The air thickened as Elias stepped forward, the weight of the Pawn Shops settling over him like something alive. His chest tightened, his senses stretched too thin, and for a moment, he had the strangest feeling that he wasn’t walking through space but through a thought, something that wasn’t supposed to be real but had willed itself into existence.

  And then the city behind him was gone.

  Not vanished. Not erased.

  Just… irrelevant.

  This place wasn’t a hidden alley or an underground den of secrets. The Pawn Shops weren’t nestled within the cracks of reality—they were the cracks.

  Elias felt it now.

  Truth was weak here. The edges of reality softened, flexed, bent to accommodate whatever people believed most.

  And people? They believed in lies more than anything else.

  Sera followed close behind, her steps careful, her gaze sharp. Elias could tell she was studying everything, mapping out each shift in the world around them. Something about this wasn’t normal, wasn’t right, even for her.

  It took a second for Elias to realize—

  She was expecting resistance.

  She had walked this path before. She had entered this space before. And yet, she had braced for a struggle that never came.

  The Pawn Shops let Elias in like they had been waiting for him.

  Sera’s fingers twitched at her sides.

  Elias exhaled, looking around.

  The buildings stretched upward like a cityscape made by something that only vaguely understood cities. Their signs flickered between languages and symbols, too fluid to be real. The ground beneath him wasn’t solid—it was conceptual. If he thought too hard about it, his stomach twisted.

  This place wasn’t built with foundations.

  It was built with agreements.

  A weight pressed into Elias’ chest, something deeper than fear, something more than unease.

  “The Lost,” he said suddenly, his voice quieter than he meant it to be. “They’re really just… gone, aren’t they?”

  Sera’s gaze flickered toward the figures around them.

  The fading, flickering, breaking figures.

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  Some Lost disappeared in an instant, swallowed whole by the lie, their existence erased so perfectly that no one even glanced their way. Others unraveled piece by piece. A hand dissolved into air. A face blurred out of focus. Their lips moved, trying to speak words that had been forgotten before they were even formed.

  And then—nothing.

  Gone.

  Erased.

  The system did not grieve them.

  Reality did not remember them.

  “They weren’t taken,” Sera murmured. “They traded. Bit by bit, piece by piece, until nothing remained. And the Lie did what it always does—it rewrote itself to fit the absence.”

  Elias clenched his fists. “But they don’t choose that.”

  Sera’s jaw tightened. “Not all at once.”

  The worst part wasn’t just watching them disappear.

  It was the lack of reaction.

  No one noticed. No one cared. The Agents walked past them like they were furniture, and those making deals were too consumed with their own desires to spare them a glance.

  This place didn’t steal. It didn’t take.

  It just let people destroy themselves.

  And then the system moved on.

  Elias exhaled, rubbing his temple. “The Agents,” he muttered. “You said they weren’t like the Lost.”

  Sera nodded. “They aren’t.”

  Elias looked at them now, truly looked.

  Not the customers. Not the ones making deals. The ones who facilitated them.

  They were polished. Clean. Their movements too smooth, their eyes too knowing.

  They whispered in hushed voices, guiding people toward contracts. They leaned in too close, their words laced with something that pulled, something that convinced.

  But the others—

  The ones standing at the edges, unmoving, unspeaking—

  They weren’t guiding anyone.

  They were watching.

  Sera exhaled. “They don’t just lure people into deals, Elias. They build the web. They are the ones who stitch the Lie together, ensuring it never unravels. The smaller ones, the ones you see in the world, they manipulate, they push, they persuade.” Her voice lowered. “But the ones who remain here? They don’t just exist in the system. They are the system.”

  Elias could feel it.

  The way they weren’t quite people anymore. The way their presence seeped into the fabric of this place, bending it, shaping it.

  Not Lost. Not erased.

  They had been chosen.

  And they were useful.

  His stomach twisted.

  “And the Lie Seller?”

  Sera hesitated.

  “The Lie Seller is…” She exhaled. “They are like the Lost. Once human. Once someone. But they weren’t chosen to be Agents. They were something else.”

  Elias swallowed.

  “There’s only one Lie Seller at a time,” Sera continued. “I said Lie Sellers before because I have memories of the others. I don’t know how, but I do. And I know this—” She paused. “They don’t just disappear.”

  Elias frowned. “Then what happens?”

  Sera’s expression darkened. “They get assimilated into the new one.”

  Elias’ skin prickled.

  “Each one takes from the last,” Sera said. “Each one absorbs them, becoming something more. A cycle that has no end.”

  Elias exhaled slowly.

  And then it hit him.

  He hadn’t asked that question for the first time.

  He had asked it again.

  The terror in his chest, the gnawing uncertainty, the spiraling thoughts—it had made him repeat himself, searching for a different answer, as if clarifying it would make it less real.

  He had asked what happened to the Lost.

  He had asked what happened to the Lie Seller.

  And both times, the answer was the same.

  They don’t remain.

  A weight pressed into Elias’ chest, a panic he couldn’t quite name.

  And then his vision shifted.

  A layer of reality peeled back.

  Sera inhaled sharply. “Elias?”

  “I…” Elias took a step back, gripping his head. “I see it.”

  Sera’s brow furrowed. “See what?”

  Elias didn’t know how to explain it. The deals. The exchanges. He could see them happening—not just the actions, but the weight behind them.

  A man gave up a single regret, and Elias saw the relief flood through him, so raw and overwhelming it nearly made him collapse. A woman traded the reason she hated someone, and Elias watched her posture loosen, her anger dissolve.

  And then he realized—

  He had accepted it.

  Not out loud. Not with a contract.

  But the moment the Pawn Shop had let him see, he had agreed.

  And in that instant—

  Something shifted.

  Sera’s eyes widened.

  Valen was there.

  His presence settled over the space, a weight that couldn’t be ignored.

  The Pawn Shop shifted for him, adjusted for him, but it did not let him go.

  Valen took a slow step forward, his expression unreadable.

  Elias stiffened.

  Sera’s breath hitched.

  Something about Valen was off.

  She had seen him countless times before. She had studied him, understood him.

  But now, there was a crack. A shift. A sliver of something unfamiliar.

  Valen stopped, hands in his pockets. “Well,” he said smoothly. “That was faster than I expected.”

  Elias exhaled sharply. “You mean me seeing all this?”

  Valen’s lips quirked up, but there was no amusement in it. “No. I mean them letting you in.”

  Elias frowned.

  And then—

  They weren’t in the street anymore.

  The world around them h

  ad changed.

  A different room.

  A different space.

  And for the first time—

  Valen didn’t know why.

  Elias swallowed hard. “What now?”

  Valen tilted his head.

  “Well,” he murmured. “Let’s start with that.”