The Black Bloom Bazaar was built on truce and blood rot—neutral ground ruled by the Rot Merchants, who lay claim not with guns or blades, but with silence and expectation. No enforcer polices it. No gang dares start a war within it. Not because they fear the merchants, but because they fear the terms.

  Here, enemies trade blades over spice and poisons. Murderers haggle like midwives. All sins are sold wholesale, wrapped in velvet and petals, and so long as the deal holds, the Rot Merchants look away. But break an agreement—just once—and you won’t hear footsteps. You’ll only feel the bloom take root.

  The flowers feed on the filth, and the roots remember every name.

  – From ‘The Florilegium of Blight’ by Anonymous, banned by three factions and burned by the Rot Merchants

  The Black Bloom Bazaar was awake, seething, writhing like something half-alive—half-feral—and completely out of its goddamned mind.

  People say it was a beast of a market: an ant nest of noise, light, and the scent of rot layered perfumes. Gael would have to agree with them. The entrance to the bazaar sprawled before the three of them with rows of makeshift stalls, mismatched blackstone buildings, and crude awnings stitched from mismatched tarps, all crammed so tight they looked ready to cannibalize each other. A ceiling of woven, diseased silk stretched overhead, filtering the morning light into something grimy and sickly golden.

  Creeping vines swallowed the mess of rusted iron scaffoldings around the buildings, their leaves black as ink, thick as leather. Lantern-fruits swayed from coiled stems, bioluminescent and pulsing like sluggish, dying hearts. They dripped thick, golden nectar that reeked of fermented honey and spoiled wine, and just about every overgrown plant did the same—so if he had to describe the bazaar in one word, it’d be ‘exotic’.

  Then it’d be ‘well-protected’, because he of all people would know just how easy it’d be to accidentally miss the growing buds of a giant man-eating flower.

  And that ain’t one word, but whatever.

  It’s been, what, five days since I last heard someone get eaten by a giant flower in a shady back alley?

  That’s a new record.

  But the people here were more dangerous than the scenery.

  Even at the mouth of the street, half the crowd of a thousand men were dressed like they’d crawled straight out of some necromancer’s bad dream. Bone masks, stitched-up leather hoods, armored cloaks made of beetle husks, and dark robes dripping with vials of questionable fluids. The other half wasn’t even fully human. Men passed by with chitinous plates instead of skin, convents of women whose arms were long, boneless, and slick like the tendrils of a jellyfish. An entire building block, three stories high, hosted shouting vendors on the ground, balconies, and roof, and all of them had their torsos wrapped in pulsating, glowing fungi.

  Afflicted were common here. Expected. It was the price that came with living too long in Bharncair’s underbelly of the underbelly. If the Vile didn’t get you, some curse would. If the curses didn’t, well, something else would.

  Vharnish like Maeve and Old Banks may not be able to understand that—they’d question why men here weren’t full with locks of golden hair, strong as an ox, and fit as a fiddle, or why the women here had bones so thin and skin so pale they could easily be mistaken for ghouls and wretches—so when Maeve opened her mouth next to him, he was already prepared to shoot a sharp jab back at her.

  But her question was much less sinister.

  “There’s barely any Vile here,” she said, frowning as she noted the suspiciously clear air in the bazaar. She still wasn’t taking off her mask—and neither was anyone else around them, for that matter. “Why is that?”

  “... Welcome to the only place in the southern ward where you can breathe easily without coughing up blood,” he replied after a moment, grinning and gesturing deep into the bazaar. “You can thank the Vile Eaters for that. Considering this is the only place in the southern ward that sells Vile Eaters, it stands to reason the people selling them have a few extra machines sitting around sucking up all the mist.”

  Cara blinked on his other side, turning to stare at him. “Wait. That’s why the air in this place is so clean?”

  He shot her a look. “What the hell did you think was happening all this time?”

  “I just figured the Rot Merchants running the place had some kind of Art that kept the mist away.”

  He let out a sharp, amused snort. “Right. Because those guys would just clear the air out of the goodness of their hearts.”

