The moment they step through the mirror, Aster forgets how to breathe.
The Market District explodes around him in a riot of light, noise, and aggressively monetized wonder. Stalls spiral into impossible alleys beneath hanging lanterns and drifting sigils. Things hiss, glow, click, sing, and occasionally growl from cages that look more decorative than secure. It is like walking into a shopping mall designed by fever dreams and then franchised by a civilisation that thought consumer protection was a personality flaw.
Musa points lazily down the main thoroughfare. "Alloy Alley's that way. But go on—have a look around. You only lose your market virginity once."
Aster tries. He really does. But the place is too much. Too loud. Too alive. Vendors bark over one another in a dozen accents. Something somewhere detonates with a soft puff of blue flame and no visible concern from anyone nearby. Stalls spill into the street beneath awnings stitched from rune-thread and beast hide, stacked high with things that have no business being sold beside each other: twitching wings, jars of blinking eyes, polished fangs longer than his forearm, bottled weather, bottled regret, and at one point what appears to be a very sleepy squid playing chess with itself in a glass tank.
He turns to say something clever and nearly walks face-first into a butcher's hook holding a severed yellow claw the size of his torso.
"Dragon?" he asks.
The vendor, one eye milky and the other glowing faintly green, sighs. "I wish. Dune Allegecko."
Aster nods slowly and backs away, trying not to think too hard about where he ranks on the local food chain.
"Keep up," Musa calls.
They haven't gone twenty paces before Aster stops again.
A crystal sits nestled in a bed of silver leaves, pulsing softly with violet light. The moment he looks at it, something in him leans forward. The thing hums low enough to rattle his bones.
The vendor—an elderly woman who looks as though she has been assembled from sandalwood, wrinkles, and concentrated opportunism—smiles at him over steepled fingers.
"Good eye," she rasps. "Dreaming Crystal. Condensed Spirit Essence. Very useful for someone like you."
Aster has spent enough time broke to recognise a sales pitch when it puts on lipstick.
"How much?"
The woman tilts her head, as if consulting a higher moral authority or calculating the street value of his kidneys.
"Normally? Seven thousand five hundred Faith." She smiles wider. "But you've got a good aura. For you? Five thousand."
Aster stares at her.
Then at the crystal.
Then back at her.
"Five thousand Faith," he repeats flatly.
She nods serenely.
Something inside him, already hanging together with string and bad coping mechanisms, snaps on principle.
"You were born to do this, weren't you?" he mutters. "Ripping people off spiritually. It's a calling. A sacred vocation. Somewhere deep in your soul there's a little shrine to predatory pricing."
The woman blinks.
Musa materialises beside him and steers him away by the elbow before Aster can escalate into an economic manifesto in public.
"Five thousand?" Aster hisses as they round the next stall. "For a rock? A rock that glows at me? That's more than my entire net worth."
"It wasn't a rock," Musa says. "It was condensed Spirit Essence."
"Then it was an expensive rock with branding."
What follows is less shopping and more a guided tour through the afterlife's commitment to making poverty feel personal.
Aster makes the mistake of glancing at a pair of gloves woven from moon-silver thread. Twelve thousand Faith.
A flute that can apparently "speak in suggestions." Eight thousand four hundred.
They pass a stand where a glass orb pulses with warm golden light. A sign above it reads: Contains Forgiveness. One Use.
He stares, tears forming in his eyes. "That's beautiful."
Musa sighs. "Don't—"
Too late.
Thirty-nine thousand Faith.
Aster sways like a man hit with a tranquilizer dart.
"I can't afford closure!" he barks. "I get the chance to purchase forgiveness, and I still can't afford it!"
"Stop reading the price tags."
"I can't stop! It's like standing at the edge of a cliff and trying not to look down. Except the cliff is every item in this market, and the drop is lifelong karmic debt!"
A woman passes them pushing a cart of bottled time. "Ten minutes of invisibility—1,500 Faith."
He blinks. "That's less than the rock."
"Stop comparing everything to the rock."
"I will never stop comparing everything to the rock."
