The moment they step through the mirror, Aster forgets how to breathe.

  It doesn’t sneak up on him—it crashes down, loud and shimmering and utterly unapologetic. He steps out into a storm of lights, sounds, and aggressively monetized wonder. Stalls twist down into impossible alleys, stacked with glittering, growling, hissing things. Nothing about this place feels stable. Or regulated.

  It’s like walking into a mall built by fever dreams and funded by unchecked divine capitalism.

  Musa points lazily ahead. “Alloy Alley’s that way, but go on—take a look around. You only lose your market virginity once.”

  Aster tries. He really does. But everything is too much, too loud, too alive. A cacophony of overlapping conversations, the clank of gear against stone, the occasional sizzle of alchemical reactions—and, yes, at least one guttural roar that does not sound properly caged.

  Stalls spill into the thoroughfares, stacked high with things that have no right being sold next to each other. Glowing tusks. Wings still twitching. A jar of preserved eyes blinking independently.

  Aster turns to say something clever and almost walks straight into a butcher’s hook holding a mustard-yellow severed claw the size of his torso.

  “Is that from a dragon?” he asks.

  The vendor turns, one eye milky with cataracts, the other suspiciously glowing. “I wish,” she says with a sigh. “Only the local Dune Gecko.”

  Aster nods slowly and shuffles away, trying not to think about where he falls on the Astral food chain.

  “Keep up,” Musa calls, already detouring past a stall where a squid in a jar plays chess with itself. “You don’t want to get hexed on your first visit.”

  They pass a stand piled with crystals, each glowing faintly. Aster stops short. His Spirit Typing flares in recognition. A crystal—nestled in a bed of crushed silver leaves, faintly pulsing like it has a heartbeat. Purple, luminous, and humming in a way that makes his bones vibrate, like his entire soul just leaned forward.

  The vendor, a little old woman who looks like she was born of incense smoke and sandalwood, gives him a smile that’s either grandmotherly or predatory. Hard to tell.

  “Good eye,” she rasps. “Dreaming Crystals. Condensed Spirit Essence. Very rare. Especially good for someone like you.”

  Aster blinks. “How do you know what I—?”

  “Spirit Type,” she interrupts gently. “You glow a certain way.”

  Knowing the art of haggling, he doesn’t allow her to sell it any further—jumping to the punch before she can inflate the price with the awe that would no doubt reflect in his eyes if she truly pitched it.

  “How much?”

  He braces himself. I have 750 blue Faith. I could afford 200. Maybe 250, max.

  The woman hesitates—just long enough to imply she’s wrestling with her conscience or perhaps calculating the cost of his soul.

  “Normally? Seven thousand five hundred Faith,” she says. “But you’ve got a good aura. For you? Five thousand.”

  Aster freezes.

  Then flinches.

  Then stares at her like she’s just confessed to eating babies recreationally.

  “Five thousand Faith?” he repeats, voice dead flat.

  She nods, all sugar and mysticism.

  Something in Aster breaks.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  He doesn’t back away—he lunges. Not at the crystal, but at the concept of the crystal. At the gall. The nerve. The sheer capitalist audacity of it all. He stares down the old woman like she personally invented the recession.

  “You were born to do this, weren’t you?” he mutters. “Ripping people off spiritually. That’s your Typing. Must be. It’s the only explanation.”

  The woman blinks. For a moment, she looks like she’s considering calling a guard. Or a priest. Or an exorcist.

  Musa materializes, dragging Aster backward with the same ease you’d use to pull a cat out of a laundry basket. “Alright, time to go.”

  “Five thousand Faith? For a rock that glows and vibes at me?! That’s more than my entire net worth,” Aster hisses.

  He’s still fuming as they round a corner, muttering bitterly about soul economics and predatory enlightenment.

  What follows is a certified slog through the capitalist equivalent of noticing your friend’s family has a bigger house, two cars, and a bi-yearly vacation.

  There—a set of gloves that shimmer like water caught in a moonbeam. “Don’t look at the price,” Aster mutters to himself. “It doesn’t matter. It’s fine.”

  He looks anyway.

  Twelve thousand Faith. His soul visibly recoils.

  Next stall, a beautiful silver flute that promises to let you “speak in suggestions.” He leans closer, enchanted. The price glares back: 8,400 Faith.

  He clutches his chest. “I think I just overdrew emotionally.”

  They pass a stand where a glass orb pulses with warm golden light. A sign above it reads: Contains Forgiveness. One Use.

  He stares, tears forming in his eyes. “That’s beautiful.”

  Musa sighs. “Don’t—”

  Too late.

  Thirty-nine thousand Faith.

  Aster sways like a man hit with a tranquilizer dart.

  “I can’t afford closure!” he barks. “I get the chance to purchase forgiveness, and I still can’t afford it!”

  “Stop reading the price tags.”

  “I can’t stop! It’s like standing at the edge of a cliff and trying not to look down. Except the cliff is every item in this market, and the drop is lifelong karmic debt!”

  A golden crystal catches his eye. A single rune floats above it: Luck (Uncut).

  He squints at the tag. Negotiable, depending on outcome.

  “That one offers a gambling mechanic,” he whispers. “It judged me before I even touched it.”

  A woman passes them pushing a cart of bottled time. “Ten minutes of invisibility—1,500 Faith.”

  He blinks. “That’s less than the rock.”

  “Stop comparing everything to the rock.”

  “I will never stop comparing everything to the rock.”

  They pass a vendor offering spirit contracts—guaranteed upgrades to karmic status in exchange for lifelong servitude in your next reincarnation. A man at the stall next door sells infused beverages with names like Liquid Remorse and Sip of Spite.

  “I’m going to live in a box,” Aster says. “In an alley. Eating the ambient guilt fumes from nearby regret shops.”

  “You’ll make Faith,” Musa says again, far too cheerfully.

  “Don’t you dare give me the ‘bootstrap my karma’ speech,” Aster snaps. “Capitalism should not be the default setting for the afterlife. You’d think an entire spiritual society—built around energy and reincarnation and soul-eating space worms—might have moved beyond rent-seeking economics. But no! No, we built heaven like a strip mall, and now I need a loan to afford even spiritual growth!”

  Musa finally turns to him, exasperated but not unkind. “Not everyone’s here to do you in, Aster. Those prices might seem like a lot, but they’ll help with your cultivation. The old lady at the start—the one trying to sell you the Dream Gem? She really was offering you a bargain. That crystal could’ve kick-started your cultivation. Might’ve nudged you up a whole Rank.”

  Aster laughs bitterly. “Yeah? And it also would’ve jump-started my career as a homeless ghost.”

  He gestures vaguely at the chaos behind them. “I mean, how the hell was I supposed to tell? You think I was born with a sixth sense for metaphysical scams?”

  Musa opens his mouth. Closes it. Blinks.

  “...Right,” he mutters, like the thought has just landed. “I keep forgetting you’re new.”

  Musa veers sharply toward a more modest corner booth tucked between two alchemical vape shops.