The shop was not a shop; it was a graveyard of broken things.
Kael—the man with the sickly yellow light on his wrist—pushed open a heavy wooden door that groaned on rusted hinges. The air inside was thick, smelling of wet wool, metallic dust, and something sour, like milk left too long in the sun.
"This is it," Kael said, tossing his wet umbrella into a corner. He didn't look back to see if I had made it inside. "The Emporium of Lost Shards. People bring me what they don't want, and I find someone desperate enough to buy it. Starting tonight, you're the one who makes sure those shards don't look like junk."
I stood by the door, water dripping from my hair and pooling on the floorboards. My chest felt tight. Everywhere I looked, there were shelves piled high with tarnished silver, cracked porcelain, and tangled heaps of clockwork gears.
"What do I do?" I asked, my voice still small and fragile.
Kael pointed a thick finger toward a massive pile of blackened silverware in the center of the room. "Polishing. Every piece must shine by dawn. If I see a single speck of tarnish, you don't eat. If you break something... well, let's just say you'll wish you had stayed in the gutter."
He kicked a wooden bucket toward me. Inside was a rag so thin it was almost transparent and a tin of foul-smelling gray paste.
"Wait," I called out as he turned to climb a narrow set of stairs to the upper floor. "My name... do you know who I am?"
Kael paused, his hand on the railing. He looked down at me, and for a second, I saw a flicker of something—mockery or perhaps a twisted kind of pity.
"Names are for people with futures, girl. You don't have a Mark, so you don't have a destiny. Why waste a name on a ghost? Call yourself 'Six.' You're the sixth Blank I've picked up this year. The other five didn't last a week."
The door upstairs slammed shut, leaving me in a silence so heavy it felt like it was crushing my lungs.
Six. I looked at my reflection in a cracked mirror leaning against a stack of crates. I saw a girl with pale skin, dark, tangled hair, and eyes that looked too big for her face. I didn't look like a 'Six.' But then again, I didn't look like anyone.
I sat on the cold floor and picked up a heavy silver tray. It was covered in a layer of black oxidation so thick it looked like soot. I applied a bit of the paste and began to rub.
An hour passed. Then two.
My arms began to throb. The repetitive motion sent stabs of pain through my shoulders. I looked at the tray, expecting to see a glint of silver.
Nothing. It was still dull, still black.
I looked toward the window. Across the street, a boy no older than me was cleaning the windows of a bakery. I watched him. His wrist glowed with a soft, steady orange light—the Mark of the Laborer. He wasn't even looking at the glass; he was whistling, his hand moving in effortless, perfect circles. As he touched the pane, the dirt seemed to simply vanish, fleeing from his touch as if by magic.
In ten minutes, he had finished the entire storefront. He looked fresh, happy, and energized. The "Dream Trace" gave him the talent; the world gave him the success.
I looked back at my tray. I had been scrubbing for two hours, and I had only managed to reveal a tiny, scratched corner of silver. My fingers were raw, and the chemical paste was stinging the small cuts on my hands.
It's not fair, a voice whispered in my mind.
Why did he get to be fast? Why did the girl with the needle get to be graceful? Why was I born—or reborn—into a body that had to fight for every inch of progress?
I pushed harder. I scrubbed until my muscles screamed, until the sweat mixed with the rain-dampness of my clothes. I didn't have a Mark to make the dirt vanish. I didn't have a "Dream" to guide my hands.
By the time the clock on the wall chimed four in the morning, my hands were trembling so violently I couldn't hold the rag. But the pile of silverware was done. It wasn't perfect—it didn't have the magical shimmer of a "Marked" person's work—but it was clean.
I leaned my head against the cold stone wall, my breath coming in ragged gasps. I was exhausted, more tired than I thought a human could be. But as I looked at the silver, I felt a strange, cold flicker of something in my gut.
It wasn't a dream. It was spite.
If the world was going to make it hard for me, I would simply have to be harder than the world.
The stairs creaked. Kael descended, looking refreshed and smelling of coffee. He walked over to the pile and picked up the tray I had spent hours on. He turned it over in his hands, squinting at the surface.
"Sloppy," he grunted, tossing the tray back onto the pile with a loud clatter. "Look at these scratches. A Marked Polisher would have made this look like a diamond. You're slow, and you have no talent."
He reached into his pocket and threw a dry, hard crust of bread onto the floor near my feet.
"Eat. Then start on the brass clocks in the corner. And try not to be so useless this time, Six."
I picked up the bread. It was stale and tasted like dust, but I ate it as if it were a feast. I didn't cry. I didn't complain. I just watched his yellow Mark glow as he walked away, and I realized something important.
In this world, people with Dreams were pampered by fate. They didn't know what it was like to struggle. They didn't know what it was like to bleed for a single tray.
And because they didn't know how to struggle, they were weak.
I looked at the brass clocks. My hands hurt, my stomach was half-empty, and I had no name. But as I picked up the rag again, I realized that Kael was wrong. I wasn't a ghost.
I was the only person in this room who was actually awake.