The Midnight Market did not exist on any map of New Babel. It was a parasitic organism that attached itself to the underside of the Great Bridge—a massive, leaking artery of iron and stone that connected the Industrial District to the Slums.
Dante moved through the crowd like a drop of oil in water: distinct, unmixing, and slippery.
He wore a rebreather mask over his nose, hiding the Silvergrin. To the casual observer, he was just another "Lead-Lung"—a factory worker trying to filter out the smog. But under the heavy wool coat, his muscles were coiled, and the jar of Void-Tar containing the Resonance Core thumped against his hip like a second, heavier heart.
The market smelled of roasted rat, exotic spices, and ozone.
"Eyes! Fresh eyes! Grown in vats, blue as the summer sky!" a merchant shouted, waving a jar of eyeballs that tracked the passing customers.
"Memories! Buy a happy childhood! Only three silver gears!" whispered a hag in a booth made of bones.
Dante ignored them. He kept his head down, scanning for Stall 44.
The Law of Convergence was itching again. It felt like a phantom spider walking up his spine. He wasn't just walking to a meeting; he was walking into a web. But he had no choice. He needed money, and he needed information on who was hunting him.
He found it. Stall 44 wasn't a booth. It was a hollowed-out section of the bridge's support pillar, draped in heavy, dark tapestries embroidered with silver thread.
Dante stepped inside.
The noise of the market vanished instantly, cut off by a sound-dampening ward. The air here smelled of lavender and dried blood.
Sitting behind a table made of petrified wood was a woman. She was enormous—not fat, but architecturally vast. Her shoulders were broad, her hands the size of shovels, and she wore a multitude of monocles over her left eye, each one zooming and clicking as she assessed him.
This was The Weaver.
"You're late," she said. Her voice sounded like silk tearing. "And you're leaking entropy. Please don't touch my tablecloth. It's authentic spider-silk from the Deep Roads."
Dante stood in the center of the room, hands clearly visible, away from his weapons.
"I had to take the scenic route," Dante said, his voice muffled by the rebreather. "You know how it is. Traffic. Murder attempts."
The Weaver chuckled. She picked up a needle and continued stitching a piece of leather that looked suspiciously like human skin.
"Show me the rock, Scavenger."
Dante reached into his coat. He didn't take the Core out of the jar. He placed the heavy glass container of Void-Tar on the table. The black sludge obscured the object, but the Weaver's monocles whirred and clicked, peering through the murk.
"Grade A," she murmured. "Siege Class. Nasty little thing. It's screaming, you know. Calling for its mother."
"I silenced it," Dante said.
"You gagged it," she corrected. "The tar will dissolve in... three hours? Four? Then every Aspirant in the city will know exactly where we are."
She looked up at him. "I offer ten thousand Gears. Hard currency."
Dante shook his head. "Information first. Who made the Core? And who sent the note?"
The Weaver paused her stitching. She looked at Dante with a mix of pity and amusement.
"The Core belongs to the Aspirant of Stasis. Lady Vespera. She rules the High Spire. She doesn't like things that change, little entropic man. And you... you are pure change. You are her natural enemy."
Dante felt a chill. Vespera. One of the Three Great Powers of New Babel. He had punched way above his weight class.
"And the note?" Dante asked. "Who are you buying this for?"
"I'm not buying it for anyone," the Weaver smiled, revealing teeth filed to points. "I'm buying it to dismantle it. There is a market for 'God-Parts,' boy. If I grind this Core down, I can sell the dust to a hundred different buyers. Safe. Anonymous."
She pushed a heavy sack of coins across the table. It clinked heavily.
"Take the money. Leave the bomb. Go hide in a hole until you fade away."
It was a good deal. It was the smart deal.
Dante reached for the money.
Thump.
The jar of Void-Tar vibrated.
Dante froze. The Weaver froze.
The vibration wasn't coming from the Core. It was coming from the floor.
"Did you bring a tail?" The Weaver's voice dropped an octave, losing all warmth.
"I was careful," Dante hissed, stepping back. "I salted my tracks."
"Salt doesn't stop a Grave-Walker," she spat.
Suddenly, the heavy tapestry behind Dante ripped open.
It didn't tear; it shattered, frozen shards of fabric exploding inward.
A figure stepped through the ruin. It was tall, impossibly thin, wrapped in grey bandages that fluttered in a wind that didn't exist. It wore a porcelain mask with a single painted eye.
The Grave-Walker.
The Weaver roared, flipping the table. "Not in my shop!"
She pulled a shotgun from beneath her chair—a quadruple-barreled monstrosity etched with runes. She fired.
BOOM.
The sound was deafening in the enclosed space. A spread of alchemical buckshot, designed to shred spirits, flew straight at the intruder.
The Grave-Walker didn't dodge. It simply raised a hand.
STASIS.
The buckshot stopped in mid-air. The pellets hung suspended, caught in a bubble of frozen time just inches from the Grave-Walker's mask.
The creature flicked its wrist.
The pellets reversed direction.
The Weaver screamed as her own ammunition tore through her shoulder, pinning her massive frame to the back wall. She slumped, bleeding but alive, groaning in shock.
The Grave-Walker ignored her. Its single painted eye fixed on Dante.
"The Mistress... requires... the sample," the creature rasped. Its voice sounded like dry leaves skittering on pavement.
Dante didn't wait to negotiate.
He grabbed the jar of Void-Tar and kicked the support beam of the stall.
