Three days.

  Three days in the pastel, aggressively soft paradise of Woolmere Love. Three days of my soldiers sleeping in memory-foam beds, eating pre-digested jelly, and getting emotionally validated by Affection Technicians.

  I stood across the street from the Woolhaven Hospital, leaning against a braided yarn lamppost, watching the gears of my new monopoly turn. Clayborn orderlies were carrying the last of the burn victims out of the wards, fully healed.

  I tapped my HUD, letting the sweet, sweet dopamine of compound interest wash over me.

  "Look at it," I whispered, taking a bite of a cashmere-apple. "It’s a beautiful, self-sustaining ecosystem of trauma and healing. I am a saint with a profit margin."

  But as I admired my fluffy medical empire, my eyes caught a jarring anomaly.

  Standing in the shadows of the hospital’s velvet overhang was a man who absolutely did not belong in this soft world.

  Ser Damian Ironvine.

  He was wearing his full, heavy plate armor dark green enamel trimmed with silver ivy. He looked exhausted. He wasn't physically wounded Dr. Fenris had patched up his minor scrapes on day one but he looked hollowed out. He was leaning against the felt wall, his head bowed, staring at his gauntleted hands as if they were covered in something only he could see.

  I walked over, tossing the apple core into a nearby silk bin.

  "Ser Damian," I said cheerfully. "You look like a man who just found out taxes are mandatory. Are the Affection Technicians not to your liking? I can get you a discount at the Whisper."

  Damian didn't smile. He slowly looked up. His eyes, so much like Lydia’s but entirely devoid of her cynical venom, were bloodshot.

  "I don't want comfort, Wilhelm," Damian said, his voice thick and raspy. "Comfort is for men with clean consciences."

  I stopped smiling. My Merchant instincts flared.

  There was a heavy, suffocating weight hanging over him. It wasn't the lingering trauma of the dragon fight. This was something else. This was guilt.

  "What happened?" I asked, dropping the Bastard act and stepping closer.

  Damian looked back down at his armored hands. He rubbed his thumbs over the steel joints, a nervous, repetitive tick.

  "I am the eldest son of Dankmar Ironvine," Damian whispered, staring at the metal. "I was born to inherit the largest army, the deepest mines, and the coldest legacy in the Realm. Do you know why I took the oaths of a Knight, Wilhelm? Do you know why I voluntarily disinherited myself?"

  "I assumed you liked the shiny armor," I said gently.

  Damian let out a hollow, broken laugh.

  "I did it to get away from him," he said, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "I refused his coin. I refused his titles. I thought if I swore an oath to the Crown, if I bound myself to the chivalry of the sword, I could wash the Ironvine mud from my hands. I thought I could be a good man."

  He closed his eyes. A tremor ran through his broad shoulders.

  "But you can't outrun Dankmar," Damian choked out. "He doesn't need to control my purse strings. He knows exactly where my heart is anchored."

  "Lydia," I guessed quietly.

  Damian’s eyes snapped open. The fierce, absolute, tragic love he held for his sister burned in his gaze.

  "days ago," Damian said, his voice vibrating with self-loathing, "while you were fighting dragons... a messenger raven arrived from my father. A coded directive."

  He looked around the quiet, soft street, making sure no one was listening.

  "You remember Ser Hestor?" Damian said, his voice vibrating with self-loathing. "The veteran of the Royal Vanguard. The man who trained your brothers. The man who died foaming at the mouth in the stables back at the Citadel."

  My blood ran cold. I remembered the purple face, the bitter smell of almonds, and Dr. Fenris’s diagnosis of the Widow’s Kiss.

  "who served the Stormsongs for twenty years... he found a ledger," Damian whispered. "A ledger that hinted at a truth. A secret about my sister. About... Volpert."

  My blood ran cold. The great Ironvine Secret. The thing Vasco Vane was constantly dancing around. The true parentage of the monstrous Prince.

  "What did your father order you to do?" I asked, my voice deadly serious.

  Damian looked at me, and for a second, the honorable, good-hearted knight shattered, revealing a boy who was drowning in his family's sins.

  "He ordered me to silence Ser Hestor," Damian wept, a single tear escaping his bloodshot eye. "Before he could reach King Brandan. He told me that if I didn't do it... Lydia would burn. Volpert would hang. House Ironvine would be executed for treason."

  I stared at him. "Damian... tell me you didn't."

  Damian swallowed hard. He looked at his hands again.

  "I am a Knight of the Realm," Damian whispered, his voice cracking. "I swore to protect the innocent. I swore to uphold the truth."

  He slowly curled his hands into fists.

  "But I love my sister more than I love my soul."

