The First Night in Eastwind City

Cerqin didn’t sleep easy. After nights burned thin, she sank into rest like a stone dropping into a still pond—heavy, spent, oddly satisfied.

To just lie down and do nothing felt strange, like a cart suddenly stripped of its load.

At first light, she stepped out with a flat, speechless face, a small grumble fogging her chest like a stubborn cloud. Why rent a room just to cram three people in when we’re not even doing anything…

She drew a deep breath of the cool morning. The season was warming; grasses and trees were in full surge. Green scent and earth’s sweet damp threaded the air like soft silk, and every early riser felt their heart open like a window.

After breakfast, she let her thoughts flutter like sparrows and wondered how to spend the day.

She’d walked the orcish quarter yesterday; today she should still get familiar, leave new footprints, mark the ground again.

Where else to wander? The bustling market with its cries like waves was a good choice, but too many hours alone go dull, like tea brewed thin.

Her fingers brushed the bracelet at her wrist. Silver Luan had given it to her last night, right before lights-out, cool as moonlight against her skin.

It was a storage magic item, a pocket of night bound in silver. The space wasn’t large, but the price was.

Inside lay the gold from Spring Tide, suns that clinked in a dark sky. A joint gift from the two of them.

Spring Tide had said a third-tier was too weak to need much for now, and so she’d tossed in some gold like a casual wave.

To Cerqin, it was an avalanche—a windfall rolling down the slope.

It was the first time she’d seen so much gold, a heap shining like ripe wheat.

The space bracelet thrilled her more. It meant the trophies she hunted could ride at her wrist like silent foxes, safe from prying eyes.

A pity the inner pocket was small. At her old hunting pace, the gourd would fill fast and brim.

With this money, she could finally look at the things she’d wanted and couldn’t buy, windows bright with color calling her name.

Yesterday in the market, she had coveted clothes and trinkets—fabrics that flowed like waves, metal glints like scattered stars.

Back then, her purse-string was knotted tight, and the coins were few.

Sudden giddiness rose like a spring, and she started buying, sleeves fluttering, coins pattering like light rain.

She swept up a pile of outfits with special uses, gathered in one breath.

After paying, regret pricked her skin; a shy blush welled like a tide as she packed them herself.

Wandering with that soft after-heat, she drifted to a stall stacked with oddities, drawn there like a moth to a lone lantern.

It was because the stall owner was simply too arresting—stunning like a peony under noon sun.

A black-haired matron in sumptuous dress, out of place among dust and noise. Her lazy grace echoed the Archbishop Ming Xi Cerqin had seen before.

A beauty with a different air from the Holy Maiden, yet of the same rare caliber—moon to jade, peer to peer.

Cerqin bent to study the odd goods, mostly tools for divination—bones, beads, cards—and a few tomes that looked like spell manuals. Her eyes, slanted like a cat’s, kept sliding back to the owner.

The owner barely spared the pink-haired girl a glance. She sat in a languid sprawl, eyes half-closed, soaking the sun like a cat on a warm wall.

One arm propped her cheek; leaning on the table, she pressed the generous weight before her into a curve that hooked the eye.

“Hey, miss, how much is this?”

Cerqin picked up a manual at random. She didn’t even read the cover; she just wanted to talk, fingers brushing vellum like leaves.

Her voice cut the quiet laziness. The black-haired beauty rose a fraction, looked at Cerqin, let a shopkeeper’s smile bloom like a trained flower, and spoke slow.

“This one? Two hundred gold. It’s rather underwhelming, so among space-type magic, it’s the cheapest.”

So pricey…

Two hundred gold was a year’s hard labor to a commoner, enough to keep a family of three fed with sacks of grain and smoke in the chimney, and still have some left.

Startled by the number, Cerqin finally dropped her gaze to the cover in her hands.

Four stark words met her: Hand of Space.

The manual was sealed by a special ward, so she couldn’t open it. Normally the cover carries a summary beyond the spell’s name.

Other manuals on the stall were like that. Only this one wore four bare words, plain as rock.

Before Cerqin could speak, the beauty explained first.

“I found this manual as a fragment in some ruins. I added the cover myself. Don’t hate the price; it’s space magic, after all—just a bit underwhelming.”

She seemed not to care whether the thing sold or not, drifting on about how meh it was, like a cloud that wouldn’t bother to rain.

That piqued Spring Tide’s curiosity, a wave lifting its edge.

Cerqin knew space magic was powerful, but as a third-tier fledgling, the mountain was distant and the mist thick; she had no real feel for it.

The stronger the spell, the more mana it eats, the finer your control must be—climbing a steep ridge on thread-thin lines—which means a higher rank.

“I call it underwhelming because it’s essentially a support spell…”

Cerqin listened, and her eyes lit like lamps at dusk.

The spell called Hand of Space has no training threshold. The cost scales with the range, ripple to ripple. Even a third-tier can learn it.

Cast it, and you open a field of mana, gain a mana-sight, and can shift one thing within that net.

Pros: the mana ripple is small, hard to notice; and the mana-sight isn’t just raw sensing—it shows more than energy, the field drawn in quiet lines.

It’s ‘meh’ because to reach a range that actually helps in a fight, the cost spikes like a candle burning fast, the duration shrinks, and it can only move things without a mana signature…

Cerqin felt it was tailor-made for her, a silk glove fitting the hand.

If she learned it, she could lift anyone’s personal items ghost-quiet, like a fox’s paw in the dark.

Clothes mostly don’t carry any mana pulse!

A divine skill—no doubt!

“I’ll take it!”

Her excitement rolled in like a wave, drowning out the thrill of meeting such a lovely lady.

She just wanted to learn it fast, then field-test it—fingers itching, bowstring taut.

“You really want it?”

The beauty showed rare surprise, a small flame of curiosity flickering as her gaze weighed Cerqin.

She didn’t drift to the teasing place Cerqin feared; she just thought, so there really is a big spender ready to buy this near-dud.

“Of course.”

Cerqin didn’t babble. She glanced around, brushed her bracelet like wiping dew, and drew out two small pouches of gold, coins chiming soft as rain.

“Thanks for your patronage.”

The owner said no more. She took the gold and, with a casual swipe, lifted the ward from the manual like a veil rising.

With this lucky find in hand, Cerqin’s mood to wander evaporated like mist. She pushed back her stroll through the orcish quarter.

She wanted to rush to her room and start studying. But after two steps, she felt eyes on her—unseen, cool as shadows touching the back of her neck.