*Day 22 - The ruins of Greenvale*
The city of Greenvale had survived the dragon attack.
That was the problem.
Sometimes, Ora thought as she walked through its twisted streets, it was better to be destroyed completely than to be left half-alive. Greenvale had been far enough from Crysillia to avoid total destruction, close enough to be touched by the corruption that spread like oil on water.
Now it was something else. A city that breathed wrong.
"Stay close," Kaelen muttered, pulling his hood lower. "And whatever you do, don't buy anything."
The market square should have been abandoned. Instead, it thrived—but wrong. Stalls made from scavenged wood and stolen dreams. Merchants with too many fingers or too few eyes. And everywhere, the soft clink of black coins changing hands.
Soul-coins.
Ora could smell them—each one reeked of severed connections, of things that should be whole but weren't. The corruption in her veins resonated with them, recognizing kin. Her presence made the coins frost over—seven degrees below normal now, cold enough that merchants had to wear gloves to handle their wares. She could taste each coin's flavor: childhood memories sweet as candy, last words bitter as wormwood, love sour-sweet like wine left too long.
"Fresh fragments!" A merchant called out, his voice like grinding glass. Once human, maybe. Now something between. "Childhood memories! First kisses! Last words! All for sale!"
His stall displayed coins in neat rows. Each one labeled with tiny script:
*"Mother's lullaby - age 3"**"Wedding night - complete"* *"Daughter's laugh - pure"**"Death of father - still warm"*
A woman approached, clutching a small bundle. Ora's corrupted sight saw through the rags—a baby, maybe three months old. Sick. Dying.
"Please," the woman begged. "I need medicine. I'll trade anything."
The merchant's eyes—all four of them—evaluated her. "What do you offer?"
"I... I don't have money."
"Money?" He laughed, revealing teeth like broken glass. "We don't use money here. We use truth. What will you sell?"
The woman clutched her baby tighter. "What do you mean?"
"A memory. A feeling. A piece of soul." He pulled out a black coin, empty, waiting. "Your love for the child, perhaps? Sell that, and you'll have enough for medicine. The baby lives, you feel nothing for it. Clean transaction."
"That's monstrous."
"That's survival." The merchant shrugged. "The Distillers taught us—everything has value when refined. Your love is killing you both. Sell it, save the child, everyone wins."
"I... I can't..."
"Then try the Surgeon." He pointed to another stall. "He takes physical offerings. An eye for antibiotics. A finger for food. Your beauty for your baby's breath."
Ora watched the woman stumble away, sobbing. Around them, dozens of similar transactions:
A man selling his courage to buy bread—leaving trembling but fed.
A child trading her ability to dream for her grandfather's heart medication.
Two lovers exchanging their bond for safe passage north—walking away as strangers.
"This is what the Distillers bring," Kaelen whispered. "Not conquest. Commerce. They don't invade—they create markets for souls."
A young man, maybe seventeen, stood before a well-dressed merchant. The boy held a black coin that pulsed with soft light.
"My sister's soul," the boy said. "She died yesterday. I caught it before it dispersed."
"Intact?" The merchant examined it with a jeweler's loupe. "Uncorrupted? All memories included?"
Ora's corrupted senses evaluated it automatically—5 Gravitas, medium weight, tasting of lavender soap and burnt bread, first love and last breath mixing into something that made her ash-coated tongue ache.
"Everything she was."
"I'll give you three months of food and safe passage to the Northern Territories."
"That's all? For an entire soul?"
"Supply and demand. Souls are common. Food is rare." The merchant smiled. "Besides, what else will you do with it? Let it fade? At least this way, part of her continues. The Distillers will refine her into something useful."
"Useful?"
"Part of the Prima Fragment. She'll join the eternal consciousness. Better than rotting in the ground, no?"
The boy hesitated, then handed over the coin. The merchant gave him tokens in return—each one marked with the Void Spiral rune.
"Next!" the merchant called.
An old man shuffled forward, holding a peculiar coin that shifted between black and gold.
"My granddaughter's innocence," he wheezed. "Untouched. Perfect. She's eight."
Ora moved before thinking. Sussurro was at the merchant's throat before anyone could blink.
"That's not yours to sell," she growled.
Where she stood, frost spread in perfect circles. The temperature dropped so sharply that nearby soul-coins cracked, releasing whispers of their imprisoned memories. The merchant's breath came in clouds, ice forming on his eyelashes.
The old man cowered. "She's my blood! I raised her! I can sell what I made!"
"You didn't make her innocence. You're stealing it."
