My stone room in House Argent smelled of dust and destitution. I sat on the edge of the lumpy mattress, staring at the palm of my hand.
Two gold coins.
That was it. That was the sum total of our liquid assets. We had a thousand-gold debt hanging over our heads like a guillotine blade, a payment of fifty gold due to the Bursar in three days, and we needed twenty gold immediately just to buy the materials—the custom suits and velvet bags—for the laundry scam that was supposed to save us.
'The math doesn't work,' Ronan said, his voice heavy in my head. 'We are insolvent, Murphy. We can't afford the startup costs. We can't even afford the business cards.'
"I know," I muttered, flipping one of the coins. It caught the flickering light of the mana-lamp. "We need a loan."
'We have no collateral. No reputation. Even Loan sharks don't lend to sinking ships.' Ronan added.
"We just need to throw some chum in the water. Sharks don't bite unless they smell blood... or in this case, money."
I stood up, the metal warming in my palm. I focused on the coins, visualising them as part of me—an extension of my equipment, just like my boots or my grey tunic. If the Art copied my clothes, it should copy what was in my hand.
I reached for the Art, carving out the mana for a full squad.
The air in the small room shimmered. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.
Suddenly, the cell was crowded. Five Murphy-Clones stood around the room, chests heaving slightly as they stabilised. They were identical to me in every way.
And in the right hand of every single clone, clenched tight, were two gold coins.
I walked over to Clone Alpha.
"Open your hand," I ordered.
The clone obeyed. Lying in his palm were two heavy, shining gold pieces. They looked real. They caught the light perfectly. The Emperor's profile stamped on the face was crisp and arrogant.
I reached out and picked one up. It felt cold and hard. It had weight. I bit it. It dented.
'It worked,' Ronan whispered, sounding scandalised. 'The Art replicates the user's current state... including possessions. Murphy, we just created ten gold coins out of thin air.'
'We created ten constructs,' I corrected, tossing the fake coin back to the clone. 'It's made of mana, Ronan. It's solid light wrapped in a texture map. It's a glitch.'
'It passes the bite test,' Ronan argued. 'It passes the visual test. We have twelve gold coins in this room right now. We could walk into the tailor shop and buy the suit!'
"And ten minutes later, when I dispel the clones to recharge, the gold vanishes from the tailor's till," I said, pacing the small space and dodging clones. "Tell me you would be fine with that? Yeah, I thought so."
I stopped, looking at the squad. "We can't spend it," I muttered. "It's volatile. It has a shelf life equal to our mana pool. The moment the clone goes poof, the money goes poof."
'Then it's useless,' Ronan sighed. 'We can't buy anything with money that evaporates.'
"Not useless," I said, a slow, dangerous grin spreading across my face. I looked at the twelve gold coins glittering in the room—two real, ten fake. "We can't spend it... but we can lose it."
'Lose it?'
"Think like a con man, Ronan. What's the one thing that proves you're rich?"
'Paying your debts?'
"No. Wasting money," I corrected. "Poor people count their coins. Rich people throw them away. If I walk into a high-stakes poker game and lose ten gold coins without blinking an eye... what does that make me?"
'An idiot,' Ronan supplied helpfully.
"A rich idiot," I said. "A Whale. Someone with so much family money that ten gold is a rounding error."
I turned to the clones.
"Pocket the gold," I ordered.
The five clones moved in unison, sliding the construct coins into their pouches.
"We're going to the Old Bell Tower," I told Ronan. "We're going to find Henry Black, that loan shark Finn told us about. And we aren't going to ask for a loan. We're going to make him beg to give us one."
'And how do we do that?'
"By putting on a show," I said, grabbing my cloak. "Tonight, Murphy Sunstrider isn't a broke scholarship student. Tonight, I'm a trust-fund baby who's been cut off by Daddy to 'learn a lesson,' and I'm looking to make some bad decisions."
'And the fake gold?'
"That's our buy-in," I said, checking my reflection. "We're going to lose it to random players at the table. Feed it to the sharks. By the time they realise it's gone, we'll already have the loan and be halfway to the tailor."
'This is incredibly dishonest,' Ronan grumbled.
"But we aren't stealing," I said, turning off the mana-lamp. "Let's go play some cards."
