I set the heavy black stone back on the wooden tray and let my eyes drift across the rest of the vendor's table.
Behind a mountain of dented copper teapots, cracked furnace valves, and rusted iron bolts, Soul Sight caught something strange. It wasn't a bright elemental flare like a monster core or a spirit herb. It was a cold, heavy, almost microscopic tremor, a pulse so dense and slow that it seemed to hum in the wood of the table itself, coming from somewhere deep inside a battered piece of scrap.
I shifted aside a handful of oxidized nails, flakes of rust coming off orange on my fingertips, and drew out an eight-inch triangular metal shard.
It looked like nothing. The surface was crusted in reddish-brown rust, jagged mineral scale, and old black grease, as if it had spent fifty years in a sewage pipe. To any merchant in District 3, it was the broken corner of a collapsed boiler.
I weighed it in my palm. It was far too heavy for its size. I opened Inspect.
[ITEM IDENTIFIED: ANCIENT STELLAR ALLOY SHARD (DAMAGED)]
Material Quality: Low-Grade Stellar Alloy (Star-Forged)
Status: Heavily Oxidized / Surface Corroded
Description: A fragment of forged stellar metal, originating from an ancient cosmic vessel or imperial armament. Dense and practically impervious to elemental decay beneath its outer crust. Can be restored through high-tier smelting or converted into Celestial Points.
Estimated System Value: 2,500 Celestial Points (Market Value: 50+ Gold Credits)
I stood there with my thumb on the rough, rust-crusted edge.
From an ancient cosmic vessel.
It had crossed the dark between worlds, once. It had fallen out of the sky, or been carried, and it had ended up buried under a collapsed mining rig on a backwater planet where nobody knew what it was. For fifty years, maybe five hundred, it had sat in the dirt, waiting for someone to look closely.
I knew a little about that. The thought was so strange and so private that I almost laughed out loud.
"See something you like, kid?" The vendor leaned over his counter with a toothy, yellowed grin. "Found that iron wedge buried under a collapsed mining rig three miles past the sector wall. Sturdy piece of scrap. Make a fine doorstop. Two silver."
"Two silver's steep for rust," I said, keeping my voice flat and a little bored. "Five coppers."
"Five?" He threw up a hand in a show of outrage. "Look at the weight on that thing! Eight, and she's yours."
I counted eight worn coppers onto the counter.
"Done," he chuckled, and swept them into a wooden bowl before I could change my mind.
I slid the shard into the inner pocket of my jacket, where it sat heavy against my ribs, and abruptly I felt a little sick.
Fifty gold, for eight coppers. Six thousand two hundred and fifty times what I'd paid. The man didn't know. He was a tired man with yellow teeth, selling junk from a wooden stall to feed whoever depended on him. I'd stood on the other side of a hundred stalls just like this one, being told what I could and couldn't afford by someone who knew exactly what they were looking at.
It's his table. It's his price, said the cold voice. He set it. You didn't lie.
It was true. It still sat in me like a stone in my boot.
I looked back at the table. My eye fell on a dented copper teapot, a little squat, with a cracked lid and a spout that listed to one side. "How much for that?"
The vendor blinked. "The teapot? Another silver, I guess."
I laid a silver on the counter without arguing. "I'll take it."
"You want... the teapot."
"I know someone who'd like it." I picked it up. It was lighter than it looked, the copper cool and a little greasy under my fingers. A man who stood over a steaming iron pot every morning of his life might have a use for a copper one with a crooked spout. "It's a good pot."
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The vendor stared at the silver, then at me, and something in his face shifted, just for a moment, from the grin to something I couldn't read. "Huh," he said. "Thanks, kid."
I sent the teapot into the dark pocket beside my dantian, next to a red ribbon and a stack of letters. It was a poor excuse for fairness, and I knew it. The shard was worth fifty gold, and all he'd gotten from me was a silver and eight coppers. But it was something.
Maya was watching me with her head tilted. "What did you buy?" she asked softly. "A piece of scrap iron? Andaras, you really paid for a rusty..."
"It's not iron," I murmured. "The rust's just a shell. Underneath, the metal's denser than standard Qi-steel. Clean it off, and it'll make a good alloy for reforging."
Her eyebrows rose. "You can tell that just by holding it? Academy appraisers need a diagnostic array to check metal density."
"Good instincts," I said.