By the time Musa finally veers them toward a quieter side corridor, Aster is muttering about class warfare in the afterlife and whether it is ethically defensible to mug a man selling bottled serenity.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
The booth they stop at looks almost modest by comparison. Plain wood. Clean counters. Rows of scrolls suspended inside containment rings. Above it hangs a softly pulsing sigil:
The Interface Emporium – Nootropic Interface Imprints for the Ascendant Mind
Aster eyes it warily. "That sounds fake."
"It's not." Musa steps closer to the display. "And you're going to need one if you want to survive here."
The nearest shelf holds a neat row of scrolls under a glowing sign labelled POPULAR. Each one displays a title, a specialisation, and a price high enough to qualify as a hate crime.
Aster's gaze skims the first.
Darwin’s Lens
Biological Archive of Charles D.
Specialty: Evolutionary Response Modeling
Price: 1,800 Faith
Next.
Crowley’s Codex
Runic Deconstruction Library of Aleister C.
Specialty: Occult Resonance, Symbolic DNA
Price: 2,500 Faith
And—
Smith’s Ledger
Spiritual Economic Treatise of Adam S.
Specialty: Soul Valuation, Cultivation Investment, Market-Adjusted Threat Ratings
Price: 3,900 Faith
Aster tilts his head. "And these are what, like… journals with opinions?"
Musa snorts softly.
"Where a Scripture strips away the creator until only executable instinct remains. An NII does the opposite. It strips away everything except the author's understanding."
"We call them NII," Musa continues. "Each one is the echo of an academic who mastered their field so completely that their understanding of reality stuck. Their thoughts, deemed too important to disappear, become commercially valuable enough that they're able to monetise their very personality and insight."
Aster raises a brow. "So they're... sentient?"
"Not exactly. But they're close enough to argue with." Musa smirks. "They have moods. Opinions. They'll argue with each other if you install more than one. You should think of them more as impressions—crafted overlays. Each one is a guided interface, a lens forged from a lived genius. When you install an NII, you're seeing the world through professional archivists who dedicated their entire lives to the act of knowing—not just information, but pattern. Perspective."
"So let me get this straight," Aster says slowly. "Scriptures are dead people teaching your body how to move."
"Correct."
"And NIIs are dead people teaching your brain how to think."
A reluctant pause.
"…yes."
Aster stares at the endless shelves of preserved cognition surrounding him.
"…so they invented therapy and immediately figured out how to weaponize it."
He turns away from the Popular shelf before one of the scrolls can make eye contact and charge him a consultation fee.
That is when his display flickers.
Just once.
A green flash in the corner of his vision.
DISCOUNT – 97% OFF
Aster, who has spent his whole life primed for discount hunting, zones in like a police dog with a cocaine addiction.
There, just behind the vendor, mostly hidden by a curtain—a shelf. Or part of one. The scan UI twists and glitches around it like it's trying not to acknowledge its existence.
Aster steps forward.
The vendor moves with unnatural speed, planting himself in Aster's path with a smile that says everything's fine, please stop trying to see the void.
"Ah, sir! Might I suggest one of our curated recommendations?"
Aster leans sideways. The vendor mirrors him with terrifying grace.
He steps left. So does the vendor.
Aster takes a casual step back, fakes a yawn, then pivots like a bored tourist. And there—just for a blink—his display lights up:
🧿 Blenkinsop’s Beast Binder
Field Notes of Baelor Blenkinsop
• Titles: “Wild Sage of Viscid Gulch,” “Magical Steve Irwin”
• Specialty: Faunal Temperament, Ecological Sympathy, Reproductive Resistance Metrics
• Tone: Ecstatic. Irreverent. Obsessed with whether creatures are “down to clown.”
Warning: Prone to poetic tangents and unsolicited romantic commentary
Price: 45 Faith
Aster, focusing only on the price, immediately lights up. "That one."
The vendor goes corpse-pale. "No. Absolutely not. That NII is condemned. It's on the Council's Destroy on Sight list."
The vendor wrings his hands. "It's on the Council's pending destruction registry. I haven't disposed of it yet because I still need the permit countersigned by a second-level archivist and the Office of Mnemonic Sanitation only opens on third Moonsdays, but that is not the point. The point is that scroll is a tether-corrupting cognitive contaminant and should never, under any circumstances, be installed."