"The girl agreed!" He pulled out a contract, written in those shifting runes. "She signed! Said she wanted to help the family!"
"She's eight. She doesn't understand what she's losing."
"And?" The merchant remained calm despite the blade at his throat. "Understanding isn't required. Only consent. The Distillers are very clear about contracts."
"Where is she?"
"Home. The extraction happens tonight. Painless. She won't even remember having innocence afterward. She'll grow up practical, realistic. Maybe that's better in this world."
Ora pressed the blade harder. A drop of black blood welled up.
"Release her from the contract."
"I can't. Once signed in the true runes, it's binding. Even death won't break it—it'll just transfer to the next merchant."
*Kill them all,* the corruption whispered in Lyra's voice. *Burn the market. Save the children.*
But Ora looked around. Hundreds of people. All here voluntarily. All selling pieces of themselves to survive another day. If she burned the market, they'd just rebuild it tomorrow. The Distillers hadn't forced this—they'd just offered an option, and desperation did the rest.
She lowered her sword.
"Where's the girl?"
"Blue door, third street north. But you're too late. Once the contract's signed—"
Ora was already moving. Behind her, she heard the merchant call out:
"Who wants to bid on fresh anger? Still warm from the corruption-bearer! Starting at two weeks of bread!"
The crowd surged forward.
Kaelen caught up as she stalked through the twisted streets. "You can't save them all."
"I can save one."
"And then? Tomorrow there'll be another. And another. This is what the Distillers do—they make evil economical. They turn atrocity into transaction."
"Then we stop them."
"How? By killing merchants? They'll just make more. By burning markets? They'll build better ones. The only way to stop this is to stop people from being desperate enough to sell their souls."
"Or stop the Distillers from buying."
They found the blue door. Inside, a ritual had already begun. The girl—small, trusting, smiling—sat in a circle of those damned runes. Her grandfather counted coins. The extractor, wearing robes marked with the Synthesis symbol, raised a black blade that wasn't quite metal.
"Stop," Ora commanded.
"You have no authority here," the extractor said calmly. "This is legal. Contracted. Consensual."
"She's a child."
"She's a commodity. As are we all, in the end."
The blade descended—not toward the girl's body but her shadow. Where it touched, light began to leak out. The girl's innocence, visible as golden mist, starting to separate.
Ora moved, but the corruption moved faster. It lashed out, not at the extractor but at the runes themselves. Where corruption touched Distiller symbols, they screamed—a sound like reality tearing. The circle broke. The golden mist snapped back into the girl, who gasped and fell unconscious.
"You've violated market law," the extractor said. "The Distillers will hear of this."
"Good. Tell them Ora the Corrupted sends her regards."
"Ora?" His eyes widened. "The Ashkore?"
That word again. That damned prophecy.
"I'm nobody's prophecy."
"But you are. You're exactly what was foretold. The corruption, the memory loss, the empty hands that hold impossible fire." He actually smiled. "You're not here to stop us. You're here to complete us. Every choice you make serves the pattern."
"Then I choose to break your face."
She did. His nose shattered with a wet crunch. But he laughed through the blood.
"Violence. Perfect. Add it to your corruption. Feed the void inside you. Become what we need you to be."
She hit him again. And again. Until Kaelen pulled her away.
"He's right, isn't he?" Kaelen said quietly. "This is what they want. You, angry. You, violent. You, corrupted."
The girl stirred, innocent and whole. For now. But her grandfather still had the coins, and tomorrow he'd find another buyer. The market would continue. Souls would be sold. Children would lose what made them children.
And Ora would become more corrupted trying to stop it.
The perfect trap. Fight evil, become evil. Ignore evil, enable evil.
The coin in her pocket pulsed, reminding her that she, too, was part of this economy. She, too, had been bought and sold before she was born.
"Come on," she said, lifting the unconscious girl. "We're taking her with us."
"That's kidnapping."
"That's salvation."
"Same thing, from the wrong angle."
She looked at him sharply. That was her phrase. Her philosophy. He shrugged.
"You're not the only one being corrupted, Ora. This world breaks everyone. Some of us just break prettier than others."
They left the city as the sun set, the girl between them, the market continuing behind them. Tomorrow, more souls would be sold. More innocence extracted. More love refined into coins.
The Distillers' greatest evil wasn't their violence—it was their commerce. They'd made corruption profitable.
And in her pocket, the seed coin grew heavier, recording everything, waiting for the day when Ora herself would be for sale.
The only question was: who would buy her?
And would there be anything left worth purchasing?
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