Before she could ask anything else, a voice drawled from behind us, bright with contempt. "Good instincts? More like a common beggar sifting through bins because he can't afford a real weapon at the armory."
I turned slowly.
A group of three was strolling down the cobblestone aisle. The speaker at their head was a tall, sharp-featured teenager in an extravagant silver-and-white martial coat trimmed with real spirit-mink. A pristine Grade-2 Spirit Rapier hung from his silk sash, its guard set with a sparkling blue Water Qi crystal. Behind him, two older bodyguards in matching silver alloy armor wore the crest of a prominent District 3 noble house.
Soul Sight and Inspect ran on their own.
[TARGET IDENTIFIED: VALERIAN OF HOUSE CORVO]
Race: Human
Spirit Cultivation: Qi Condensation Realm — Level 6
Body Cultivation: None (Pill-Tempered)
Valerian stopped at the stall with his nose lifted, as if Scavenger's Row smelled bad to his refined senses. His eyes slid across my dark jacket and the iron badge on my belt, and his lip curled.
Then he saw Maya, and his whole face changed. The disdain smoothed into a polished smile. "Lady Maya." He bowed from the waist with dramatic flair. "What a surprise, to find a daughter of the distinguished House Sterling wandering the filthy alleys of the lower bazaar."
Maya's whole body went stiff. Her smile vanished, and she took a small step back toward my side. "Valerian," she said, cold and distant. "I'm doing some personal shopping. What are you doing here?"
"Inspecting my family's alchemy shops on Second Avenue. I saw you standing here and grew concerned." He stepped closer, shot me another dismissive glance, and turned back to her. "Maya. Why are you standing in the dirt talking to a lowly commoner? A lady of your standing shouldn't be seen with street rats who buy rust from garbage stalls."
Her eyes flashed. "Mind your tongue! Andaras is my friend, and he's a registered Rifter!"
"An F-Rank freelancer." Valerian gave a short, condescending laugh and pointed at the iron badge. "Look at that cheap token. No family crest. No academy badge. An uneducated wanderer from the outer slums who got lucky picking up a few coppers." He held out his arm to her with an insufferable, patronizing smile. "Come, Maya. My family has reserved a private tea room at the Imperial Pavilion on First Avenue. Let me escort you away from this filth before someone from the academy sees you."
Maya didn't take his arm. She crossed her own tightly over her white tunic, her face flushed with fury, and stayed where she was, a half-step closer to me than before.
"I'm not going anywhere with you, Valerian." Her voice rang clearly down the aisle. "And if you insult Andaras one more time, I'll report your conduct to the academy discipline committee."
The polished smile froze.
I'd seen that kind of pause before. I'd seen it on Jax, and on Julian, and on a dozen others. It was the pause of someone who'd expected the world to bend and had just heard something crack.
Valerian's eyes narrowed. He looked at Maya, then at me, and the sight of a daughter of a great house standing beside a freelancer in a dark leather jacket instead of beside him seemed to catch on something fragile in him, like a torch put to dry wood.
He stepped right into my space, close enough that I could smell his expensive cologne. His Level 6 Spirit Qi flared faintly around his shoulders. His blue eyes burned with sharp, venomous malice. "You," he said, very low. "Commoner trash. What spell did you cast on her? Do you honestly think a clean jacket makes you the equal of a noble of District 3?"
I stood there, hands resting in my pockets, and watched his flushed face.
I could have said a lot of things. I could have said that this whole wardrobe had cost two gold, and that three weeks ago I'd been wearing rags. I could have said that his bodyguards were gripping their hilts too tightly, that he carried his weight too high on his left heel, and that he'd never taken a real hit in his life. I could have said, I've been laughed at by thousands of people, Valerian. You're going to have to try harder.
I said nothing.
I'd learned that from an old man at a soup stall and a proctor with a granite voice. Some things weren't worth the breath. And some people were so used to being answered that silence was the only thing that could unsettle them.
I looked at him with calm, steady eyes and let the quiet stretch.
Maya stood close enough beside me that I could feel her trembling with anger. She hadn't backed up. She'd said friend, in front of a noble heir and two armored men, in a public market, and she'd meant it.
Not many people had ever said that out loud for me. It sat in my chest, small and warm and a little alarming, right next to the red thread.
Third one since I got to District 3, I thought wearily, as Valerian's jaw began to work. You'd think there would be some variety.