Luca didn't go home. Home was a corner of a warehouse loft shared with eleven other people, and corners had ears.

  He went to the docks instead—the old northern docks where Harlen Marsh had worked before a green crystal turned him into something more than a hauler and a sewer creature turned him into something less than a man. The docks were half-abandoned now. Most of the fishing fleet had been pulled inland or scuttled for timber when the first creatures came out of the harbor. What remained were rotting piers and salt-warped planking, close enough to the pylon's radius that monsters couldn't spawn but far enough from the bazaar that nobody came here unless they wanted to be alone.

  Luca sat on a coil of rope at the end of Pier Nine and stared at the water until his breathing settled.

  Wrong.

  The impression from the bazaar wouldn't leave him. He'd felt it for less than a second—that mismatch between the blue shard's resonance and whatever name the System had given it—but the certainty hadn't faded.

  He didn't even know the shard's name. He'd been too far away, and his Appraise+ too low-ranked, to catch anything that specific at distance. All he'd gotten was dissonance. The System's label pointing one direction. The shard's actual nature pointing another.

  Which meant one of three things.

  One: his skill was wrong. Low-rank, still developing, reading noise instead of signal. Possible. He'd only been using Appraise+ for six days. He'd made mistakes before—a shard he'd tagged as Movement-domain that turned out to be closer to Agility enhancement, which might or might not be the same thing. His impressions were still blurry at this rank.

  Two: the shard was damaged. A hairline crack too fine to see at distance, destabilizing its resonance the way that kid's failed absorption had cracked Harlen's green crystal this morning. A damaged Rare shard would still glow blue, still show a name, still look like forty gold to anyone without a reason to suspect otherwise.

  Three: the shard was something else entirely.

  Luca pulled his coat tighter. He didn't like option three.

  Not because mutated shards were inherently bad. His own Appraise+ was mutated—a Common skill whose true function far exceeded what its name suggested—and that mutation was the only reason he was still alive. But his mutation had been a quiet gift, discovered alone in a warehouse with no one watching. This was different. This was a mutated shard about to be sold at public auction by the most powerful guild in Korrath, to a buyer who would absorb it expecting one thing and get another.

  And that buyer would have questions. Loud ones.

  When someone paid forty gold for a defense skill and discovered it wasn't a defense skill, they wouldn't shrug and adapt. They'd go back to Iron Vow demanding answers. Iron Vow would start investigating how the shard's nature was misread. And any investigation into how mutations worked—how a shard's name could lie about its function—would eventually circle toward the question of whether other mutated shards existed in the city. Whether someone might already be carrying one.

  Whether someone might be able to detect them.

  That was the thread Luca couldn't afford to have anyone pull. His survival depended on Appraise+ looking like exactly what its name said: a worthless Common-tier identification skill. If mutations became a known phenomenon in Korrath—if people started asking who might be able to spot them—his cover was gone.

  Option three didn't just mean he knew something dangerous. It meant the shard itself was dangerous to him, whether he touched it or not.

  He pressed his thumb against his sternum, feeling for the warmth of the skill in his slot. Appraise+ pulsed faintly—a dull ache behind his ribs, the kind of strain he felt whenever he'd pushed the skill recently. He'd triggered it from twenty paces on a shard he wasn't holding, further than he'd ever tried before. The headache building behind his left eye told him he'd pay for that tonight.

  Spirit drain. The System showed him his core stats—Might, Agility, Vitality, and Spirit—as bare numbers on his personal interface, but it didn't show him how much Spirit he had left at any given moment. No bar. No percentage. No warning before the well ran dry. He had to track his own limits by feel, the way a runner tracks fatigue: fine, then tired, then staggering, then down. Three times in the first week he'd pushed Appraise+ too far and collapsed—vision narrowing to a point, legs folding, the skill shutting itself off as his Spirit bottomed out. Each time he'd woken slumped against a wall in a city where being unconscious and alone was an invitation to lose everything you owned.

  By now he'd learned to read the signs. The dull ache meant he was past halfway. The headache meant he was closer to a quarter. He had maybe two deep reads left today. Maybe three shallow ones.

  Not much. But maybe enough.

  He thought about the Exchange hall. Iron Vow had the shard under guard—their own people on the doors—but the Exchange's rules weren't optional, even for the biggest guild in the city. Any shard listed for auction had to be available for visual inspection by prospective bidders. That was the whole point of the verification room: buyers could examine the crystal's color and read its System-displayed name before committing to a sealed bid. Nobody could touch the shard or pick it up. But they could stand in the room and look.

  Looking was all Luca needed.

  The question was whether a deep Appraise+ read at close range would give him more than the fleeting impression he'd caught from across the bazaar. At this distance, with focus and time, he might get a tag. A domain read. Maybe even a clear sense of what the skill actually did beneath its name.

  But the cost would be steep. A deep read on a Rare shard would drain most of what he had left. He'd spend the night shaking and half-blind from the depletion. And he'd be doing it in a room full of people, which meant he'd need to be careful about how it looked from the outside.

