Luca slept better than he had in days. No Spirit depletion dragging him under, no headache chasing him into the dark. Just ambient warehouse noise.

  He woke with the deal still sitting on his chest. Midday at the Exchange, Maren would walk out with the shard and tonight she'd absorb it.

  He couldn't do anything about that until evening. So he did what he always did.

  Luca laid out his cloth, set out his sign, and waited for the people who couldn't afford certainty to come pay two copper for the next best thing.

  Three customers before noon. A dock laborer with a white shard he'd pulled from a dead rat-thing near the harbor wall — Luca held it and felt the familiar pull behind his eyes, the world thinning until only the crystal's nature came through. Something small. A sharpening of one of the minor senses, maybe hearing, maybe peripheral awareness. Nothing that would save the man's life. He told him it was a quality-of-life skill, not for combat, and that he'd be lucky to get a copper for it at the Exchange. The laborer left looking deflated. Nobody wanted to hear that the shard they'd risked their life for was barely worth the walk to sell it.

  The second was a woman who'd come to him yesterday with a green crystal. She was back, and she hadn't absorbed it yet.

  "You told me it was a healing skill," she said, setting the green shard on the cloth. "Slow-acting to use between fights, not during."

  Luca picked it up again. The impression came through the same as before — vitality, regeneration, something slow and passive that worked beneath the surface. That was good — it meant his reads weren't shifting between sessions, which was something he'd been quietly worried about.

  "That's still what I get from it," he said.

  "Nobody wants to buy a slow healer. I've been to three stalls."

  "Then absorb it yourself."

  She looked at him like he'd suggested she jump off the pier. "I'm not a fighter."

  "You don't have to be. A skill that helps you heal faster is useful whether you're clearing dungeons or hauling cargo. You wake up less sore. Cuts close quicker. You get sick less, maybe." He set the shard back on the cloth between them. "The fighters in this city want skills that hit harder. That doesn't mean the skill is bad, it just means they're not the right buyer."

  She stared at the green crystal for a long time. Then she picked it up, paid her two copper, and left without saying whether she'd take his advice.

  The third customer was a man Luca hadn't seen before — older, lean, with the sunburn of someone who'd spent time outside the pylon's radius recently. He set two white shards on the cloth side by side.

  "Both." he said.

  Luca picked up the first. The impression hit fast — combat, kinetic, a burst of concentrated force. A striker skill, probably a single heavy hit. He set it down and picked up the second. A completely different read, something structural, reinforcing — a skill that toughened or hardened. Not the user's body, necessarily. Possibly armor or even a weapon.

  "First one's a combat skill," Luca said. "A Heavy single strike at close range. Second one's harder to pin down — it reinforces something. Could be defensive, could be a crafting tool. Depends on how the user applies it."

  The man studied him. "You're more specific than the other appraisers."

  "There aren't other appraisers."

  "There's one near the west fountain who charges three copper."

  Luca paused. "And what does he tell you?"

  "Names. But not just names — he said the first one felt 'aggressive' and the second felt 'sturdy.' Couldn't tell me more than that."

  Luca's hand stilled on the cloth.

  Those weren't System labels. Those were impressions — vague and barely useful, but impressions all the same. Standard Appraise at Rank F gave you a name and nothing else. If this man was getting faint reads on a shard's nature, it meant his skill had ranked up.

  Appraise at Rank E. It had to be. The skill was starting to give its users a whisper of what Luca had been seeing since day one — except his mutated version had been doing it from the start, clearer and deeper than what this man was apparently getting at a higher rank.

  The gap was still wide. "Aggressive" and "sturdy" were a long way from the layered domain reads Luca pulled from a shard at contact. But the gap would narrow. Every rank the standard version climbed, it would inch closer to what Luca could do — and more people would start wondering why a man with the same Common-tier skill was so much better at it than everyone else.

  "Then he's giving you feelings, not answers." Luca held out his hand. "Four copper. Two per shard."

  The man paid and left.

  Another appraiser — and one whose skill was growing. It didn't threaten him yet; vague impressions weren't competition for real reads. But it meant the market for shard identification was changing. People were starting to rank their skills up, and Appraise was ranking with them. The window where Luca was the only person in Korrath who could tell you what a shard actually did was closing, slowly, one rank at a time.

