Morning came softly in Corbin's tunnel, filtering through the cracks like a secret the world had forgotten.

  He stirred beneath a threadbare bnket, sat up slowly, and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. The faint ache of yesterday's chase still lingered in his muscles, but it was dulled by something warmer—satisfaction.

  Dragging himself to his little water stash, he cupped the cool liquid and spshed it against his face. It shocked him fully awake, as it always did, and left him blinking in the quiet dim.

  Still scratching at his scalp, he reached for a scrap of bread and a dented tin cup. He tossed in some brittle leaves from a small pouch—cheap tea, but a luxury in his world—and filled it with hot water from a kettle he had set to boil before sleeping.

  A little celebration. One he could afford now.

  He sat cross-legged, sipping slowly, chewing with care. His gaze wandered toward the small leather pouch resting against the wall, plump with stolen fortune.

  He exhaled through his nose, pulled out a pocket watch—half-broken, missing its cover—and flipped it open. The ticking was faint, but steady.

  It was time to pn.

  The problem wasn't the money itself. It was turning it into something usable. Stolen currency, especially minted bank tokens like these, wasn't safe to spend outright. Guilds tracked serial numbers. Merchants fgged anything that didn't come with a proper trail.

  So, bck market it was.

  Carefully. Slowly. One or two crests at a time. Sold for three-quarters of their worth, maybe less, exchange after exchange until the dirt wore off.

  Bothersome, yeah. But safer than getting caught with twenty-five marks of theft in your pocket.

  He drummed the rim of his cup with his fingers, staring into the steam.

  It wasn't the act of selling them that bothered him—

  It was the people.

  The bck market wasn't a pce. It was a world. A thousand doorways into something ancient and tangled, sprawling through the bones of Valune like a second city. Dug deep. Carved by old crime and darker intent.

  Chaotic. Lawless. Alive.

  Most of the lurkers weren't criminals, not officially. But none of them were what you'd call normal. Some wore masks. Others spoke in riddles or invented nguages. Some cimed to be warlocks. Some sold bottled memories like perfume.

  He winced at that one.

  Bottled memories, huh.

  The most popur drug in all three empires. Small vials. Strange green mist inside. Inhale it, and suddenly, you were back—six years old, riding on your father's shoulders, or lying beneath stars you haven't seen in years. Crystal-clear, totally lucid. A perfect dream of something real.

  Problem is, you don't want to leave.

  Most don't. They just keep going back. Inhale. Dream. Inhale again. Until they forget they even have a life to return to. Until their body gives out. Well, until they die.

  Good thing my childhood sucked ass.

  But even in all this chaos, sometimes things aligned. Briefly. Strangely. Like weeds growing in patterns, or dice falling in rows.

  That's how he came to know a few faces, a couple of names. Pces where it was safer to tread.

  He stuck to those. The ones where the gres were tired rather than hungry.

  He could almost smile.

  Because if you could look past that part—the rot, the strangeness—there was safety in chaos. In anonymity.

  It was even a tiny bit exciting.

  Down there, no one asked where your goods came from. As long as your mouth stayed shut and your bde stayed hidden, you were just another shadow. For all they knew, Corbin could be a noble's errand boy. A syndicate courier. A madman's son.

  And nobody sane picked fights with people like that.

  That fear? That uncertainty?

  That was armor.

  He finished his tea, letting the st curl of steam brush across his face before standing.He moved slow, deliberate. Pulled on a clean shirt. Tightened the straps of his boots.Then, from his pack, he pulled out his disguise.

  Not just bck. That was too easy. Too predictable. Corbin had learned that the trick wasn't vanishing—it was being ignored.

  So he wore a long coal-gray coat with uneven buttons and a high colr. The sleeves were patched with green leather, odd and creaky. His boots didn't match. One had metal tips, the other had painted vines curling up its side. And the mask? Not bnk anymore.

  It was a cracked white porcein face with exaggerated, droopy eyes and a twisted grin. Something between tragic and comical—like an actor who'd forgotten his lines.

  Goofy, sure. Corny, most likely. But in the Market Below, normal looked suspicious. Weird was invisible.

  He tucked everything into a side pouch and stood for a moment in the silence, feeling the stone under his feet. This hideout had kept him alive. But he knew better than to get attached.Climbing the worn stone steps, he rose back into the world above.

  The hatch opened with a quiet creak, and he slipped out into the alley, shutting it behind him with care. Light filtered in through grime-covered sts. The scent of oil and smoke hung in the air.He merged with the crowd like ink in water.