  Appraise+ didn't produce any visible effect when used. No glow, no light, no System notification to anyone nearby. The skill's activation was entirely internal—a shift in his perception that only he could feel. But the drain had physical symptoms. Nosebleeds. Unsteady legs. Glazed eyes. If he pushed too hard in a crowded room, someone might notice a man in shabby clothes swaying on his feet and bleeding from the nose, and they might start asking questions he didn't want to answer.

  He'd need to be fast. In and out. One read, then leave before the symptoms got obvious.

  Luca stood. His knees popped. Twenty-four years old, and his body was already protesting the sleeping arrangements—a thin bedroll on bare planking, cold enough that he woke up stiff every morning. Before the Fracture, he'd had a room above a dockside tavern. Small, drafty, but his. Now that tavern was a refugee barracks and his room held six families.

  He walked back toward the inner city, keeping to the side streets where the foot traffic was thinner. The main roads were dangerous at dusk—not because of monsters, which the pylon kept at bay, but because of people. Korrath after dark belonged to the desperate and the predatory, and the line between the two blurred more every day.

  A group of young men loitered at the intersection of Chandler's Row and the old harbor road, passing a bottle and watching everyone who walked past. One of them had a shard strapped to his belt in a leather pouch—visible on purpose. Advertising.

  Luca kept his head down and his pace steady. Not fast enough to look like prey. Not slow enough to look worth stopping.

  "Hey. Appraiser."

  He didn't stop. Three more steps and he'd be past them.

  "I said hey."

  A hand caught his shoulder. Luca turned and found himself looking at a boy—maybe nineteen—with a jaw that had been broken and reset crooked. The shard pouch on his belt was open, and Luca could see the edge of a white crystal inside.

  "You're the one from the east stalls," the boy said. Not a question. "The Appraise guy."

  "I'm closed for the day."

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  "I'll pay triple."

  "Triple of two copper is six copper. I can't eat for six copper."

  The boy's expression tightened. "Then what do you want?"

  Luca looked at him. At the crystal in the pouch. At the three friends behind him who were trying to look casual and failing.

  He could feel Appraise+ reaching toward the white shard—the same automatic pull he felt whenever an unread crystal entered his proximity. He let it brush the surface. The lightest possible touch, barely any Spirit at all.

  Combat. Kinetic. Short-range.

  A striker skill. Something that hit fast and close. Common-tier, no visible damage, probably a clean drop from a Tier 1 mob in the sewers.

  "It's a melee skill," Luca said. "Fast, close-range. Probably a dash-strike or a quick-hit. Not a buff, not a defense. You want to hit things harder and faster."

  The boy stared at him. His hand drifted away from Luca's shoulder.

  "How—"

  "I'm good at my job." The same line he always used. "Six copper."

  The boy paid. His friends were whispering behind him. Luca pocketed the coins and kept walking, resisting the urge to move faster.

  That was the tightrope. Every accurate reading built his reputation, which brought more customers, which kept him fed. But every accurate reading also added another witness to a growing pattern—a Common-tier appraiser who knew things his skill shouldn't be able to tell him. In a city where skills could be ripped from your chest if someone decided you were worth more dead than alive, standing out was dangerous.

  He needed to be careful. He needed to be invisible.

  He also needed to find out what that blue shard actually was.

  Luca cut through the old textile district—empty looms, shuttered windows—and circled toward the Exchange hall from the back. The building was pre-Fracture, a stone trading house that the Korrath Council had requisitioned as the official marketplace for shard transactions. Two guards at the front. One at the back.

  Iron Vow insignia on their shoulders.

  He'd expected that. They'd post their own people for anything this valuable.

  He didn't try to enter from the back. Instead, he circled to the front and joined the thin stream of people passing through the main doors. The Exchange was a public building. Anyone could enter during operating hours—that was the Council's rule, not Iron Vow's, and even Korrath's biggest guild couldn't close a public auction to foot traffic without the Council's permission. The guards checked for weapons at the door, not credentials.

  Luca didn't have any weapons. He walked through without a second glance.

  Inside, the verification room was busy but not packed—perhaps fifteen people spread across the space, most of them clustered near the rope line at the front. Guild representatives in clean leather. Trade consortium agents with ink-stained fingers. A handful of independents who looked like they'd pooled everything they had for a shot at a Rare. Two more Iron Vow guards stood at either end of the display case, arms crossed, watching the crowd.

  The blue shard sat on a velvet stand behind reinforced glass, catching the lamplight.

  To everyone in this room, the shard was straightforward. Blue crystal. Rare tier. The System displayed its name when examined: Stillwater Guard. The name sounded defensive—"Guard" was right there in the label. Any buyer looking at it would picture a shield skill, a damage-reduction ability, something you'd slot into a Vanguard or a frontline tank build. That's what Iron Vow believed they were selling, and that's why they'd set the minimum bid at forty gold.

  Luca didn't approach the rope line. He drifted to the far wall, near a notice board covered in Exchange postings and trade permits, and positioned himself with his back to the stone. From here he had a clear sightline to the display case across the room. Fifteen paces. Close enough.

