The Night Market of Forgotten Deals

Beneath the city, below the tangled veins of subway tunnels and abandoned service corridors, a place exists where the rules of reality bend. It is neither myth nor urban legend—those who know of it have either traded a piece of their soul for the knowledge or were foolish enough to stumble upon it when the stars aligned just right.

The Night Market of Forgotten Deals does not remain in one place for long. It shifts like a living thing, moving beneath the metropolis, finding new dark corners to root itself in before dawn wipes it away. Some claim the market exists in the spaces where unspoken desires fester, where promises once made and broken still echo in the bones of the city.

Tonight, the entrance is in the basement of a condemned hotel, behind a door that should not exist. It is rusted and warped, inscribed with symbols that flicker between recognition and nonsense. Those who pass through find themselves in a world that smells of old paper, burning incense, and something metallic, like fresh-cut copper. The stalls stretch in impossible directions, vanishing into dim corners that shouldn't exist underground.

The Merchants

They are not human. Not entirely. Each one is a shade off from normal—some too tall, their joints bending in ways that make the eye twitch. Others appear ordinary at first glance but have eyes that reflect too much light, or smiles that stretch a fraction too wide. They trade in things no mundane market would dare: stolen shadows, bottled echoes of laughter, names no longer spoken, and forgotten days from a person’s life.

A vendor draped in moth-eaten silk cradles a velvet-lined box filled with flickering memories, each one encased in a shard of glass. A weary man haggles over the cost of forgetting a name that haunts him. Another merchant, her fingers like the legs of a spider, sells the ability to see two seconds into the future—for a price measured in years, not currency.

The Buyer

He enters cautiously, though his heart pounds with excitement. It has taken him months to track down the market’s entrance. His name no longer matters here, only his desire.

He moves past stalls selling cursed poetry and elixirs that guarantee love but not happiness. He ignores the whispers of vendors offering truths too heavy for mortals to bear. His focus is singular.

At last, he finds her—the one he has been seeking.

The merchant’s skin is as pale as bone, her eyes like pools of ink that drink in the dim light. She smiles knowingly, already aware of what he has come for. She has been expecting him.

“I want it back,” he says, his voice steady despite the weight of the air around them.

She tilts her head. “Are you certain? What is taken does not return unchanged.”

He nods. There is no hesitation. He has lived too long without it.

She unfolds her hands, and in her palm lies a small, writhing mass of silver and shadow. It pulses, shifting in and out of shape—a fragment of his soul, stolen long ago in a deal he can no longer recall.

“The price?” he asks.

The merchant leans forward, whispering the cost into his ear. His breath stills.

For the first time, doubt claws at him.

But in the Night Market of Forgotten Deals, hesitation is a currency all its own. The longer one lingers, the more the market takes.

And so, he reaches out—accepting his soul once more, and with it, the burden of everything he had once chosen to forget.

✅ Step into the Night Market