  He made eight copper by early afternoon. Combined with what he had from yesterday: sixteen copper and one silver. He bought nothing, his stomach had opinions about this, but his stomach didn't know that tonight would determine whether he had a client or a death sentence.

  At mid-afternoon the bazaar thinned. The heat had settled into the flagstones and the pylon's hum grew louder in the quieter air. Luca sat on his cloth and watched the crowd and thought about the shard.

  Maren had it by now. The Exchange opened transfer processing at midday, and she didn't seem like the kind of person who waited when something she'd paid fifty-two gold for was sitting behind a counter. She'd have it in her hands, in her pouch, walking through the streets with her crew flanking her and her fingers probably wrapped around the crystal through the leather.

  Tonight she'd absorb it. And Luca would be in the room.

  Absorption failures happened — he'd seen the kid press Harlen's cracked green crystal against his chest and get nothing. But Stillwater Guard wasn't cracked. It was clean and intact, and Maren was already Awakened with at least one open slot or she wouldn't have bid. The risk wasn't failure. The risk was that the skill would settle into her slot, she'd feel its function, and what she felt wouldn't match what Luca had told her.

  He pressed his thumb against his sternum. He'd trusted this skill with everything he had.

  He closed the stall when the shadows hit the fountain and left for the destination.

  Ren was already there.

  He was leaning against the weapons hawker's empty table, arms crossed, watching the east-side foot traffic with relaxed attention. His hand-axe was on his belt. The leather shard pouch was gone — the striker skill was in his slot now, not in a bag.

  They walked without talking. Ren led him west through the textile district by a different route than Luca would have taken — side streets, back alleys, a stretch along the inner wall where the stonework threw long shadows. Twice Ren stopped at intersections and looked behind them. Just a turn of the head, a pause to adjust his boot, his eyes sweeping the street in the motion.

  The chandler's shop was the same as Maren had described. A narrow building on the west side, wedged between a cooperage and a half-built wall someone had abandoned. The ground floor was dark. The smell of old tallow crept through the planks as they climbed — two flights up a staircase that announced every step.

  On the third floor they reached a door. Ren knocked twice, paused, knocked once more.

  The door opened.

  The room was small with one window, shuttered tight. A single table with two chairs. A lantern burning low and a bedroll in the corner — someone had been sleeping here.

  Maren stood by the window. She wore the same clothes as the Boatman's Rest, the same careful posture. Her hand rested on the table near a leather pouch that was heavier than it had been a few hours ago.

  A young woman sat against the far wall with a crossbow case beside her — the same woman from the Boatman's Rest, the one who'd sat with Ren. And a man Luca hadn't seen before: older, mid-forties maybe, with a trimmed beard and a longbow leaning against the wall behind him. He stood near the door with the ease of someone who was used to being the last person between trouble and everyone else.

  Four people, counting Maren. Three of them were looking at Luca.

  "This is Luca," Maren said. Not the appraiser. The same anchor she'd used for Ren.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  The older man nodded once. The crossbow woman didn't move.

  "Close the door," Maren said.

  She opened the leather pouch and drew out the shard.

  Blue. Even in the lantern's low light, the color was unmistakable — throwing faint reflections across the plaster ceiling. Luca felt Appraise+ stir behind his sternum, reaching toward the crystal the way it always did when a shard entered his range. What mattered now was what it did when it entered someone else.

  Maren held the crystal in her open palm. She looked at it, then at Luca.

  "Tell me again," she said. "What to expect."

  "If it's what I told you, it'll feel like awareness opening up. Like the space around you gets clearer — where walls are, where people are, where things are moving. The name reads as defense, but it won't feel like a shield." He paused. "If I'm wrong, it'll feel like resistance. You'll know the difference."

  "And if the absorption fails?"

  "It won't. The shard is intact and you've got a slot open. Failures happen with damaged crystals or overloaded slots."

  Maren looked at the shard one more time. Then she pressed it against her chest with both hands.

  The room changed.

