Rain had a strange way of falling in Vireth.
Sometimes it came down sideways, like it had forgotten gravity. Other times it evaporated before touching the ground, sizzling against invisible wards like ghosts denied entrance. But tonight, it was slow—deliberate. As if the sky itself was watching.
Kael stood beneath the broken archway of the Dust Quarter shrine, soaked to the bone, his cloak heavy with water and blood. Not his. A courier had come an hour before, bearing a message written in burning ink.
> "Auction I Begins at Dusk. Bring Your Coin. Do Not Be Late."
Simple. Brutal. Final.
"You're sure about this?" Sera asked from behind him. Her voice was tight, not with fear—but with that sharper emotion that lives next to it. Calculation. The knowledge that the wrong choice here wouldn't mean just death. It meant irrelevance. To disappear not in body, but in memory.
He didn't turn. "I can't win the Game if I don't show up to play."
Sera stepped up beside him, eyes hard.
"Then we do this on our terms."
They arrived at the designated site an hour early.
The Auction Hall was not a hall in the traditional sense. It wasn't a building at all. It was a fold in the city—a part of the world that had been sliced open, stitched differently, and then hidden in the seams between seconds.
A flat square of black stone hovered in the void. Around it, rows of floating plinths spiraled upward like teeth. Each held a figure cloaked in silk, shadow, or bone. No two looked the same, but each radiated power.
Kael and Sera stood alone in the center, the only participants standing on stone.
A voice echoed through the void. Cold. Genderless. Ancient.
"KAEL VEYLOR. YOU HOLD THE COIN. YOU HOLD THE RIGHT. YOU HAVE BEEN ENTERED."
Kael stepped forward. "Then let's begin."
The silence broke like glass.
From the far side of the void, a shape coalesced into existence. No footsteps. No fanfare. Just arrival. A man, if you could call him that, wrapped in robes that dripped with living gold. His face was a blank mask, like a coin melted smooth.
"FIRST BIDDER," the voice intoned. "COUNCILOR VAUN OF THE THIRD TABLE."
The figure raised a hand.
"I offer you land," he said. "A freehold beneath the Skyvault. Ten thousand acres untouched by war. Your name etched in sovereign stone."
The air shimmered as the image appeared—rolling fields, towers without masters, a throne of quartz.
Kael said nothing.
"SECOND BIDDER: LADY NYSSARA OF THE BLOOD DEBT."
A woman emerged from the mist, her eyes weeping silver tears.
"I offer you protection," she said. "A ward of seven shields, old as the Rewrite. Your enemies will never find you. Your bloodline will never end."
Sera stiffened at that.
"They're offering immortality," she whispered.
Kael clenched his jaw.
"THIRD BIDDER: ARCHON MARLEX OF THE SHADOW BURSARY."
A voice like cracked glass.
"I offer you knowledge," it rasped. "The true name of the Tyrant. The location of the original Ledger. And your mother's final words."
Kael flinched. Just a fraction.
The voice returned.
"KAEL VEYLOR. MAKE YOUR CHOICE. CLAIM A BID. OR OFFER YOUR COUNTER."
The void waited.
Kael looked at Sera.
Her eyes met his—and he saw it. The edge of fear.
"You can take one of them," she said, voice hushed. "Live. Walk away. Some of these offers are better than anything we imagined."
"I know," he replied.
He stepped forward.
"I make no claim."
A hush fell like a sword.
"I offer my bid."
Gasps whispered through the void.
Kael lifted the Tyrant's Coin.
"I bid disruption. I bid my future titles—earned, not bought. I offer nothing forged. Only change. And I offer it not to you," he said, turning toward the Councilor, the Lady, the Archon, "but to them."
He pointed to the higher tiers—where lesser eyes watched. Not bidders. Not rulers.
Players.
A new voice rang out. Not the cold arbiter from before—but something warmer. Curious. Dangerous.
A child's voice.
"Accepted."
The void shuddered.
The others vanished. Councilor Vaun, Lady Nyssara, Archon Marlex—all erased like chalk in stormwind.
Kael staggered.
The black stone beneath him cracked.
Sera caught him, her eyes wide. "What did you do?"
He looked at her.
"I changed the rules."
---
They woke in the Dust Quarter, just before dawn. No memory of leaving the Auction. No wounds. No bruises.
But Kael's coin had changed.
Where once it read "+1 PROMISE," it now pulsed with new words:
"BALANCE: +3. RECKONING INBOUND."
He stared at it.
Sera touched the glyph at his wrist. "Three points this fast?" she asked. "That's more than some nobles earn in three lifetimes."
Kael nodded slowly. "And now they'll come for me."
"Then we need allies."
He looked out the window, at the rising sun casting firelight across crumbling rooftops and chimney-bone.
"Not just allies," he said. "We need players of our own."