  He didn't have to say anything else. The veteran was dead. Murdered in the shadows of this soft, peaceful city, not by an assassin, but by the most honorable knight in the army. Forced into it by a father who knew exactly how to weaponize his son's love.

  "Damian," I said quietly, stepping forward. "Secrets are expensive liabilities. They rot the foundation. Tell me what the secret is. Tell me what Dankmar is hiding. I am the Broker. Let me help you manage this debt."

  Damian took a step back. The vulnerability vanished, replaced instantly by the rigid, impenetrable wall of a brother protecting his family.

  "No," Damian said firmly. He wiped his face, his jaw setting into a hard line. "This is not a trade, Wilhelm. This is a curse. And it stays in my blood."

  He looked at me, his green eyes filled with a tragic, absolute finality.

  "Keep your Soft-Hearts, Merchant," Damian said softly. "Some debts can only be paid in damnation."

  He turned and walked away, his heavy armor clanking softly the only abrasive sound in the entire city of Woolmere Love.

  I stood under the yarn lamppost, watching him go. I had 214,000 Gold. I had an international guild. I had the stats to fight dragons.

  But as I watched the Sad Knight walk into the pastel shadows, carrying a secret that was slowly killing him from the inside out, I realized that some things in this world couldn't be bought, fixed, or hacked.

  There was a rot deep inside the Royal Court. And soon, the bill was going to come due.

  I left the gloomy shadows of the street and pushed through the heavy velvet flaps of the Woolhaven Hospital.

  The interior was a marvel of absurd, fluffy engineering. The walls were lined with antibacterial silk, and thousands of my Moonclaw soldiers were resting on memory-foam cots, hooked up to IV drips that fed them a mixture of healing potions and liquid comfort. It smelled of lavender, antiseptic, and expensive textiles.

  I tapped my HUD, watching the numbers climb.

  "Best hundred thousand Soft-Hearts I ever spent," I muttered, dodging a Clayborn orderly carrying a stack of pristine bandages.

  I walked past the burn wards and the fracture clinics, heading toward the central courtyard. The roof here was open to the sky to allow for an airflow. And they needed it.

  Because taking up the entirety of the central courtyard, resting on a bed of fire-retardant asbestos-wool, was the Obsidian Dragon.

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  "I am a diagnostician, Wilhelm," Dr. Fenris Vulpine barked, walked toward me and pointing his cane at the massive reptile. "I fix human beings. I do not have a medical textbook for a Mythic-tier flying flamethrower. Do you know what I had to use to stitch that wing? Anchor cables! And the beast sneezed on me. Do you know what a dragon sneeze is? It's a localized wildfire!"

  "You're doing great, Fenris," I patted his shoulder, ignoring his scowl. "Just keep the asset alive."

  I stepped past the doctor and slowly approached the beast.

  Up close, the dragon was utterly terrifying. Ignis was the size of a galleon. His black scales were jagged and thick, radiating a heat that made the air shimmer. Even injured, heavily bandaged with acres of Whitefield silk around his shattered left wing, the sheer predatory aura of the creature made every survival instinct in my body scream: Run.

  But the Merchant in me whispered: Own it.

  Sitting by the dragon’s massive head was Queen Helga Bladeblood.

  She had shed her dented plate armor, wearing only a simple red linen tunic. Her arms were wrapped around the dragon’s snout. She was humming a low, guttural melody a Firelands lullaby that sounded like grinding stones and crackling embers.

  "Your Majesty," I said softly, not wanting to startle a beast that could bite me in half.

  Helga looked up. The tragic, hollow look from the crater had softened slightly. Ignis opened one massive, molten-gold eye and let out a low rumble that vibrated in my chest cavity.

  "Do not be afraid, Merchant," Helga said gently, stroking the scales above the dragon's eye. "He knows your scent. He knows you ordered the healers to save him. Ignis never forgets a kindness."

  "That's good," I swallowed hard, forcing myself to take another step closer. "Because I am currently calculating how much it costs to feed him, and I need to know he won't eat the accountant."

  Helga managed a small, tired smile. She reached into a heavy iron bucket beside her. It was filled with raw chunks of meat heavily dusted with crushed coal and sulfur.

  "Here," Helga offered me a piece. It was the size of a ham. "He needs the carbon for his furnace. You feed him."

  My hand trembled as I took the heavy chunk of coal-dusted meat. I stepped up to the massive jaws. Each tooth was the size of a broadsword.

  I held out the meat. "Here you go, boy... uh... nice apocalyptic lizard."

  Ignis huffed. A puff of hot, sulfurous smoke blew directly into my face, making me cough. Then, with a gentleness that defied logic, the massive jaws parted. He didn't snap. He delicately took the meat from my hands using only his lips, swallowed it whole, and let out a contented purr that sounded like an earthquake.

