Chapter 96: Her Arrival - Koyā’s Reason to Bid his Entire Fortune.

Five minutes later came a scarred beastfolk quarry-hand, followed by a weeping girl with a rare water-affinity mark on her collarbone.

With each lot, the announcer pitched a different facet of their existence: back muscle, spell output, bone structure, breeding lineage, docility under the whip.

Every piece of a human life was weighed, graded, and converted into silver marks on the overhead board.

Kōya’s scarred fingers curled around the hilt of the Hero Sword at his hip.

Beside him, Lyra laid her hand over his tense forearm. "Don’t."

Heat pulsed behind his eyes as he faced her pale face.

"Wait," she whispered beneath the applause for the fourth lot. "The innkeeper was right."

Kōya turned back toward the brightly lit stage. "Right about what?"

Leaning an inch closer to his shoulder so the brokers in the next row wouldn’t catch her voice, she murmured, "Every person who runs this machine is sitting in the balconies above us."

Kōya lifted his chin, scanning the tiered crescent of private boxes rising toward the vaulted dome.

In the second and third tiers sat the territory’s aristocracy, guild masters, and high-tier mercenary commanders—men wearing single rings worth ten years of a farmer’s harvest. Above them all, in the shadowed fourth ring beneath the ceiling arches, One seated figure radiated a dense, pressure that weighed on the amphitheater air until Kōya’s molars ached.

The Demon Peer, Zarth.

Kōya’s eyes narrowed as he tracked three boxes to the right of the center arch.

Lounging in a high-backed chair of crimson leather sat Zarth the Third—the exact Demon Peer whose black-liveried servant Kōya had pinned to a pine tree an hour earlier.

Beside his chair, a crimson slate recorded two accepted female claims and five hundred remaining crowns.

Lyra’s stare climbed the same line to the fourth tier. "That’s him."

"Yes."

Up in the crimson box, Zarth kept his red eyes off the lower tiers, leaning sideways to give a dismissive order to a kneeling attendant while the stage curtains stirred.

Kōya locked the exact pillar and stairwell alignment of that box into his memory. Picking a blind fight against a Peer and four hundred house guards on the open floor would accomplish nothing except getting Lyra killed; he was here to trace the supply lines back to his family.

Down on the stage, the preliminary silver lots gave way to the midday catalog.

Gold crowns replaced silver marks on the glowing display board. Enchanted blades and notarized land deeds were bundled into the bidding alongside chained prisoners, while white-gloved clerks escorted high-tier buyers behind the velvet curtains to finalize blood-contracts in the private sealing rooms.

The old innkeeper leaned in close to Kōya’s right elbow. "What you’re seeing on the boards right now is still the general floor slate."

Kōya glanced down at him. "There’s a higher catalog?"

"Three of them," the innkeeper whispered, pointing a thumb toward the upper balconies. "The higher your seat sits under the dome, the rarer the lots they bring out of the deep cisterns."

"For the richest syndicates?"

"And the Demon Peer. He gets first refusal on the prime stock."

The innkeeper’s voice dropped further.

"House law caps the floor. Common paddles stop at four hundred crowns. Pit victors may spend earned crowns up to six hundred. A Peer carries a thousand, but every accepted lot drains the tally. No buyer claims more than three lots. When tallies meet, the lesser claim breaks the tie by one open crown. Your pit token carries five hundred."

Down on the stage, the announcer stepped to the front lip of the platform, his amplified voice dropping half an octave to command the hall’s attention.

"Our next consignment features specialized combatants taken from the frontier," the announcer called out.

Halberdiers marched a line of twelve chained fighters between two files of weapons—some bearing the calloused knuckles and hard stares of veteran soldiers, others sagging under twenty-pound neck-chains or shuffling on half-healed leg wounds.

After the mining syndicate claimed the last frontier soldier, the announcer paused, letting a calculated silence stretch across the amphitheater before smiling up at the noble boxes.

"Our next collection," the announcer said smoothly, "has been curated specifically for our most distinguished patrons seeking high-grade female combatants."

Across the second and third tiers, velvet chairs creaked as two dozen wealthy buyers and demon representatives leaned forward over the brass rails. The murmur in the hall dropped to a low, covetous hum. A broker in the front stall wiped his palms flat on his trousers.

Kōya’s lip curled in disgust. Beside his hip, Lyra dropped her gaze to her boots, her fingers white around her satchel strap.

"These acquisitions," the announcer continued, "have been selected for their exceptional martial pedigree, rare physical resilience, and unmatched value to a discerning household."

One by one, the handlers marched the women across the boards. One glared at the balconies through a bruised eye; a second shook so badly the chains at her wrists played a constant rattle; a third stared straight through the footlights with the blank, hollowed-out eyes of someone whose mind had retreated behind a wall weeks ago.

Kōya’s breathing slowed into a cold, shallow rhythm while the faces in the surrounding stalls filled his vision.

The handful of sadists grinning in the front row were easy to understand. Monsters were simple. What turned his stomach was the fifty respectable guild clerks taking notes in the middle benches, the noblemen chatting politely about horse-breeding while a girl wept ten yards away, and the merchants who winced at the chains yet kept their hands folded in their laps because interrupting the market was bad for business.

Every soul in the seats kept the wheels greased.

Down on the stage, the announcer raised one gloved hand high.

"And now—the final special entry of the day, a premier acquisition from the eastern border."

At the back of the platform, the thick velvet curtain parted.

An armored handler shoved a tall woman out into the glare of the footlights.

She took two slow, uncoordinated steps forward only because the handler’s iron prod stayed planted between her shoulder blades. Her broad, athletic shoulders sagged forward; her coarse prisoner’s shift was ripped along the ribs, exposing deep, untreated lacerations and purple contusions across her skin. Tangled silver-white hair fell matted with dried blood over her face, and her silver eyes stared down at the oak stage planks without a spark of focus—a body still drawing breath long after the person inside had forgotten why.

Coiled around the base of her bruised throat glowed the dark crimson ink of a high-tier slave crest.

Kōya’s lungs locked mid-breath.

Every sound in the vaulted amphitheater—the clink of wine goblets, the rustle of silk programs, the hum of the overhead wards—dropped away into a deafening roar of blood in his ears.

Prodded a second time by the guard, the woman stumbled half a step closer to the footlights, and her scarred profile came clear under the lamps.

His master.

His teacher.

The fierce silver-haired warrior who had knocked him flat in the courtyard mud a hundred times and laughed when he complained his wrists hurt; the woman whose striped tail he had grabbed in the rain the day they met; the swordswoman who had stood shoulder-to-shoulder with his family when the world caught fire.

Kaela.

Kōya’s right hand blurred to the hilt of the Hero Sword at his belt, a ragged, animal rasp tearing out of his throat.

"Kaela..."