The side street narrowed twice before Khan found what he was looking for.
Not privacy, exactly.
Privacy was a luxury cities rarely provided.
What he found was the cheaper substitute: a place nobody had a reason to look.
A narrow gap ran between the rear wall of the tavern and an abandoned tailor's shop, screened by stacked barrels and a crooked wooden fence. Rainwater dripped steadily from a broken gutter overhead. Empty crates leaned against one wall, and somebody had apparently decided the corner was an acceptable place to dispose of three chairs, half a broom, and a boot with no obvious owner.
Khan stepped inside.
Miriel followed.
He set the crate of Sunfruits on an overturned barrel.
One of them twitched.
Khan looked at it.
The fruit twitched again.
He decided not to ask.
There were already too many questions in his life.
Miriel stopped several paces away from him.
The nervous, socially incompetent girl from the market was gone.
Not entirely.
But enough.
Her posture had changed.
Her shoulders were straight now. Her right hand rested beneath her cloak, close to Nightfall. The shadow of her hood hid her eyes, but Khan could feel them studying him.
Calculating.
That was better.
Idiots were unpredictable.
Intelligent people were dangerous, but at least they usually had reasons.
Usually.
"Now," Miriel said.
Khan leaned against the wall.
"Now what?"
"Explain."
"That's a broad request."
"Who are you?"
"Khan."
"You already said that."
"Then we're making excellent progress."
Her fingers tightened beneath the cloak.
[Diplomatic relations deteriorating.]
Khan ignored the System.
Miriel took one step closer.
"You recognized my dagger."
There it was.
Khan's mind went to work.
He knew almost nothing about this world.
He didn't know its kingdoms.
Its religions.
Its history.
Its magic.
Its politics.
He didn't even know whether two gold was expensive.
And yet he had just casually identified an artifact the System itself classified as SSS-rank.
That was a problem.
More specifically, it was the kind of problem that became fatal when the person asking the questions could turn him into decorative pavement.
He needed an explanation.
Preferably one that sounded plausible.
Immediately.
Fortunately, Khan had spent twenty years in finance.
The entire profession had trained him for moments when someone expected an intelligent answer before reality had finished providing one.
He folded his arms.
"I'm an artifact researcher."
Silence.
Miriel stared at him.
Khan stared back.
[Lie detected.]
Thank you.
[Quality assessment: Poor.]
Fuck you.
[Would you like assistance constructing a more convincing lie?]
Can you actually provide one?
[...]
Thought so.
Miriel tilted her head.
"An artifact researcher."
"Correct."
"You look eighteen."
Khan felt something inside him die for the second time that week.
"Age discrimination. Wonderful."
Her hand shifted beneath the cloak.
Khan cleared his throat.
"Independent researcher."
"From where?"
There were questions one should anticipate before lying.
That had been one of them.
Khan had not anticipated it.
[Professional.]
He considered naming the first city that came to mind.
Unfortunately, every city that came to mind was on Earth.
London seemed risky.
Tokyo seemed worse.
New York would probably create theological complications.
So Khan did what traders did when they lacked sufficient information.
He increased ambiguity.
"I travel."
Miriel's eyes narrowed.
"From where?"
"Several places."
"Name one."
"You're very suspicious for someone who nearly traded a priceless weapon for groceries."
Her expression hardened.
Good.
Deflection.
Primitive, but effective.
Khan pushed off the wall.
"More importantly, you pulled Nightfall out in the middle of a public market."
"You knew its name."
Khan stopped.
That was worse.
He had said too much.
Miriel's voice dropped.
"Not merely its rank."
Khan said nothing.
"You called it an SSS-rank artifact. Then you looked at it as if you knew exactly what it was."
Technically, the System had recognized it.
Khan had merely benefited from the world's most invasive floating tooltip.
Unfortunately, "I have an invisible sarcastic entity living inside my head" was not currently among his preferred explanations.
Miriel drew the dagger.
