The star fragment burned like a wound in the center of her palm.
Kael watched carefully as the merchant flexed her hand, the celestial piece pulsing with an unnatural green light that seemed to push against her skin from the inside.
Her fingers moved with a predatory grace that suggested the fragment was more than just a piece of fallen star—it was alive.
Riverstone's fragment market was nothing like the peaceful trading squares of the old world. Here, power was currency. Ability was wealth. And everyone was hungry for something.
It was amazing how quickly things had changed.
The merchant's name was Elena. She had found her fragment three months after the sky shattered, in a riverbed just outside of town. Where once she had been a simple cloth trader, now she could weave textiles that shimmered with impossible colors, fabrics that seemed to breathe with their own internal light.
"Interested?" she asked Kael, her voice different now. No longer the casual tone of a local trader, but something cold and calculating.
Kael had accompanied his father Marcus to the market, a ritual that had transformed from a simple economic necessity to a carefully orchestrated tactic of survival.
Marcus stood nearby, his hand never far from the small knife at his belt. Not out of aggression, but preparedness.
The world had become a place where caution was as essential as breathing.
"Just looking," Kael responded, his eyes taking in the market around him.
The fragment market was a battlefield of unspoken tensions. Some merchants displayed their abilities like peacocks showing their most brilliant feathers. A farmer might grow an entire season's crop with a single touch. A smith could shape metal with nothing more than a thought and an open palm.
But there was a darker side. A hunger that lived beneath the surface.
"Fragments change people," Marcus had told him repeatedly. "Not just their abilities. Their very nature."
Kael understood now what his father meant.
Elena's fragment pulsed again. The green light leaked out, barely contained, casting strange shadows on the market stalls around her. Nearby villagers instinctively took a step back.
A brutal transaction was unfolding just two stalls away. A fragment hunter—a tall, lean man with eyes that seemed to have forgotten how to show mercy—was negotiating with a desperate farmer. The farmer's hands trembled. He held a fragment no larger than a child's thumb, but its potential was immense.
"Water growth," the fragment hunter muttered. "Makes crops flourish in the driest conditions."
'Wait a minute,' Roland thought, his mind sharpening. 'How could they possibly know what type of fragment it is?'
The farmer's desperation was palpable. His farm had been struggling. His family was hungry. The fragment was his last hope.
"How much?" the farmer asked.
The hunter's smile was not kind. "Enough to keep you alive. For now."
Kael felt something against his chest. The fragment he carried—the one no one knew about—seemed to pulse. A warning? A response? He couldn't be certain.
His mind drifted to the first time he truly understood the fragment's presence.
It had started subtly. A heightened awareness. A sense that something fundamental had changed within him.
During a routine day of farm work, he'd discovered he could anticipate movements with impossible precision. A chicken escaping its coop. A tool about to fall. His body moved before his mind could process the information.
Then came the emotional resonance. The ability to sense tensions before they erupted. To feel the emotional state of those around him as clearly as one might feel heat from a fire.
He hadn't told anyone. Not his father. Not Lira. The secret felt both burdensome and precious.
The market continued its brutal dance.
Fragments of fallen stars. Pieces of celestial power that had transformed their world in a matter of moments.
Some brought miracles. Some brought destruction. Most brought something in between—a complex mixture of possibility and peril.
"Your father is wise to be cautious," Elena said, watching Kael. Her fragment continued to pulse, that strange green light dancing around her fingers.
Marcus was speaking with another merchant, discussing crop yields and the strange new economics of their fragment-transformed world.
Prices were no longer determined by simple supply and demand. Now, a merchant's fragment abilities could inflate or deflate entire market segments.
A weaver with a light manipulation fragment could create cloth that changed colors. Instantly valuable. A farmer with a growth fragment could produce crops with unprecedented speed. Economic power redefined.
The fragment hunter completed his transaction with the desperate farmer. Coins exchanged hands. The fragment passed from one palm to another. A moment of transfer that felt more like a violation than a trade.
Kael watched.
The farmer looked defeated. The hunter looked predatory.
And somewhere, beneath it all, Kael's own fragment pulsed.
As the day progressed, the market revealed its true nature. Not a place of simple commerce, but a complex ecosystem of power and survival.
'Lira would have loved this', Kael thought. Her obsession with understanding power, with her gymnastic training that she claimed was divine guidance, would have found this market fascinating.
"We must prepare," Marcus had told them repeatedly. "The world has changed."
And prepare they did.
Marcus was a former military officer, forced into retirement after sustaining a debilitating injury during a high-stakes mission deep behind enemy lines.
His once-unwavering precision and physical prowess had been compromised, leaving him to grapple with the harsh reality that his career, built on years of discipline and sacrifice, had come to an abrupt end.
The weight of his decision still lingered, a constant reminder of the cost of service, but he felt no regret, because he had his family with him.
Marcus trained Kael in basic defense. Not with weapons, exactly. But with awareness. With understanding. How to read a room. How to sense potential threats. How to survive in a world where power could emerge from anywhere.
Lira continued her gymnastics training. What had started as a seemingly absurd dream now felt like preparation. Her movements were no longer clumsy. Each twist, each leap they were all calculated.
"The gods showed me this path," she would say. And watching her, Kael was beginning to believe her.
The market began to wind down. Shadows lengthened. The fragment traders packed their wares—not just goods, but pieces of fallen stars. Potential. Power and danger.
Elena's green fragment continued to pulse. A living thing. Hungry.
As they prepared to leave, a disturbance emerged at the market's edge.
A group of fragment-enhanced individuals. Their abilities crackling around them like visible energy. Tension rising. A potential conflict brewing.
Marcus's hand went to his knife. Kael felt his own fragment respond. That subtle warmth. That quiet resonance.
Something was coming.