The Old Bell Tower didn't ring anymore, but it certainly smelled. The air inside the damp, spiralling stone structure was a thick, layered cake of stale cigar smoke, cheap perfume, and the sour sweat of people losing money they didn't have.
I stepped into the basement level, my grey cloak pulled back just enough to reveal the arrogant tilt of my chin.
'This is a den of vice,' Ronan noted instantly, his mental tone wrinkling its nose. 'Look at them. Drinking. Gambling. Wasting their potential.'
'It's a marketplace, Ronan,' I corrected, scanning the room. 'And we're here to buy a reputation.'
The room was crowded. Tables were jammed into every available alcove, lit by low-hanging mana-lanterns that cast long, dramatic shadows. I spotted House Vermillion students rubbing shoulders with mercenaries, and frantic-looking scholarship kids trying to turn their last silver into next week's tuition.
I walked straight to the centre table—High Stakes.
The game was "Dragon's Breath," a poker variant where the wild cards shifted every round. Sitting at the head of the table was a guy who looked like he'd been carved out of shadows and sharp edges. He wore a vest of dark crimson silk, and his eyes were constantly moving, weighing everyone in the room.
Henry Black. The Shark.
I stepped up to the table. The current hand was ending. A nervous-looking elf folded, leaving the pot to a burly dwarf.
"Seat open?" I asked, my voice loud enough to turn heads.
Henry looked up. He took in my grey, nondescript clothes, then my face. He didn't recognise me as a player.
"Ten silver minimum buy-in, friend," Henry said, his voice smooth and dismissive. "The copper tables are by the door."
I laughed. It was a short, sharp, dismissive sound.
"Silver?" I scoffed.
I reached into my pouch—where I had consolidated the ten fake coins collected from the clones back in the dorm—and pulled out a handful. I let them drop onto the felt table.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
Five gold crowns.
The sound cut through the noise of the room. Heads turned. Five gold crowns was a semester's living expenses for most people here. I had just tossed it onto the table like it was pocket lint.
"Deal me in," I said, dropping into the empty chair. "And get me a drink. Something expensive."
Henry's eyes widened just a fraction. He looked at the gold—my mana-constructs—glinting under the lamp. He nodded to the dealer.
"Card the gentleman."
The game began.
I played like a maniac. I played like a man who hated money.
First-hand: I bet a gold coin on a pair of twos. I lost to a flush.
"Unlucky," I breezed, tossing the coin to the winner, a scar-faced mercenary. "Next hand."
'Murphy, you had a pair of twos,' Ronan whispered, agonised. 'Why did you bet?'
'Because the Whale splashes,' I thought back. 'Watch the room.'
The atmosphere shifted. The other players weren't looking at me with suspicion anymore; they were looking at me with hunger. I was fresh meat. I was the rich idiot who didn't know the odds.
Second hand: I raised two gold on a bluff so obvious a child could have called it. A Vermillion student called me with three Kings.
"Ah, you got me," I chuckled, sliding two more construct coins across the felt. "Well played."
I checked my internal mana gauge. The Battery Clones back in the dorm were meditating, cycling the mana perfectly. The link was a solid, unwavering hum in the back of my skull. As long as the boys back home kept breathing, the gold on this table would remain as hard and heavy as the real thing. It could sit in their pockets for days if I needed it to.
By the fourth hand, I had "lost" eight of the fake gold coins. I had spread them out beautifully—two to the merc, two to the student, four to the dwarf. No single person held enough to create a massive investigation when it eventually vanished, but everyone had seen me bleed gold.
I was down to my last two coins—the real ones.
I stared at my hand. A straight. An actual, winning hand.
I folded.
"Updates," I muttered, slamming the cards down and feigning petulance. "This deck is cursed."
I stood up, grabbing my last two real coins from the table. "I'm out. This is boring."
The table protested. They wanted the rest of my money.
"Come on, friend, your luck is bound to turn!" the dwarf urged, eyeing my last two gold.
"No," I snapped, channelling every spoiled brat I'd ever met. "I need a real stake to make this interesting. This is... pocket change."
I turned, making eye contact with Henry Black. He hadn't played a hand. He'd just been watching me, analysing the spread, seeing a boy with deep pockets and shallow skills.
