The goblin slaver bit one of the magic crystals to test its purity, his eyes gleaming with greed before he signaled his assistants to unchain the two captives.
"Pleasure doing business with you, little mistress! We'll have them delivered to 'The Fallen Star Emporium' by sundown. They'll be scrubbed and fitted with standard contractor collars," the goblin chirped, rubbing his hands together.
Goldie turned to leave, but she felt a heavy, cold presence behind her. Saphirus was standing there, his three new Devil-spawn guards—towering, red-skinned brutes with obsidian horns—looming behind him. The Cat-kin he'd purchased, a lithe girl with a scarred eye, followed silently in his shadow.
Goldie turned and raised her brows. "What?."
Saphirus flinched before he let out a cough. "Nothing, I was just wandering why you were only buying two slaves instead of more."
"I don't really need that much people and besides, I like people who keep secrets." She said as she slowly walked up towards Saphirus.
Saphirus stepped back instinctively. "W-what are you doing?."
Goldie smiled and opened her arms, before Saphirus could react Goldie gave him a small and gentle hug. "I hope you succeed Saphirus, it's refreshing to see someone else go on about making their dream a reality."
Saphirus froze. His heart hammered against his ribs, not from the terrifying "void-pressure" he usually exerted on others, but from the sheer, logic-defying shock of the gesture. To anyone else, it was a sweet moment between two children. To Saphirus, who knew the girl who once used his shadow-step as a literal footstool, it felt like being hugged by a beautiful, miniature supernova.
He stood rigid until Goldie pulled away, her golden eyes sparkling with a mix of genuine Gold-inherited empathy and Droyar-level mischief.
"Don't get used to it," she hummed, turning on her heel and waving a hand over her shoulder as she walked toward the exit. "If you fail and get yourself killed, I'll find your soul and turn it into a low-tier 'Crying Ghost' card just for the aesthetic."
"You... you're still the worst!" Saphirus yelled after her, his face turning a shade of red that rivaled his new guards' skin. But as she disappeared into the crowd, his grip on his katana loosened. For the first time since leaving the Eighth Continent, the crushing weight of his heritage felt a little lighter.
By the time Goldie returned to her shop, the sun was dipping below the horizon, painting the sky of Freedris in hues of violet and bruised orange. The goblin's delivery arrived promptly.
The Enlightened Human stood with his hands tucked into his sleeves, his expression one of eternal patience. The Dragon Eater girl, however, was crouched on a crate, her tail twitching and her iridescent scales shimmering in the twilight.
The Dragon eater girl, upon seeing Goldie jumped down and walked towards her. She stood in front of her and tilted her head with curiosity then she smiled.
Goldie couldn't help but find that cute and patted her head. The Dragon Eater girl's smile widened at the pat, her white horns tilting forward as she leaned slightly into Goldie's hand like a cat accepting affection it hadn't been offered in a long time. The iridescent scales on her cheeks caught the last of the fading light, scattering little prisms across the ivy-covered walls of the shop.
"What's your name?" Goldie asked, her voice carrying the particular softness Gold had reserved for small animals and things he didn't want to scare away.
The girl's amber eyes blinked. Then she opened her mouth and made a sound that was somewhere between a hiss and a whistle, a sequence of syllables that no human or elf tongue was built to reproduce correctly.
Goldie stared at her for a moment. "I'm going to call you Ember."
The Dragon Eater considered this for approximately one second before nodding with great conviction, as though she had been called Ember her entire life and was simply glad Goldie had finally caught up.
The Enlightened Human stepped forward then, folding into a precise and unhurried bow. "I am called Muen," he said, his voice low and even, like water moving through stone. "Of the Ninth Clarity Order, World of Enlightenment. I am at your service, Mistress Droyar."
His glowing forehead mark pulsed once, gently, as though acknowledging the formal introduction itself.
Goldie looked between the two of them — Muen, composed as still water, and Ember, who had already begun poking curiously at the ivy growing through the storefront wall with one clawed finger.
"Good," Goldie said, clasping her hands behind her back with the practised authority of someone who had technically been running a noble household in her inherited memories since birth. "Then here are your responsibilities. Muen, you will handle inventory, client records, and any administrative work the guild requires. I expect zero errors and I will not repeat myself."
Muen bowed again. "Understood."
