RUST AND AETHER - The Black Market Bargain

Night fell over

Night fell over

Ascendant like black iron, cold and unyielding.In the small, drafty cottage at the edge of the

Julian sat at his uneven wooden table by the faint glow of an oil lamp.

Eric’s heavy leather coin pouch lay open before him, its contents glinting dully in the pale light.Two gold crowns, thirty-four silver marks, and a handful of copper bits.

Added to the silver he’d taken off

Seth two nights ago, it was more money than the sweeper boy had seen in his entire seven years on the mountain.”A paltry sum,” Kaelen remarked in his mind, his tone dripping with cultured disdain. “Back when

I held court in the

Frost-Palace, my footmen tipped the stable grooms in refined spirit-stones.

This copper slag smells like stale lard and horse sweat.””Well, your

Frost-Palace is six feet under a mountain of glacier ice, you old windbag,” Vanya snorted, her voice crackling like dry tinder. “To a boy who’s been living on boiled turnip skins, thirty silver marks buys enough rye bread to fill a cellar.

Stop whining and let him plan.”Julian didn’t join the bickering.

He counted the silver into three neat stacks, wrapped the coins in a scrap of clean linen, and tucked them inside his tunic next to the

Dragon-Heart

Grass.He needed two things before dawn.First, a foundational cultivation method.

His washed meridians and newly opened cores were like empty dry riverbeds—without a manual to guide his breathing and draw the ambient

Aether into his lower dantian, he was just a physically strong mortal.Second, discretion.

Eric’s uncle was a junior steward in the outer yards.

A sweeper boy walking around with a broken wall, an outer disciple’s stolen steel sword, and a pocket full of silver would attract the wrong kind of attention before the sun rose.Julian pulled a heavy, moth-eaten wool cloak over his shoulders.

The deep hood shadowed his pale, ivory-smooth face, concealing the transformation wrought by the milk-stone bath.

He tied the rusted iron sword securely under the folds of the cloak, left

Eric’s stolen steel blade hidden beneath the floorboards near the hearth, and stepped out into the freezing night.The

Under-Market didn’t officially exist in the

Order’s registries.Nestled two miles behind the

Dregs in a natural granite hollow known as the

Bone-Crags, it was a sanctuary for rogue peddlers, disgraced former disciples, black-market herbalists, and fence-men who asked no questions.

Sect’s patrols knew about it, of course, but as long as the market stayed hidden in the shadows and paid its monthly “inspection fees” to the junior stewards, the guards turned a blind eye.Julian picked his way through the narrow, wind-scoured stone gullies, guided by the acrid smell of burning pine-pitch and sulfur.The

Under-Market opened up beneath a overhang of black slate.

Smoky torches sputtered in iron cages bolted to the rock walls, casting long, swaying shadows across fifty-odd stalls made of crude timber and stretched canvas.

Masked figures huddled over greasy blankets laid across the gravel, displaying rusted weapons, suspicious medicinal powders in unlabelled clay vials, and scraps of iron salvaged from the garbage slopes.The air here was thick with the murmur of low-voiced bargaining, the clink of copper, and the heavy smell of roasting mutton fat.”Watch your purse, kid,” Vanya warned, her voice taking on a sharp, pragmatic edge. “At least three pairs of eyes picked you up the second you walked past that iron torch-cage.

The skinny one on the ledge has a hidden crossbow under his serpe.”Julian didn’t look up, but his right hand glided casually beneath his cloak, his palm resting on the pommel of his rusted sword.

He adjusted his stride, making his footfalls sound heavy and unhurried—the gait of someone accustomed to violence, not a nervous mark.

The shadow on the ledge hesitated, then faded back into the dark.Julian walked past several stalls selling low-grade iron knives and doubtful herb roots until he spotted a stall near the back wall, tucked away under a jagged outcrop of rock.Behind a rickety table sat an old man wrapped in a greasy badger-fur coat.

His face was a crisscross of deep wrinkles, his eyes milky with cataracts, and three fingers were missing from his left hand—the healed scars left by a beast’s fangs.

He was quietly scraping the mold off a dried root with a small bone knife.Julian stopped in front of the table. “You buy spirit-herbs?”The old merchant didn’t look up from his root. “Depends on the herb, boy.

Most of the junk the street-rats haul up from the slopes is just poisonous toad-stool or rotten lichen.

I don’t buy poison.

The patrols throw me in the pit if a buyer dies.”Julian reached under his cloak, pulled out a small bundle wrapped in damp river-leaves, and unrolled it just enough to reveal a single inch of a crimson, scale-shaped leaf.A faint, pulsing warmth radiated from the leaf, casting a soft, blood-red glow across the old man’s cracked knuckles.The bone knife stopped scraping.The old merchant’s milky eyes snapped up, a sudden, razor-sharp clarity cutting through his dim gaze.

He sniffed the air once, his nostrils flaring as he caught the clean, metallic scent of wild

Yang-energy.”Dragon-Heart

Grass,” the old man whispered, his raspy voice dropping an octave.

He leaned forward, his remaining two fingers twitching slightly. “Third-grade… wild-grown.

And the root-bulb is intact.

Where did you get this?””In the crags,” Julian replied, his voice deadpan behind the shadow of his hood. “Do you want it or not?”The merchant stared at the red leaf for three long seconds, then pulled a small bronze scale and a velvet-lined wooden box from beneath the counter. “One stalk.