I walked over to him.
"You run this game?" I asked, keeping my chin high.
Henry leaned back, nursing a glass of amber liquid. "I facilitate it. You seem to be having a rough night."
"Rough week," I corrected, leaning in conspiratorially. "My Old Man is being a tyrant. Froze my main accounts because I bought a racing gryphon without asking. He wants me to learn the 'value of a hard-earned coin'."
I rolled my eyes. Henry smirked. He knew the type.
"Fathers can be difficult," Henry agreed smoothly. "And what do you need from me?"
"I need a bridge," I said, lowering my voice. "I made a bet with him. If I can show him a ledger with a twenty-gold profit by tomorrow morning, he unlocks the trust fund. I just need to show him the coin. Flash it, get the key, put it back."
I held up my two real coins. "I had twelve. The table ate ten. I need twenty to make the show."
Henry swirled his drink. "So you want to borrow twenty gold. To trick your father."
"I want to borrow twenty gold to unlock a vault that has five thousand in it," I corrected. "I'll pay you back tomorrow. With interest. Say... five gold on top? Easy money for you."
'Murphy, the interest rate!' Ronan hissed. 'Twenty-five per cent overnight? That is robbery!'
'It's bait,' I silenced him.
Henry looked at me. He saw the grey clothes—an affectation of a rebel child. He saw the way I'd thrown ten gold away without flinching. He saw the greed and the stupidity.
"Twenty-five is fair," Henry mused. "But I need a name. And a dorm."
"Castian Blackwood," I lied, pulling a name out of thin air that sounded vaguely aristocratic. "House Vermillion, West Tower, Room 302. Distant cousin to the main line, hence the... lack of supervision."
Henry paused. He didn't reach for a roster. He just looked at the potential profit. Twenty-five gold for a day's loan was too good to verify, and by the time he realised "Castian" didn't exist, I'd be long gone.
Henry smiled. It was a shark's smile—all teeth and dead eyes. He reached into his vest and pulled out a heavy velvet bag.
"Twenty gold," Henry said, placing it on the table. "Due tomorrow at midnight. Twenty-five gold total."
He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a whisper that cut through the noise of the room. He nodded to a hulking figure standing in the shadows by the stairs—a man whose knuckles were covered in thick, silver rings.
"And Castian? If you don't pay..." Henry warned. "Knuckles pays you a visit."
I looked at the enforcer. He was terrifyingly large, but there was something off about him. The air around him shimmered slightly.
'He's not fully physical,' Ronan analysed instantly, his tone fascinated. 'That's a Mind-Weave construct. A high-level illusion. He attacks the psyche, not the body. If he hits you, your brain registers the pain of broken bones—you'll feel the snap, the agony, the shock—but physically, you'll be untouched. No bruises. No evidence for the Proctor. It's the perfect tool for a school loan shark.'
'So he hurts like hell but leaves no scars?' I thought. 'Creative.'
"You'll have it," I promised, snatching the bag.
I faked a nervous gulp, widening my eyes just enough to sell the fear of the trust-fund kid realising he was in deep water. Inside, my pulse didn't even skip a beat. Pain was just data. Fear was just a chemical reaction I had burned out centuries ago.
I walked out of the Bell Tower, the heavy bag of real gold swinging at my hip.
'We did it,' Ronan breathed. 'We actually did it.'
'Phase one complete,' I thought. 'Now we find Finn. We have a business to launch.'
The back of the Great Library was a canyon of shadows, smelling of old parchment and damp stone. It was the perfect place for a clandestine hand-off, mostly because the librarians were terrifying enough to keep the area clear of casual strollers.
I arrived early. It was a tactical necessity. I had the heavy velvet bag from Henry Black swinging at my hip—twenty real gold crowns. Before I handed that capital over to my runner, I needed to secure my own future.
I stepped deep into the recess of a service alcove, completely hidden from the main path.
'Okay,' I thought. 'Let's print the tuition.'
I gripped the heavy bag tight in my left hand, feeling the distinct shape of the coins through the velvet. I reached for the Art.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
Three Murphy-Clones materialised in the darkness next to me. They were silent, grey-cloaked shadows. In the left hand of each clone was a perfect mana-construct replica of the heavy bag.