  "I'll be damned," I breathed, awe completely overriding my fear. I reached out, hesitantly, and placed my hand on his snout.

  The scales were rough like volcanic glass, and incredibly hot, but the creature leaned into my touch. It was magical. An absolute sense of wonder washed over me. This wasn't just a monster. It was a thinking, feeling, ancient soul.

  "He is beautiful," I whispered.

  "He is," Helga agreed, leaning her head against his jaw. "The Firelands are a harsh place, Wilhelm. Our home is a landscape of active volcanoes, rivers of magma, and sky choked with ash. We are raised to be as hard as the obsidian we mine."

  She traced a long, faded scar on the dragon's neck.

  "In the Bladeblood House, when a dragon clutch hatches in the caldera, only the strongest survive," Helga explained, her voice dropping into a melodic, heartbreaking cadence. "The runts are pushed into the magma by the brood-mothers. Only perfection is allowed to live. Only the strongest are worthy of a rider."

  She looked at me, her dark eyes shining with unshed tears.

  "Fifteen years ago, I went to the caldera," Helga whispered. "I was just a Princess then. Veratrix was the golden child, already bonded to the Emerald Dragon. I was supposed to pick a champion. But when I looked down into the crater... I saw a tiny, crippled hatchling. His left wing was deformed. The others had torn at him. He was bleeding, clinging to a rock above the magma, waiting to die."

  My heart ached. I looked at the massive beast, trying to imagine him as a tiny, broken thing.

  "My father, Harmut, told me to leave him," Helga said, her voice tightening with emotion. "He said a Bladeblood does not bond with garbage. But I looked at him... and he looked at me. He was so scared, Wilhelm. But he was fighting so hard just to hold onto that rock."

  Helga held up her hands. I noticed, for the first time, that the skin on her palms and forearms was heavily scarred with old, silvery burn marks.

  "I climbed down into the caldera," Helga said proudly, tears finally spilling over. "The heat boiled my skin. My armor baked into my flesh. But I pulled him out of the fire. I hid him in my chambers. I fed him from my own plate. I stayed awake for nights, splinting his wing, telling him that he was not garbage. That he was a King."

  Ignis let out a soft whine, nuzzling his massive head against her chest, carefully avoiding crushing her.

  "Veratrix laughed at us," Helga smiled through her tears, hugging the dragon's snout. "She said a crippled dragon would never fly. But Ignis didn't just fly. He grew larger than any dragon in a century. Because he didn't grow out of pride. He grew out of love. He is not my weapon, Wilhelm. He is my heart, beating outside of my chest."

  I stood there in the quiet courtyard, my hand still resting on the warm, black scales.

  I thought about my own life. A Bastard. A 'Flaw' in the Stormsong family. Tossed aside because I didn't have Pure Blood, didn't have the strength.

  Helga and Ignis... they were exactly like me. Broken things that refused to burn.

  "He will fly again, Helga," I said, my voice thick with emotion. I wasn't speaking as a Merchant. I was speaking as a Bastard. "I don't care how many Soft-Hearts or SP it costs. Dr. Fenris will fix his wing. And we will get your kingdom back."

  Helga looked at me, stunned. The deposed Queen, sitting in an enemy hospital, looked at the Golden Merchant and saw something she hadn't expected.

  "You are a strange conqueror, Wilhelm Storm," Helga whispered gratefully.

  "I'm not a conqueror," I smiled, giving Ignis one last pat before turning to leave. "I'm a Broker. And I know a good investment when I see one."

  I left the courtyard, my heart full, my mind buzzing with the logistics of transporting a Mythic Dragon. I had just shared a moment of profound understanding with a captive queen. I felt untouchable.

  But as I walked through the plush, velvet-lined corridors of the Woolhaven Hospital, I noticed an anomaly. Behind a tapestry depicting a flock of grazing sheep, a heavy door had been left slightly ajar. Behind it, a staircase of dark, tightly woven felt led downward into the basement.

  It was an area marked Restricted: Acoustic Dampening Cellar.

  I shouldn't have gone down. I was the Guildmaster; I had orderlies for that. But my [Perception] was solid with my gear, caught the faintest echo of a footstep.

  I descended the stairs. The felt absorbed every sound. It was like walking into a sensory deprivation tank.

  At the end of the dim, lavender-scented hallway, a single door was cracked open. Golden light spilled out onto the soft floor.

  Standing in the sliver of light was Astrid Falken.

  The Scorpion had wandered off from the restaurant, probably looking for a quiet place away from the aggressive snuggling of the Affection Technicians. She had her single hand resting on the velvet doorframe. She was peering inside.

  I raised my hand to call out to her, to tell her to come back up to the feast.