  With that he led the way into the thick of the bazaar, Maeve and Cara flanking him as they waded into the throng of bodies. The market was dense with heat, noise, and the choking perfume of a hundred different toxins. The air itself shimmered with the mingling scents of roasted flesh, fermented nectar, and pungent alkaloids that stung the back of the throat. Even in daylight, the place was cast in perpetual twilight. The towering tarps that stretched high above gave most of the bazaar shade, so bioarcanic lanterns hung from every stall, flickering between eerie blues and sickly greens and bloody reds depending on where one was looking.

  The entire bazaar was like a fever dream, and he’d stand by that every time he came to visit, but Maeve wasn’t walking nearly as fast and as urgently as he and Cara were. She slowed, drawn to the bizarre wares spilling from the stalls: vats of wriggling larvae, vials of poison in colors that didn’t belong in nature, and meat that twitched as though still alive. Despite herself, she leaned in to examine a row of severed limbs: each one preserved, each one still growing slowly in its vat.

  Cara, already a step ahead of the two of them, was speed-haggling with a squat, sentient bundle of vines, her fingers tapping impatiently on a crate of vegetables that looked suspiciously like they could bite back. She worked fast, sharp-eyed and ruthless, snatching up sacks of produce before the vine-thing could even finish grumbling out a counteroffer.

  I guess we’re eating man-eating veggies tonight.

  Gael barely had time to chuckle before Maeve started drifting too far away from him, her eyes still roaming over the market like she was cataloging a crime scene. He sighed and twirled his leg around the chain connecting them, pulling her back in.

  She shot him a glare as she stumbled over a pebble, falling into his back. “What?” she growled. “I don’t appreciate—”

  “Stick close.”

  She scowled at him. “People are already giving us space.”

  And they were. Around them, the press of bodies parted just enough, wary eyes flickering toward the crest of the two-headed wasp stitched onto the sleeve of her dress.

  ... And that’s exactly the problem.

  He glanced upward, past the tangled canopy of the market, past the skeletal buildings and fungal growth curling along the rooftops. Far, far above Bharncair, shrouded in thin mist and golden light, loomed the floating City of Splendors. Vharnveil, perched under the heavens like it’d never known suffering a day in its existence. Its ivory towers gleamed, distant and unreachable, and the only indication that it wasn’t some citadel from the stars themselves was the fact that it was tethered to the four wards of Bharncair below by four enormous chains, thick as fortresses.

  Even with the bazaar’s clear air, he couldn’t really make out the finer details of the upper city. It sat in the sky like a cruel joke—too far to touch, yet too close to ignore. It was a message to all of them down in the lower city, deliberate and taunting: ‘You don’t belong there. You never will’.

  So he let out a dry chuckle, yanking on her chain harder to pull her even closer.

  “You Vharnish up there probably think Exorcists are keepers of peace, don’t you?”

  Maeve stiffened, but didn’t refute him immediately.

  “Down here, most people know someone who’s been killed by an Exorcist. ”His voice lowered, edged with something sharp. “They don’t see protectors when they see that crest on your sleeve. They see murderers. Executioners. Nobody gives a shit how eminent your organization is up there in the golden towers. Down here, with that shackle, you’re walking with a target painted on your sleeve.”

  Maeve said nothing, still, so Cara—who’d finished stuffing her haul of food into a worn satchel—suddenly slid up beside them and ribbed Gael in the side, making him groan.

  “Listen to you talk,” Cara grumbled. “The Plagueplain Doctors aren’t exactly loved down here either, you know.”

  He grinned painfully. “Yeah, but they’re used to me.” Then he clapped a hand on Maeve’s shoulder. “But you, on the other hand, are new. And this chain is making people nervous.”

  “So?” Maeve gritted her teeth. “What can we do about it? It’s not like we can hide the chain, can we?”

  “Who said anything about hiding it?” he said casually, grabbing her left hand and holding it tightly in his right. “Now don’t let go.”

  She blinked.

  Once.

  Twice.

  “I beg… your pardon?”

  “It’s for safety,” Gael assured. “Walk next to me, hold my hand, and nobody will mess with us. We’re husband and wife. Act like it, and even the five hoodlums eyeing us four meters to our right will think twice before putting a hand on your ass.”

  A faint blush, barely imperceptible, rose onto her face. She obviously thought about whirling around to confront her most curious onlookers, but her training wasn’t just for show after all. Avoiding confrontation was the best way to stay out of trouble.

