Chapter 4: The Bone Market

The imp’s femur made a poor walking stick, but Callum kept it anyway.

It was too short, for one thing. Too slick near the knobbed end where black blood had dried in the grooves. The hollow middle had cracked during the fight, leaving a jagged seam that pinched his palm every time he leaned on it. It also smelled like burnt hair and old pennies, which did very little for his already fragile relationship with his stomach.

But it had killed something.

That made it his.

The ruined chapel crouched behind him beneath the blood-red sky, its broken bell tower jutting like a snapped finger from the hill. Wind moved through the dead grass in gray waves. Somewhere inside, beyond the splintered pews and the circle of melted candles, the imp’s corpse had already begun dissolving into ash and twitching strings of code-light. Arkenfall did not leave bodies alone for long. The world ate everything eventually.

Callum picked his way down the slope, ribs throbbing, one eye nearly swollen shut, his new loot wrapped in a strip torn from his shirt and tucked against his chest.

The drop looked like trash.

To anyone else, it probably was trash.

[Charred Imp Fang]
Common Crafting Material
Quality: Poor
Use: Alchemy reagent, minor fire-aspect component
Vendor Value: 2 copper splinters

That was what the System wanted him to see. That neat little box of disappointment had floated over the fang the first time he picked it up, like a customer service apology written by a god that hated him.

Then his Scavenger sense had crawled over the object like cold ants.

[Scavenger’s Appraisal — Hidden Residue Detected]
Charred Imp Fang contains trace imprint of failed skill ignition.
Residual Mechanic: Ember Spit (Incomplete)
Condition: Damaged / Dormant / Extractable under specific circumstances

Specific circumstances. The System had not elaborated. Of course it hadn’t. That would have been useful.

Still, Callum had stared at the second window until his grin split the dried blood on his lip.

In every game he had ever played, the worst classes were never truly the worst. They were either traps for idiots or keys for lunatics. Sometimes both. Developers loved hiding broken interactions behind pathetic tooltips. They loved making players suffer before handing them the crowbar to pry reality open.

Callum had built a career on finding those crowbars.

Then he’d lost that career. Then his life. Now he had a cracked System window, a bone club, and a monster tooth with a half-dead skill hiding inside it.

Progress.

The hill descended into a valley stitched with wagon ruts and trampled mud. Far ahead, light gathered under the red sky—not sunlight, not firelight, but a pale blue column that rose from the earth and stabbed toward the clouds. It pulsed in slow, steady beats. Each pulse tugged at something inside Callum’s chest, like a hook set behind his sternum.

A shrine.

He had seen the word earlier, floating at the edge of his vision when he’d crawled out from under the subway wreckage into this nightmare of a world.

[Region: Bleakmere Verge]
Nearest Respawn Shrine: 3.2 miles east
Warning: Shrine Access May Be Restricted By Local Authority

“May be restricted,” Callum muttered, limping through the ruts. “Love that. Very reassuring. Like ‘may contain poison’ or ‘minor chance of organ failure.’”

No one answered except the wind.

He missed noise. Real noise. Train brakes screaming. Keyboard switches clacking. His mother yelling from the kitchen that dinner was getting cold while he insisted he was in the middle of a tournament match. The electronic roar of a crowd when he baited a team into overcommitting and wiped them in twelve seconds.

Here, the world made different sounds.

Dry reeds hissed along the roadside. Something huge groaned far off in the fog, a low animal note that made the mud tremble. In the ditch, beetles with translucent shells crawled over a dead rabbit and clicked their mandibles in rhythmic little bursts.

Every sound made him tighten his grip on the femur.

The first person he saw in Arkenfall was hanging from a signpost.

Callum stopped so abruptly his injured knee almost buckled.

The body dangled at the fork where the wagon path met a wider road of black stones. It had been there long enough for the face to go waxy and tight, long enough for carrion birds to take the eyes, but not long enough for the System to dissolve it. A length of chain ran from the corpse’s neck to the signpost crossbeam. A wooden placard had been nailed to its chest.

