The Black Market didn't have a door. It had a grate. A rusted, piss-stained grate behind The Slaughtered Lamb that you had to crawl through on your belly like the worm you were.
Kian had done it a hundred times.
Never with an inventory full of Unique-grade armor.
The grate scraped his back. He didn't care. He was grinning in the dark like a fucking maniac.
Mud. That's what they'd call me. Mud-scraper. Bottom-feeder. Hey, bait-boy, go pull aggro and die quietly, yeah?
His knuckles were white around the strap of his bag. Not because he was nervous. Because he was buzzing.
He dropped into the basement. Landed soft. The air smelled like mold, cheap ale, and desperation. His favorite combination.
Three lanterns. One table. And behind it, Mags.
She was a brick shithouse of a woman with a scar that split her lip and an eye that never stopped moving. She'd been running this hole for twelve years. Never once looked at Kian like he was worth the air he breathed.
"You again." She didn't look up from her ledger. "Got nothing for you tonight, scrap-boy. The guilds already picked the dungeon clean. Try the,"
"I'm not selling scrap tonight."
He slammed the chestplate onto the table.
Iron Covenant. Unique-grade.
The metal thrummed. Even in the dim light, it pulsed with that sick blue glow that only S-Rank gear had. The kind of glow that made people do stupid things.
Mags' hand stopped moving.
She stared at it. Then at him. Then back at it.
"…the fuck is that?"
"Reading's not your strong suit, huh?" Kian tapped the engraving on the pauldron. "Says right there. Iron Covenant. Only three in existence. One's on the Grandmaster of the Northern Guild. One's on the Emperor's personal champion. And the third?"
He leaned forward. Dropped his voice.
"Was on a dead man named Gareth about an hour ago."
Mags' good eye narrowed. The scarred one didn't do anything, it just sat there, white and dead, but the other one burned.
"Gareth Vane got killed in the Deep Raid."
"He did. Very sad." Kian shrugged. "I was there. Holding aggro. Being disposable. The usual."
"Then that plate's Soul-Bound to his corpse, you stupid,"
"Try it."
Silence.
Mags didn't move. Her fingers twitched toward the detection rune on her desk. Standard procedure. Every black market dealer had one. It flagged Soul-Bound items before they even touched the counter.
She hit the rune.
The chestplate sat there. Quiet. Dark. No red flash. No warning chime.
Mags' face went pale under the scars.
"That's…" Her voice cracked. She cleared her throat. "That's not possible."
"And yet." Kian pulled out a second chestplate. Same glow. Same weight. Same impossible existence. "Here we are."
He set it down next to the first. The two of them hummed together, like twin hearts beating in sync.
Mags stood up so fast her stool clattered backward.
"You need to leave. Right now. Whatever you're running, whatever glitch you found,I want no part of it. The Guild Masters will,"
"The Guild Masters will what?" Kian's voice went flat. Cold. The grin didn't leave his face, but it stopped being friendly. "Kill me? They've been trying to get me killed since I was fourteen. Throw me in a cell? I've slept in worse places than your fucking basement."
He picked up one chestplate. Tossed it to her. She caught it on instinct, her knuckles going white around the edges.
"That's a gift," he said. "For old times' sake. The other one? You're gonna sell it for me."
"I'm not,"
"You're gonna sell it," he repeated, stepping closer, "because I'm not asking. I'm telling. And I'm gonna come back next week with ten more. Then a hundred. Then whatever number I feel like."
He stopped inches from her face. She was taller. Broader. Stronger. But she was looking at him like he'd just pulled the moon out of his pocket.
"The System's broken," he whispered. "And I'm the one holding the hammer. So you can get on board, or you can be the first person I make an example of. Your call."
Mags didn't speak for a long time.
Then she looked down at the chestplate in her hands. At the second one sitting on her table like a bomb waiting to go off.
"…how much?" she asked.
Kian's grin came back. Sharp. Real.
"That's my fucking girl."