[Ray's POV]
I had been walking for what felt like an hour, my path a deliberate navigation through the village's forgotten arteries. One damp, shadowed alley bled into the next, each one narrower and quieter than the last, the festive roar of Meadowlark fading to a distant, muffled memory. The air here smelled of wet stone, mildew, and the faint, lingering traces of things best not examined too closely.
Finally, at the end of a particularly foul-smelling, dead-end lane, I saw it. A single, grimy window glowed with a weak, yellow light. A hand-painted sign above a heavy, reinforced door simply read "Goods & Sundries." It was unassuming, almost laughably so. This had to be the place. The black market of Meadowlark.