NEWBORN THIEF.

PROPERTY OF NO GUILD.

NO REFUND.

Callum swallowed.

“Okay,” he said softly. “So the tutorial town is friendly.”

The corpse’s boots were missing. So was its belt, cloak, rings, and most of its fingers. Someone had cut away anything worth taking. Beneath the placard, a faint shimmer clung to the body like heat haze.

Callum’s vision prickled.

[Scavenger’s Appraisal]
Corpse: Human Newborn, Level 2
Loot State: Stripped
Remaining Value: Bone, sinew, memory residue
Warning: Claimed by local statute

His stomach twisted—not from disgust, exactly. He had seen bodies under the subway. He had been one.

This was different.

This was a message.

The blue shrine-light pulsed again beyond a low rise, closer now, painting the dead man’s skin the color of drowned glass.

Callum forced himself onward.

The settlement revealed itself piece by piece.

First came the walls: not timber palisades or stone ramparts, but stacked bones. Massive ribs, femurs thicker than tree trunks, skulls with eye sockets large enough to crawl through. They had been lashed together with iron bands and black rope, mortared with gray clay that smelled of ash. Smaller bones filled the gaps—human, animal, things too strange to name. The entire barricade curved around the shrine-light like a cupped hand holding a candle.

Then came the sound.

Voices. Hundreds of them. Hawkers shouting prices. Hammers clanging on metal. Animals squealing. Children laughing too sharply. Somewhere, someone screamed, and no one stopped shouting.

Then the smell rolled over him.

Smoke. Sweat. Rot. Spiced meat. Wet leather. Boiled marrow. Cheap alcohol. Human fear.

A gate yawned in the bone wall beneath the skull of something with six horns. Two guards stood under it with spears and bored expressions. Their armor did not match. One wore a breastplate lacquered red and dented at the shoulder; the other had chainmail patched with squares of hide. Both had the same symbol burned into their leather armbands: a chalice overflowing with drops of gold.

Between them stood a narrow iron frame fitted with a cloudy crystal slab. A line of travelers shuffled toward it, each pressing a hand to the slab before passing through. The crystal flashed green for some, yellow for others. One man made it flash red. The guards immediately hit him in the stomach with the butt of a spear and dragged him aside while he wheezed.

Callum joined the line because every other option involved wilderness, monsters, and dying alone in a ditch.

The people ahead of him smelled only slightly better than he did. A woman in a patched cloak held a cage of featherless birds that whispered insults in three voices. A boy with antlers sprouting from his temples clutched a sack of turnips and kept glancing at Callum’s bone club. An old man dragged a sled piled with chitin plates, each one the size of a shield.

Above the gate, black letters had been painted across a stretched hide banner.

WELCOME TO MARROWICK. PAY WHAT YOU OWE. KEEP WHAT YOU CAN.

“Charming,” Callum said.

The antlered boy looked at him. “First time?”

Callum considered lying. His shirt was torn, his face was bruised, and he was armed with a dead imp’s leg. “What gave it away?”

The boy’s eyes flicked over him. “You’re not crying anymore.”

“Anymore?”

“Most Newborns cry when they reach the gate.” The boy shrugged. “Then they stop after the first tax.”

Callum stared at him. “Tax.”

The woman with the whispering birds snorted. “Don’t scare him, Renn. Let the knives find his ribs naturally.”

“I love community banter,” Callum said. “Really warms the soul.”

The line moved. The red-flashing man had been stripped of his boots and pack by a third guard who emerged from a booth. He protested once. The spear butt came down on his mouth. Teeth clicked against stone.

No one in line looked surprised.

Callum’s pulse slowed. Not because he was calm. Because some old, competitive part of him had risen from the wreckage and taken over his breathing.

Observe. Learn the rules. Find the exploit.

The woman ahead pressed her palm to the crystal slab.

