The hall outside had gone very quiet.
Ten thousand gold coins. The number had a weight to it that silenced a room the way very few numbers could. Anyone who understood money understood what that meant — one gold coin kept a family of three fed for a month. Ten gold bought serviceable armor. Ten thousand could outfit a hundred knights from boots to helmet and have change left over.
For a stone with green veins and no confirmed contents.
Seraphine was asking for the third time whether anyone in the hall wished to bid.
The silence held.
---
In booth six, Evander was still thinking about Veyra.
He had paid a significant price for his Identification Method skill, and it had never failed him. Every person, every beast, every creature with a level below his own — the skill read them clearly. Cultivation tier, vocation, approximate rank.
It had failed on Leo.
Not partially. Completely. Age and current strength were all it had returned, and even those had seemed uncertain, as if something beneath the surface was actively resisting the read. That didn’t happen. In Evander’s experience, that simply did not happen.
And now Veyra — a fourth-rank mid beast, by the look of her — had also returned nothing. No species. No attribute breakdown. No classification.
Two blanks in one afternoon.
He kept his expression pleasant and filed the information away in the part of his mind he reserved for things that needed more time.
"Brother Leo," he said.
Leo wasn’t listening. His eyes were on the stage, on the stone sphere sitting quiet and unremarkable on its gilt cart, and his expression had the specific quality of someone doing internal arithmetic they didn’t like the answer to.
"Brother Leo," Evander said again.
"—Ten thousand," Leo said quietly, mostly to himself.
Below them, Seraphine had begun her polite pivot toward withdrawing the item. Then she stopped. Her eyes moved to the bidding panel at the front of the booth.
"One moment," she said, and the careful neutrality in her voice gave way to genuine surprise. "Booth six VIP — ten thousand gold."
A ripple went through the hall. Not quite laughter. Something warmer than that.
Seraphine looked up toward booth six with the expression of someone who had expected better and had decided to be professional about it anyway.
Inside the booth, Evander was already on his feet.
"That sister — you cannot do this!" His voice had lost its careful composure entirely. "Brother Leo had already offered to borrow from me. You stole my opportunity!"
Liora sat with the perfect posture of someone who had just done something they were pleased with. "Hao Chen is my little brother," she said, very mildly. "Is it strange for a big sister to buy something for her little brother?"
"That’s not — that’s completely—" Evander pressed both hands to his face. "Do you have any idea how much I was looking forward to that leverage?"
Leo had gone pale. "Big Sister Lin. Ten thousand gold coins—"
Liora stood and walked toward him. Her expression when she reached him was soft in a way Leo hadn’t seen from her before — not the composed, polished softness she wore in public, but something more careful and more real.
"Hao Chen," she said. "If you were twenty, I would have no hesitation. I would absolutely steal you from Mira and the consequences could sort themselves out." A quiet laugh. "But the age difference is what it is, and so I can only be your big sister. That’s not a bad thing." She tilted her head slightly. "I haven’t forgotten. Two times. Twice, you were the one who stood between me and death. Especially the second time." She paused. "I could already smell the cold on that blade. It was you who pulled me back."
Leo opened his mouth.
Liora raised one hand and placed it lightly over his.
"Don’t argue. I already discussed it with Big Sister Mira, and she agreed. If you refuse, I’ll ask you never to call me Big Sister again." A beat. "Your big sister’s life is worth at least ten thousand gold coins. I’d like to think it’s worth more."
Every night since the mission ended, Liora had woken up from the same dream. The cold of the blade. The specific moment when her body had understood, before her mind did, that something irreversible was about to happen.
Every time she woke from it, she thought about Leo.
She had come to the Crownhammer Auction House with this exact purpose already in mind. Find something useful for him before the Selection. She hadn’t known what it would be. The stone sphere wasn’t what she’d pictured, but when she saw Veyra’s reaction — the urgency, the absolute focus, that quality of recognition that bypassed all normal beast behavior — she had understood immediately.
This mattered to him. Which meant it mattered.
"Big Sister," Leo said, after a long moment.
"Yes?"
"Thank you."
Liora’s hand moved from his and she sat back down with her usual composure restored, as if the previous thirty seconds had been a brief interruption in an otherwise normal afternoon. "That’s the appropriate response," she said.
Mira was looking at the ceiling. Her expression suggested she was experiencing several feelings simultaneously and had elected not to discuss any of them.
Evander had sat back down and was staring at the stage with the wounded dignity of a person whose carefully arranged plan had been dismantled by someone who hadn’t even known the plan existed.
"I was looking forward to that leverage," he said again, quietly.
---
Outside, Seraphine’s voice reached them clearly. "Ten thousand gold, once. Ten thousand gold, twice." A beat. "Sold. The mysterious stone sphere goes to the distinguished guest in booth six."
A sound from the hall — a collective exhale, something between relief and amusement. Whatever the stone turned out to be, at least one person had been willing to gamble on it.
Evander leaned toward Leo. "I would still very much like you to consider my proposal."
Leo glanced at him sideways. "I’m still considering it."
"Consider faster."
"You’ll have an answer when I have one."
A knock at the booth door.
Nora entered, pushing the gilt cart from the stage. The stone sphere sat on top of it, exactly as unremarkable as it had appeared from a distance — grey surface, dark green veins, no visible energy.
Veyra moved before the cart had fully stopped.
Both heads extended. Four eyes locked. Every other thing in the room ceased to exist for her.
Leo caught her by the scruff of one neck before she could close the remaining distance. "Not here," he said, quiet and firm. "Wait."
Veyra went still. The wanting didn’t leave her eyes, but she held.
Liora paid from her own magic crystal card without ceremony. Nora completed the transaction, gave a small bow, and left. She had seen Master Evander in many moods across many visits, but she had never seen him sit that quietly or that unhappily, and she didn’t ask.
Leo waited until the door was shut.
Then he took the stone sphere from the cart and turned it over in his hands. Up close, the green veins were denser than they’d appeared from the booth window — branching and looping across the surface in patterns that felt almost deliberate, like something had grown rather than been carved. It was heavier than it looked.
No spiritual energy radiated from it. Nothing he could sense.
He looked at Veyra.
Veyra looked at the sphere.
Little Light’s eyes were very still. Little Flame’s were bright.
Leo stored the sphere in the Forget-Me-Not ring.
Veyra’s expression shifted — not upset, just patient. She understood. Evander was in the room, and Evander was curious in the way that very intelligent people were curious, which was to say: thoroughly and without boundaries.
Whatever this stone was, it wasn’t something to examine in front of an audience.
"Brother Leo," Evander said.
"Still considering," Leo said.
Evander sighed. He smoothed his hair over his shoulder, looked at the spot where the stone sphere had just been, and then looked at Veyra, whose four eyes were still faintly fixed on the ring on Leo’s hand.
He thought about the Identification Method failing.
He thought about a fourth-rank beast summoning herself without being called, specifically for a ten-thousand-gold stone that no appraiser in the Crownhammer could identify.
He thought about Leo’s cultivation level reading as something that didn’t fully make sense for his age.
"Brother Leo," he said, for the third time.
"Yes."
"I think I like you more than I expected to."
Leo looked at him.
"That’s not a compliment," Evander added. "People I find interesting tend to be inconvenient."
Mira laughed. Actually laughed, not the restrained sounds she usually allowed herself. It lasted about two seconds before she pressed her hand over her mouth, but it had happened.
Leo turned back toward the stage, where the next item was being introduced, and said nothing.
But he didn’t disagree.