The Soul Brokers Game

The Veilshade Archive didn't open like a building. It exhaled.

Lucien slipped through a fracture in the world, a seam of fog stitched between two faceless statues. The mist thickened around him the moment he crossed inside, and the temperature dropped as if the place resented his breath.

Something cold unfurled beneath his skin. The Ledger stirred where it nested beneath his wrist, humming with a quiet authority that buzzed through bone.

"Tracking active," it said, voice even. Glyphs washed across his sight, pale and sharp as frost. "Soulglass resonance detected. Structural degradation at 32 percent. Specter density rising."

He didn't respond. There wasn't oxygen here. Not really. Just weight, ancient and soaked with old knowledge, pressing against lungs like a memory trying to drown him. His footsteps softened in the Archive's air, each one landing like a secret too heavy to echo. The corridors didn't follow logic. They curved in ways that suggested someone had folded the blueprint in on itself and called it holy. 

Behind him, Vara moved like a rumor. Her breathing barely touched the stale air, her movements stripped down to silence and shadows. Even her footsteps avoided eye contact with the ground.

"How many decoys you plant?" she whispered.

Lucien thumbed the interface pad. The Ledger synced without a sound.

"Seven," he said. "Each tailored for false soul signatures, drift decay, and mimic frequency."

The Ledger confirmed. "Specters diverted. Probability of premature exposure down by forty-eight percent."

Vara frowned. "And risk range?"

Lucien arched an eyebrow. "Low. Unless you break into song."

She didn't laugh, but her mouth twitched with the ghost of it. That was good. Humor turned panic into something chewable. The tension didn't vanish, but it grew shape—something they could move around instead of drowning in.

The soulglass wasn't kept like treasure. It had no shelf or box. It bled into the space, wove through the Archive's skin like scar tissue. Lucien moved slow, steady, like a man trying to sneak up on grief.

The Ledger kept feeding pulses into his nerves, sharp as cracked knuckles.

"Sector three breach. Glyph containment: fractured.""Last contract embedded: Talindra Mourn. Status: incomplete.""Residual echo active. Specter intercept in thirty-one seconds."

Lucien veered left and slid a decoy into a socket behind the wall's latticework. It blinked once, then vanished as its mimic field pulsed out in a ripple of false warmth.

"South passage," he told Vara, nodding toward a hall scraped with sigils white as chalk dust. "The soulglass is bleeding there. Follow it till your teeth itch."

"You're splitting us here?" she asked, voice lower. "Now?"

"We cover more ground this way."

The Ledger surged. "Specter behavior change. New variable present. Containment probability falling. Twenty-two percent and climbing."

Vara's eyes narrowed. She looked like she wanted to spit, or maybe swing, but she turned and vanished into the hall, absorbed by the Archive's pale breath. Her shadow slipped after her like a blade with no hilt.

Lucien let his exhale bleed out slowly. The air didn't want it. He planted a second decoy, sync-locked it to the drift pulse, then let the Ledger finish the rest. Glyphs glowed beneath his skin like veins full of borrowed fire.

"Specters circling," the Ledger warned. Its voice had sharpened. "Predatory pattern confirmed."

"They're probing."

"Correct. No confirmation of presence yet. Redirecting."

"Then mislead them."

"Ambient soul signature scrambled. Displacing tracer echoes."

Lucien moved deeper into the Archive. The passage grew crooked, twitching at the edges like a dream fighting to stay asleep. Time warped here, pooling in corners. The glyphs didn't glow—they pulsed like they were alive, syncing to a heartbeat that didn't belong to him.

Ahead, a pane of soulglass shimmered into view, suspended in a vault face marked by four rotating glyph cores. The Ledger chimed, louder now.

"Target fragment confirmed. Resonance match to Vara's query: ninety-two percent. Vault integrity: unstable."

Lucien placed his palm flat against the vault. The glyphs shifted, rearranging into acceptance.

"Access partial. Full echo recovery not possible. Tether frayed."

And then came the cold.

Not physical. Not even truly felt. A pressure rolled through the air like a thought gone wrong. Behind him, the specters arrived. Four of them. Their movements slick and off-tempo, like spilled oil slithering across a choir's remains. No eyes. No mouths. Just shapes stitched from hunger.

Lucien didn't curse. He breathed in hard through his teeth. "Vara, change position. Move now."

No answer.

"Vara, respond."

The Ledger pulsed like a fist tightening. "Path sealed. Specter glyph engaged at southern axis."

He stood still. The Archive was watching. Or maybe judging.

"Exit possible," the Ledger offered. "Sacrifice within operational threshold."

He didn't move. His eyes stayed locked on the passage Vara had taken. He saw her expression again when he told her to split off. He remembered how she held onto that last thread of hope like it could stitch her sister back together.

"Her hope was my shield," he said softly.

He ran.

The Ledger flared, throwing new overlays across his vision. Specter arcs. Barrier thresholds. Risk markers spinning in real time.

"Suggested paths calculated. Decoy placements optimal at junction points seventeen and twenty-two. Do not slow."

Lucien didn't. He dropped two more decoys while vaulting over cracked glyph platforms. The specters closed fast, noise bleeding from their movement like a choir screaming underwater.

"New threat identified," the Ledger spat. "Cassian cipher detected. Glyph etched below target vault."

Lucien skidded. That symbol pulsed with oily light—Cassian's mark. Faint but deliberate.

"He's tagging archives now," Lucien hissed. "Injecting rot where it clings hardest."

"Confirmed. Signature matches proxy code from Duskspire breach."

The passage snapped around him. One specter lashed forward, claws twitching. Lucien activated Valthamur's boon. Chains erupted from his hands, fire-wrought and spectral. They wrapped the creature mid-lunge. It screamed, but not through any throat. The sound poured straight into his thoughts.

He ducked beneath the second, rolled hard, then grabbed Vara where she'd collapsed behind a shattered plinth.

"You were supposed to run," she wheezed, blinking through dust and fury.

"Her trust breaks," the Ledger murmured, low and too close.

Lucien held her gaze for half a beat longer than he meant to, then yanked her to her feet and dragged her into a backup passage. The vault's door slammed behind them with a hiss that echoed like a sigh cut short.

She stood under her own power now, shoulders shaking but eyes burning. She reached for the glyph wall with fingers that trembled.

"She's there," Vara said, voice thin. "That's her."

Lucien didn't speak. He laid down a glyph net across the archway, linking it to the cipher Cassian had left behind.

"Cassian's traps are sloppy," he muttered, setting the final rune.

The Ledger didn't hesitate. "So are yours."

Lucien's mouth twisted into a humorless grin.

He finished binding the trap, watched the pulses settle into quiet menace. If Cassian came back for the mark, he'd walk into a vault full of consequences.

The Ledger returned to its low hum, satisfied. "Containment secured. Glyph resonance anchored. Surveillance initiated."

Vara didn't look away from the wall. Her sister's echo flickered there, barely more than a breath suspended in fractured glass. She said nothing.

Lucien let the silence hold between them. No fixing it with words. Not tonight.

He turned back toward the deeper corridors. There were more ruins to chart. More ghosts that remembered his name.

Behind him, the Archive sighed. And the Ledger whispered once more, quiet and cool in his ear.

"Fix your flaws."

Lucien adjusted his collar, checked the weight of the next decoy pack, and stepped into the dark.