Green light.

[Local Authority Scan]
Citizen Ledger Recognized
Gate Due: 1 marrow chit

She paid with a small white token, then dragged her bird cage inside.

The antlered boy pressed his hand.

Yellow.

[Local Authority Scan]
Unregistered Minor
Sponsorship Mark Detected: Tallowhands Butchery
Gate Due: Waived

The guard waved him through.

Then it was Callum’s turn.

Up close, the crystal slab was cloudy with fingerprints and older stains. Hairline cracks ran through its surface, glowing faintly with blue light. Callum could feel the System inside it—not alive, exactly, but attentive. Like a camera behind tinted glass.

“Hand,” said the red-armored guard.

“Buy me dinner first,” Callum said automatically.

The guard stared.

The other guard chuckled under his breath. “Newborn mouth.”

Callum placed his palm on the slab.

Cold shot through his bones.

The crystal flared white, then blue, then a sickly flicker between yellow and red. The System window cracked open in front of him, its edges stuttering.

[Local Authority Scan]
Status: Newborn
Origin: Unmapped
Class: Scavenger
Level: 1
Guild: None
Shrine Bond: None
Debt: Pending Assessment

The guards’ expressions changed.

Not much. Just enough.

The red-armored one smiled.

“Newborn,” he called toward the booth. “Fresh. No bond.”

A woman inside the booth leaned out. She was thin, gray-haired, and had a ledger tattooed directly across her scalp in tiny black columns. Her eyes sharpened on Callum like needles.

“Class?”

“Scavenger,” said the guard.

A few people nearby laughed.

The woman’s mouth twisted. “Poor little thing.” She dipped a quill into a pot of red ink. “Entry tax: five silver crescents or equivalent value. Newborn registration: three silver. Shrine preservation tithe: two silver. Unbonded risk deposit: ten silver. Total due: twenty silver crescents.”

Callum looked at the guard. “Is that a lot?”

The guard’s smile widened. “For you? Yes.”

“I have two copper splinters’ worth of imp tooth and a femur with sentimental value.”

“Then you have debt.” The ledger woman wrote something. “Debt may be settled through labor contract, guild sponsorship, asset seizure, or indenture auction.”

The words landed one by one like stones.

Callum kept his face loose. “Indenture auction sounds illegal.”

“Lawful under Marrowick charter, Shrine Compact, and Bleakmere survival codes,” the woman said without looking up. “Newborns without payment remain provisional persons until bonded, bought, buried, or banned.”

“Provisional persons.” Callum nodded slowly. “That’s cute. Did a villain committee workshop that?”

The red-armored guard stepped closer. He smelled of onions and steel oil. “You can joke in the pens if your buyer likes noise.”

Behind Callum, the line had gone quiet in the hungry way crowds went quiet near accidents.

Callum’s mind raced.

Twenty silver. No context, but by everyone’s reactions, impossible. The gate was a funnel. Newborns reached the only safe place for miles and got converted into debt. Classic predatory spawn-camp economy. Whoever controlled the shrine controlled life, death, respawns, labor, and desperation.

He shifted his weight. Pain lanced through his ribs.

The guard noticed. His eyes dropped to the bundle tucked against Callum’s chest. “What’s that?”

“Emotional support garbage.”

“Open it.”

Callum’s fingers tightened around the cloth.

The guard raised his spear.

Callum breathed out, unwrapped the fang, and held it up between two fingers.

The ledger woman squinted. “Imp fang. Poor grade.”

“Two copper,” said the second guard.

“Two copper,” she agreed. “Applied to debt. Remaining balance—”

Callum pulled the fang back before she could gesture for it. “Actually, I was planning to sell it inside.”

The red-armored guard laughed. “You don’t get inside until you pay.”

“Then how do I sell it?”

“You don’t.”

“Efficient.”

The guard reached for the fang.