  With great effort, she managed to control her impulsive thoughts at the last second and inhaled deeply, the way one might when suppressing the urge to strangle someone.

  She squeezed his hand so tightly he felt she might just break his bones.

  “... Put a hand anywhere but around my hand, and I will end you,” she said calmly, giving him the brightest, fakest smile he’d ever seen from her.

  “Now, now.” Gael grinned back, half-pained, half-irritated. “Wives don’t threaten their husbands in public. If you must insist, we can beat the shit out of each other back in the clini—”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  A sudden bang resounded in front of them, making him hold his tongue.

  A commotion rippled through the bazaar. Like a stone thrown into a pond of filth, the crowd around the three of them stirred, then began to part to the sides in quick, uneasy waves.

  Gael recognized this phenomenon, so he did what any self-preserving local and love-loving husband would do: he grabbed Maeve’s face like a man checking the ripeness of a fruit and yanked her towards the nearest alley. Cara was already moving on her own as well, ducking into the shadows like she’d done this song a dance a thousand times before.

  Maeve, on the other hand, bristled like a feral cat. She tore his hand off as he managed to drag her into a dark alley, eyes flashing. “And what the hell do you think you’re—”

  “What do you think?” he mumbled, pressing a finger to his lips before pointing his cane out into the street. “We Bharnish pay respects not to the powers we can see up there in the sky, but the powers that be down here in the pipes.”

  Maeve narrowed her eyes, but curiosity got the better of her as she peeked around the corner as well, trying to see what he was pointing at.

  This particular section of the street had gone eerily silent, save for the distant hum of bioarcanic lanterns and the guttural croaks of the plant-clogged drainage pipes. At the heart of the disturbance about twenty meters in front of them, a gang of men loomed before a trembling market stall. There were about two dozen of them, all scarred, gaunt, and pale people in tattered wear and patchwork leather masks, like funeral attendees who’d crawled out of their own graves.

  Gael knew their type. Knew exactly who they were, too. Each one of them had at least two extra arms grafted onto their backs. Some arms were muscular, some were spindly, but all were unnervingly mismatched. Taken from different men. And they used their extra arms quite well, drumming fingers against oversized weapons, adjusting their patchwork human skin coats, and flicking the safeties on and off their switchblades and chain-axes.

  Damn, he thought. Their switch weapons look nastier than the last time I saw them.

  My bladed cane and sheathe looks like a toy compared to what they have now.

  The gang of men marked over each other, all yelling at the same trembling store owner in front of them. The old man himself was hunched and wrapped in loose silk that barely clung to his wiry frame. His hands shook so badly Gael half-expected them to fall off his wrists, but then—a single thud.

  The gang leader planted his staff into the ground, and silence crashed over the street like a hammer.

  Unlike the others, he had no crude grafted limbs jutting from his spine. Instead, four black, glossy spider’s legs curled out from beneath his coat, each twitching with deliberate patience. His long, braided hair was a murky, dull shade of gold, and his staff—no, not a staff. It was a butcher’s sawstaff, and the circular sawblade glinted dull under the market’s sickly light.

  … So that’s the new boss, huh?

  And his voice, as he spoke to the store owner, was calm. Courteous. The kind of tone Gael tried to reserve for patients he was about to carve open.

  “No need for all this tension,” the boss said, dipping his head politely. “We’re not here to make your life difficult, old man. We’re just here for what’s owed.”

  The shopkeeper clutched his trembling hands together. “P-please, I just need three more days! That’s all! My courier—he sent word and said he’d be back from the northern ward soon! I’ve invested everything in this shipment, so when it arrives, I’ll have your money! I swear it on the Saint’s good name!”

  A beat of silence.

  Then, a polite, knowing smile from the boss. “You’ve said that before.”

  The shopkeeper swallowed hard.

  “Twice, in fact,” the boss continued. “And I was patient. I gave you an extension three days ago.” He held up one finger. “Then another two days ago.” A second finger. “And just yesterday, I gave you one more day.” A third. “That’s three days, old man. Do we not say ‘third time’s the charm’ down here?”

  The old shopkeeper’s face went pale.

  And then, for some inexplicable reason—he ran.

  He didn’t hesitate. Didn’t look back. Just bolted. Legs pumping, silk robes flaring, sheer survival instinct kicking in. He didn’t even have to push past anyone, because there was no one in his way. The crowd had already parted, the street yawning open before him like a grave.

