Chapter 12: Market

Chapter 12: Chapter 12: Market

The taxi rattled over a pothole as it merged onto the main road, and Jason pulled out his phone more out of habit than expectation. He tapped open his banking app, half-braced for the usual dismal number staring back at him.

Instead, he blinked.

25,412 pounds.

’That’s... a lot more than I remember having.’ He scrolled up, checking the transaction history, and found it. A deposit, dated that morning, for twenty thousand pounds, ten from the Veryon clan, ten from the Agnello clan. His stipend. The final formality of a marriage neither family had wanted to attend.

’The last gift from two clans that couldn’t wait to be rid of us.’ The remaining five thousand was his own, years of menial jobs, delivery runs, odd cultivation-adjacent labor no one else wanted, scraped together one thin paycheck at a time.

He almost laughed. Novaria, in her prime, could have lost this exact sum at a card table and not thought about it again before breakfast.

To the clans, twenty thousand pounds was loose change swept into an envelope to salve a guilty conscience. To him and Novaria now, it was the difference between surviving and merely existing.

’Well. No point complaining about scraps when you’re starving.’ He pocketed the phone and watched the city blur past the window, already mentally listing what he needed.

---

The market that catered to cultivators wasn’t the kind of place you stumbled into by accident. Tucked behind a nondescript shopfront that sold, ostensibly, herbal teas, the real market sprawled underground, stalls lit by soft mana-lanterns, the air thick with the mingled scents of spirit herbs, ionized water, and something faintly metallic that always made Jason’s nose itch.

He moved through it methodically, the same way he approached everything now: no wasted steps, no impulse buys.

Purple yang ginseng first, a root so temperamental it had to be stored in a stasis box the moment it left the vendor’s stall, or it would wither within the hour.

The old woman selling it named a price that made his jaw tighten, but he paid it without argument. Novaria’s meridians needed the warmth-nourishing properties badly, and haggling over a root that could stabilize her circulation for another few days felt like a poor place to save money.

Then spirit spring water, three sealed vials, cool to the touch even through the glass, faint motes of light drifting lazily inside like sediment that never settled. A handful of other minor ingredients followed: dried lotus of the seventh vein, powdered cinder-root, a pouch of something the vendor simply called "clarity salt" and refused to elaborate on further.

By the time he was done, he’d gathered enough to prepare Novaria’s meals for about a week. The final tally came to just over seven thousand pounds.

’Seven thousand. For soup ingredients.’ He kept his expression neutral as he paid, but internally he was already recalculating their savings, watching the cushion he’d just built shrink back down to something far less comfortable. ’At this rate the stipend disappears in a month and a half. Novaria’s health doesn’t negotiate on price, though. So neither will I.’

His last stop was the medicine counter, tucked in the back corner behind reinforced glass. He requested three extra doses of Novaria’s seizure medication, the same emergency injections he’d used on her the other night, the ones that yanked her out of an essence-induced spiral before it could do lasting damage.

Two thousand pounds. Per dose.

He didn’t flinch outwardly, only handed over the payment and tucked the small case into his bag with more care than he’d given anything else he’d bought that day. ’Her seizures don’t wait for a good time.

They don’t care if we can afford it or not.’ Ever since the Gate accident had scarred her meridians, her essence circulated on its own, unbidden, indifferent to her will, and when it surged wrong, her body paid the price. Having a buffer of medication on hand wasn’t a luxury. It was insurance against a variable neither of them could control.

---

The ride home was quieter, the driver uninterested in conversation, which suited Jason fine. He settled back against the seat, bags at his feet, and let his mind drift toward the thing he’d been circling since the morning the system had unsealed his talent.

’Time to actually start. No more waiting around feeling sorry for myself.’

He closed his eyes, and, carefully, tentatively, began to circulate his mana the way the Heretical God Law described. Fire first, a coiling thread of heat unspooling from somewhere behind his sternum.

Then lightning, sharper, quicker, threading itself alongside the fire rather than replacing it. Two currents that should have fought each other, should have torn a lesser body apart trying to occupy the same space, and yet the technique guided them into something that almost resembled harmony.

Almost. He was far from steady. The taxi jolted over an uneven seam in the road and his concentration scattered like startled birds, the dual current sputtering before he coaxed it back into motion.

’Can’t get a clean cycle going while the car’s throwing me around. Fine. Small steps.’ He didn’t push for depth, just let the mana trickle through the pathways the technique carved out for it, testing the shape of something he hadn’t held in sixteen years.

He noticed it almost immediately, a warmth blooming under his skin, faint sweat prickling at his hairline despite the taxi’s air conditioning.

The technique cut off abruptly when the taxi rolled to a stop outside the house.

Jason opened his eyes, mana settling back into stillness, and reached for his bags, only to catch movement at the edge of his vision. A man in a dark, precisely tailored uniform was descending the front steps, posture rigid in the particular way that only came from decades of formal service.

An Agnello butler.

Jason paid the driver and stepped out, and their paths crossed on the narrow walkway, close enough that he caught the faint scent of pressed linen and old parchment clinging to the man’s coat.

’What would the Agnello family want here, of all places?’ The clan had made their feelings about Novaria’s worth abundantly clear the day they signed the marriage papers and walked away. A visit now, unannounced, uninvited, it didn’t fit the pattern of a family that considered the matter closed.

The butler didn’t so much as glance at him. Walked straight past, eyes forward, expression carved from stone, as if Jason were simply another fixture of the street he had no reason to acknowledge.

Jason watched him go, bags of spirit-grade ingredients cutting into his fingers, and felt the first stirring of a familiar, unwelcome instinct.

’Something’s happening. And nobody’s bothered to tell me what.’