Callum let his vision soften, focusing not on the item’s obvious value but on the hidden shimmer beneath it. The faint ember in the root. The incomplete mechanic curled like a sleeping parasite.

His Scavenger window pulsed.

[Scavenger’s Appraisal]
Hidden Residue concealed from standard valuation.
Potential leverage: Unknown to local authority scan.

Unknown.

That word was a blade.

Callum closed his hand around the fang before the guard could take it. “Before you rob me, quick question. Is there an alchemist inside who buys fire-aspect components with residue?”

The ledger woman’s quill stopped.

The second guard’s chuckle died.

The red-armored guard narrowed his eyes. “Residue?”

“Trace ignition. Dormant. Probably useless unless someone knows how to extract it.” Callum shrugged with as much nonchalance as a bruised, starving man could manage. “But hey, I’m a Scavenger. What do I know?”

The ledger woman leaned farther out of the booth. “Show me.”

“Sure. Waive the entry tax and point me at a buyer.”

The red-armored guard barked a laugh and swung the spear butt toward Callum’s gut.

Callum expected it. Not fully. His body was too slow, too battered. But he twisted just enough that the blow glanced off his hip instead of folding him in half. Pain flashed white. He staggered, caught himself on the femur, and smiled through his teeth.

“Counteroffer,” he wheezed. “Don’t do that.”

The guard lifted the spear again.

“Harl,” said the ledger woman.

The guard paused.

Her eyes remained fixed on Callum’s fist. Greed had stripped the boredom off her face. “Residue components are guild-taxable. If the boy is lying, put him in the pens. If he isn’t, and you break the item, Captain Vey will tan your hide and sell it back to you as armor.”

Harl’s jaw flexed.

Callum tucked away the name. Captain Vey. Someone above gate guards. Someone connected to taxes on rare materials.

“Temporary market pass,” the ledger woman said. “One hour. Escort mark.”

She pressed her thumb to the page. Red ink rose from the ledger like smoke and snapped across the air, striking Callum’s wrist.

Heat burned into his skin.

[Temporary Market Pass Acquired]
Duration: 01:00:00
Restrictions: Cannot access shrine chamber, guild quarter, inner wells, armory, livestock ring, debtor pens.
Debt Status: Suspended
Warning: Leaving designated market lanes before debt settlement will trigger enforcement.

A red ring appeared around his wrist, glowing under the grime.

Callum stared at it. “I’m starting to think the hospitality industry took a weird turn here.”

Harl shoved him through the gate.

Marrowick swallowed him whole.

Inside the bone walls, the settlement was less a town than a wound that had learned commerce. Stalls clustered around muddy lanes, patched awnings sagging under soot and rainwater. Lanterns made from skulls swung on chains, their eye sockets glowing with bottled blue flame. Buildings leaned against one another in crooked rows, built from scavenged planks, monster shell, stone blocks stolen from older ruins, and bones—always bones.

The shrine dominated everything.

It stood at the center of Marrowick on a raised platform of black marble, surrounded by iron fences and armed guards. A crystal obelisk rose from a basin of pale water, its surface carved with symbols that rearranged themselves whenever Callum tried to focus on them. Blue light pulsed from within it. Each pulse rolled through the market, and people glanced toward it with reflexive hunger, reverence, or resentment.

Near the shrine fence, a line of people waited with tokens in hand. Some were wounded. One man had no lower jaw, only a rag tied around his face. A woman held her own severed arm in a sack, calmly arguing with a clerk.

Above the shrine gate hung another sign.

RESPAWN BOND RATES UPDATED DAILY. NO CREDIT FOR NEWBORNS. NO REFUNDS FOR SOUL DAMAGE.

Callum slowed.

The blue pull in his chest intensified, warm and awful. Safety stood there behind iron bars. Not free. Not merciful. Just another service with a price tag.

Harl jabbed him between the shoulders. “Move. Market lane.”

“I was admiring the dystopia.”

“Admire while walking.”