Khan's body went still.
Nightfall looked almost disappointingly simple.
The blade was narrow and black, darker than iron had any right to be. No jewels decorated its hilt. No elaborate runes crawled along the metal.
Yet the shadows around it behaved strangely.
They leaned toward the blade.
Khan watched the shadow of a broken chair stretch across the stones toward it, even though the light was coming from the opposite direction.
His instincts began screaming.
The System was considerably calmer.
[SSS-Rank Artifact: Nightfall.]
[Recommended action: Do not get stabbed.]
Khan stared at the message.
That's your recommendation?
[Previous experience indicates stabbing is detrimental to your long-term prospects.]
For once, Khan had no rebuttal.
Miriel held Nightfall loosely at her side.
Somehow, that made it worse.
"My father possessed scholars who studied Nightfall for decades," she said. "Most could not identify it without consulting the royal records."
Khan's mind snagged on the important word.
Possessed.
Past tense.
He filed it away.
"And yet," she continued, "a wandering eighteen-year-old artifact researcher recognized it from several steps away."
Khan smiled.
Not because anything was funny.
Because sometimes confidence was merely panic wearing expensive clothes.
"Then your father's scholars weren't very good."
Miriel froze.
The System froze.
Even the Sunfruit seemed to stop twitching.
[Host.]
What?
[That was either exceptionally brave or exceptionally stupid.]
Difference?
[Outcome.]
Fair.
For several seconds, neither of them moved.
Then Miriel slowly lowered Nightfall.
"How?"
Khan understood the question.
How had he recognized it?
He needed something better than "several places."
So he built the lie the way he used to build a position.
Start with something true.
Add something probable.
Never overcommit.
"Artifacts leave signatures."
Miriel remained silent.
Excellent.
Apparently that was at least possible.
Khan continued.
"Materials. Mana behavior. Construction techniques. Age. Origin. Whoever made Nightfall wasn't exactly trying to imitate a kitchen knife."
The shadows around the dagger crept another inch toward it.
Khan pointed.
"That, for example."
Miriel glanced down.
"You can perceive the distortion?"
No.
"I'd be a terrible artifact researcher if I couldn't."
[You are not an artifact researcher.]
Details.
[You became one approximately forty-three seconds ago.]
Every profession starts somewhere.
Miriel studied him again.
This time, however, suspicion was no longer the only thing in her eyes.
There was something else.
Recognition.
Not of his face.
Of an idea.
Khan noticed immediately.
"What?"
Miriel didn't answer.
Her gaze had dropped to his hands.
No rings.
No noble crest.
No calluses from sword training.
His clothes were cheap. His boots were already wearing thin. Nothing about him suggested wealth, power, lineage, or anyone standing behind him.
Yet he had spent two gold without hesitation.
Recognized Nightfall.
Recognized her.
And approached her willingly.
A demon.
In human territory.
Something long buried stirred in Miriel's memory.
A dark room.
Stone beneath her knees.
The smell of incense.
And blood.
So much blood.
The prophet had been dying when he began to laugh.
Miriel remembered that most clearly.
Not his screams.
Not the soldiers outside hammering at the sealed doors.
Not the palace burning beyond the stained-glass windows.
His laughter.
Wet.
Broken.
Insane.
She had been seventeen.
Her hands had been slick with his blood.
"Stop speaking," she begged.
The old demon smiled at her.
His eyes were already blind.
Burned white by whatever he had seen.
"Princess..."
"Save your strength."
"There is none left to save."
"Don't."
His trembling fingers closed around her wrist.
Miriel remembered how weak that grip had felt.
This was the man kings had once crossed continents to consult.
A prophet who had predicted wars before generals conceived them.
A prophet who had warned her father of the betrayal.
Too late.
Always too late.
"Listen to me."
She tried to pull away.
He held on.
"Everything will be taken from you."
Miriel's breath caught.
"Your crown."
