The five wraiths did not delay. One breath, they were pale shapes in the air, the next, they had shrunk and hardened into children's marbles, glossy and harmless at a glance.

They clicked together once, then scattered across the road and rolled away in different directions, hunting a way to reach Ledgegrove Bazaar as fast as they could.

Fay watched them go and felt the hair at her nape lift. Mimicry that quick meant they understood more than they admitted.

She seized Good Chip by the sleeve and pulled him back to their pavilion.

"We must change," she said.

Good Chip blinked at her. The robe he wore was clean and too bright in a place that fed on grime.

The jade white of Fay's skin was worse. It made her look like something carved and set on a shelf.

Fay was not a boastful lady. Yet Radeon had said she had beauty, said it plain. If she was worth looking at, then she was worth taking. So she hid it.

Looking at her junior's robe, an idea struck. Fay dug out a small pot of tan pigment and began smearing it over her arms, her throat, the curve of her cheek.

The paint smelled of clay and bitter herb. She worked fast, using qi to dry it before it could cake. Fay pushed the pot into his hands.

"You as well," she said, indicating his cheek.

Fay wiped Good Chip's cheeks with a paler wash she had mixed for him, lightening what the sun tan he carried.

The white robe stayed. The whole lie was meant to be read in one glance.

If someone looked at them from the street, they would see a young master in clean cloth and a maid with a rough face and rougher skin.

They would see a girl who should not be coveted. They would see a boy who could afford to be careless.

Good Chip cleared his throat. Doubt sat on his face.

"Sister Fay. Please. Tell me this is necessary."

Fay nodded. The paint had dried enough to pull at her mouth, making her want to keep her words short.

"It is best if we look like this," she said. "I move in the dark. You will attract attention. Master has placed his trust in us. We will not fail him."

Hearing such stakes and risks, Good Chip nodded, reluctant.

A carriage had appeared without fuss, called by hands Fay never saw. The marbles must have done it. She did not ask how.

They climbed in. The ride was quiet except for the wheels.

Radeon did not come with them. He stayed at a distance, practicing the feel of his new power while ghost workers moved to rebuild his collapsed pavilion.

Half the morning later, the carriage let them down at the edge of Ledgegrove Bazaar. The first breath there was wrong.

Cairnlight Barterhold had air that tasted like clean water. Ledgegrove's air was sweet, thick, like syrup warmed in a pot.

It clung inside Fay's nose. It slid down her throat. The scent carried fruit and smoke and something floral.

Good Chip took a deep breath. His eyelids lowered. His shoulders loosened.

"You sensed something?" Fay asked.

"My head," he whispered. "It's... gone soft on me."

Fay kept her breathing shallow. She did not trust softness. She did not trust anything that made a person stop sharpening themselves.

A small chime rang in her thoughts. The system tab flared open like a lantern.

[Messaging] (1)

Fay and Good Chip both saw it. The words were brief.

[Calyx: Take care of yourselves. Radeon tasked us a mission of our own. We will see each other in half a day.]

Good Chip closed it with a blink and his attention slid away at once, drifting toward the nearest stall.

Fay caught him before he could wander. Two fingers hooked into his sleeve, firm as a collar.

"Then let us return to our task," she said. "We cannot afford distractions."

The bazaar spread along the mountain ledge in a crooked line of cloth awnings and wooden tables.

Lanterns hung even in daylight. People moved in slow waves, smiling too much, laughing too late, touching each other's hands as if they needed to remember skin existed. A few stared at nothing at all.

Fay spotted a stall with rice cakes stacked like small pale bricks. Steam drifted up.

It smelled harmless. It smelled like home to anyone who had ever been hungry.

She rummaged in her purse and found ten copper coins.

"Two," she said.

The seller's grin was wide and empty. He handed them over with hands that trembled, not from fear but from anticipation.

Fay gave one cake to Good Chip. They ate. The taste was bland. Rice, a little salt, nothing more. It should have been forgettable.

Instead, Fay's mouth felt as if it had awakened. A thin ache bloomed under her tongue, a wanting that did not belong to simple food.