  In a new record, he made it fifteen meters before a gunshot rang through the air, sharp and sudden.

  The old man’s body lurched mid-stride, momentum carrying him forward before his knees buckled and he slammed face-first onto the street, a fresh hole punched clean through his right shoulder.

  Gael’s gaze flicked up.

  Standing along the second and third floors of the bazaar—behind balconies, railings, and windows—was another gang. These men were different. Sharper, well-dressed in fine suits, and less monstrous than the ones on the ground. But no less dangerous. Their clawed metal gauntlets were sharp like daggers, their eyeless masks were made out of chiselled gold, and their leather belts were all lined with bioarcanic pistols.

  Gael spotted the shooter easily. It was a man in a tailored high-collared coat behind a third-floor balcony, lowering his pistol with smoke still curling from the barrel. He stepped back into the shadows leisurely, slotting in a fresh round while the shopkeeper grunted and clawed at the street, still trying to drag himself away from the gang on the ground.

  Maeve moved for some reason.

  Not a thought. Pure instinct. But before she could take a single step, Cara yanked her back, and Gael clamped a hand over her mask, pressing his cane against her ribs.

  “Shhh,” he whispered.

  On the street, the gang with the grafted limbs had already set to work. They tore apart the shopkeeper’s stall with mechanical efficiency, rifling through crates, stuffing valuables into burlap sacks. But the boss and five of his higher-ranked men—each one bearing four extra spider limbs—strode toward the wounded shopkeeper, and no spectator dared stop them from reaching their prey.

  The old man barely had the strength to crawl two meters forward before a heavy boot crashed down on his back, pinning him to the ground.

  “... Three extensions.” The boss sighed with a slow shake of his head. “For that, I will exact three extra payments in addition to everything you own.”

  Then he twirled his sawstaff.

  The blade spun once, carving straight through the shopkeeper’s left arm. The old man shrieked, but then he swung the staff around and the saw bit again—through his left leg. Then his right.

  Three severed limbs hit the street, slick and twitching. Three of the higher-ranked men beside the boss immediately scooped them up, wrapping them in thick protective paper with the delicate precision of butchers handling prime cuts.

  “No need to worry.” The boss gave the screaming, dying man a satisfied nod. “You may not have been useful, but your limbs are still in excellent condition. We’ll take good care of them.”

  The shopkeeper’s body convulsed weakly before finally falling still, blood pooling beneath him. Almost immediately, another high-ranking man hauled up the corpse like a sack of grain, slinging it effortlessly over his shoulder.

  With that, the gang turned and walked away with their severed limbs and corpse, disappearing into the veins of the Black Bloom Bazaar.

  Silence for one second.

  Two seconds.

  And the third second’s the charm.

  As if nothing had happened, the market breathed back to life. Vendors slid back onto the streets. Merchants resumed their shouts. Perfume peddlers wafted their toxic wares beneath noses, and haggling erupted like the gunshot had never been fired.

  Life went on.

  Maeve looked sick beside him. Gael didn’t blame her. He supposed it wasn’t everyday a Vharnish had to watch a man get his limbs carved off like a pig at slaughter, and then watch the world shuffle back to business as if nothing had happened.

  So he clapped her hard on the back and felt her flinch.

  “Gonna hurl?” he teased.

  She shot him a look, but her face stayed pale.

  “Relax,” he grumbled, still holding onto her hand as he pulled her out of the alley. Cara followed, waving and greeting a familiar vendor she frequented with a bright smile as she did. “Dismemberment’s just a normal afternoon pastime in Bharncair. You’ll get used to it soon enough.”

  “I’d… rather not,” she muttered.

  “Well. You may have thought you Symbiote Exorcists were real hot shit down here, but the truth is, nobody in the lower city really gives a fuck about your fancy little orders,” he said, shrugging casually. “Upper city organizations like the Mortifera Enforcers, the Church of Severin, the Blood Barons, and the Symbiote Exorcists—you lot live in bedtime stories people tell their children. It don’t matter that each of the organizations I just listed can level the southern ward by themselves. Most Bharnish down here in the southern ward never see a single Exorcist in their lives, so we don’t fear you nearly as much as you think we do, even if you are worthy of that fear once we get to know you.”