  Blue light pulsed between her fingers — not the weak flicker of a failed bond but a deep, steady glow that filled the space and threw hard shadows against the walls. The crossbow woman shifted. The older man's hand moved toward the longbow and stopped. Ren stood with his back to the door and didn't breathe.

  The glow intensified. Three seconds. Five. The light was bright enough that Luca had to narrow his eyes, and through the glare he could see Maren's jaw clench and her fingers press harder against the crystal as it dissolved.

  Seven seconds. The light folded inward — collapsing toward her sternum — and then it was gone.

  The shard was gone with it. Maren's hands were empty and flat against her chest.

  Silence.

  She stood with her eyes closed, breathing through her nose, her hands still pressed where the crystal had been. The room waited. The older man's eyes hadn't left Maren's face.

  When she opened her eyes, she didn't look at anyone. She looked at the room.

  She turned her head slowly, like someone hearing music from a direction she couldn't quite identify, and her gaze tracked along the walls without focusing on any surface in particular. Her hands dropped to her sides. Her breathing changed — slower, more even, the rhythm of someone processing something enormous through a channel she'd never used before.

  "Maren," the older man said quietly.

  "I'm fine." Her voice was steady but distant, like she was speaking from the other side of a wall.

  Nobody moved.

  "The walls," she said, her eyes following each word. "The floor under us. The stairwell." Her head turned toward the shuttered window. "There are people on the street. Two — no, three. One is moving south. Two are standing near the cooperage."

  Ren went to the window. He opened the shutter a hand's width and looked down.

  "Two men by the cooperage wall," he said. "Sharing a bottle. There's a woman further down, heading toward the main road."

  Maren nodded. Her eyes were open now, focused, but something behind them was still working — processing a new layer of the world that the rest of them couldn't see.

  She looked at the crossbow woman. "Your case is unlatched, check the bottom clasp."

  The woman looked down. Her hand found the clasp. It was open.

  "Dael." Maren turned to the older man. "Your bowstring. There's a fray near the top."

  The man — Dael — reached up without looking and ran his fingers along the upper limb of his longbow. He found the spot and his expression shifted.

  "Hairline," he said. "Wouldn't have caught it until the next draw."

  Maren sat down. She set her hands flat on the table and stared at them for a moment, then looked up at Luca.

  "It's not a defense skill," she said.

  Something shifted behind Luca's ribs. Not relief — something deeper, in the place where Appraise+ sat in its slot. A warmth that spread outward, faint but unmistakable, the same kind of flicker the System gave when it noticed something worth noticing. His skill had been right about a Rare shard. The System, apparently, thought that mattered.

  He filed it away and kept his face still.

  "What does the System call it?" he asked.

  "Stillwater Guard. Same name as the label." She shook her head once. "But the name doesn't fit. It's not for defense. It's a map."

  Exactly what he'd felt through the glass at the Exchange.

  "How far does it reach?" he asked.

  "This building and the street below. I can feel the floors, the load-bearing walls, the hollow spots." She paused. "Beyond that it starts to thin. There's something further out — the cooperage next door, maybe the lot — but it's unclear. Like trying to hear a conversation through stone."

  Rank-limited. The same constraint Luca felt with Appraise+ — clear impressions close, fog at the edges, and a hard boundary beyond that where the skill just stopped giving. As her proficiency grew, the range would open. But that was his framework, not hers. He didn't say it.

  "You were right," Maren said. "Down to the detail."

  Luca let a breath out. He'd been careful about what he showed this room since he walked in, and he wasn't going to drop that now.

  "I need to know what else it shows you," he said. "As you use it. Not just range — any new effects, anything that changes as you practice with it. The more I can match my reads against what skills actually do, the better I get at this."

  Maren nodded. Then she reached into a second pouch — not the one that had held the shard — and set something on the table.

  Gold. Five coins, stacked.

  "Your fee," she said. "For the Stillwater Guard read."

  Five gold. Luca had earned maybe thirty copper in his best week at the stall. Five gold was another world.

  He picked up the coins and put them in his pouch. He didn't count them in front of her. Counting in front of the person who paid you was a porter's mistake, and he'd stopped being a porter eight years ago.

  Five gold. He’d earned maybe thirty copper in his best week at the stall. This was months of work sitting in his pouch.

