Fair Exchange

They say if your curiosity outweighs your common sense, you should walk the district after the lanterns dim. Find the alleyway where the smell of rain never fades, turn right twice, then left, and look for the gap between the brickwork. You won't find a door of wood or iron-only heavy, floor-to-ceiling velvet drapes the color of dried blood.

Knock three times, wait for the silver chime, and enter.

Inside, the air is thick with the scent of old paper and ozone. There sits a woman with hair like unspun silk and eyes the color of a serpent's gaze. Do not expect a warm welcome; she loathes the curious. She treats every question like a debt that hasn't been paid.

Most tellingly, she never looks at the faces of her own cards. She shuffles them with a cold, mechanical precision, her fingers dancing over the backs of the deck as if the truth they hold is too heavy to witness. To see a life saved, a life must be risked; to find a fortune, a loss must be anchored. She lives by the "Equivalent Weight," ensuring that no truth is revealed without a price of equal importance.

For years, she was a ghost in the velvet, a private enigma tucked away from the Guilds and their wars. But even the most careful shadows can be stepped on.

Now, the girl who hated curiosity must become the weapon that satisfies it, learning that while the cards have a price, survival costs even more.