Ashes of the Veiled Market part 4

The Relic Appraiser was more careful. He lived in the upper city, pretending to be a scholar of antiquities. His house smelled of ink, dust, and secrets.

I slipped in through a window while he studied a shard of obsidian on his desk — one I recognized instantly: Black Ember, cracked and still pulsing faintly with infernal heat.

He spoke aloud, as if to the shard itself.

“Soon, my Sovereign, you shall have permanence. The Broker will honor the price. Even the Inquisition cannot unmake a contract once sealed.”

His voice trembled between reverence and fear.

I stepped from the dark behind him. “You talk too much for a man about to die.”

He turned, eyes wide, but I was already moving. The knife was quick. A whisper between heartbeats.

I cleaned the blade on his sleeve, leaving behind a forged note with a rival’s signature. Then I took the shard. The pulse of it lingered against my palm like a heartbeat that wasn’t mine.

Two down.

The last one, the Soul Merchant, was different.

He wasn’t hiding. He waited.

The slums were thick with fog when I found him at the edge of the old canal. He sat on a crate, flipping a coin carved with a demonic sigil — the kind used in soul bargains. His smile when he saw me made my blood run cold.

“The Inquisition’s pet killer,” he said softly. “I was wondering when they’d send you.”

He wasn’t armed. He didn’t need to be. The air around him shimmered faintly, warped by unseen energy — demonic protection.

“You think killing me will stop the Sovereign?” he asked. “You think demons care about our flesh? We’re just the ink they sign with.”

I said nothing.

“Then let me make you a counteroffer,” he said, tossing the coin to me. “Walk away. I’ll tell them you died in the chaos. You’ll be rich, free, and far from all this pious slaughter.”

I caught the coin. It burned.

The knife slipped through his throat before I realized I’d moved. His body fell forward, eyes wide in betrayal — or relief.

I stared at the coin in my hand, the sigil glowing faintly even as the blood cooled. When I dropped it, it sank into the canal without a ripple.

Three down.

Sophia met me in the catacombs beneath the chapel that night. The torchlight painted her face in gold and shadow.

“You did it,” she said quietly. “Three fewer mouths to whisper to Hell.”

I handed her the shard from the appraiser. It pulsed once before dimming, as if aware of what we’d done.

She didn’t smile. “They said we’d weaken the demon army by cutting off its supply lines,” she murmured. “I see only corpses and coin purses.”

I didn’t answer.

Because she was right.

Every kill had bought us time. But at what cost? Each name I struck from the list blurred the line between the infiltrator and the executioner. Between justice and obedience.

When I left the catacombs, the city was silent — too silent. A storm was coming. I could feel it in the stillness, in the pulse of the Black Ember shard still echoing faintly in my coat pocket.

The Sovereign’s ritual was drawing near.

And for the first time, I wondered whether the real summoning had already begun — not in the vaults, but inside us.

The Gray Sovereign
The invitation came wrapped in silk and sealed with ash. No threats. No commands. Just a line written in elegant, gray ink:

“All debts come due. Meet me beneath the city.”

By then, my cover was deep enough that I couldn’t tell where the disguise ended and I began. The Guild whispered my false name with reverence, calling me the Broker’s chosen blade.

Sophia wanted to come with me. The Inquisition forbade it. “If you go,” she warned, “you go alone. No backup. No prayers. The Gray Sovereign isn’t a man — he’s a market given flesh.”

I almost laughed at that. Until I saw him.

The catacombs beneath Choury stretched for miles — a maze of bone and coin, where graves were carved from vault doors. Lanterns burned with blue witchfire, their glow bouncing across murals of trade and sin: hands exchanging gold, souls bartered for crowns.

At the far end of the chamber sat the Gray Sovereign.

He wore robes of muted silver and a porcelain mask streaked with soot. His voice, when he spoke, was neither loud nor soft — it simply was, like a thought that existed before sound.

“You’ve done well, thief. The Guild bleeds, yet you remain unbroken. That makes you valuable.”

The others gathered in the shadows — masked followers, merchants, killers, all silent.

“Tonight, you join the heart of the Veil,” the Sovereign continued. “But first… a test.”

They brought forward a brazier filled with black flame. I felt the pull before I understood it — the aura of demonic essence, ancient and cold.

“Place your hand within,” said the Sovereign. “Let the Market judge you.”

My pulse pounded in my ears. The Veilstone Sigil on my chest flared briefly, trying to suppress the divine within me. Sophia’s voice whispered from memory: ‘If the relic fails, burn bright. It’s better to die holy than live hollow.’

I plunged my hand into the flame.

Agony lanced up my arm — not from heat, but hunger. The fire wanted me. It gnawed at the divine residue in my blood, tasting, testing, savoring.

Then light burst from my palm. Holy, raw, defiant.

The chamber gasped as the brazier shattered.

The Sovereign rose from his throne, mask tilting. “You are not what you claim.”

And in that moment, I saw the truth. His body trembled — not from rage, but strain. Shadows pulsed beneath his skin like veins of ink. His voice split, layered with another — deeper, colder, older.

“What are you?” I asked.