The gate guard escorted him down a lane where merchants sold the remains of violence. Monster claws hung in bundles. Teeth rattled in jars. Strips of cured hide flapped from hooks like flags. A dwarf with crystal growths across his cheeks hacked apart a huge insect leg while shouting prices for tendon, shell, and venom sac. A blind woman sold bottled screams. A child no older than eight threaded beads made from knuckle bones and sang softly to herself.

Callum’s Scavenger senses went berserk.

Every stall shimmered with windows. Most were standard, flat and obvious.

[Bog-Rat Tail] Common Material. Vendor Value: 1 copper.

[Cracked Mirewolf Claw] Common Material. Vendor Value: 3 copper.

[Hollow Wight Rib] Uncommon Material. Necrotic Affinity. Vendor Value: 8 copper.

But beneath those labels, other things flickered. Fragments. Residues. Echoes. A cracked claw carried a ghost of Pounce, too degraded to use. A wight rib hummed with a sliver of Grave Chill, leaking slowly into the air. Half the market was sitting on hidden mechanics, and most people walked past them like they were sacks of flour.

Callum’s mouth went dry.

This is a junkyard full of source code.

Harl shoved him again. “Buyer’s row. Pick fast.”

“Do you get paid per shove?”

“I get paid extra if you run.”

“Then we both have dreams.”

They stopped before a stall roofed with stitched salamander skins. Heat rolled from it in shimmering waves. Glass jars lined the shelves, each filled with powders, organs, oils, or little flames that pressed against the glass like trapped insects. Behind the counter stood a man shaped like a question mark, all bent spine and long fingers. His beard had been braided around copper wires, and his left eye had been replaced with a rotating brass lens.

“Master Pell,” Harl said. “Newborn claims residue.”

The alchemist’s brass eye clicked, dilated, and fixed on Callum. “Newborns claim many things. Last week one claimed to be the Moon King. He was not even baronial.”

“Tragic,” Callum said. “Was the moon disappointed?”

Pell’s natural eye brightened. “Mouthy. Usually worth less. Show.”

Callum placed the charred imp fang on the counter but kept two fingers on it.

Pell produced a thin silver needle and tapped the fang. A spark jumped. His brass eye whirred faster.

“Poor fang,” he murmured. “Ash rot along root. Heat channel burned through. Two copper.”

Harl smirked.

Callum said nothing.

Pell tapped it again. The needle made a faint whining noise. The alchemist frowned. He bent closer, nostrils flaring. A bead of sweat slid down his temple, though the stall was already hot as an oven.

“Hmm.”

Callum leaned on the femur. “That a two-copper hmm or a please-don’t-let-the-guard-know hmm?”

Pell’s gaze snapped to him. “Where did you get this?”

“Killed an imp with poor life choices.”

“Level?”

“Mine or his?”

“Imp.”

“Three, I think.”

“Impossible.” Pell’s fingers hovered over the fang. “This residue pattern belongs to a flame gland miscast. Not common bite heat. Skill ignition. Incomplete, yes. Torn, yes. But present.”

Harl’s smile vanished.

Callum felt the market shift around him. No one had stopped moving, but attention had begun collecting like flies.

“What’s it worth?” Callum asked.

Pell’s face closed. “Three copper.”

Callum laughed.

It hurt his ribs, but it was worth it.

“You just went from impossible to three copper without blinking. Respect the hustle, Master Pell, but I’ve been poor before. Not stupid.”

The alchemist’s fingers drummed on the counter. “Residue extraction may fail.”

“Then it’s a gamble.”

“The vessel is damaged.”

“Then it’s a discounted gamble.”

“You are in debt to the gate.”

“And you are talking too loudly for a man hoping to steal the only interesting thing on this counter.”

Pell stared at him.

Harl muttered, “Careful.”

Callum ignored him. His old life rose around him for one strange heartbeat: negotiation tables after tournaments, sponsors trying to lowball a teenager because they thought fast hands meant slow brains, team managers smiling while sliding traps into contracts. Different world. Same predators. Worse hygiene.