'Sixty fake gold secured,' Ronan noted with satisfaction. 'That covers the Bursar.'
"Get back to the dorm," I whispered to the clones. "Take the back way. Don't be seen. Sit in the room and wait."
The three Bankers nodded and melted into the shadows, heading back to House Argent to deposit the "funds."
I checked my internal register. Back in the dorm, the three Ronan-Clones were still sitting in a circle, deep in the Solar Crucible meditation. They were the engine, pumping mana into our system faster than the new Banker clones could drain it. As long as the Generator was running, the Bankers would exist indefinitely. No strain. No time limit. Just a perfect, closed loop of magical fraud.
I stepped out of the alcove and walked toward the gargoyle where I'd told Finn to wait.
The scrawny wind-mage was there, vibrating slightly, clutching his broom like a lifeline. He jumped when he saw me.
"You're late," Finn hissed. "I thought the shark ate you."
"Sharks don't eat their own," I said, patting the real bag at my hip. The clink of twenty gold pieces was a beautiful sound.
"Is that...?" Finn's eyes widened.
"Startup capital," I confirmed.
I didn't hand it over immediately. I leaned against the stone wall, studying him. "You showed up."
Finn blinked. "You asked me to."
"People ask for a lot of things. Most don't deliver." I crossed my arms. "I haven't asked you about your story, Finn. We met at the Inn when you were with that party—Gror and Elara, right? You seemed happy enough hunting trolls. Why give that up to come to this prison?"
Finn looked down at his broom, his fingers tracing the wood. "The Guild is... fine. But it's just work. My family, the Sylas Clan... they're Sky Knights. Riders. If you can't fly, you're nothing to them."
He looked up, a flash of determination in his anxious eyes. "I struggle with heights…. I can't ride a Wyvern without passing out. But the Academy has records of a technique—well, let's just say if I can learn it, I can fly. I can go home."
I watched him carefully. He was being honest. 'He's driven,' Ronan murmured in my head. 'And he's honest about his weakness. That's rare.'
I felt a twinge in my chest—not pain, but the rusty creak of a door opening that had been welded shut for centuries. The Curse had taught me that getting close to people was a death sentence. Friends were just collateral damage waiting to happen. But the Curse was gone, or at least dormant.
'I'm proud of you, Murph,' Ronan said softly. 'You're letting someone in.'
'It's vetting,' I corrected internally, though the denial felt thin. 'I need to know he won't run with the gold.'
"I trust you, Finn," I said aloud. "Because you were the only one who treated me like a person before you knew anything about me."
I unhooked the heavy bag and tossed it to him.
Finn caught it, stumbling slightly under the weight. "Whoa."
"That is twenty gold crowns," I said. "Do not lose it. Do not gamble it."
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a single, loose gold coin—one of the two I had started with. I flicked it to him.
"And that is for you. A down payment on your services."
Finn caught the coin, staring at it. "Murphy, this is... this is a lot."
"It's hazardous duty pay," I said, handing him the list with instructions. "I need you to go to the tailor in the Lower District. The one who doesn't ask questions. I need a suit. High-end leather. Black and purple. Jester style."
"A Jester?" Finn asked, baffled.
"Full mask," I continued. "Bells on the hood. I need it to cover every inch of skin. It needs to be distinctive, theatrical, and completely anonymous. Also, fifty large black velvet bags with gold drawstrings. And business cards. Premium stock. Details are on the list."
Finn looked at the list. "The Jester's Private Laundry Society?"
"Just buy it, Finn. Can you make it back before curfew?"
Finn grinned, pocketing the coin. He tapped his boots, and a small whirlwind of dust kicked up around his heels.
"I'm the fastest thing on two legs, boss. Consider it done."
He blurred. One second, he was there; the next, he was a gust of wind and a receding shadow.
I turned back toward the dorms. The heist was in motion. The debt was funded (with fake gold), the business was funded (with borrowed gold), and I had a runner I could actually trust.
'Not a bad night's work,' I thought.
'And now?' Ronan asked.
'Now, we wait,' I said, starting the walk back. 'And I sleep. Real sleep. You've got the night watch.'
'I always do,' Ronan replied.