“A broker,” the voice said. “A keeper of ledgers. A witness to every bargain your kind has ever made.”

The mask cracked, revealing one burning eye beneath.

“This one,” it said, gesturing to the Sovereign’s body, “was merely greedy enough to host me.”

The Bound Broker. A demon of contracts, greed, and balance — not a destroyer, but a corrupter.

“You don’t seek chaos,” I said. “You profit from it.”

“We do not create greed, human,” it replied. “We simply collect the interest. Kill me, and another merchant will take my place. Another Guild. Another Sovereign. That is your nature — not ours.”

The cultists began to murmur. The air grew hot and heavy.

I reached into my cloak, drawing the Inquisition’s hidden relic — a Revelator Shard, taken from Sophia’s sanctum. Its surface burned with sacred script.

“Then let’s balance the books,” I said.

The Sovereign lunged — or perhaps it was the Broker, dragging his host like a puppet. The catacombs erupted into chaos. Flames clawed at the walls, shadows twisting like serpents. I drove the Shard into the ground, its light expanding outward in a ring of gold.

The Sovereign screamed, voice fractured between human and demon:

“You think purity will free you from want? You’ll beg again tomorrow!”

The Shard pulsed once, twice — then exploded.

When the light faded, I stood alone. The throne was ash. The mask lay cracked beside it, still warm. The demonic presence was gone — but so was the man.

Sophia found me hours later, kneeling in the ruins. Her torchlight fell across the shattered mask.

“It’s done,” I said. “The Bound Broker’s gone.”

She knelt beside me, eyes on the ashes. “No. It’s free.”

“What?”

She lifted a fragment of the mask, revealing faint runes still glowing. “Bound demons don’t die. They disperse. Find new hosts. New contracts.”

I looked down at my own hand — the faint mark burned into my palm where the black flame had tasted me.

The Broker’s whisper lingered still:

“All debts come due.”

Ashes of the Market
The tunnels smelled of blood and incense. Even before the Inquisition banners unfurled, I could hear the whispers — prayers, bargains, screams — all blending into the wet hum of the underground bazaar. It wasn’t a market anymore. It was a graveyard that hadn’t yet realized it was dead.

Sophia stood at the front of the strike team, her Inquisitor’s insignia dimly gleaming beneath the torchlight. “This is it. The heart of rot. We burn it out, or it spreads again.”

The Veilstone Sigil on my neck pulsed faintly, like it too could sense the presence of the Broker Demon below. The air was heavy — saturated with demonic musk and fear. We moved silently through the maze of stalls and crates that once trafficked in jewels and silks. Now they overflowed with vials of dark ichor, infernal bones, half-fused relics. Each one whispered promises. Each one begged to be touched.

Then came the first wave — Guild defenders, faces wrapped in gray hoods, their eyes glassy and hollow. Not zealots — addicts, slaves to greed and the Broker’s promises. Their blades were sharp, but their conviction dulled by corruption. We cut through them like fire through parchment.

Every strike echoed with finality. Every soul that fell made the tunnels darker.

At the center of the bazaar was the Vault of Veins — its ceiling pulsing faintly like the underside of a living beast. The summoning circle sprawled across the floor, drawn in ash and gold. The Broker Demon had no form yet, but its presence pressed on the lungs like a heavy coin placed on the chest.

Sophia approached the circle, holy fire curling around her hands. “Greed isn’t a sin. It’s a disease. And this is the cure.”

The demon’s voice coiled through the air — not spoken, but offered.

“You burn gold and call it virtue. Yet all men return to the market, child. Even your faith has its price.” The Broker spoke.

It tried to bargain, even as its host body flickered in and out of existence — a warped merchant’s form, fused with scales and shadow. I threw the Inquisitorial relic — the Ember Seal — into the circle. The ground split open, releasing a scream of molten black fire.

The Broker’s manifestation erupted — a figure of coin and flame, its mouth a pit of endless debt. I swung my blessed blade into its chest as Sophia chanted the Rite of Severance. The fire consumed everything — the relics, the stalls, the whispers.

When the ceiling began to collapse, I saw her turn toward me — her eyes bright, her face calm. “Go. Let the market end with me.” She pleaded.

The light swallowed her before I could speak.

When I emerged from the ruins, dawn was breaking over Choury. The city hummed with life above, indifferent as ever. Captain Holt met me at the barracks, armor still dusted with ash.

“The Veiled Market is no more. The brokers dead, the relics seized. But look outside — the streets are no cleaner than before.” Holt muttered.

He handed me a parchment stamped with the Emperor’s seal — commendation, reward, a line in some holy ledger.

But when I looked at my hands, they still trembled. They smelled of smoke and coins.

And in the faint light of morning, I could almost hear the Broker’s whisper:
“Markets rebuild. Greed never dies.”

Epilogue Note: The Veiled Market collapses, its leaders dead and its network shattered. The Inquisition seizes its relics, burning every trace of demonic trade. Sophia Sidona is declared martyred in service, though rumors whisper of a veiled woman seen near the border, wearing a broken sigil.

The world remains — unchanged, but quieter. And beneath that silence, commerce stirs once more.