  But Astrid’s body went completely rigid.

  Her usual tough, abrasive, northern demeanor vanished in a split second. She didn't draw her needle-sword. She just stared into the room, her eyes widening in absolute, paralyzing horror.

  "No," Astrid whispered, her voice trembling. "That's... that's wrong."

  From inside the room, two voices drifted out. They were muffled by the acoustic dampening of the wool walls. I couldn't recognize the pitch, but I could hear the sheer panic in the first voice. It was a woman.

  "She saw us!" the woman hissed, her voice vibrating with terror. "Gods, she saw us! Let her go! She’s just a child!"

  "She is a Falken," a man’s voice replied. It was cold. Absolute. Devoid of any panic. It was the voice of a predator who had just been cornered. "If King Brandan hears of this, we hang. If the Wolf hears of this, our heads go on spikes. My entire architecture to break the Crown, months of planning to overthrow the Bear... exposed by a snooping cripple. I will not let that happen."

  "Please! Don't !" the woman begged.

  A shadow moved inside the room. It was impossibly fast.

  Astrid gasped, trying to stumble backward. But she was too slow.

  SHHHHK.

  The sound of metal tearing through flesh was sickeningly loud in the muffled hallway.

  Astrid’s eyes went wide. She looked down at her chest. A long, jagged blade of dark steel had pierced straight through her leather tunic, erupting from her back.

  "ASTRID!" I screamed.

  The blade was violently yanked out. Astrid collapsed, falling backward onto the white cashmere floor like a broken doll.

  I sprinted. The memory-foam floor fought against my boots, making my dash feel like a nightmare where you run through molasses.

  I crashed into the heavy velvet door, throwing it wide open.

  "Show yourself!" I roared, drawing Cinderbrand, the black ash flaring to life.

  The room was a lavish, underground VIP suite. But it was empty. A silk curtain fluttered near an open escape hatch in the ceiling. They were gone. Whoever they were, they had shadow-stepped or fled the second the blade left Astrid's body.

  I didn't give chase. I couldn't.

  Astrid was convulsing on the floor.

  I dropped to my knees beside her. The wound was catastrophic. It was a perfect, lethal strike, aimed directly at the heart and lungs. The bright, terrifying red of her blood was soaking rapidly into the pristine white wool, spreading like a blooming rose.

  "Astrid," I panicked, pressing my bare hands over the wound. The blood immediately slipped through my fingers. "Fenris! SOMEONE GET FENRIS!"

  No one could hear me. The acoustic dampening of the cellar swallowed my scream whole.

  Astrid coughed. A bubble of blood formed on her lips. She looked up at me, her tough, Northern facade completely broken. She was just a terrified child.

  "Wilhelm..." she gasped, her one hand weakly grabbing my coat. "It... it was..."

  "Don't speak," I begged, my hands slick with her blood. "You're going to be okay. I'm the Broker. I can buy anything. I'll buy you a new heart."

  Her eyes started to roll back. Her HP was plummeting to zero.

  My Blood-Leech Vial flashed, full of the 1,000 ml I had siphoned from the Bladebloods. But it wasn't enough. A wound like this required massive, continuous regeneration just to keep the organs functioning until a healer arrived.

  "System!" I screamed, tears blurring my vision. "Direct Transfusion! Open the ledger! Take my blood!"

  I grabbed the glowing red crystal at my neck and pressed it directly into Astrid's gaping wound. I didn't pull blood from the environment. I pushed my own life force outward.

  I felt the agonizing pull in my chest. It felt like my veins were being sucked through a straw.

  "Stay with me, Scorpion," I gritted my teeth, feeling the dizziness hit me instantly. "You don't get to die in a pillow! You promised to stab someone for me!"

  Astrid’s chest heaved. The massive, lethal wound began to knit together, fueled entirely by my own physical vitality. But it wasn't a clean heal. It was a desperate, messy plug.

  "Wilhelm..." Astrid whispered, her vision fading. "The King... tell the King... they are..."

  Her hand went limp. She fell unconscious, her head lolling to the side.

  I collapsed back onto the bloody wool, gasping for air. The edges of my vision were black. I was freezing cold.

  I looked at the young girl lying in the pool of our mixed blood. I looked at the open escape hatch.

  The smell of lavender and luxury was completely overpowered by the metallic stench of treason.

  Someone in our camp someone powerful, someone ruthless was plotting to overthrow King Brandan. And they had just tried to murder a child to keep their secret.

  I clenched my blood-soaked fists. The euphoria of the victory above was gone, replaced by a cold, absolute fury.

  I am going to find you, I promised the empty room, staring at the bloody stain on the white floor. I don't care who you are. I am going to find you, and I am going to bankrupt your soul.