The Floating Market had a thousand eyes.

  Emre discovered this in the hours after Thalassar's death. Every merchant, every trader, every being who passed through this drifting city had seen something, heard something, known something. The challenge wasn't finding information—it was sorting through the flood of it.

  The Zarthan saw a figure in dark robes leaving the Spice Pavilion moments before the attack.

  A spice merchant heard raised voices—an argument, perhaps, or a confrontation—coming from the direction of the Mer delegation's quarters.

  A child selling glowing flowers saw someone running, someone who moved wrong, someone who didn't quite belong.

  Emre collected each piece of information like data points, fitting them together, building a picture. It was what he did. What he'd always done. Debugging reality meant understanding the system, and understanding the system meant knowing how each part connected to every other part.

  But this wasn't code. This was murder. And the pieces didn't fit.

  "The witnesses contradict each other," he said, hours into the investigation. They had gathered in their rooms—Emre, Sulley, Maya, Kaelen—around a table covered in notes and sketches. "Different descriptions. Different times. Different directions."

  "Meaning what?" Maya asked.

  "Meaning either we have multiple killers, or someone's lying." He rubbed his eyes. "Or both."

  Kaelen leaned forward. "The Sunken King will want answers. Quickly. If we don't give him something, he'll assume the worst."

  "The worst being?"

  "That we're covering for the real killers. That the surface nations planned this. That the treaty was a trick to get Thalassar into the open." His expression was grim. "He's already lost his ambassador. He won't lose face too."

  Sulley had been quiet, studying the notes. Now she spoke.

  "What if it wasn't about the treaty at all?"

  They looked at her.

  "Thalassar was old," she continued. "Centuries old. He'd been serving the Sunken King for longer than any of us have been alive. He knew things—secrets, probably. About the deeps, about the magic there, about whatever the God Butchers did when they attacked."

  "You think someone killed him for what he knew?"

  "I think it's worth considering. The treaty was important, but it was also public. Everyone knew about it. If someone wanted to stop the peace, killing Thalassar in such an obvious way—in the middle of the Floating Market, with hundreds of witnesses—isn't exactly subtle." She met Emre's eyes. "It's almost like they wanted to be seen. Wanted the chaos."

  Emre's mind raced. She was right. The murder was too public, too messy, too obvious. Real conspirators would have made it look like an accident. Would have waited until Thalassar was alone, isolated, vulnerable.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  This was something else.

  This was a message.

  "What if the killer wanted us to blame the surface nations?" he said slowly. "Wanted the war to happen?"

  "Then they're succeeding," Kaelen said. "The Sunken King is already mobilizing. I've heard the rumors—his fleet is moving toward the shallows. If they reach the floating continents, there'll be no stopping this."

  "Then we stop it before they get there." Emre stood. "We need to find the killer. Find who sent them. And prove to the Sunken King that this wasn't about the treaty."

  "How? We have nothing. Just contradictions and guesses."

  Emre looked at the notes. At the contradictory statements. At the pieces that didn't fit.

  "Sometimes," he said, "the contradictions are the clue."

  ---

  They started with the child.

  The girl—she couldn't have been more than ten, by Earth standards—sold glowing flowers near the platform where Thalassar had been killed. She was easy to find; her flowers were impossible to miss, pulsing with soft light that shifted through every color of the spectrum.

  She was also terrified.

  "I already told the other man," she said, backing away as Emre approached. "I don't know anything else."

  "Other man?"

  "The one with the eyes. The cold eyes. He asked the same questions you're asking." She clutched her flowers like a shield. "I told him everything. I don't know anything else."

  Emre exchanged a glance with Sulley. Someone else was investigating. Someone with cold eyes.

  "What did you tell him?" Emre asked gently.

  "That I saw someone running. After the shouting. Running away from the place where the Mer-man died." She pointed. "That way. Toward the lower platforms."

  "And the person running—what did they look like?"

  The girl hesitated. "That's the thing. I don't know. They were... blurry. Like my eyes couldn't quite see them. Like they were there and not there at the same time."

  Emre's heart rate increased. "Blurry how?"

  "Like..." She struggled to find words. "Like when you look at something through water. Or through heat haze. They were there, but they weren't. Does that make sense?"

  It made terrible sense.

  The Zarthan had described something similar. The spice merchant had mentioned a figure that seemed to "flicker." The witnesses weren't contradicting each other—they were all describing the same impossible thing.

  A killer who could blur reality.

  A killer who could hide in the spaces between.

  A killer who might not be entirely... human.

  ---

  They found Kaelen near the market's edge, staring out at the clouds.

  "We need to talk," Emre said.

  Kaelen didn't turn. "I know who killed Thalassar."

  "What?"

  "The Unbound. That's what they call themselves. A faction that broke away from the Mando years ago—before even I was recruited. They don't believe in binding souls. They believe in freeing them. Releasing them from the cycle of existence entirely." His voice was flat. "They've been hunting Echoes for decades. Trying to 'liberate' them from their bodies."

  "And Thalassar? He wasn't an Echo."

  "No. But he knew where Echoes were. He'd spent centuries mapping the deeps, and the deeps are full of them—souls that sank after the old wars, trapped in the darkness, waiting." Kaelen finally turned. "The Unbound wanted that knowledge. Thalassar wouldn't give it to them. So they killed him."

  Emre processed this. A new faction. A new threat. A new reason for murder.

  "How do you know all this?"

  Kaelen's smile was bitter. "Because they tried to recruit me. Years ago, after I left the Mando. They said I was perfect for them—angry, disillusioned, full of hate for everything the Mando stood for. I said no." He paused. "But I remembered. I always remember."

  "Where do we find them?"

  "You don't. They find you. That's how they operate." Kaelen looked back at the clouds. "But if they killed Thalassar, they're still here. Still watching. Still waiting for their next move."

  Sulley moved closer to Emre. "What's their next move?"

  "The treaty was a threat to them. Peace between surface and deep means more stability, more cooperation, more protection for Echoes. They need chaos. Need fear. Need people too busy fighting to notice what they're doing." Kaelen's voice hardened. "They'll hit again. Soon. Something that makes the Sunken King even angrier. Something that guarantees war."

  "Then we stop them before they can."

  "How? We don't know where they are, what they look like, how many of them there are—"

  "I do."

  The voice came from behind them.

  They turned.

  The old woman from the market—the one with the filed teeth and golden eyes—stood a few meters away, leaning on a staff that hadn't been there before. She smiled her sharp smile.

  "I know where the Unbound are hiding. I know how many. I even know what they look like, more or less." She tilted her head. "The question is: what are you willing to pay for that information?"

  Emre studied her. Another player. Another angle. Another cost.

  "What do you want?"

  "Nothing much. Just a small favor. A tiny thing, really." Her smile widened. "When you find them—when you deal with them—I want you to bring me something they stole. A book. Old. Dangerous. Called the Codex of Unbinding."

  "And if we refuse?"

  "Then you spend the next week chasing shadows while the Unbound start their war and the Sunken King burns the surface nations to ash." She shrugged. "Your choice."

  Emre looked at Sulley. At Kaelen. At Maya, who had just arrived, breathless.

  They had no choice. They never did.

  "Tell us where they are," Emre said.

  The old woman's eyes glittered.

  "Level Seven. The Abandoned Sector. Where the market's lights don't reach and the laws don't apply." She pointed down, through layers of platforms, toward darkness. "They're in the shadows. Waiting. Just like you."

  Emre nodded.

  "Then we'll go to the shadows."

  He started walking.

  Behind him, his friends followed.

  And somewhere in the darkness below, the Unbound waited—unaware that the Debugger was coming for them.