Chapter 8: The Black Market Bloom

Chapter 8: The Black Market Bloom

The Guild's sterile order was a gilded cage, and Guildmaster Thorne now held the key. Under his watchful eye, any attempt to acquire the components she needed would be a confession of her unsanctioned mission. Elara was left with only one path: to dive into the city's murky, unregulated undercurrents where oaths meant nothing and coin meant everything.

In her small, spartan apartment—the only personal space she allowed herself—she shed her identity. The grey Janitor jumpsuit, a second skin for years, was replaced by worn cargo pants, a dark hooded jacket, and scuffed combat boots. She unpinned her hair, letting the silver-streaked black waves fall around her shoulders, obscuring the sharp lines of her face. From a hidden alchemical kit, she took a small disc of solidified glamour, warming it between her palms before smoothing it over her skin. It was a low-grade illusion, not enough to fool a dedicated scryer, but it would blur her features, shifting the colour of her amethyst eyes to a common, forgettable brown and softening the sharp set of her jaw. To the casual observer, she was no one of importance. Just another shadow seeking a bargain in the dark.

Her destination was the Penumbra Bazaar, a festering open secret in the guts of Umbra City. It materialized only after midnight in the abandoned labyrinth of the old Grand Central interchange, a nexus of forgotten subway tunnels and cavernous platforms. The air within was a thick soup of smells: otherworldly spices, goblin-brewed moonshine, the ozone crackle of raw magic, and the damp, metallic scent of old blood that never quite washed away.

Elara moved through the throng with a practiced, unobtrusive gait. Fae with iridescent wings haggled over bottled dreams, while hulking trolls in long coats acted as security, their stony gazes promising swift, brutal consequences for any disruptions. Here, a vial of vampire blood was a commodity, a werewolf's pelt was a luxury good, and secrets were the most valuable currency of all.

Her target was a gnome named Finnian, a notorious information broker whose stall was tucked away in a disused signal control room. Finnian had ears in every gutter and sewer grate in the city, and his price for information was always steep but fair.

She found him polishing a collection of enchanted shrunken heads, his long, nimble fingers working with unsettling care. “Looking for something special, shadow?” he chirped without looking up, his voice like the chime of cracked glass.

“Components,” Elara said, her voice a low murmur. “High-grade. Restricted. Petrified Fae Bloom, for a start.”

Finnian finally looked up, his black, beady eyes widening for a fraction of a second. He set down the head he was polishing. “Fae Bloom? Haven’t seen a petal of the real stuff on the market in a cycle. Covenants cracked down hard after that warlock tried to animate the city’s gargoyles. What I can tell you,” he leaned forward conspiratorially, “is that there’s a new alchemist cornering the market on potent reagents. Calls himself ‘The Apothecary.’ Works out of the deep tunnels. He might have what you need… or know who does.”

He gave her a coded location—a specific ventilation shaft in the lowest level of the tunnels—in exchange for a solid gold Guild service medal she’d “found” at a cleanup site years ago. As she turned to leave, a commotion near the main platform drew her attention.

A frantic-looking warlock, his robes singed and his eyes wide with a feverish energy, was shoving his way through the crowd toward a cloaked dealer. The dealer was lean and moved with the quick, furtive motions of a carrion bird.

“You got it? You got the new stuff?” the warlock hissed, his voice trembling with a desperate craving.

“The price went up,” the dealer replied, his voice a dry rasp. “Demand is high. The kick is worth it, you know it is.”

A bag of coins was exchanged for a small, corked vial. Inside, a crystalline powder shimmered with a faint, but unmistakable, cobalt-blue light. Elara froze. It was the colour of Rhys’s eyes. The colour of the thirst.

The warlock clutched the vial like a holy relic and scurried into a dark alcove. Elara shadowed him, melting into the throng of bodies. Peering through a gap between two stacked crates, she watched as the warlock uncorked the vial. He didn't mix it or brew it. He simply poured a small amount of the shimmering dust onto his tongue.

The effect was instantaneous and violent. The warlock gasped, his back arching. His veins lit up from within, glowing with that same hungry, cobalt energy. His magical aura, previously a dull flicker, erupted into a blazing inferno that made the air around him crackle. He laughed, a high, unhinged sound, his eyes glowing with borrowed power.

Elara didn't need her spectrometer. She could feel the signature of the energy from twenty feet away. It was the alien frequency. The null-entropic resonance of the Hollows' curse.

The drug's name, whispered from the dealer to another potential buyer, drifted to her ears.

“It’s called ‘Shiver’,” the dealer rasped. “One taste, and you’ll feel like a god for an hour. The crash is hell, but that first rush… it’s worth it.”

The pieces slammed together in Elara’s mind with the force of a physical blow. The weightless men. The husks left behind by the Hollows. The crystalline dust that precipitated from their kills. It wasn't just being left to scatter in the wind.

Someone was following Rhys’s people. Someone was tracking their kills, waiting for them to leave, and then harvesting the byproduct. They were collecting the husks and the shimmering dust, grinding it down, packaging it, and selling it on the black market as a potent new magical narcotic.

Her entire bargain with Rhys was built on a flawed premise. She had assumed the killings were a self-contained tragedy, a desperate struggle for survival between the Hollows and the rest of the city. But this… this changed everything. This introduced a third player, a parasitic faction that had a vested, financial interest in the Hollows continuing to kill. The more the Hollows fed, the more Shiver could be produced. The more desperate the supernatural junkies of Umbra City became, the higher the price would climb.

The killings weren’t just a tragedy anymore. They were a business.

The warlock’s high was already fading. The brilliant cobalt glow in his veins sputtered, and he collapsed against the wall, his body wracked with tremors. The divine energy was gone, replaced by a bottomless, aching need. He looked down at his empty vial with an expression of pure desolation.

Elara backed away slowly, the noise and clamour of the Penumbra Bazaar fading into a dull roar in her ears. Her mission had just become infinitely more complex. Finding a synthetic food source for the Hollows wouldn't be enough. Even if she succeeded, this new, mysterious Apothecary would have every reason to sabotage her work, to keep the Hollows starving, desperate, and producing his valuable product.

She was no longer caught between a rock and a hard place, between the Covenant and the Hollows. She had stumbled into a three-sided war, and the third side was a shadowy cabal of drug manufacturers who profited from suffering and thrived on murder. Her desperate gambit to prevent a war had just become the first move in a conspiracy that ran deeper and darker than she could ever have imagined.