“I hope you can survive alone for a few moments, little fool,” I muttered through clenched teeth.
After all, perhaps it was better that she didn’t see where I was going.
My steps carried me into a narrow alley, almost invisible to untrained eyes. An arch of shadow opened onto a steep passage. I slipped inside, pulling my hood lower to conceal my face. Figures moved past, carrying trembling cages half-hidden beneath dark cloths.
The name of the Wish Witch was carved into those cages.
The alley spilled into the heart of the black market, where the facade of the sorcerers’ market gave way to the raw truth. A cavern, burrowed into the mountain’s gut, where the darkness came not merely from the absence of light.
The stench hit first. A suffocating blend of mold, rotting flesh, and an acrid tang of iron that clung to my palate. Every breath tasted of blood.
Then came the noise. Hoarse moans, guttural growls, the cruel crack of thunder-strikes slamming into bodies too exhausted to even scream. Cursed, crammed into cages so small they could not move. Their skeletal limbs twisted under the pressure, their many eyes glowing with a sickly gleam. Electricity crackled over their torn skin at each strike of the electrified batons. A methodical torture. Rhythmic. As one breaks a beast.
I remembered it too well.
Hunger, pain, terror. That was what they sold here.
The trafficking of the Cursed.
A monster like me should have felt at home in such a place. Yet all I felt was a burning desire to see it reduced to ashes. Low-grade Cursed were sold to sorcerers for their experiments. Turned into slaves or tortured for spectacle.
Thorns erupted along my forearm, tearing through the fabric. There were hundreds of Cursed. Too many locks, too many chains. But I was in no mood to negotiate.
“Silence, vermin!” snarled a greasy voice.
The merchant. An abomination sculpted out of filth and fat, a twisted silhouette reeking of carrion. His smile was a gaping cavern, one tooth missing among a rack of yellow rot. At his feet, stunted ostriches gasped for breath, magical collars squeezing their throats to suffocation.
“What can I do for you?” The question carried a criminal indifference, a reflex born of treating life as nothing but coin.
A smile stretched slowly across my lips.
A real smile.
The kind I hadn’t worn in far too long.
“Because of you, I’m going to break a promise.”
I tilted my head, my neck cracking as I savored the mist thickening around me. The merchant blinked, the predator’s instinct faltering in the face of something more predatory still.
He should have run.
I tore off my mask and raised my hand, ready to drive my claws into that repulsive chest, curious to see what would seep out. Would he bleed black, thick and foul, like the mire that had fed him his whole life?
But an image burst into my mind.
Lempicka.
Her irritated frown. Her lips pinched in reproach.
I lowered my hand into a clenched fist.
“W-what are you?—”
I closed my eyes and snapped my wrist. My magic surged, sharp and final. The sound that followed was a metallic hymn, cold and flawless. Locks shattered one by one, snapping like bones.
When I opened my eyes, the cages stood open.
The Cursed did not move at first. Instinct whispered this was another trap. But when realization dawned, some fled toward the light like broken shadows. Others chose another path. The shift was instant. The roles reversed in the span of a heartbeat.
