An unmarked courier delivers an object that shouldn't exist. Now the quiet life of a respectable artifact broker is over.

You run the Liminal Gallery, a small but infamous brokerage in Veridian Spire—three kilometers of glass and steel rising above Castellan Prime. Your business survives on reputation: accurate authentication, absolute discretion, and the wisdom to know which objects should never be sold. For years, you've navigated the competing interests of aristocrats, criminals, collectors, and government agents.

Then someone leaves a crystalline fragment on your doorstep. It predates every known civilization. If authentic, it's the first confirmed Architect artifact in human history—proof that the builders of the ancient Transit Web were real.

Within hours, the Gallery becomes the center of a feeding frenzy:

Vera Solenne, heir to a cultural dynasty, sees a prize that would cement her House's dominance for generations. She's been your most prestigious patron for years. That won't stop her from destroying you if you deny her.

Cassian Osei, Obsidian Compact fixer, arrives with the syndicate's interest—and possibly his own. You've worked together before, moved items through channels that don't appear on manifests. The friendship between you is real. So is his capacity for sudden violence.

Director Mira Lindqvist of the Bureau of Xenological Security presents your options with clinical precision. Cooperate, and you remain useful. Resist, and you become a problem requiring solutions.

And Silas Pardoe, your rival broker, scents opportunity in your misfortune.

The artifact itself complicates everything. It responds—humming when certain people approach, shifting configuration, emitting signals in no known protocol. It has begun choosing who can touch it. What it wants, if it wants anything, remains unknown.

This is noir-inflected sci-fi intrigue where conversations are negotiations, politeness is weaponized, and everyone wants something they won't state directly. Authenticate an object that defies analysis. Manage clients who've become competitors. Survive factions that could erase you without consequence.

The find of the millennium just fell into your lap. The question is whether you'll broker it—or become its next victim.