The Undermarket didn’t hum with life. It hummed with debt. A slow, pulsing thrum beneath the surface of reality, something deeper than sound, heavier than air. It coiled through the space like the residue of a thousand broken promises, a pressure that clung to the skin, to the bones, to the soul. The deeper Dante walked, the more he could feel it—slithering, tightening, pulling. An unseen weight, an invisible ledger, a quiet reminder that in this place, nothing was ever truly free.

The market itself sprawled beneath the city in a vast cavern of cracked stone and forgotten history, illuminated by the flickering glow of contract seals. Some hovered mid-air, sigils of debt floating like ghostly embers, their meanings known only to those bound by them. Others were etched into the very foundations, pulsing softly, their light dimming and brightening in time with unseen transactions. Lanterns, strung haphazardly between leaning structures, cast warped, elongated shadows. The pathways twisted like veins through the market, lined with stalls that sold nothing tangible—only favors, curses, names, secrets. Some were run by people, or things that only looked mostly human, their smiles too sharp, their eyes too still. Others didn’t bother with pretense. Hooded figures, whispering voices from the depths of empty stalls, hands that extended from curtains of shadow to seal a deal.

Dante swallowed hard. He was out of place here, a trespasser in a world where every glance carried an unspoken offer, where every breath felt like it cost something. But he didn’t have the luxury of fear, or hesitation. He didn’t belong in the Undermarket, but he had come anyway. Because there was only one person in this godforsaken place who could tell him what the hell he had gotten himself into.

At the center of it all sat the Broker.

There was no throne, no grand display of power—just a plain wooden desk, old but well-kept, planted right in the heart of the chaos like it had always been there, like the rest of the market had simply grown around it. No excess, no opulence. Just a man in a crisp three-piece suit, sleeves rolled up, ink stains darkening his fingertips, as if he had spent hours—days—writing things that could never be unwritten. He had the air of a tax auditor who moonlighted as a funeral director, someone who had seen the debts of men and measured the weight of their graves.

The moment Dante stepped closer, the Broker’s eyes flicked up. Cold. Sharp. Knowing. He smiled, slow and amused, as if he had been expecting this exact moment. As if he had already done the calculations and knew exactly how this conversation would end.

“Ah. A fresh Pactmaker.”

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Dante hesitated, feet refusing to move closer. The weight of his contract burned against his skin, like the very air around the Broker had recognized it. He swallowed down the unease. “You the guy who can tell me what the hell I’m dealing with?”

The Broker gestured to the seat across from him. “That depends. Can you afford the answer?”

Dante didn’t sit. His fingers twitched at his sides, resisting the instinct to clench into fists. “I already signed something I shouldn’t have. Not looking to add to my tab.”

The Broker chuckled. It was not comforting. It was the sound of someone who had seen this story before. Someone who already knew how it ended.

“Oh, Dante.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk, fingers laced together. His smile sharpened, all teeth and inevitability. “You don’t need to add to it. You’re already in deeper than you realize.”

The air tightened. Not physically—not in a way that could be measured or explained—but in a way that felt wrong. Heavy. Like an invisible hand pressing down on Dante’s shoulders, reminding him that even standing here was a kind of debt. The ink on the contract pulsed, the letters rippling as if they were breathing, as if they were watching. Dante’s gut twisted. He had seen this thing before, but never like this—never laid bare under the Broker’s scrutiny, never so exposed.

And the Broker was scrutinizing it. His sharp eyes flicked across the page, his expression unreadable, save for the small, knowing twitch at the corner of his mouth. He wasn’t just reading it. He was analyzing, calculating, as if somewhere in those shifting lines, he was seeing numbers Dante couldn’t. Weighing risks. Assessing value. His ink-stained fingers tapped idly against the desk, a slow, deliberate rhythm, like a man considering the worth of something in a pawn shop. A thing not yet sold, but already owned.

Dante clenched his jaw. He hated the feeling creeping into his bones—the sensation of being measured, categorized, sorted into some invisible column of assets and liabilities. This wasn’t just a conversation. It was a valuation. A test to see how much leverage the Broker had over him. And the worst part? The part that made his skin crawl? He already knew the answer.

Too much.

With a flick of his wrist, a contract appeared. Not conjured from nothing, not written in that moment, but revealed, like it had always been there, just waiting to be acknowledged. Dante’s contract. The same parchment that had bound itself to him, the same ink that had slithered across the page when he first saw it. Now it lay stretched across the desk, its words shifting like something alive, twisting, rewriting, adapting to new terms.

The Broker tapped the page, a lazy motion, but one that sent a ripple through the parchment, like water disturbed in a still pond. “You didn’t just sign a contract,” he said, tone almost casual. Almost. “You entered the Game.”

Dante’s stomach turned. “What the hell does that mean?”

The Broker leaned in, his presence suddenly heavier, like gravity itself had bent around him. “It means that every contract has a price. A burden. A consequence. And you?” His fingers traced the glowing words on the parchment, the ones Dante didn’t want to look at but couldn’t ignore.

“You already owe more than you can afford.”