  A face among many. Forgettable by design.

  His destination y across the lower city: an old guard tower, mostly abandoned. Used to be a royal checkpoint. Now it was run by nobodies in borrowed armor. Hoodlums paid by ghosts.There were other entrances to the bck market. Some fshy. Some hidden. Some that required passwords or tokens.

  But not this one.

  This one just didn't care.

  As long as you didn't walk in wearing the royal crest, they let you through.

  And the royals?

  They'd stopped giving a shit about what lived under their streets a long time ago.

  They probably use it too.

  The city had begun to stir in full.

  Valune's lower districts moved with the people—iron gates creaked open, merchants tugged at stall covers, and the streets hummed with the low music of early footsteps. Not chaos, not beauty—just life. Steady, indifferent, and dense with stories.

  Corbin kept to the edges. Not hiding, just choosing quieter streets. He liked the rhythm there. Fewer eyes. Less noise.

  And more importantly, fewer chances of seeing a wanted poster.

  He checked for them regurly. Slipped gnces at alley walls, corners of notice boards, the odd tavern door. But nothing matched his face. No sketch of his wiry hair or thin jaw. No note about his coat, his gait, or his eyes.

  He'd stolen often. Moved often. And never got caught.

  At some point, the fear had just... dulled. Not vanished, but faded into instinct.

  Even so, his eyes stayed moving.

  The air was warmer here, coated by dust and light. Somewhere, someone was pying a flute.

  People passed him without a gnce. Men in travel cloaks. Women in baking aprons. Students with heavy bags, carrying tomes, potions, and who knows what.

  It was comforting, in a way. Just ordinary people doing their thing.

  Even the guards were more ceremonial here—stationed at wide intersections, leaning on spears that hadn't seen combat in years. They watched, but didn't interfere. Not unless they had to. Some of them were even straight-up reading or just idly talking to each other without a single care for the world around them.

  As Corbin moved further southeast, the city began to thin. Stone gave way to older cobble. Walls wore more moss. The alleys were narrower, with people from more humble backgrounds.He crossed a small square where pigeons gathered on a statue's head. A few kids darted between benches, not homeless like him—he knew just by looking. One of them was selling fvored ice, shouting prices like a merchant twice his age.

  Corbin offered a gnce. He didn't know what to think.

  They looked... fine. Like they belonged here.

  Not quite rich. Not starving. Just settled.

  He never felt that way.

  Nah, forget it. Just focus, idiot. You got a job to do.

  So he just walked on.

  Eventually, the tower came into view.

  Old. Crooked. Half-forgotten.

  It stood like a leftover piece from another age, wedged between two newer buildings. The top was intact—barely. Ivy climbed the stone like it had pns of its own.

  Two figures waited by the door. Not guards, not exactly. More like gatekeepers. One smoked something sharp-smelling. The other leaned on a polished cane that didn't match the rest of his patchwork coat.

  People said these two were paid to keep the pce clear of authority—anyone with badges, orders, or royal stamps.

  Corbin had heard rumors they didn't rely on sight alone. That the cane was ced with some weird mana contraptions.

  It was called Third-Eye or something.

  But it didn't really matter to him what they named it.

  If you walked up pnning to lie, cheat, or cause noise—they'd know. That was the only important bit of intel he needed.

  A piece of intel he never intended to put to test.

  Before stepping into the open, Corbin ducked into a nook beside a barrel of rainwater. Its surface was slick with city grime, but clear enough to catch his reflection. He looked at himself—rough hair, thin face, dark eyes—and then pulled the odd patchwork coat over his shoulders, slid the crooked grin mask into pce.

  The figure staring back at him looked like a street clown who had just failed an audition.

  He snorted.

  What a creep.

  Slinging his pouch over one shoulder, he stepped out, into the light.

  At first gnce, the two men could've passed for ordinary borers. Nothing special—just a couple of guys killing time before a shift. But anyone foolish enough to try arresting someone here wouldn't leave with all their teeth. Or their memory intact.

  Corbin wasn't one of those people.

  And so they didn't stop him.

  One even gave a nod. The other just watched.

  Corbin nodded back, kept his pace even, and stepped into the shadow of the tower.

  Cool air met him inside, thick with dust and damp stone. The noise of the city faded behind him, repced by a low hum—distant and hollow, like wind echoing through miles of empty space.

  He didn't pause. His feet found the spiral stairs by memory. Hidden neatly behind some old cargo.

  Downward.

  To the Market Below.