"Ember." The Dragon Eater's head snapped toward her, tail going stiff with attention. "You stay close to me when I'm making cards. If the mana starts doing something it shouldn't, you eat it. Don't wait for permission. Don't ask. Just eat it before it becomes my problem."
Ember clicked her teeth together twice in what Goldie had already decided was her version of yes.
"Good." Goldie produced the shop key from her card inventory and unlocked the front door. The hinges protested with a groan that suggested they had opinions about the whole arrangement.
The inside smelled of old wood and damp earth, the vines Barnaby had warned about already threading up through the gaps between the basement floorboards in thin, curious tendrils. The main floor was bare except for a long counter, a few empty shelves, and a single lantern hanging from a hook in the ceiling that lit up with a faint green glow the moment they entered — a residual effect of the Green Witch's mana saturating the continent's atmosphere.
Goldie stood in the centre of the empty room and looked around slowly.
A Card Maker's Emporium. Hers.
The shop was honestly hideous right now. Barnaby had not been exaggerating about the ivy. There was a suspicious crack in the eastern wall, the shelving was uneven, and the lantern's green light made everything look vaguely like the inside of a haunted greenhouse.
But underneath all of that, the bones of it were solid. The counter was good hardwood. The ceiling was high enough. The storefront window, once cleaned, would catch the morning light perfectly.
Goldie exhaled.
"We open in one week," she said quietly, more to herself than to either of them. "Before that, I have a deck of twenty cards to build, a shop to make beautiful, and a guild sample to prepare." She turned and looked at the two of them standing in the doorway. "Neither of you are permitted to have a dull moment while under my employment. Welcome to The Fallen Star Emporium."
She then used her skill to Create a simple card. "Create Caed:Telekinesis."
The cards image materialised and she observed. Just as the name said, it does what it is supposed to do. She didn't get any Hirogems for creating the card since it's not original and the requirements for the card is pretty simple.
For every second the skill is used, she will lose 1 mana, the amount of mana scales to how large the object was and she had some things to bring back inside.
Goldie walked back outside and placed the telekinesis card against her palm, letting it dissolve into her skin with a brief, tingling warmth. Then she raised one hand toward the stack of deliveries still sitting on the front step — the crates of paint, the wrapped furniture pieces, the bundles of dried flowers from the florist — and focused.
The first crate shuddered, then lifted. Slowly, but smoothly.
Muen watched from the doorway with the particular quality of stillness that suggested he was filing this information away under a category labelled do not be alarmed by this. Ember watched with her mouth slightly open, scales catching the green lanternlight, and then began clapping.
Goldie moved everything inside in silence, the mana drain ticking steadily in the back of her awareness like a quiet clock. It was efficient. It was practical. It was also, she noted with some satisfaction, considerably more elegant than doing it by hand.
When the last bundle of magic flowers drifted through the doorway and settled on the counter, she dropped the card's effect and felt the familiar dull pull of mana expenditure — minor, manageable. She'd used roughly forty mana. Fine.
"Muen," she said, turning toward the counter. "Can you read structural plans?"
"I can learn them by morning," he replied, which was, she supposed, effectively the same thing.
"There's a crack in the east wall. I want to know if it's cosmetic or if Barnaby sold me a building that's slowly becoming a basement." She set a small pouch of copper coins on the counter beside him. "Take that, find a reputable stoneworker before the market closes, and have them here tomorrow at first light."
Muen picked up the pouch with two fingers, tucked it into his sleeve without counting it, and was out the door before she finished the sentence.
Goldie watched him go, quietly satisfied.
Ember had already migrated toward the vines threading up through the floorboards and was crouched over them, pressing her nose very close to the green tendrils and sniffing with intense academic focus.
"Don't eat those," Goldie said.
Ember looked up at her.
"They're saturated with the Green Witch's mana. I don't know what that does to a Dragon Eater's digestion and I don't want to find out tonight."
Ember looked back at the vines. Then back at Goldie. Then she stood up and moved away from the vines with an air of someone who had definitely not been about to eat them.
Goldie's lips curved.
She moved to the centre of the room, rolled up her sleeves with the practised efficiency of someone who had inherited two lifetimes of working with their hands, and opened her card inventory. The custom furniture orders wouldn't arrive until tomorrow. The paint was here. The flowers were here. She had one evening, an empty room, and an aesthetic standard she refused to compromise.