  "Going forward," Maren said, "I'll bring shards to you before we buy. Rate scales with the crystal — Common for copper, anything above that we negotiate." She looked at the others in the room. "My crew knows you by face now and that can't be undone. So we make it worth the risk."

  Looking back to Luca. "You stay small at the bazaar. Keep giving two-copper reads to strangers and when I need you for something bigger, Ren finds you."

  "There's another appraiser near the west fountain," Luca said. "Charges three copper. He's giving vague impressions now — 'aggressive,' 'sturdy,' that kind of thing. Not real reads, but more than just names."

  Maren’s eyes sharpened. “His skill ranked up?”

  “Seems like it. He’s not competition yet, but he will be eventually.”

  “Worth keeping an eye on?”

  “I already plan to. Every appraiser in the city is going to start giving more than names as their skills grow. The ones who figure out what that means first will start charging for it.”

  “Then your lead shrinks.”

  “My lead is different. But yes.”

  Luca nodded. He stood.

  "Ren will walk you to the main road," she said. "Don't come back here unless I send for you. Regular business goes through the Boatman's Rest."

  "One more thing," Luca said from the doorway. He looked back at her. "Buy Dalla a teapot. Hers has a crack."

  Something crossed Maren's face. Not a smile — she didn't seem like someone who gave those out easily — but an acknowledgment.

  "I'll think about it," she said.

  Ren walked him down the stairs and out the side door. The textile district was dark, the buildings throwing black shapes against a sky with no stars — clouds had rolled in off the harbor.

  They walked three blocks before Ren spoke.

  "It's real," he said. Not a question. He'd seen enough.

  Ren was quiet for another half-block. Then: "She hasn't been steady since Saltmere. Since we lost people. This is the first time she's looked right in weeks."

  Luca didn't respond. There wasn't anything he could add that wouldn't presume more than he'd earned.

  They reached the main road. The bazaar's night sounds drifted south — raised voices, the clatter of a dice game, someone singing off-key near the fountain.

  "Straight from here," Ren said.

  Luca nodded. Ren turned and disappeared back into the dark streets without another word.

  Luca walked home. The door-watcher was at her post, the candle stub almost finished. She nodded him in. He climbed the ladder to the loft, stepped over sleeping shapes, and lowered himself onto his bedroll.

  Five gold in his pouch. The leather was heavier against his thigh than it had ever been. He lay on his back and stared at the rafters and listened to the Hassin girl murmuring in her sleep two partitions away.

  The money mattered. He could eat properly for weeks. He could buy a heavier coat before the weather turned. He could even set something aside, start building a margin between himself and the edge.

  But the money wasn't the important thing.

  Stillwater Guard was a perception skill. He'd called it from fifteen paces through glass, reading through fog, and he'd been right. Domain, nature, the mismatch between name and function — all of it confirmed the moment it settled into Maren's slot.

  His framework worked. The impressions he'd been mapping — the domain reads, the faint whispers of categories the System used but never showed — they were real. Blurry, incomplete, constrained by rank and Spirit and the limits of a skill he'd only been using for two weeks.

  He could build on real.

  He thought about the warmth he'd felt behind his ribs when Maren confirmed the read. He'd filed it away in the moment, but now, lying in the dark with nothing to distract him, he pulled up his interface.

  The translucent overlay materialized. The same sparse ledger, the same handful of numbers.

  Level: 7 | Tier: 1

  Might: 6 Agility: 8 Vitality: 7 Spirit: 12

  Skill Slots: 1/1 [1] Appraise+ — Proficiency: Rank E

  He stared at it.

  Level 7. Three levels in a single day — the System had been watching, apparently, and it had decided that what he'd done with Stillwater Guard counted for more than hauling beams off a road. His Spirit had ticked up by one and Appraise+ had crossed from Rank F to Rank E.

  The same rank the west fountain appraiser had reached. The rank where standard Appraise started giving vague impressions instead of just names.

  Luca wondered what Rank E meant for his version. His mutated skill had been giving him domain reads and tag whispers since Rank F — deeper and clearer than what any standard appraiser was getting now. If the baseline had just jumped, then his ceiling had jumped with it.