Outside, something exploded.
Dust sifted down from the ceiling.
"Your home."
A scream echoed through the corridor.
"Your name."
"Enough."
"Your family."
"Enough!"
The prophet smiled.
And Miriel hated him for it.
She hated him because he was dying.
Because her father was somewhere beyond those doors.
Because the Ashen Dominion was burning.
Because prophecies were useless things that arrived just in time to tell you why hope had been foolish.
Then his expression changed.
For one brief moment, the madness was gone.
His dead eyes seemed to look straight into hers.
"But you will meet an Irregular."
Miriel stopped struggling.
"What?"
"One who should not exist."
His bloody fingers tightened around her wrist.
"A soul outside the ordained current."
She stared at him.
"He will carry no blessing you recognize. No lineage you can trace. Fate will reject him because fate did not write him."
The prophet coughed.
Blood ran down his chin.
Then he whispered the words Miriel had carried with her ever since.
"The Incarnation of Avarice."
The room seemed to grow colder.
"He will desire what others are too afraid to desire."
Miriel leaned closer.
"What will he take?"
The prophet laughed again.
"Everything he can."
"Then why should I trust him?"
"You shouldn't."
Miriel had never forgotten what he said next.
"You should give him a reason to want the same thing you do."
His hand slipped from her wrist.
She caught it.
"Wait."
The prophet's breathing had turned shallow.
"Will he save the Dominion?"
"No."
"My father?"
Silence.
"My brothers?"
Nothing.
Tears blurred her vision.
"Then what will he do?"
The prophet drew one final breath.
"He will help you reclaim..."
His lips barely moved.
"...everything you have lost."
Then he died in her hands.
"Miriel."
She returned to the present.
Khan was staring at her.
Her dagger was still drawn.
Rainwater dripped from the broken gutter between them.
One.
Two.
Three.
"You disappeared for a moment," Khan said.
"I was thinking."
"Dangerous hobby."
She ignored that.
Her heartbeat had become unpleasantly loud.
A soul outside the ordained current.
She looked at Khan again.
No recognizable lineage.
No known order.
No insignia.
No fear.
He had recognized an artifact that royal scholars struggled to identify.
He had somehow recognized her as a demon princess, concealment magic and all.
And when faced with Nightfall, his first reaction had not been terror.
He had insulted her father's scholars.
Miriel's grip tightened.
Could it be?
No.
That was absurd.
The prophecy was nearly two years old.
Thousands of people could fit fragments of it if she wanted it badly enough.
And she had learned, painfully, what happened when desperate people mistook coincidence for destiny.
She needed proof.
"Artifact researcher," she said.
Khan nodded.
"Apparently."
Her eyes sharpened.
"What do you want?"
The question caught him off guard.
"What?"
"You helped me without knowing me. You spent gold on a stranger. You recognized Nightfall and made no attempt to steal it."
Miriel took one slow step toward him.
"So what do you want?"
Khan stared at her.
The question was simple.
The answer wasn't.
Money?
He'd had money.
More than he had ever imagined having when he was eighteen the first time.
He had spent half his life chasing it.
Watching numbers climb.
Making the right trades.
Taking losses.
Recovering.
Compounding.
Waiting.
Then, eventually, he had reached the number.
The number he'd written in a cheap notebook decades earlier.
Financial independence.
Freedom.
Victory.
He remembered staring at his account balance.
He remembered feeling...
Nothing.
Then he'd gone outside.
And died in an alley.
Khan looked at Miriel.
"What do I want?"
"Yes."
He laughed quietly.
"I haven't figured that out yet."
Miriel's heart skipped.
The prophet's voice rose from the grave.
He will desire what others are too afraid to desire.
Khan continued.
"But I know what I don't want."
"What?"
"To spend my second chance being poor."
Miriel blinked.
The System appeared.
[There it is.]
Khan ignored it.
