Elara Veyne had always believed Bhastion was a city with two faces. By daylight, it was a place of commerce and chatter, its streets swollen with vendors and voices. But when the lamps flickered awake and the fog rolled in from the river, the city shed its mask. The alleys grew longer, the shadows thicker, and silence was never truly silence—it was filled with whispers, as though the stones themselves remembered things no one dared speak aloud.
Tonight, the air was different. Heavy. Charged. A storm pressed against the horizon, its rumble crawling across the sky like a predator waiting to strike. Elara walked alone, her notebook clutched against her chest, chasing inspiration through the labyrinth of streets. She was a seeker of stories, a collector of fragments, and tonight something tugged at her senses—an unseen thread pulling her toward the forgotten quarter of the city.
She stopped before an abandoned arcade, its iron gates rusted, its windows blind with dust. The building had been lifeless for decades, yet tonight it seemed to breathe. A faint sound drifted from within—not quite music, not quite speech. It was the murmur of a crowd, muffled and distant, as though hundreds of unseen voices were gathered just beyond the walls.
Her pulse quickened.
Elara pressed her hand to the gate. The iron was warm, unnaturally so, as though the building itself had a heartbeat. The whispers sharpened, rising and falling like chants. She strained to catch the words, but they slipped through her mind like smoke.
Then, a sudden gust tore through the street, scattering scraps of paper at her feet. One sheet snagged against her boot. She bent to pick it up—and froze.
It wasn't paper at all. It was parchment, yellowed and brittle, inked with a single phrase in looping script:
"Lot 13: The Future of Elara Veyne."
Her breath caught. The letters shimmered faintly, pulsing with a light that came from nowhere. She dropped the parchment, but the words had already burned themselves into her mind.
The whispers inside the arcade swelled, as though they had sensed her name. The sound became a chorus, layered with tones both human and inhuman. For a heartbeat, she thought she heard her own voice among them—pleading, warning, echoing from a place she had never been.
The lamps along the street flickered violently. Shadows stretched unnaturally, bending toward her like grasping hands. The fog thickened, swallowing the far end of the alley until it seemed the world beyond had ceased to exist.
Elara staggered back, her chest tight. Fear clawed at her, but beneath it was something else: a strange, magnetic pull. The parchment lay at her feet, edges curling, ink glowing faintly in the stormlight.
The city around her seemed to hold its breath. The silence pressed in until she could hear only the pounding of her own heart.
And in that moment, Elara realized the city wasn't breathing at all.
It was watching.
Then, from deep within the arcade, a sound broke the silence—sharp, deliberate, impossible to mistake.
The hollow strike of a gavel.
The whispers surged, layered with voices that seemed to chant her name. The gate creaked open by itself, inch by inch, revealing nothing but a blackness so dense it seemed alive.
The parchment at her feet lifted into the air, folding neatly as if claimed by unseen hands. Its final words shimmered before vanishing into the fog:
"The Auction begins at midnight."
Midnight was only minutes away.
Elara's breath caught. She wanted to run, but her legs refused to move. The darkness beyond the gate pulsed, waiting, as if the city itself had placed her on the block.
And somewhere inside, unseen bidders stirred.
The air grew colder, biting at her skin, yet sweat slicked her palms. The whispers twisted into laughter—low, guttural, inhuman. She felt it coil around her like smoke, pressing against her ears, her mind, her very bones.
Her notebook slipped from her grasp, pages fluttering open. The words she had written earlier—half-formed ideas, fragments of stories—shifted on the paper, rearranging themselves into a single line:
"Sold."
Elara's stomach dropped. The letters bled across the page, dripping like ink that refused to dry.
The gavel struck again, louder this time, echoing through the alley as though the city itself had become the auction hall.
The gate yawned wider. The shadows inside writhed, stretching into shapes that almost resembled figures—tall, faceless silhouettes, their heads turning toward her in unison.
Elara's heart hammered against her ribs. Every instinct screamed at her to flee, yet her feet remained rooted, bound by something stronger than fear.
The fog thickened, swallowing the world behind her. There was no escape. Only forward. Only into the dark.
And as the final chime of the gavel rang out, Elara understood with bone-deep certainty:
She was no longer a spectator.
She was Lot 13....