“I don’t need top value,” Callum said. “I need enough to clear the gate debt and buy information. You need a residue component nobody else noticed before a guild tax collector hears the word extractable. So we can make this quick, or we can make it public.”

Pell’s brass eye contracted to a pinprick.

Harl shifted his spear. “The debt is twenty silver.”

The alchemist hissed through his teeth. “Twenty? For a Scavenger?”

“Ledger rates.”

“Robbery lacks artistry these days.” Pell looked at Callum with renewed irritation. “Five silver.”

Callum picked up the fang.

“Six,” Pell said.

Callum wrapped it in cloth.

“Seven and a minor burn salve.”

Callum turned.

“Twelve,” Pell snapped.

Callum paused.

Harl’s eyes narrowed. The watching merchants pretended not to watch.

“Twenty-five,” Callum said.

Pell made a strangled sound. “For a cracked imp tooth?”

“For a cracked imp tooth with a hidden skill residue you couldn’t see until I told you where to look.”

“You did not tell me where.”

“Exactly.”

For a moment, heat crackled between them. Then Pell barked a laugh so sharp it startled the jars of trapped flame.

“Horrible boy.” He reached beneath the counter and produced a leather pouch. “Fifteen silver. A salve. And one answer.”

“Twenty.”

“Fifteen and two answers.”

“Eighteen and three answers.”

“Sixteen and three answers, one of which I may lie about if it bores me.”

“Seventeen, three true answers, and the salve.”

Pell grinned, showing teeth stained orange. “Done. May your greed grow tumors.”

“May your ethics recover.”

The alchemist counted coins onto the counter: silver crescents thin as clipped fingernails, stamped with the shrine obelisk on one side and the overflowing chalice on the other. Then he added a small clay pot sealed with wax.

Callum handed over the fang, and for one stupid second felt like he had traded away a winning lottery ticket.

Then the coins touched his palm.

[Currency Acquired]
17 Silver Crescents

Not enough.

Three short of freedom, assuming the gate didn’t invent a breathing surcharge.

Harl held out his hand. “Debt payment.”

Callum stared at him. “I’m still short.”

“Then pay partial. Debt remains. Pass expires. Pens wait.”

Callum turned back to Pell. “Question one: how do I make three silver in under an hour without dying, being enslaved, or selling anything I’m attached to?”

Pell lifted the fang with tweezers, already distracted. “You are attached to your organs?”

“Increasingly.”

The alchemist clicked his tongue. “Monster scrap weighers near the west marrow pit. They buy mixed lots from hunters too lazy to sort. Prices bad, scales worse, but fast.”

Callum lifted the femur. “Do they buy bones?”

Harl snorted.

Pell’s brass eye rotated toward the femur. “Imp femur. Cracked. Blooded. Trace impact resonance.”

Callum blinked. “Trace what?”

“You beat something to death with it?”

“More or less.”

“Then maybe one silver to a fetish-carver if foolish. Less to scrap.” Pell’s mouth curved. “Unless it also hides a miracle?”

Callum looked down at the femur.

His Scavenger sense crawled.

[Broken Imp Femur]
Improvised Weapon
Durability: 3/11
Damage: Pathetic Blunt
Hidden Residue: Impact Pattern Imprint (Minor)
Potential Use: Unknown

He had been so focused on the fang he hadn’t looked properly at the bone.

Impact Pattern Imprint.

Potential unknown.

Callum’s grip tightened.

“Not for sale,” he said.

Harl rolled his eyes. “It’s a bone.”

“So are you, under all that charm.”

Pell cackled.

Callum scooped up the coins and salve. Harl immediately plucked fourteen silver from his palm before he could react.

“Hey.”

“Gate debt partial,” Harl said. “Ledger takes first claim on market earnings.”

Callum’s vision flashed.

