Ashes of the Veiled Market part 2

The Offering Beneath the Stones
The deeper I went, the less the city above felt real.

The laughter, the markets, the clamor of the living — all of it seemed like a dream that hadn’t realized it had died. Down here, beneath the old sewers of Choury, the Veiled Market had roots older than the Empire itself. Some said these tunnels were carved by the ancient civilization that came before — the ones who built with light and machines and vanished without explanation.

Now, those same stones hummed faintly with something unholy.

Sophia’s message had been brief, scratched in cipher onto the inside of a coin pouch:
They’re preparing a summoning. Do not engage alone. Find proof. Stay alive.

Proof, she said. Easy words for a woman who could vanish in a shadow.

I followed the trail of crates marked with the Guild’s sigil — a serpent coiled around a coin — down to a flooded section of tunnel. There, torchlight danced across the walls, and voices echoed off the stone.

I crouched behind a half-collapsed pillar, peering into a cavern where the Guild was busy at work.

Half a dozen thieves moved like ants around a ritual circle carved into the floor — chalk mixed with salt, dust, and something darker that gleamed like oil. A chained figure knelt at the center, head bowed. A prisoner.

And overseeing it all was the Broker.

His porcelain mask gleamed under the torchlight. “Tonight,” he said, “the Market ascends. No longer beggars of scraps — we trade with the true merchants now.”

The “true merchants.”

I knew what he meant before I saw it — the shape shifting in the shadows at the edge of the circle. A silhouette that bent the light wrong, its outline flickering like heat haze. A demon emissary.

The air grew colder. The walls seemed to breathe.

My instincts screamed to draw my blade, to shatter the ritual then and there — but I forced myself to stay still. I needed evidence. I needed to know how deep this went.

The Broker raised a crystal phial, swirling with black ichor. “Payment,” he said. “The blood of a saint, taken from a cathedral vault. The Empire’s purity — bartered for our ascension.”

The demon’s laughter sounded like broken glass and honey. “Then the pact is sealed.”

Flames of violet and crimson rose from the circle, twisting into sigils that clawed at the stone ceiling. The chained prisoner screamed once — and then silence, as their body dissolved into ash that the demon inhaled like incense.

I felt bile rise in my throat. This was no trade. It was a feeding.

The Broker turned, and for a moment, I swore he looked straight at me. “Faith is the oldest currency,” he murmured. “And the easiest to counterfeit.”

I slipped back into the tunnels, heart pounding like war drums. The Veilstone Sigil thrummed at my neck, almost in pain — the holy magic beneath it protesting the blasphemy I’d just witnessed.

When I reached the safehouse, Sophia was already there, waiting in the dim light of a single candle.

“You saw it,” she said quietly.

“They’ve made a pact,” I replied. My voice cracked. “They offered a human sacrifice to a demon in exchange for power. The Broker’s leading them.”

Sophia’s expression didn’t change — but her hand tightened around the hilt of her dagger. “Then the Inquisition was right. The Guild’s corruption isn’t greed — it’s infestation.”

She looked at me then, eyes sharp, sorrow buried beneath steel. “We’ll burn them out. Every last one.”

But even as she said it, I could hear something in her tone — the same cold weariness I’d begun to feel myself.

“You ever wonder,” I asked quietly, “if the world above even cares what happens down here?”

Sophia met my gaze for a long moment, then blew out the candle.

“They don’t,” she said. “But we do.”

The next day, the Guild moved to new quarters — deeper beneath the city, closer to the ruins of the old civilization. The Broker had declared the ritual a “success.” Strange sigils now burned faintly on the tunnel walls, pulsing with demonic residue.

And every thief I passed looked... different. Stronger. Faster. Their shadows lingered a heartbeat too long.

The Veiled Market had begun to change.

Later that night, Sophia gave me a sealed letter from the Inquisition. The wax bore the mark of the sunburst — the symbol of divine judgment.

Stage the downfall from within. When the Broker calls his next gathering, signal the purge. The Holy Empire will respond in force.

It was the beginning of the end.

And the first step in burning a city’s shadow from its own veins.

Among Shadows
Night in Choury feels different once you’ve stolen for it.

The streets sound quieter, the lamps burn meaner. Every echo becomes a question — is someone following, or is it just guilt catching up?

By now, the Veiled Market had started to trust me. Or, at least, they trusted the lie named Corin Sidona. To them, I was a promising recruit — light on my feet, lighter with my morals. To the Inquisition, I was a dagger pointed inward.

This time, the job was simple: slip into a merchant’s warehouse near the east wall, steal a shipment ledger, and make sure no one saw me do it. Simple, if you ignored the part where every shadow might report back to a demon.

Rolan Dace gave the order himself.

“Shipment records,” he said, tossing me a wax-sealed note. “Don’t ask what’s inside. Just bring it. The less you know, the less you bleed.”

“Understood,” I said, with my best imitation of a bored thief.

“Good,” Rolan grunted. “You do well, and maybe the Broker himself takes notice. Fail, and we’ll pretend we never met.”

The warehouse loomed by the docks, half-lit by flickering oil lamps. Fog rolled off the sea, carrying the smell of salt and rusted chains. The guards looked bored — dangerous, because boredom breeds curiosity.

I waited until the tide’s crash masked my steps. One lockpick, two turns, a breath — and I was inside.

The place smelled of cedar, ink, and secrets. Crates stacked like tombstones, stamped with sigils of noble houses: Kareth & Sons, Marlowe Trade Company, House Dureth. All respectable names, all laundering something.

I found the ledgers on a desk upstairs, bound in red leather and still warm from a candle’s touch. Each entry was neat, careful, coded — “Black Ember deliveries: dock 7, payment in crimson.”