She swallowed and found herself thinking of the next bite she did not have.

Good Chip finished his cake too quickly. His eyes flicked back to the stack.

They went stall by stall, pretending to browse. Candied fruits that glistened like gems. Powders in tiny jars that were never labeled.

Pipes carved with snakes and vines. Bundles of herbs tied with red string.

Each time Fay passed a stall, the same hunger rose. It did not matter what the item was.

The hunger wanted the act of taking, the act of consuming. It wanted more.

Good Chip rubbed his stomach as if that might quiet it.

"I am still hungry," he said quietly. "May we eat a little more?"

"So am I," Fay said, leaving unspoken that her hunger felt artificial.

Her immature intuition, that half formed sense cultivated by training and luck, whispered that something was wrong.

Yet the air kept stroking her mind into softness. The sweet scent kept telling her there was no danger here, only comfort, only pleasure, only more.

Three men drifted behind them. Not close enough to be obvious. Not far enough to be coincidence.

On the other side, Calyx's voice came through first, clipped and bored.

"These fields..." He drew a careful breath. "Do you catch that? Most of it is a flesh relaxing perfume. Hallucinogens in the air."

"Is Master Radeon interested in this?" Ewan asked, curiosity getting the better of him.

"Perhaps," Maeron replied. "He may know an alchemical use that escapes the rest of us."

"Would we not draw more resources if the humans stay addled?" Oisin let out a low, mirthless chuckle. "Fewer blades find their mark when a man can't keep his feet beneath him."

For them, it did not matter if a man was sober or staggering. If a person ruined their own clarity with sweet smoke, that was their fault.

Their cultivation had failed. Their pain was a lesson.

"We've got a lean fellow there. Shifty." Calyx's voice stayed low, controlled. "Keep to his shadow. We'll have this done quickly... and then we go home."

Calyx would serve as the information sorter this time. He began to sift through the images from Oisin, Elsin, Maeron, and Ewan.

Small rooms. Smoke in colors that did not belong to herbs. Faces stretched too wide in elation.

Laughter that turned to sobbing without warning. Men and women muttering to themselves, as if speaking to lovers who were not there.

Then the impression of a door. A stair. An alchemic laboratory, large enough to feed a city's appetite.

Tables stained with old spills. Jars lined in rows. Mortars and scales. A furnace that never seemed to cool.

Maeron's interest sharpened. He was scanning fast, yet his curiosity kept tugging his attention sideways, wanting to learn the man's method.

The alchemist, a man with stained fingers and a smile like a cut, gathered ten people in front of him.

They were giggling, swaying, leaning into each other as if gravity was a joke.

He gave the first man on the left a pill. For a heartbeat, the man looked almost pleased.

Then the giggling broke. It snapped into crying, sudden and ugly, like children in pain.

Blood burst from a man's nose, then from his eyes, then from his mouth. It ran from his ears.

It poured from places that should not bleed. He fell, and his body hit the floor with a sound like a sack of wet grain.

Another man was handed a mixture of herbs and told to smoke. He obeyed like a devout worshipper.

He drew the smoke in deep, and his face slackened.

He sagged to the floor, not dead, only emptied, as if the blood and the corpse beside him were a bed and blanket fit for a king.

The alchemist turned to his assistant.

"Success!" the alchemist said, smiling too wide "Eyes here, my dears. Keep this one under watch awhile."

Maeron watched it all. He wanted to see how the alchemist measured and mixed.

He wanted to know what made a man cry blood and die and what made another melt into the floor like wax.

"This would surely count as initiative," Maeron murmured to himself.

Then the system flared across his sight, red and sharp as fresh wounds.

[You have failed your task.]

[Task: Make sure Fay and Good Chip return safely.]

[500 Contribution Points have been reduced to your account.]

For a heartbeat he did not understand. Yet the notice sat there, undeniable, and the cost had already been taken.

Maeron's eyes widened. The marble that was his body clicked once against the stone. He rolled hard and fast, abandoning the laboratory.

He needed Calyx. Now. He needed to know what had happened to the two they had left in the bazaar.

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