"I don't want to work for someone else. I don't want to spend fifty years crawling up some hierarchy, hoping the idiot above me dies so I can inherit his chair."
[Incarnation of Workplace Dissatisfaction.]
"And if this world works anything like the old one, power follows resources."
[Incarnation of Capitalism.]
"So I'll acquire resources."
[Incarnation of Taxable Income.]
Khan's eye twitched.
Miriel watched with growing confusion as his expression cycled through several stages of irritation, despite nobody else having said a word.
"And then?" she asked.
Khan looked at the rain dripping from the rooftops.
"Then I'll acquire more."
Miriel stopped breathing.
The System did not.
[Oh.]
Khan frowned.
What?
A new window opened.
Not the usual translucent gray.
This one was black.
Thin golden letters bled across it.
[Hidden designation conditions partially fulfilled.]
Khan straightened.
What the hell does that mean?
The letters changed.
[External Fate Designation Detected.]
[Title recorded within local causal structure.]
[INCARNATION OF AVARICE.]
Khan stared.
Miriel stared at Khan.
Neither knew what the other was seeing.
[Congratulations.]
The System paused.
[You have been in this world for three days and someone has already prophetically diagnosed you with greed.]
Khan's face went very still.
"...I hate this place."
Miriel's dagger slipped from her fingers.
Nightfall struck the stones.
The sound rang through the hidden corner like a bell.
Khan looked up.
Miriel had gone pale.
Not frightened.
Not exactly.
She was looking at him the way people looked at something impossible that had nevertheless decided to stand directly in front of them.
Khan slowly pointed at Nightfall.
"You're dropping the priceless artifact again."
Miriel didn't look down.
"Who are you?"
Khan sighed.
"We literally covered this."
"No."
Her voice trembled.
For the first time since the market, there was nothing royal in it.
Nothing guarded.
She looked eighteen.
Just eighteen.
A girl carrying the ruins of a kingdom beneath a borrowed cloak.
"Who are you really?"
Khan looked at the black window hanging before his eyes.
[INCARNATION OF AVARICE.]
Then at Miriel.
Then at the crate of Sunfruits.
One of them twitched.
Khan dragged both hands down his face.
Three days.
He had survived three days in this world.
And somehow he was already tangled up with a fugitive demon princess, an SSS-rank weapon, an invisible System that bullied him professionally, and a title that sounded like something a final boss would scream before destroying a continent.
He missed candlestick charts.
Candlestick charts had never looked at him like destiny had made a clerical error.
"I'm an artifact researcher," Khan said.
The System chimed at once.
[Lie quality reassessment.]
[Catastrophic.]
Miriel kept staring.
Khan picked up the crate.
"Also, these cost me two gold, so you're carrying them."
He shoved the Sunfruits into the arms of the prophesied heir of the Ashen Dominion.
Miriel caught them automatically.
Khan walked toward the street.
Behind him, Miriel didn't move.
Her thoughts were chaos.
The prophecy.
Nightfall.
His impossible perception.
His strange speech.
His complete lack of fear.
His greed.
And those last words.
Then I'll acquire more.
She looked down at the crate in her arms.
One Sunfruit twitched.
Miriel touched it, slowly.
For the first time in two years, hope frightened her more than despair.
"Khan."
He stopped at the mouth of the alley.
She swallowed.
"If someone had lost a kingdom..."
Khan glanced over his shoulder.
"...what would it take to buy it back?"
Silence settled between them.
The System opened another window.
[Estimated answer: A lot.]
Khan stared at it.
No shit.
[Artifact Researcher-level analysis.]
Khan looked back at Miriel.
At the hood hiding her horns.
At Nightfall lying on the stones between them.
At the princess who had twelve silver coins to her name and apparently enough enemies to make carrying an SSS-rank artifact seem reasonable.
Then he smiled.
It was not a kind smile.
It was the smile he used to wear when markets collapsed and everyone else was panic-selling.
"That," Khan said, "depends on how undervalued it is."