It wasn’t standard smuggling language. Black Ember — I’d heard that term whispered once before, in the Broker’s chamber, during the demon pact. Whatever it was, it wasn’t coal or spice.

I tucked the book under my arm and froze.

Footsteps.

Someone else was here.

I slipped behind a pillar as a man entered — another thief, judging by his cloak and the faint clink of tools. He muttered to himself as he rummaged through crates.

“Shipment to Sable Docks... payment cleared… next batch for the Crimson Buyers.”

Crimson Buyers. There it was again.

He turned toward my hiding place, eyes narrowing — and I did the only thing I could. I tossed a small vial from my belt; it shattered on the floor, flooding the air with choking smoke.

When it cleared, I was gone.

Back in the tunnels, I found the secret drop point Sophia had shown me — a hollowed-out brick behind a shrine to the old saints. I slid the ledger inside, along with a note in cipher:
“Black Ember. Crimson Buyers. Connected to Sable Docks. They’re building a network.”

Then I waited, hidden in the dark.

An hour later, when I returned, her reply was already there:

“Good work. Decoding confirms demonic reagents traded under noble seals. Do not expose yourself. Maintain cover. Every piece we gather brings them closer to judgment.”

Her handwriting was steady. Mine, when I wrote back, was not.

Days passed. The Guild grew louder, richer. Their smuggling operations ran like clockwork. Even among thieves, there was discipline — coded signals, silent runners, payments delivered with ritual precision.

Some of them even believed they were doing good.

One woman, a fence named Nira, told me over a shared drink:

“We’re not villains, Corin. We steal from nobles who starve us. From merchants who hoard bread while children die in gutters. If the Guild profits — so be it. Someone has to balance the scales.”

And for a heartbeat, I wanted to believe her.

But I’d seen the ledger. The “Crimson Buyers” weren’t starving peasants — they were demons wrapped in human skin, paying for souls with cursed gold.

The Guild wasn’t redistributing wealth. It was redistributing damnation.

That night, I knelt by the sea wall and stared at the black waves breaking against the docks. The city’s lights shimmered on the surface — tiny, fragile, trembling things that thought themselves stars.

Somewhere beneath those waters, smugglers ferried crates of infernal reagents under the name Black Ember.

And I realized: this was no longer about infiltrating thieves. It was about poisoning the very heart of the Empire — one secret trade at a time.

The Sable Docks
The sea never forgets what’s thrown into it.

I thought of that as I stood on the ridge above the Sable Docks, watching fog roll in like an army. The smell of salt and tar clung to the air — but beneath it, faint and wrong, I caught a trace of sulfur.

Black Ember.

The Inquisition’s orders had been precise: infiltrate the docks, sabotage three of the Guild’s shipments, collect samples, and identify whoever was funding them. But it wasn’t just the Guild now. These shipments came backed by noble coin and Imperial seals. Corruption had roots in marble halls as well as gutter alleys.

Sophia’s words from the last meeting still lingered in my mind:

“We’re not purging thieves anymore. We’re cutting out a cancer that learned how to wear perfume.”

Getting into the docks was easy enough — the Guild had disguised their ships as fishing vessels, sails patched, hulls scarred by salt and smoke. From above, they looked harmless. From beneath, the water glowed faintly red where the cargo leaked.

I slipped aboard one under the cover of rain. A crew of smugglers was unloading crates marked with fish symbols, laughing between swigs of spiced rum. Their laughter stopped when the wind changed direction — the faint hiss of corruption crawling from their cargo.

I pried one crate open. Inside, shards of dark crystal pulsed with crimson veins. Each shard gave off a faint heat, like the embers of a dying forge — but wrong, unnatural. I could feel the Veilstone Sigil burn against my chest as if recoiling from it.

Black Ember. Demon-forged reagent.

Used by cult alchemists to distill infernal power into potions, blades, or worse — people.

I planted the first charge beneath the hull — a small vial of acidic oil given to me by the Inquisition. It would eat through the ship’s keel in minutes once activated. One down.

The second ship was easier. I moved with the tide, slipping from shadow to shadow, until I reached the cargo bay. More crates. More ember.

And then — a voice behind me.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

I turned, hand on my dagger. A man stepped from the shadows — a Guild foreman, judging by his silver pin and the calm in his voice.

“Do you know what this is worth?” he asked, lifting one of the crystals. “The nobles pay a fortune for just a handful. Alchemists, healers, priests... all claiming purity, all drinking poison. You see why we do this? We’re just supplying demand.”

I didn’t answer. He smiled — a weary, crooked thing. “You’re one of us, right? I can see it. That look — someone who’s done bad for good reasons.”

“Maybe once,” I said quietly. Then I drove my dagger through the oil barrel beside him.

The flames that followed turned the night red.

By the time I reached the third vessel, the docks were chaos. Smugglers shouting, smoke rising, gulls screaming overhead. The ship’s crew was already trying to sail away when I leapt aboard and cut through the rigging.

The hull creaked. Crates tumbled into the sea, their contents igniting on contact with saltwater — patches of burning crimson floating like dead stars.

In one of the crates, wrapped in oilskin, I found something else: a letter sealed with a noble crest.

The crest of Baron Istren Korr.
The same Baron Korr who funded orphanages, built soup kitchens, and donated gold to the Cathedral of Saint Ilyra.

I broke the seal. The letter read:

“Ensure the next shipment reaches the inner districts. The alchemists will refine the Black Ember before inspection. Our buyers grow impatient — and the profit from these reagents will ensure the Empire’s ‘holy’ crusade remains affordable.” — I.K.

My stomach turned.

Charity by day, demonic commerce by night.