"Well," Dalken said, snapping Kyro out of his deliberations, "I've clearly given you plenty to chew on. As much as I'd love to stick around and see how this all plays out, regrettably, duty calls."
Kyro nodded, too preoccupied to argue.
"I originally intended to offload one of my lesser Imbued Objects on you as recompense," Dalken continued, producing a sturdy black leather pouch and setting it on the table with a weighty thud. "But I suspect coin will serve you better for now. The amount inside is roughly what such an object would fetch. Not exactly equivalent to the value of a life, but then again, what is?"
Kyro stared at the pouch as Dalken rose to his feet.
"Try not to splurge it all at once," the Ascendant added lightly. "I have a strong feeling you're going to need it soon."
He offered a few parting remarks—half advice, half idle musing—before finally excusing himself.
To his credit, Kyro waited until Dalken had fully disappeared down the street before opening the pouch.
What he found inside was perhaps the most disorienting sight of his life.
Bit coins—hundreds of them—alongside a separate, heavier stack of larger, distinctly stamped pieces he recognised immediately as Marks. He counted twice before he trusted the number.
Two thousand five hundred Bits... and sixty-five Marks.
Sixty-five Marks.
For a long moment, Kyro's mind refused to process it. He had never held—nor even imagined possessing—this kind of wealth. Even Nia Soren's bounty had amounted to a mere three thousand Bits, a paltry fraction of this sum.
Approximately one-twelfth, his arithmetic supplied after a beat.
With this, he could afford years of lodging without scraping by. Decades, if he was frugal.
Once the initial shock faded, unease set in.
Kyro closed the pouch slowly, fingers tightening as though the money might vanish if he loosened his grip. Wealth like this didn't just buy comfort, it bought attention. Keeping his breathing steady, he scanned the eatery without lifting his head. No sudden hush. No obvious stares. Just patrons eating and drinking, blissfully detached from the harsher realities he lived with daily.
It did nothing to calm him.
If Dalken had been able to observe him from afar without his noticing, someone else surely could as well.
Unwilling to tempt fate, Kyro promptly made his exit from Velarium. Only after he'd put sufficient distance between himself and the establishment did he duck into a narrow alley, swiftly stowing the pouch in his gaiter, the gaiter in his jacket, and the jacket in his backpack, basically shedding anything that made him memorable.
As an added precaution, he avoided the usual route to Samm's entirely, taking a longer, circuitous path instead.
Paranoid? Maybe.
But better paranoid than dead.
...
Samm's shop sat at the tail end of a neglected trade row.
From the outside, it didn't look like much, just another run-down utility shop frequented by regulars or chanced upon by aimless wanderers. The interior was nothing special either. Every inch of space was occupied: spindly shelves rising to the ceiling, bending under the weight of coils of insulated wire, dented canteens, cracked goggles, outdated scanners, water purifiers, and a dozen other odds and ends. Tags written in Samm's loopy scrawl dangled from the displays, serving as price markers, condition disclaimers, or both.
Between the cluttered aisles ran narrow pathways barely wide enough for two people to pass. In one of them, a scrawny boy—maybe eleven or twelve—sporting an oversized dusty green apron with the name tag scratched out, worked diligently to wipe down shelves and polish the items on them to a passable standard.
"Who are you?" Kyro blurted the moment the stranger came into view.
"H—hello! I'm Finn. Finn Elsen. I—I work here," came the timid reply. "How can I help you?"
"You… work here?" Kyro frowned. "Since when?"
"Uh, about three days ago. W—why?"
Ah. I got replaced. Kyro quickly put two and two together.
Barely a week absent—his first unexcused absence in years of loyal, near-thankless service—and Samm had already scraped up another desperate street kid to overwork and underpay.
Can't say I'm surprised, Kyro thought, though the sting was quieter than he'd expected. He supposed a lot had changed in the past hour.
Either way, he hadn't come to beg for his old job back. He was just here to tie up loose ends.
"Where's Samm?" Kyro asked, his gaze drifting around the shop before settling, inevitably, on the jade fish in the far corner.
The accursed thing still stood there, human-sized and hideous. Carved with unsettling precision, its bulbous eyes bulged with uncanny alertness, its puckered lips stretching unnaturally wide.
An involuntary shiver ran down his spine.
"He went to the farmers' market," Finn said. "He said he'll be back by nightfall."
"Tch. Farmers' market. Yeah, right. More like the Ecstasy Parlour," Kyro muttered, already moving toward the aquatic effigy.
Bubble-Eyed Horror. Jade Nightmare. Grinning Abomination.
Customers had coined many names for it over the years. Eldritch Fish Stick was still Kyro's favourite.
"Hey! What are you doing?!" Finn yelped when Kyro shoved his entire forearm into the statue's gullet without warning. "I'll sound the alarm if you try anything funny!"
"It doesn't work," Kyro said calmly, fishing around the fish's insides. "Hasn't for two years. And relax. I'm not stealing anything. Just collecting personal effects."
True to his word, he retrieved a chipped silver pendant, a tarnished brass ring, and a handful of loose change. In all, nothing worth robbing, or raising a fuss over.
"Personal effects?" Finn hesitated, a speculative look flickering across his face. "Perchance, are you… Kyro?"
"Bingo," Kyro said, pocketing the items. "The very same one whose name you scratched off that apron."
Finn flushed with guilt immediately, though none of this was truly his fault. Like Kyro—and many others before them, Kyro surmised—he was just another casualty of circumstance.
"Don't worry," Kyro said. "I'm not here to jeopardise your job. As a matter of fact, I'll be leaving right now."
He turned for the door—hoping, praying, that this chapter of his life was finally over—only for his hand to pause on the handle.
"One more thing," he said, without looking back. "Whatever you do, always try to put yourself first. Don't let your circumstances be mistaken for loyalty. Don't let your gratitude become debt."
It was the advice no one had ever given him.
"Just so someone says it."
Then he left.