A few hours earlier, Fay and Good Chip were on a spree.

They ate like the day would end if they stopped. Skewers of meat slick with sauce. Steamed buns that left their fingers shiny. Cakes that crumbled sweet grit between the teeth.

Fay's belt pinched and Good Chip's belly pushed against his robe like a stubborn gourd.

"Sister Fay, let's eat more," Good Chip demanded, eyes bright and unfocused.

Fay swallowed and tasted salt and smoke and something cloying that refused to fade. Something was wrong.

Yet when she tried to name it, her thoughts slid off the idea. She forced herself to think of Master Radeon instead.

Of what would displease him. Of what would earn punishment, and what would earn trust.

Good Chip looked unharmed. Just sauce smeared across his mouth from the earlier barbecue, his cheeks flushed with greedy joy.

The sight made Fay's worry feel like overthinking, a tight little knot she could untie if she only relaxed.

'Maybe I'm just thinking too much on it,' she told herself.

She pointed at a stall where caramel apples glowed under the bright sun, amber and glossy as polished stone.

"How about we slow down," she said. "Fruits for now."

She held up her notes as if paper could anchor her. Ink lines. Stall names. Faces.

A few odd patterns she had scribbled down, still trying to be diligent even while her mouth kept wanting more.

Good Chip glanced at the notes, then scratched his head, baffled.

"Great work, Sister Fay," he said, then frowned. "Why was I even tasked to come here, just to eat?"

"That's not true," Fay said. "Didn't you help by looking like a profligate young master? It makes our identity solid."

Good Chip grinned, pleased with himself, and that grin should have reassured Fay. It did.

Still, Fay counted out twenty copper coins and passed them to the stall owner. The apples were heavy in her hands, sticky through the paper wrap.

She bit in and the caramel cracked with a sharp snap. Sweet flooded her mouth. Too sweet. It made her tongue ache for another bite before she had finished the first.

As they munched, three men drifted toward them. Their heads flicked left and right in little jerks, as if they were listening to music only they could hear.

Their clothes were unclean. Their skin looked waxy. One kept rubbing his fingers together like he was always counting something invisible.

The Espionage Manual had warned her about men like this. Not the exact look, but the feel. The twitch. The hunger in the eyes. The way they approached like a net closing.

Fay's spine stiffened. She kept her face neutral.

"Do you want to know what Ledgegrove Bazaar sells best?" the man in the middle asked.

His teeth were rotten, black at the edges. When he smiled, the smell reached Fay before the words did.

Fay did not step back. She did not make a scene.

"What is that?" she asked.

The man's hands shook as he drew out a small pouch. The two beside him leaned in at once, licking their lips like dogs smelling meat.

Whatever was inside made them eager in a way that was not hunger for food.

"This," the middle man said. He raised his hands as if performing for a crowd. "This is what we use to cultivate. We call it..."

He paused, savoring the moment, then said the name with a flourish.

"Vision Crystals."

Fay felt the word settle into her mind like a pebble in mud. Divination. Her chest tightened.

She had wanted to study it. She had wanted to take initiative, to bring Master Radeon something useful, something rare.

Skepticism rose first. She was not a child anymore. She was not naive enough to fall for fanfare and smiles.

Yet even as she held the doubt, the sweet air of the bazaar curled around it.

The caramel on her tongue seemed to whisper that this was reasonable, that this was fortunate, that this was meant for her.

"What does it do then?" she asked. "Does it help divinizing?"

The three men shifted their feet, subtle, then not subtle at all. Their shoes scraped the dirt in a pattern that felt rehearsed.

Their shoulders angled. Their hands moved like they were marking positions. A signal. A set.

Then they began to act, theatrical as street performers.

"It gives you the vision of the future," said the first man, wide eyed.

"It gives you the best path to take in the present," the middle chimed, voice thick with promise.

"It also lets you enter an epiphany about what was missed in the past," the last man added, smiling too hard.

Fay felt something wrong in her gut, but her mind began to accept their words.

Good Chip did not even hesitate. His eyes lit up like lanterns.

"I'll go," he blurted. "How do we use this vision crystal. I want to use it now."

Fay's fingers tightened around her apple until caramel smeared her skin. She should have grabbed him. They should have turned them away. They should have run.

Instead, her feet stayed where they were. Her thoughts moved like they were wading through honey.

The three men shuffled their stance again, that same abnormal pattern, and the middle man pointed with a shaking finger.

"That huge building over there," he said, as if it were obvious. "Of course."

They indicated a pagoda that rose above the nearby stalls.

Its paint was clean. Its wood looked oiled. No grime. No scabs of dye.

Even the stones around it were swept clear, pristine enough to sing of reputation and money.

Good Chip started babbling about the future he might see. He sounded delighted.

Fay nodded once, silent, and followed, telling herself it was for investigation.

Her notes pressed against her hip, a hard reminder that she was here for a reason.

On the side of Calyx and the others, the notification rang clear across all five of their sight, red as fresh blood.

[You have failed your task.]

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

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

This was no illusion. The system did not bother to lie when it could simply take.

They had overestimated Fay and Good Chip. Worse, they had paid for the mistake.

The pain of the deduction was not physical, not exactly, but it still made them flinch.

A hollow pull in the core of what they were. A weight added to a ledger that did not forgive.

Points reduced. A debt owed. Owing money to the very employer they served.

Calyx's marble body clicked once against the stone, the smallest sound in a world that had just tilted.

His mind was not on the loss. Not yet. His mind was on the two living idiots they had left alone by the stalls.

Radeon would punish them if they did not find Fay and Good Chip. Calyx did not doubt it.

"Hold," Calyx said through the message-channel. "We stop this. We look for the children. Perhaps... Just perhaps... We can set it right yet."

The others fell in behind that certainty. Calyx had far more experience than any of them. He had survived curses that had ground at him for ages.

He had endured wars that had turned names into ash. If he said there was a path, then there was a path.

Oisin could not swallow it so easily.

"What if they're dead?" he asked, the words coming too honest. "And why would it exact so vast a deduction for an act that yields so paltry a reward? It makes no sense."

Maeron rolled close and bumped Oisin lightly, the nearest thing a marble could do to pat a shoulder.

"Sense is not the point," Maeron said. "You saw it yourself. A curse that clung to Calyx for thousands of years, wiped clean in a single day. Now put yourself in Master Radeon's place. Do you truly think he lacks the means to teach us wraiths new lessons as he pleases?"

Oisin's anger flared anyway.

"That's not an answer."

Ewan cut in before it could turn into a real fracture.

"It is only a feeling," he said. "Yet I suspect Master Radeon lived long before any of us. How long, I cannot say, none of us can. So, for now, we take his intent on faith."

Calyx did not thank him. He did not waste breath on comfort.

"Then let us move. At once."

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