I decide to test him, to find out how much of that swagger is real and how much is just a front for squeezing money out of careless customers.

The feud between Divers and Drowneds is the thing that irritates me most in Thirstfall. No matter how hard we try to stay neutral, most of them only make the whole situation worse, and if you lower your head and walk out, you simply leave without your product, because they don’t care. I genuinely hope that isn’t the case this time.

"Production in the process of operational registration. I need OXI-resistant vials, neutral catalyst, fixation salt, filtering membranes, alchemy kits tier 3, Reef Hydrox bone, and lunaria juice."

I settle on tier 3 kits to guarantee extreme purity and minimize contamination of the formula by adjacent compounds. The tier-three kit carries the bigger technological advances: UV light, stabilizers, more sensitive tools. And for less experienced hands, it helps far more thanks to the technology built into it.

The seller looks me up and down and mutters, more to himself than to me.

"Hmm... Azure Prime student, Rank D, expensive armor, the posture of someone who wants to buy wholesale without looking desperate."

Then he turns to me and finishes out loud.

"I see... How many vials?"

I ignore the impudence and just answer.

"Ten thousand."

The seller doesn’t blink. He only seems to complete his judgment.

"Then you really are desperate."

My blood starts to curdle.

"And what if I’m testing your capacity?"

"My capacity is excellent, but your credit hasn’t been proven yet."

Oliver lets out a low laugh. God only knows whether it’s in my favor or at my expense.

I pull a Plate from my inventory and set it on the counter, without pushing it forward.

The seller looks at the Plate, then at me.

"That buys respect, not a discount."

"I don’t want a discount. I want priority, fast delivery, and silence."

"Silence usually costs more than ten thousand glass vials."

"Then put it in the budget."

For the first time, his eyes looks real.

"Ten thousand resistant vials, twenty tier-three alchemy kits, four crates of fixation salt, neutral catalyst, ten crates of Reef Hydrox bone, decent membranes... ah, of course, thirty crates of lunaria juice. If you want everything in quality that won’t kill anyone, that’s ten Plates."

"Seven."

"You said you didn’t want a discount."

"I also said I was testing you."

"For seven, I sell you vials that crack if someone says OXI too close to them."

"Eight, with delivery today."

"Okay, smart guy. Nine Plates at most, and delivery tomorrow morning."

"Eight Plates and fifty Shards. Delivery today, to the warehouse three hundred feet from here. And you get preference as the standing supplier for a new line backed by the King."

The drowned goes quiet.

The words line and King in the same sentence land exactly where I aimed them.

"Name of the line?"

"Not announced yet."

"Product?"

"Clean OXI recovery. No penalizing stomach effects, no long-term debilitation."

His eyes shift only a little, but they shift. For the first time, something close to a smile crosses his face.

"Seven Plates," he says, slower now. "Delivery today. But I want a sample when it exists."

"Small."

"Fair."

I extend my hand, and he shakes it.

We talk through a few more structural materials and machinery. That kind of thing is made by Divers with a profession-type Class, just like my Cartographer class in my past life. Some of them will have to come to the warehouse and build everything using runification and active skills. Naturally, we draw up a contract to secure secrecy over all of it.

Right after I sign, the shop door opens behind us, bringing first the noise of the street, then the dry tap of a cane against the floor. One beat, followed by another, with a calm so controlled that my body recognizes the presence before I even look over my shoulder.

An absurd energy, dense and exotic, floods the entire room. It doesn’t crash in. It settles, the way water fills a sinking hull, finding every low corner of the space until there’s no air left that doesn’t belong to him.

The seller’s smile fades by degrees, not out of fright but out of pure self-preservation instinct. Oliver stays at my side, too quiet for someone his size, while Rahul Sharma walks into Third Breath Alchemy with the ease of a man who doesn’t visit places. He decides they belong to him for a few minutes.

He’s dressed the way I remember from the arena, an immaculate suit in deep shades of purple, the glass cane turning idly in his long fingers. It catches the alchemist’s lamplight and throws thin ribbons of it across the shelves.

My hand is still on the counter. Near the contract. Near freshly sealed secrets. Far too close to everything I don’t want this man to see. A new product. A new supplier. If Sharma reads even the edges of what just happened here, the deadlock I built to save myself in the observatory stops being a wall and starts being a leash.

The good mood I’d carried since registering Safe Harbor sinks inside me, heavy and cold, while his cane touches the floor one more time.

He doesn’t look at me right away. His sharp gaze drifts across the shop first, the herbs, the washed glass, the alchemist who has gone very still, pricing every object in sight like an appraiser walking an estate that isn’t his yet but soon could be. Only then do those analytical eyes find me, peeling back a layer I’d rather keep folded.

"Mister Sands," he says, the faintest curl at the corner of his mouth. "What a small ocean Azure Prime turns out to be."

The cane goes quiet against the stone.

So does the room.

And I understand it with flat, familiar certainty: the next thing I say decides whether I walk out of here with a factory or with a problem wearing a purple suit.