  He waited. Watched the room. Counted heads. Two buyers were arguing near the door about whether the name implied a personal shield or an area effect. An independent in a patched coat was sketching the shard's dimensions in a notebook—as if shape could tell you something color and name couldn't. The Iron Vow guards looked bored.

  Nobody was watching the thin man leaning against the back wall.

  Luca breathed in. Held it. Focused.

  Appraise+ activated.

  The shift was instant and invisible. No light, no glow, no external sign. Inside his perception, the room changed. The noise of conversation dropped to a murmur. The people around him softened to shapes at the edge of his focus. The blue shard sharpened until it was the only clear thing in his vision—not its color or its physical form, but its resonance. The hidden signature beneath the System's label.

  The strain followed. His vision darkened at the edges. Behind his eyes, pressure built—a slow, heavy squeeze. He kept his breathing even. Kept his posture relaxed against the wall. Fifteen paces was easier than twenty. The read came faster.

  The name surfaced first. Stillwater Guard. The same name everyone else could see. No surprise there.

  Then came what only Luca could see.

  The shard's actual domain. Its true nature, buried beneath a label that didn't fit.

  The impression was clear this time. Close range made the difference.

  Perception. Awareness. Spatial. Predictive.

  Not defense. Not even close.

  Stillwater Guard had nothing to do with blocking damage or holding a front line. It was a perception skill—the kind that sharpened awareness, mapped surrounding space, maybe anticipated incoming threats before they landed. The "Guard" in its name wasn't about shielding. It was about seeing danger before it arrived.

  This was a mutation. The same kind of hidden mismatch that made Luca's own Appraise+ different from every other copy of Appraise in the world. The shard had formed under unusual conditions—maybe the monster that dropped it died during an anomaly, or the dungeon floor had been under some kind of stress when it crystallized. Whatever the cause, the result was a skill whose System-assigned name described one thing while the shard itself did something else entirely.

  The System didn't know. Or didn't care. It stamped a name on the shard when it formed, and that name stuck, even when it was wrong.

  Luca felt his Spirit hit the floor. He let the skill drop before the physical symptoms could escalate. His hands were trembling. His nose was damp—he wiped it with his sleeve and checked. A thin streak of red. Not much. Not enough to draw attention from across the room.

  He folded his arms, tucked his hands against his ribs to hide the shaking, and walked out of the verification room at the same pace he'd entered. Unhurried. Unremarkable. A man who'd looked at a shard he couldn't afford and decided not to bid.

  The Iron Vow guards didn't glance at him.

  Outside, the evening air hit his flushed skin and he allowed himself one unsteady breath before straightening up and walking. Not stopping. Not leaning against the wall. If he stood still, the drain would catch up and his legs would go. He needed to keep moving until the worst of it passed.

  He turned down a side street, put two corners between himself and the Exchange, and finally stopped in the shadow of a cooper's shop that had been boarded up since the first week. He pressed his back against the shuttered door and breathed.

  His head was pounding. His vision swam at the edges. But he was alone, and he was thinking clearly enough to run through what he knew.

  Iron Vow was selling Stillwater Guard as a Rare defense skill. Every bidder in that room believed them. The minimum was forty gold, and the final price would probably go higher—Rare defensive shards were in desperate demand. Guilds needed them for their frontliners. Independent fighters needed them to survive.

  But the skill wasn't defensive. It was a Rare perception skill, mislabeled by the System itself.

  The implications split in two directions.

  For the wrong buyer—a Vanguard, a tank, anyone building around defense—this shard was a disaster. They'd absorb it expecting a shield and get heightened spatial awareness instead. Useless for their build. A wasted slot. Forty gold gone.

  For the right buyer—someone building around awareness, prediction, anticipatory movement—this shard could be extraordinary. Rare perception skills were almost unheard of on the open market. The guilds that had them hoarded them for scouts and assassins. A skill that mapped space and predicted incoming threats wouldn't stop a sword. But it might let you never be where the sword landed.

  Luca's hands had stopped shaking. The math was taking over.

  He had eleven copper to his name. He couldn't bid on a shard that was listed at forty gold. He couldn't borrow that kind of money. He couldn't steal the shard from under Iron Vow's guard.

  But he had something that every bidder in that room lacked. He knew what the shard actually did.

  That knowledge was worth nothing if he kept it to himself. It was worth a fortune if he put it in front of the right person—someone who could use a perception skill, who had the gold to bid, and who would pay for the intelligence that told them this shard was worth far more than anyone else realized.

  Or it was worth something different entirely if he went to Iron Vow and told them their prize shard was mislabeled. They might pay him for the warning. They might also ask how he knew. And then the thread would start to unravel.

  Three paths. Three risks. And sundown was coming.

  Luca pushed off the wall. His legs held. The headache was still there, but the worst of the drain was fading, settling into the deep, hollow fatigue he'd come to recognize as the bottom of his Spirit reserves.

  He started walking toward the bazaar. Not because he had a plan. Because the bazaar was where information moved—through porters, runners, and low-level traders who talked too much and listened to everything. Someone in that crowd would know who was bidding on Stillwater Guard. Someone would know which buyers were building around perception or awareness. Someone would give him the thread he needed to start pulling.

  He had three hours until sundown.

  He walked faster.