Aster looks back at the listing.
Forty-five Faith.
"Then why's it on sale?" Aster asks.
"It's not! That's the tether distortion! It hijacks local metadata to trick people into buying it! It wants to be installed. It's… persuasive."
Aster spots a flickering green icon at the bottom of the scroll. "Says here 'Purchase,' though."
"No! Don't touch tha—"
He clicks it.
The interface pings cheerfully.
PURCHASE CONFIRMED
The scroll lights up faintly green, like a predator opening one eye.
Aster turns back to the horrified vendor. "Well. I bought it?"
The vendor stares at him like he has just eaten asbestos and asked if it counted as fibre.
Musa is at Aster's side in an instant.
"What did you just buy?"
Aster shows him the purchased NII, causing him to recoil like Aster has just brought plutonium to a toddler's birthday and asked where the fondue pot was.
"No. Not that NII. It's been discontinued and is the equivalent of getting spiritual herpes. You definitely do not want that voice stuck in your mind."
Aster clutches the bargain NII like the goose he caught when he discovered the geese at the local pond weren't technically owned by anyone. "It was literally less than fifty Faith."
"And it will haunt your sleep with lustful descriptions of crustaceans!" Musa hisses.
"Sounds like enrichment to me," Aster says, cradling the scroll radiating insanity like a young girl clutching a stray dingo puppy she's already named Snuffles.
Musa looks haunted. "No. I mean it! It won't stop. I heard about someone who scanned a rat—a literal astral equivalent of a sewer rat—and the scroll gave a ten-minute breakdown on how to court it romantically. Swamp frog perfume, mating posture suggestions, and at one point, a line about 'earning its trust with poetry and the right vocal squeak frequency.'"
"It had only been forty-five Faith, though…" Aster says, with the slow, delusional certainty of someone defending said Snuffles after the inevitable mauling.
Musa pinches the bridge of his nose. "You're going to regret this. You think saving Faith is always the better option. It's not. You're choosing the metaphysical equivalent of pirated antivirus software from a forum that also sells cursed NFTs."
"That sounds like capitalism," Aster says. "I'm used to it."
Musa looks like he ages five years in five seconds.
The scroll vibrates happily as Aster connects his Will to it, releasing a small puff of lavender dust as its prompt window pops up.
[🧿] Compatible Scan Interface Detected. Install "Blenkinsop's Beast Binder"?
[YES] [NO]
Musa hovers like a man watching a toddler juggle grenades.
"You have five seconds to change your mind before it bonds to your—"
Too late. Aster's Will brushes the prompt marked [YES].
Aster stumbles slightly, grabbing the edge of the counter as warmth flares behind his eyes. His vision doubles—once in the booth, once in a bog. Something wet giggles. The scroll's presence slithers into his mind like a too-eager tour guide.
[📎 Welcome, glorious biped! Oh, you smell like latent potential and repressed kink. Shall we begin?]
Repressed kink!? Aster mutters in dawning horror.
The scroll vibrates with joy.
[📎 Calibration complete! I now understand 63% of your libido-adjacent preferences. This will help when scanning fauna.]
"Why would that help—"
[📎 Trust me, darling. Every creature flirts with death. I just read the pheromones.]
🧿 [System Update: Scan Interface Installed]
— Archive Loaded: Blenkinsop’s Beast Binder
• Interface Traits:
- Emotional Bond Detection
- Pre-Mating Threat Displays
- Environmental Adaptation Sympathy Index
- ‘Down-To-Clown’ Scale
• Mood: Delighted
• Stability: 61%
• Sanity: Questionable
Disclaimer: Developer commentary cannot be muted.The interface settles in with an unsettling purr. Aster blinks, bracing for a rush of madness or metaphorical flirtation from the inside of his own skull.
Nothing.
No visions. No hives. Just a mild urge to moisturise and a vague awareness that the air now has undertones.
Musa eyes him sideways. "You feel anything weird yet?"
Aster rotates his shoulders. "Define weird."
"Like… like the world's trying to court you. Or like something's breathing against your third eye while making direct emotional eye contact."
Aster considers. "Not really. I feel… filtered. Like the world's wearing mood lighting."
Musa squints. "Yeah. That tracks."