Chapter 6: The Price of Knowledge

Chapter 6: The Price of Knowledge

The Collector's words settled over Leo like a shroud. A sentient apocalypse… the eternal jailer. The obsidian Codex in his hands felt heavier, not with physical weight, but with the gravity of a billion, billion lives resting on his terrified, inexperienced shoulders. He looked down at the smooth, dark stone. He wasn't just holding a weird artifact; he was holding the cork in the bottle of reality.

Elara had already recovered from her shock, her face a mask of grim urgency. "We're leaving," she said, her voice a low command. She didn't trust the Collector, didn't trust the opulent silence of his gallery. Her instincts, honed by years on the fringes, were screaming.

The Collector held up a placating hand, a picture of serene amusement. "So hasty. The transaction is complete. You have your information. I have mine." He glanced fondly at the cursed locket, now stripped of its mystery. "A truly exquisite piece of misery. It will fetch a handsome price."

It was then that a new sound pierced the gallery's impossible quiet. It started as a faint, high-pitched whine from outside, a sound that bypassed the ears and drilled directly into the skull. It was a siren, but unlike any Leo had ever heard. It was clean, pure, and utterly menacing.

The Collector’s thin smile returned. "Ah," he said, with the satisfaction of a man whose train has just arrived on schedule. "It seems my other clients are here."

Elara paled. The color drained from her face, leaving her tattooed runes stark against her skin. "Consortium," she breathed, the word a curse. "You tipped them off."

"Tipped them off?" The Collector chuckled, a dry, rustling sound. "My dear, I placed a formal summons. The moment you used the Codex, it sent out a pulse. All I did was add a precise location and a confirmation of an unbound Class-Omega artifact in the hands of an unsanctioned amateur. They are very particular about their classifications."

He gestured vaguely toward the gallery entrance, through which the sounds of panic from the market were beginning to spill. Shouts, crashes, the splintering of wood and the shattering of glass. The vibrant chaos Leo had witnessed moments before was curdling into sheer terror.

"It's simply good business," the Collector explained, his tone infuriatingly reasonable. "You helped me identify a troublesome asset. In return, I remove a dangerously volatile element—you—from my marketplace before it attracts even more unsavory attention. The Consortium gets their prize, I receive a finder's fee and maintain the peace. Everyone wins."

"Everyone but us!" Leo yelled, a surge of helpless rage cutting through his fear.

"The price of knowledge is always steeper than you expect," the Collector replied with a shrug. "A lesson every Warden must learn."

Elara didn't waste another second. She grabbed Leo's arm, her grip like steel, and hauled him towards a discreet door hidden behind a tapestry depicting a long-forgotten celestial war. "This way! There might be a service tunnel!"

As they scrambled for the exit, the Collector’s voice, smooth as silk, followed them. It wasn't loud, but it cut through the rising din with chilling precision.

"One final piece of information, Warden. A gift, for services rendered."

Leo glanced back. The Collector stood serene amidst his collection of horrors, a placid island in a growing storm.

"You think your burden is to guard the prisoner. You are wrong," he said, his eyes glittering. "The Warden's burden is not to keep the prisoner in. It is to keep the world out."

The words struck Leo with the force of a physical blow, twisting his entire understanding of the problem on its head. The lock wasn't just to stop an escape. It was to stop a break-in. To stop people like the Collector, or the Consortium, from getting their hands on the ultimate weapon.

Then they were through the door and back into bedlam.

The Shadow Market was a maelstrom of panic. The joyful, chaotic energy had been replaced by a primal stampede. Goblins shrieked as they tried to bundle their sputtering contraptions into burlap sacks. A stall selling bottled emotions had shattered, and clouds of iridescent rage and shimmering despair were causing fistfights and weeping fits in the fleeing crowd.

And then he saw them.

At the main station entrance, three figures had materialized in a column of blinding silver light. They wore full, articulated plate armor that seemed woven from moonlight and mercury, their helmets seamless and faceless. They moved with an unnerving, synchronized grace, each holding a long, polearm that crackled with silver energy. These were the Consortium Enforcers.

One of them slammed the butt of his weapon onto the ground. A wall of solid, shimmering light erupted, sealing the main archway from floor to ceiling. Another enforcer pointed his weapon at the far end of the platform, and a net of the same silver energy shot out, blocking the tunnel. They were flies in a jar, and the lid was being screwed on tight.

"This way!" Elara shouted, pulling him down a side aisle, shoving past a hulking, four-armed creature that was trying to protect a cart of squirming, edible fungi.

The chase was on. They were the quarry, and the hunters were methodical and relentless. A bolt of silver energy hissed past Leo's ear, striking a goblin's stall. The entire structure, clockwork parts and all, was instantly encased in a block of shimmering crystal.

They dodged behind a butcher's stall where slabs of some unidentifiable purple meat hung from iron hooks. The iron! Leo gripped the heavy poker in his hand. It felt solid, real, a comforting weight against the ethereal magic of the Consortium.

An enforcer rounded the corner, its faceless helmet turning to fix on them. It raised its weapon. Without thinking, driven by the new, desperate instinct of the Warden, Leo swung the heavy iron poker. He didn't aim for the enforcer; he slammed it against the thick iron hook holding up a massive side of meat.

The hook snapped. A two-hundred-pound slab of alien flesh slammed down onto the enforcer, sending it staggering back with a clang of impacted armor. It wasn't injured, but it was delayed.

"Good!" Elara grunted, surprise and approval in her voice. "Think like that!"

She led him through the labyrinthine market, using the panic as cover. They slid through the cloying smoke billowing from an alchemist's overturned brazier, dodged the panicked flight of a flock of leathery-winged pixies, and scrambled over a barricade of abandoned merchandise. The air was thick with the smell of fear and strange magic. His ancestral memories were providing him with flashes, not of combat, but of evasion—a Warden hiding in the catacombs of Rome, another slipping through the sewers of Paris. Survival was the first duty.

They saw another exit, a dark, narrow service tunnel near the old, disused tracks. It was their only chance. But as they sprinted for it, another silver-clad enforcer appeared, blocking their path. It stood impassively, a silent, silver judgment.

From the other end of the aisle, the heavy, rhythmic footsteps of two more enforcers echoed, closing in. They were being funneled, herded.

Elara drew her silver knife, her back pressing against Leo's. Her breath came in ragged gasps, the runes on her arms glowing with a faint, defiant light. Her limited power was no match for this. "I can buy you a few seconds," she said, her voice tight. "When you see an opening, run. Don't look back."

Leo looked from the approaching enforcers to the one blocking their escape. He clutched the Codex to his chest, its cold surface a stark reminder of the apocalyptic power they were all fighting over. He was the Warden. He couldn't run. Running was just a delayed death sentence.

He looked down the dark service tunnel behind the enforcer. An escape route. Or a dead end. The Collector’s final words echoed in his mind. Keep the world out.

They weren't just after him. They were after the prisoner.

He squeezed his eyes shut, pressing his will into the iron poker, into the Codex, into the very stones of the market. They were trapped in a dead-end alley of the supernatural world, with the law closing in. He had to do something more than just run. He had to change the rules of the game.