  Maeve stayed quiet, her eyes locked on the blood seeping between the cobblestones as they passed the spot where the old man was slain.

  “... And the Bharnish don’t fear the upper city organizations because we never interfere with lower city business,” she said quietly. “We live up there, you live down here. We are the powers you see, but—”

  “Down here in Blightmarch, the Southern Ward of Plagues in the shittiest part of Bharncair, there are three major powers that you must know about.”

  They kept trudging down the main street, moving through the crowd, and when they passed by the stall the gang with grafted arms were still ransacking, Gael thumbed at their backs discreetly.

  “These patchwork leather mask guys are the ‘Repossessors’. They’re the gang that deals in limb trading. It’s nasty business, but I hear it’s pretty profitable,” he whispered. “That man with the faded golden hair is Lorcawn, the current Palm. The boss of the gang, if you will. Even without his Symbiotic System, he’s a mean fucker. He overthrew the old boss and took over the gang a year ago, and since then, the Repossessors have been on a violent expansion spree. They rule the surface of Blightmarch and hold ninety-five percent of the ward’s territory, which makes them the law down here.”

  Then his gaze flicked up toward the rooftops, where the well-dressed men in long coats stood watch, bioarcanic pistols hanging at their sides.

  “Up there, you have the eyeless golden-masked ‘Rot Merchants’. Trade and information. They’re rich as hell and twice as cutthroat. Anything the upper city doesn’t want us gutter ruts to have? They sell it,” he said. “Their motto’s simple: ‘wealth above all, and make no lie’. They’re not very violent in comparison to the Repossessors. Just don’t break a promise or lie in their presence, and they won’t hurt a hair on your pretty head.”

  Maeve frowned. “So the Black Bloom Bazaar is their territory?”

  “I did say the Repossessors only hold ninety-five percent of the ward’s territory,” he said pointedly. “The Black Bloom Bazaar is the remaining five percent still under the Rot Merchant’s control, and that’s because they have a special peace arrangement with the Repossessors. As long as the Repossessors don’t start a turf war here and make too much of a mess, they get to trade in this immensely lucrative bazaar.”

  “And what we saw back there wasn’t ‘too much of a mess’?”

  “That was them playing nice. You should see the aftermath of some of the turf wars the Repossessors wage against the smaller, lesser-known gangs.”

  With that, he gestured down at the sewer grates and dark alleyways.

  “And the third power?” He tapped his cane on one sewer grate as they walked by. “Well, you won’t see them unless you’re looking for them. They’re the diving-mask ‘Gulchers’. They run the underground pipelines, and they don’t ever come to the surface if they can help it.”

  Maeve’s brow furrowed. “They don’t come to the surface?”

  “Not if they can help it. But the Repossessors want to own all of Blightmarch, and the Gulchers aren’t rolling over and giving up the unique resources they have down there. Turf wars are getting ugly down in the pipes.” Then he tilted his head up. “And the Rot Merchants? They’re happy playing both sides. They arm both the Repossessors and the Gulchers. Selling them weapons to keep the war burning.”

  Cara, as usual, looked unfazed, but Maeve absorbed the information, her face unreadable. Gael shrugged to lighten the mood a little.

  “Lucky for us, the clinic’s far from all this shit. We’re pretty safe so long as we don’t do anything stupid and draw the gangs’ attention to ourselves.” He flashed her a grin. “Like, say, borrowing money you can’t pay back.”

  Maeve still didn’t laugh.

  Cara sighed. “We should split up. I need to get—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” He waved her off. “Go get the herbs.”

  Without another word, Cara turned and vanished into the crowd, chasing a merchant rolling by with a cart full of sweet-smelling herbs. Maeve watched her go, then glanced at Gael. “And where are we going?”

  He stopped them right in front of a massive five-story tall building.

  Bright bioarcanic lights. Flashy signs. People swarming in and out. This was the main bazaar hall, and the real heart of the Black Bloom Bazaar.

  “Here,” he said plainly. “This is the only place we can buy a Vile Eater, and to do that, we have to talk with Juno.”

  Then he clapped her on the back again and started toward the entrance.

  “Time to meet the boss of the Rot Merchants and hope we don’t get a bullet in our heads by the end of it.”

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