"Decay."
He dumped his entire mana pool into the kick. The wood didn't just break; it aged a thousand years in a microsecond. The sturdy timber turned to dust.
The stall collapsed. The roof came down in a shower of splintered wood and stone.
Dante dived.
He rolled through the debris, coughing, scrambling out into the open chaos of the Midnight Market.
"Run!" he screamed at the crowd.
Panic rippled through the market. Merchants grabbed their wares. Thieves grabbed the merchants. It was a stampede.
Dante sprinted toward the edge of the bridge. He had to get to the lower levels. The Grave-Walker was too strong. Stasis hard-countered Entropy. Dante needed to touch something to destroy it, but the Grave-Walker could freeze him before he got within arm's reach.
He hurdled a cart full of screaming lizards.
Whoosh.
A grey bandage shot past his ear like a spear, embedding itself in the stone railing.
Dante ducked. Another bandage lashed out from the crowd, wrapping around his ankle.
"Got you," the rasping voice whispered right behind his ear.
The bandage tightened. Dante felt his boot leather hardening, freezing. The cold was spreading to his skin. If it touched his flesh, his leg would become a statue.
Dante fell forward, hitting the ground hard. The jar of Void-Tar skidded away, spinning dangerously close to the edge of the bridge.
Dante rolled onto his back. The Grave-Walker loomed over him, floating inches off the ground, a dozen bandages uncoiling from its body like serpentine tentacles.
"Surrender... implies... survival," the creature said. "You have... no rights."
Dante looked at his frozen ankle. He couldn't feel his foot.
He looked at the Grave-Walker.
He looked at the jar of Void-Tar teetering on the edge.
"Facts over feelings," Dante gritted out.
He reached into his bandolier and pulled out a flask of water.
He didn't drink it. He threw it at the Grave-Walker.
The creature didn't flinch. It simply froze the water in mid-air, creating a jagged wall of ice between them.
"Futile," the Grave-Walker droned.
"Not for me," Dante grinned. The Silvergrin flashed, wild and desperate.
Dante slammed his hand onto the cobblestone bridge beneath him.
Total Breakdown.
He didn't target the enemy. He targeted the ground.
He poured his very life force into the stone. His skin turned grey, his vision blurred as he spent his own mass to fuel the reaction.
The bridge didn't just crack. The binding agents in the cement evaporated. The iron rebar turned to sand.
A ten-meter section of the Great Bridge—the floor everyone was standing on—simply ceased to be solid.
"Gravity," Dante wheezed, "is a law you can't freeze."
The floor disintegrated.
Dante, the Grave-Walker, and the jar of Void-Tar fell into the abyss below.
They plummeted into the dark, smog-choked air, falling toward the industrial canal two hundred feet down.
The wind roared in Dante's ears. He was free falling.
Above him, the Grave-Walker was falling too, its bandages flailing, trying to latch onto something, but there was nothing but dust and gravity.
Dante saw the jar of Void-Tar spinning below him.
He angled his body, diving like a hawk. He had to catch it. If that jar broke on impact, the Core would be exposed, and every monster in the city would come to dinner.
He reached out, his hand straining.
"Come here, you little catastrophe," he screamed.
His fingers brushed the glass. He grabbed it, clutching it to his chest.
Below him, the black water of the canal was rushing up fast.
Hitting water from this height was like hitting concrete.
Dante clenched his teeth. He had one trick left.
He pulled a vial of Aerogel Powder from his belt—a rare, expensive alchemical cushion.
He crushed the vial in his hand and slammed it against his chest, activating the cloud just as he hit the surface.
SPLASH.
The impact was brutal. It felt like being kicked by a mule in every inch of his body. The aerogel bubble absorbed 60% of the force, shattering instantly, but it saved his bones from pulverizing.
Dante plunged into the freezing, toxic sludge of the canal.
Darkness swallowed him.
He kicked, his lungs burning (even though he didn't need air, the instinct was there). He dragged himself toward the surface.
He breached the water, gasping, wiping the slime from his eyes.
He was alive. He had the Core.
He looked around frantically.
Fifty feet away, a patch of the water was frozen solid. A block of ice bobbed on the surface.
The Grave-Walker had frozen the water to survive the impact.
The ice block cracked. A grey bandage slithered out, hooking onto the muddy bank.
"Persistent," Dante groaned.
He dragged himself onto the opposite bank, shivering violently. He wasn't shivering from cold; he was shivering from mass loss. The "Total Breakdown" on the bridge had cost him at least two kilograms of body weight. He felt light, airy, like he could float away.
He needed to eat. Not food. Matter.
He looked at a rusted iron pipe jutting out of the mud.
"Sorry," he whispered to the pipe.
He grabbed it. The metal groaned as he siphoned its atomic weight, the iron turning to dust in his hands as the heavy elements flowed into his skin, restabilizing his form.
It tasted like old pennies.
Dante stood up, unsteady. He clutched the jar.
He had escaped the Weaver. He had escaped the Grave-Walker. But now he was in the Sump—the lowest point of the city—wounded, exhausted, and carrying a beacon that was ticking down.
He looked up at the broken gap in the bridge far above, silhouetted against the gaslight.
"I need a partner," Dante realized. "I can't carry this alone."
He turned and limped into the darkness of the sewers. He knew only one person crazy enough to help him fight a High Aspirant.
The Flesh-Crafter of Sector 9.