carcass dressed in false gods and graffiti. Synthetic vines coiled around busted pillars, blooming with light that pulsed with breathless menace. Spells—old ones—slumped along the eaves like drunks who hadn't found a gutter.

The front entrance was suicide. Lucien didn't even glance at it. He veered toward the wall crumbling into sewage runoff, where surveillance nodes blinked every seven seconds instead of five.

The Ledger pulsed harder, and its voice sliced through his focus.

Suggested tactic: bypass perimeter. Spectral weave authorized. Holo-cage trap signature active. Probability of Cassian cipher deployment: eighty-nine percent. Illusion displacement route calculated. Deploy now.

Lucien's hand moved without hesitation. He traced a sequence across his skin, and the Ledger hissed, channeling raw spellcode from Valthamur's bond through his nervous system. Light and ash swirled beside him, shaping into a walking mirage—his exact double, right down to the twitch of his shoulder when he breathed.

"You better be prettier than me," Lucien said, watching his twin stalk toward the trap. "They always chase the wrong ghost."

The fake Lucien stepped into view of the holo-cage perimeter. Guards turned like birds scenting blood, weapons half-raised, eyes already locking onto the illusion.

Lucien moved opposite, slipping along the wall's base where the runes had rusted into silence. Every step matched the Ledger's whispers.

Inside the vault, the ledger sat beneath a cracked resin seal, humming like a thing that dreamed in numbers. He crouched beside it, breath shallow, and cracked the case with a twist of his blade. The trade-route matrix blinked to life—lines and pulses, contracts and shipments, black-market tunnels mapped in shimmering ruin.

It was beautiful, in the same way a perfect lie was.

The Ledger buzzed with sudden heat.

Trap triggered. Holo-cage deployed. Deception exploited. Guard path rerouted. Soul trail: diverted. Destination: Zerethys data grid. Warning: unauthorized soul siphon.

Lucien's mouth flattened. "Zerethys. Of course." He ducked back behind a stack of polymer crates as light flared behind him, the trap snapping closed around the illusion.

"Cassian's playing sloppy chess," he muttered. "But sloppy can still bleed you out if you stop watching."

The illusion collapsed into static, and the guards shouted—garbled orders spilling from their comms. One fired. Another stumbled into the containment field. A third saw Lucien—or thought he did—and ran wide.

The Ledger burned bright beneath his sleeve.

Containment breach within ninety seconds. Suggest route: subduct sewer vent to tunnel B‑13. Estimated time to egress: one hundred thirty seconds. Surveillance drone overhead: blind spot imminent.

Lucien ran.

The stink of wet tech and rot choked his lungs as he ducked into the sewer tunnel, his boots slapping through ankle-deep waste. A hissing valve tried to close on him, but the sigils flared and shorted the mechanism. He was through before it even sparked.

Behind him, the guards shouted louder. Boots hit metal, but too slow. He'd already slipped into the part of Undergleam the syndicates avoided—the places that whispered your name back at you wrong.

The Ledger vibrated, its voice cool and even.

Counter-theft operation authorized. Informant: compromised. Cross-check: Thorne. Loyalty breach: confirmed. Data-sell pathway traced to Zerethys node 14-K. Soul-penalty pending.

Lucien slid to a stop beneath a vent shaft. "So Thorne was a leash, not a lock." He wiped sewer grime from his palm. "We'll gut him later. Focus on the prize."

He pulled himself out of the tunnel and into a half-dead market square. Tarps flapped like wounded birds overhead, slapping against steel poles and broken neon. Rain started to fall—oily, slow, indifferent.

A merchant spotted him. Half her face was hidden behind a veil of chainlink, the other half crinkled in recognition.

"Looking for a ghost, or running from one?"

Lucien flashed her a tired grin. "Little of both."

She nodded like she'd heard worse. "In the Undergleam, even ghosts charge interest."

He passed her stall, where soulglass shards hung from hooks like rotting fruit. His fingers brushed one, and the Ledger hissed.

Memory trace detected. Shard origin: Nightfang Arcology. Contract overlap: Rena Marrow. Risk level: minimal. Curiosity index: rising.

Lucien kept walking. The past could chase him another day.

The alley twisted again. Above, drones buzzed like hornets. Below, informants shifted in the dark. A child sprinted past him, eyes wide, clutching a loaf of synthbread. Lucien stepped aside, watching the shadows around her instead of the girl herself.

Cassian was here. Not physically, not yet. But his fingerprints smudged the gameboard.

The Ledger whispered colder now.

Deceptions bind you. Each lie traded deepens the tether. Cassian adapts. Zerethys watches. Valthamur's dominion threatened.

Lucien slipped into a back corridor and unrolled the trade ledger across a crate. Its glow pulsed against his jaw, lines of digital ink rewriting real-world power. These weren't just routes—they were arteries. Cut one, you bled a market. Sever enough, and you strangled an empire.

He tapped the data into the Ledger, syncing its glow with the map's pulse. Lines flared. Boons shifted.

New boon threshold unlocked: "Whispergate." Access granted. Codex updates pending. Soulpath stabilization achieved.

Lucien nodded once. "Good. Now show me the holes."

Red veins blinked where Zerethys had clawed in—nodes corrupted, contracts rerouted under forged names. His face darkened.

"Cassian's not just playing the board," he said, jaw tight. "He's poisoning the pieces."

The Ledger agreed.

Enemy patron influence expanding. Countermeasure required. Suggested action: Veilshade raid. Location: Node 14-K. Objective: recover rerouted soulprint contracts.

Lucien tucked the scroll away and stood in silence.

He thought about Tess, about her wavering trust. About the proxy he'd trapped in Veilshade. About every contact who'd flinched before the kill.

Trust wasn't just a coin you spent. It was a contract. And lately, too many had broken before he could sign.

The merchant's voice drifted back from a stall half a block behind.

"Got something that cuts both ways," she called. "Can't promise it won't bite."

Lucien turned just enough to catch the gleam of the blade she held up—jagged, old, alive with some faint whisper of curse.

He smiled.

"Nothing worth using ever plays nice."

The Ledger pulsed once more, a deep echo in his bones.

Statement: Every pawn is a bullet. Choose your chamber.

Lucien vanished into the dark again, the ledger pressed tight against his side and the city's breath on his neck. The next move already clawed at the edges of his mind. Veilshade waited, and Cassian's web grew thicker every hour.

But Lucien? He had scissors. And he still knew how to cut.