[Debt Payment Applied]
Amount Paid: 14 Silver Crescents
Remaining Debt: 6 Silver Crescents
Temporary Market Pass Extended: +00:30:00
Warning: Outstanding balance must be cleared before expiration.

“You said twenty total,” Callum said.

“You had two copper credit.”

“That math is a crime scene.”

Harl smiled. “Welcome to Marrowick.”

Callum almost swung the femur into his teeth.

Almost.

Instead he looked at the timer glowing faintly at the edge of his vision.

Temporary Market Pass: 01:24:18

Six silver in eighty-four minutes.

No weapons worth selling. No friends. No map. No resurrection access. No leverage except a class everyone thought was garbage and a talent for seeing value in trash.

He had started worse matches with less.

“Question two,” Callum said to Pell. “Who controls the shrine?”

Pell’s grin thinned. “The Gilded Cup holds the charter. Merchant guild in name. Parasites in practice. They tax entry, deaths, respawns, wells, monster claims, and hope. Their captain here is Mara Vey. Do not owe her. Do not impress her. Do not bore her.”

“That’s three contradictory survival tips.”

“Correct.”

“Question three. Newborns—what happens to them?”

Pell’s fingers stopped moving.

For the first time, his theatrical sparkle dimmed. He glanced at Harl, then at the lane beyond.

“Depends who finds them. Guild recruiters offer contracts with teeth. Labor houses buy debt. Pit crews buy bodies with quick hands. Temples buy faith. Nobles buy curiosities. If a Newborn has a good class, the auction gets polite. If bad…” His gaze dropped briefly to Callum’s wrist mark. “They are sold by weight.”

The market noise pressed in around Callum.

A laugh from a nearby butcher. The wet chop of a cleaver. A woman bargaining over a sack of knuckles. The pulse of the shrine like a heartbeat that charged interest.

Callum thought of the corpse on the road. NEWBORN THIEF. PROPERTY OF NO GUILD.

He had not arrived in a town.

He had arrived in a machine.

And the machine had noticed him.

Harl escorted him away from Pell’s stall, less bored now, more watchful. Callum could feel the guard’s attention on the back of his neck. That was bad. The fang sale had saved him from immediate indenture, but it had also marked him as something other than a normal Scavenger.

In esports terms: he had just won a fight using an off-meta mechanic on stream.

The scouts would be clipping it already.

“West marrow pit?” Callum asked.

Harl jerked his chin. “Follow the stink.”

“You’ll have to be more specific.”

The guard led him deeper into the market.

They passed a row of recruitment boards where armored men and women lounged beneath painted guild crests. The Gilded Cup’s chalice gleamed from half the signs. Others displayed swords, eyes, wolves, towers, a black sun. Contracts had been nailed to boards with iron spikes.

SEEKING LEVEL 1-5 NEWBORNS. FOOD PROVIDED. DEATHS DEDUCTED FROM PAY.

HEALER CLASSES PRIORITY. FAMILY DEBTS ASSUMED AFTER THIRD REVIVAL.

JOIN THE BRIGHT LANCE. GLORY, GEAR, GUIDANCE. MINIMUM SERVICE: FIVE YEARS OR SEVEN DEATHS.

A thin young man in a bloodstained office coat stood on a crate, addressing a cluster of hollow-eyed newcomers. They looked like Callum felt: bruised, disoriented, dressed in scraps from another life. One wore half a business suit. Another still had a hospital bracelet. A girl with mascara streaked down her cheeks hugged a kitchen knife to her chest.

“Listen carefully,” the recruiter said, voice smooth as oiled rope. “Unbonded Newborns do not survive the Verge. You cannot access respawn without sponsorship. You cannot buy food without coin. You cannot earn coin without license. The Gilded Cup offers protection, training, and lawful integration. Sign now, and your entry debts vanish.”

“What’s the catch?” the girl with the knife asked.

The recruiter smiled warmly. “There is no catch. There is structure.”