Freshly picked…

I’ll give you three hundred silver marks for it.”Julian scoffed.

It was a cold, dry sound that rasped in the quiet corner of the market.

He reached out to fold the leaf back into its damp wrapping. “I can take it to the lower town market tomorrow morning.

An alchemy hall will pay eight hundred just for the extraction juice.””Tell the old leech a thousand,” Kaelen

Chimed in smoothly. “Third-grade

Dragon-Heart

Grass harvested with the taproot undamaged possesses fifty percent higher potency when rendered for

He knows it, and he knows an alchemy apprentice will pay double.”Julian didn’t mention

Kaelen, but he kept his hand firmly on the herb bundle. “A thousand silver marks.

Not a copper less.

I walk.”The old merchant narrowed his eyes, studying the hooded boy in front of him.

He looked at the ragged hem of

Julian’s cloak, then at the steady, motionless grip

Julian maintained on his hip beneath the fabric.

There was no hesitation in the boy’s voice, no nervous twitch of the shoulders.”A thousand is steep, kid,” the old man grumbled, though he was already reaching beneath his table. “You’re bleeding me dry.”He pulled out a heavy canvas sack that clinked with the solid, dense ring of real bullion.

He untied the drawstring and counted out ten thick, stamped bars of refined trade-silver—each bar worth exactly one hundred standard marks.Julian inspected the silver bars, feeling the cold weight and checking the

Sect’s assay stamp on the corner of the metal.

Satisfied, he handed over the single stalk of

Dragon-Heart

Grass.The old man snatched the herb, wrapping it instantly in wet silk and locking it inside the velvet box with a satisfying click.”Anything else you need, young master?” the merchant asked, his tone notably more respectful now that ten silver bars had changed hands. “I have low-grade healing salves, beast-pelt boots, iron rations…””Manuals,” Julian said. “Basic cultivation scrolls and technique sheets.””Ah.

Books.” The merchant pointed a gnarled finger toward a dusty blanket laid out on the gravel to his left, where a pile of yellowed, water-stained rolls and bound rags lay stacked. “Most of it is copy-work from failed outer disciples.

Nothing higher than

Human-grade, of course.

Order executes anyone caught selling

Core-tier scriptures.”Julian crouched down by the blanket, his eyes scanning the titles written in faded ink on the spines.The

Breath-Method.He picked up a thin, leather-bound booklet titled

Breath-Gathering

He flipped through the first few pages.

It was an unranked, elementary

Aether-induction method—the most common manual sold in the lower towns for commoners attempting to sense energy for the first time.

It didn’t offer any fancy elemental affinities or combat techniques, but its breathing route was simple, gentle, and utterly neutral.”It’s rubbish,” Kaelen sneered in his head. “A peasant’s primer.

The prose reads as if it were scribbled by a drunk mule.””It’s perfect,” Vanya countered, shutting the sword spirit down instantly. “Julian’s channels were just washed by the milk-stone.

He doesn’t need an aggressive, high-rank manual that forces his energy into a single element right now.

He needs a neutral breath-cycle to condense his first

Seed without tearing his new meridians apart.”Julian looked up at the merchant. “How much for

Breath-Gathering

Scroll?””Fifty silver marks,” the old man said instantly.Julian didn’t bother haggling over fifty marks when he had ten silver bars in his pouch.

He tossed five loose silver coins onto the blanket and tucked the scroll into his tunic.He was about to stand up when his eye caught a ragged, moisture-stained bundle tucked underneath the edge of the blanket, half-buried under a pile of discarded leather straps.It was a tattered, binding-stripped manual made of coarse parchment, its edges burnt and black with old soot.

The title on the cover was barely legible, written in dark, iron-red ink that looked as if it had been painted with a rusted nail:The

Journey.The moment

Julian’s hand brushed against the burnt edge of the parchment, a strange, electric prickle ran up his palm, straight into his chest dantian—the dormant flame core behind his ribs gave a tiny, violent throb.In his skull,

Vanya went completely, utterly silent.For three seconds, the sarcastic sabre spirit didn’t make a sound.

Then, her voice rose in a low, breathless whisper that sent a cold shudder down

Julian’s spine.”Julian… buy that book.”Julian kept his face completely expressionless under his hood.

He picked up the ragged manual casually, letting it dangle from two fingers as if it were garbage. “This one’s falling apart.

Half the pages are burnt through.

What is it?”The old merchant glanced at it and spat onto the gravel. “Some incomplete sabre technique an old scavenger brought up from the lower crags ten years ago.

Missing the entire back half.

No one uses sabres on

Ascendant anyway; everyone wants to be a noble swordsman.

Give me ten silver coins and take the trash off my blanket.””Five,” Julian offered flatly.”Done,” the old man grunted.Julian dropped five more silver pieces onto the blanket, tucked the burnt sabre manual next to the cultivation scroll, and stood up.

He pulled his hood lower over his eyes, checked his belt, and melted back into the smoky darkness of the

Under-Market.Behind him, the old merchant returned to scraping his dried root, richer by a stalk of

Dragon-Heart

Grass.And inside

Julian’s mind,

Vanya’s laugh echoed—low, fierce, and wild as a forest fire in the dark.”The

Journey…” she purred, her spirit-intent flickering madly in his chest. “They called it trash.

They called it incomplete…

They have no idea what you just bought, boy.”